Credit: Far Out / Press
Thu 30 July 2026 23:00, UK
The Beatles spawned innumerable musicians and artists in the wake of their world domination back in the 1960s, but they also inspired multiple future generations of music producers and engineers, like Jack Antonoff.
In addition to his own extensive recording career with the likes of Bleachers, Steel Train, and Fun, Antonoff’s impact on the wider musical landscape is rather difficult to ignore. With a vast array of production credits to his name, stretching from blockbuster film soundtracks to pop smashes by the likes of Sabrina Carpenter, Taylor Swift, and Lana Del Rey – to name only a handful of highlights – it is fair to say that Antonoff knows his way around a mixing desk. However, the New Jersey-born producer might never have followed that path were it not for the Fab Four.
So much of The Beatles’ existence was inherently revolutionary, whether they realised it at the time or not. Alongside their utterly incredible songwriting, though, came the production innovations carved out by the group and their sonic architect, George Martin. They were one of the very first bands to really have a say in how their music was put together and produced, and Martin never attempted to play down their revolutionary tendencies by producing the band like any run-of-the-mill pop outfit.
Particularly from Rubber Soul onwards, the production of the band’s LPs was just as commanding and fascinating as the musical content itself. They were, for instance, one of the very first groups to use an – albeit fairly primitive – sequencer; they experimented with tape loops, the newly emerging world of electronic synthesisers, and a litany of other musical experiments which were, for the first time, reaching mass audiences.
So, while some listeners put on the White Album and yearned to be able to play guitar like Eric Clapton on ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’, to sing as serenely as Paul McCartney on ‘Blackbird’, or simply to dress in the peacock fashion adopted by the band at the time, a young Jack Antonoff wanted to know how it was all put together.
In particular, Antonoff has always been fascinated by ‘Happiness Is a Warm Gun’, the John Lennon-penned track that closed out Side One. Listening to the song on an edition of The Howard Stern Show, the producer enthusiastically claimed he was blown away by “Everything about it.”
Adding, “I’ve never felt anything more like heroin than this guitar change. I mean, there’s the bending, technically the phasing, but it’s something else,” and going so far as to call the movement that leads into the song’s title, “The greatest moment of any song ever.”
Further reading: From The Vault
“This is the greatest recording ever made,” he continued, waxing lyrical about the band’s fearlessness in piecing those disparate fragments together into a song that, on paper, shouldn’t work.
“Every element of that recording, on an analytical point of view, I can break down why it’s so good – the compression, the sound, the panning,” he said. “But, more than anything, what the fuck were they thinking, and how did they end up with this? There’s nothing like it.”
That reaction will no doubt be familiar to anybody who can recall their first time listening to The Beatles: “There’s nothing like it.” Nearly 60 years on from the release of the White Album, there still isn’t anything quite like it, but there are numerous artists, songwriters, and – in the case of Jack Antonoff – producers for whom it represents the ultimate holy grail of musical innovation and inspiration.
ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE 
The Far Out Beatles Newsletter
All the latest stories about The Beatles from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.