George Martin

In 1943, when he was 17, he joined the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Navy and became an aerial observer and a commissioned officer. The war ended before Martin was involved in any combat, and he left the service in 1947. Encouraged by the pianist, teacher and broadcaster Sidney Harrison Martin used his veteran's grant to attend the Guildhall School of Music and Drama from 1947 to 1950, where he studied piano and oboe, and was interested in the music of Rachmaninoff and Ravel, as well as Cole Porter. Martin's oboe teacher was Margaret Eliot (the mother of Jane Asher, who would later become involved with Paul McCartney). After that, Martin explained that he had just picked it up by himself. On 3 January 1948 – while still at the Academy – Martin married Sheena Chisholm, with whom he would have two children, Alexis and Gregory Paul Martin. He later married Judy Lockhart-Smith on 24 June 1966, and they also had two children, Lucie and Giles Martin.

Following his graduation, he worked for the BBC's classical music department, then joined EMI in 1950 as an assistant to Oscar Preuss, the head of EMI's Parlophone Records from 1950 to 1955. Although having been regarded by EMI as a vital German imprint in the past, it was then not taken seriously and only used for EMI's insignificant acts. After taking over Parlophone, as head of artists and repertoire, when Preuss retired in 1955, Martin recorded classical and Baroque music, original cast recordings, and regional music from around Britain and Ireland.

Martin also produced numerous comedy and novelty records. His first success for Parlophone was the "Mock Mozart" single, performed by Peter Ustinov with Antony Hopkins – a record reluctantly released in 1952 by EMI, only after Preuss insisted they give his young assistant, Martin, a chance. In 1956 he produced the well known children's song "Nellie the Elephant" which was released by Parlophone in October of that year. Later that decade, Martin worked with Peter Sellers on two very popular comedy LPs. One was released on 10" format and called The Best Of Sellers, the second was released in 1957, being called Songs for Swinging Sellers (a spoof on Frank Sinatra's LP Songs for Swingin' Lovers!).

As he had worked with Sellers, he also came to know Spike Milligan, with whom he became a firm friend, and best man at Milligan's second marriage: "I loved The Goon Show, and issued an album of it on my label Parlophone, which is how I got to know Spike." The album was Bridge on the River Wye. It was a spoof of the film The Bridge on the River Kwai, being based on the 1957 Goon Show episode "An African Incident." It was intended to have the same name as the film, but shortly before its release, the film company threatened legal action if the name was used. Martin edited out the 'K' every time the word Kwai was spoken, with Bridge on the River Wye being the result. The River Wye is a river that runs through England and Wales. The album featured Milligan, Sellers, Jonathan Miller, and Peter Cook, playing various characters.

Other comedians Martin worked with included Bernard Cribbins, Charlie Drake, Terry Scott, Bruce Forsyth, Michael Bentine, Dudley Moore, Flanders and Swann, Lance Percival, Joan Sims, Bill Oddie, and The Alberts. Martin worked with both Jim Dale and the Vipers Skiffle Group, with whom he had a number of hits. In early 1962, under the pseudonym "Ray Cathode," Martin released an early electronic dance single, "Time Beat" – recorded at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. As Martin wanted to add rock and roll to Parlophone's repertoire, he struggled to find a "fireproof" hit-making pop artist or group.

Martin was contacted by Sid Coleman of Ardmore & Beechwood, who told him about Brian Epstein, the manager of a band whom he had met. He thought Martin might be interested in the group, even though they had been turned down by Decca Records. Until that time, although there had been considerable success with comedy records, and a number 1 hit with the Temperance Seven, Martin had only minor success with pop music, such as "Who Could Be Bluer" by Jerry Lordan, and singles with Shane Fenton and Matt Monro. After the telephone call by Coleman, Martin arranged a meeting on 13 February 1962 with Brian Epstein. Martin listened to a tape recorded at Decca, and thought that Epstein's group was "rather unpromising", but liked the sound of Lennon's and McCartney's vocals.

The Beatles auditioned for Martin on 6 June 1962, in studio three at EMI. Ron Richards and his engineer Norman Smith recorded four songs, which Martin (who was not present during the recording) listened to at the end of the session. The verdict was not promising, however, as Richards complained about Pete Best's drumming, and Martin thought their original songs were simply not good enough. Martin asked the individual Beatles if there was anything they personally did not like, to which George Harrison replied, "I don't like your tie." That was the turning point, according to Smith, as John Lennon and Paul McCartney joined in with jokes and comic wordplay, that made Martin think that he should sign them to a contract for their wit alone.

The Beatles' second recording session with Martin was on 4 September 1962, when they recorded "How Do You Do It", heavily modified by The Beatles which Martin thought was a sure-fire hit, even though Lennon and McCartney did not want to release it, not being one of their own compositions or style. Martin was correct: Gerry & the Pacemakers' version, which Martin produced, spent three weeks at No. 1 in April 1963, before being displaced by the Beatles' "From Me to You". On 11 September 1962, the Beatles re-recorded "Love Me Do" with session player Andy White playing drums. Ringo Starr was asked to play tambourine and maracas, and although he complied, he was definitely "not pleased". Due to an EMI library error, a 4 September version with Starr playing drums was issued on the British single release; afterwards, the tape was destroyed, and the 11 September recording with Andy White on drums was used for all subsequent releases. Martin would later praise Starr's drumming, calling him "probably ... the finest rock drummer in the world today". As "Love Me Do" peaked at number 17 in the British charts, on 26 November 1962 Martin recorded "Please Please Me", which he did only after Lennon and McCartney had almost begged him to record another of their original songs. Martin's crucial contribution to the song was to tell them to speed up what was initially a slow ballad. After the recording Martin looked over the mixing desk and said, "Gentlemen, you have just made your first number one record". Martin directed Epstein to find a good publisher, as Ardmore & Beechwood had done nothing to promote "Love Me Do", informing Epstein of three publishers who, in Martin's opinion, would be fair and honest, which led them to Dick James.

As a producer, Martin recorded the two-man show featuring Michael Flanders and Donald Swann, At the Drop of a Hat, which sold steadily for twenty-five years, although Martin's breakthrough as a producer came with the Beyond the Fringe show cast album, which starred Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett, and Jonathan Miller, and he would also produce the accompanying soundtrack album for David Frost's satirical BBC TV show That Was the Week That Was in 1963. Martin's work transformed the profile of Parlophone from a "sad little company" to a very profitable business.

Martin also produced two of the best-known James Bond themes. The first was "Goldfinger" by Shirley Bassey in 1964. The second, in 1973, was "Live and Let Die" by Paul McCartney and Wings for the film of the same name. He also composed and produced the film's score.

Martin was also commissioned to write an official opening theme for BBC Radio 1's launch in September 1967. Entitled "Theme One", it was the first music heard on Radio 1 (not The Move's "Flowers in the Rain", which was the first record played in full on the station). The tune was later covered by the British progressive rock group Van der Graaf Generator.

In the immediate aftermath of the Beatles' break-up, a time when he made many angry utterances, John Lennon trivialised Martin's importance to the Beatles' music. In his 1970 interview with Jann Wenner, Lennon said, "[Dick James] is another one of those people, who think they made us. They didn't. I'd like to hear Dick James' music and I'd like to hear George Martin's music, please, just play me some."

In a 1971 letter to Paul McCartney, Lennon wrote, "When people ask me questions about 'What did George Martin really do for you?,' I have only one answer, 'What does he do now?' I noticed you had no answer for that! It's not a putdown, it's the truth." Lennon wrote that Martin took too much credit for the Beatles' music. Commenting specifically on "Revolution 9", Lennon said, "For Martin to state that he was 'painting a sound picture' is pure hallucination. Ask any of the other people involved. The final editing Yoko and I did alone."

In 1971, Lennon said, "George Martin made us what we were in the studio. He helped us develop a language to talk to other musicians."

Also working with Gary Glitter before his chart success, Martin recorded several songs with him in the early 1960s, with the singer using the pseudonym of "Paul Raven". He also produced the album The Man in the Bowler Hat (1974) for the eccentric British folk-rock group Stackridge. Martin worked with Paul Winter on his (1972) Icarus album, which was recorded in a rented house by the sea in Marblehead, Massachusetts. Winter said that Martin taught him "how to use the studio as a tool", and allowed him to record the album in a relaxed atmosphere, which was different from the pressurised control in a professional studio. In 1979 he worked with Ron Goodwin to produce the album containing The Beatles Concerto, written by John Rutter. In 2010, Martin was the executive producer of the hard rock debut of Arms of the Sun, an all-star project featuring Rex Brown (Pantera, Down), John Luke Hebert (King Diamond), Lance Harvill and Ben Bunker.

Within the recording industry, Martin was known for having become independent at a time when many producers were still salaried. EMI had refused his pleas for royalties on his own work, nor did they provide him with any year-end bonuses (which were standard for EMI employees) after 1962, maintaining that his £3000 annual salary was sufficient remuneration for his services, at a time when artists he had signed and were producing had generated tens of millions of pounds for EMI. By 1965, the Beatles' success had given Martin the leverage to start Associated Independent Recording (AIR), which enabled him to hire out his services to other artists. Martin also took EMI's best producers and staff along with him to AIR. AIR demonstrated how important Martin's talents were to his artists, and it allowed him a share in record royalties on his hits. To this day, AIR remains one of the world's pre-eminent recording studios. In 1979, Martin opened a studio on the Caribbean island of Montserrat. This studio was destroyed by Hurricane Hugo ten years later.

In 1979, Martin published a memoir, All You Need is Ears (co-written with Jeremy Hornsby), that described his work with the Beatles and other artists (including Peter Sellers, Sophia Loren, Shirley Bassey, Flanders and Swann, Matt Monro, and Dudley Moore), and gave an informal introduction to the art and science of sound recording. In 1993 he published Summer of Love: The Making of Sgt Pepper (published in the U.S. as With a Little Help from My Friends: The Making of Sgt Pepper, co-authored with William Pearson), which also included interview quotations from a 1992 South Bank Show episode discussing the album. Martin also edited a 1983 book called Making Music: The Guide to Writing, Performing and Recording.

In 1991, Martin contributed the string arrangement and conducted the orchestra for the song "Ticket To Heaven" on the last Dire Straits studio album On Every Street. In 1992, Martin worked with Pete Townshend on the musical stage production of The Who's Tommy. The play opened on Broadway in 1993, with the original cast album being released that summer. Martin won the Grammy Award for Best Musical Show Album in 1993, as the producer of that album.

Martin oversaw post-production on The Beatles Anthology (which was originally entitled The Long and Winding Road) in 1994 and 1995, working again with Geoff Emerick. Martin decided to use an old 8-track analogue mixing console – which EMI learned an engineer still had – to mix the songs for the project, instead of a modern digital console. He explained this by saying that the old console created a completely different sound, which a new console could not accurately reproduce. He also said he found the whole project a strange experience, as they had to listen to themselves chatting in the studio, 25–30 years previously.

In 1995, he contributed the horn and string arrangement for the song "Latitude" on the Elton John Made in England album, which was recorded at Martin's AIR Studios London. He also produced "Candle in the Wind 1997", Elton's tribute single to the late Diana, Princess of Wales, which topped charts around the world in September 1997.

In 2001, Martin released Produced by George Martin: 50 Years in Recording, a six-CD retrospective of his entire studio career, and in 2002, Martin launched Playback, his limited-edition illustrated autobiography, published by Genesis Publications.

Sir George was granted a coat of arms in 2004, with the Latin motto "Amore Solum Opus Est" which translates to "All you need is love." The arms are a prime example of canting arms, creating arms with a visual pun, including Martin, a recorder, beetles, and a badge of a zebra holding an abbot's crozier, representing both Abbey Road Studios and the Beatles' album, with its iconic cover featuring a zebra crossing.

In 2006, Martin and his son, Giles Martin, remixed 80 minutes of Beatles music for the Las Vegas stage performance Love, a joint venture between Cirque du Soleil and the Beatles' Apple Corps Ltd. A soundtrack album from the show was released that same year.

Martin's work as an arranger was used for many Beatles recordings. For "Eleanor Rigby," he scored and conducted a strings-only accompaniment inspired by Bernard Herrmann. On a Canadian speaking tour in 2007, Martin said that his "Eleanor Rigby" score was influenced by Herrmann's score for the Alfred Hitchcock thriller Psycho. For "Strawberry Fields Forever", he and recording engineer Geoff Emerick turned two very different takes into a single master through careful use of vari-speed and editing. For "I Am the Walrus", he provided a quirky and original arrangement for brass, violins, cellos, and the Mike Sammes Singers vocal ensemble. On "In My Life", he played a speeded-up baroque piano solo. He worked with McCartney to implement the orchestral climax in "A Day in the Life", and he and McCartney shared conducting duties the day that it was recorded.

On 25 April 2011, a 90-minute documentary feature film co-produced by the BBC Arena team, Produced by George Martin, aired to critical acclaim for the first time in the UK. It combines rare archive footage and new interviews with, among others, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Jeff Beck, Cilla Black, and Giles Martin, and tells the life story of how George Martin, a schoolboy growing up in the Depression, grew up to become a legendary music producer. The film, with over 50 minutes of extra footage, including interviews from Rick Rubin, T-Bone Burnett and Ken Scott, was released worldwide by Eagle Rock Entertainment on DVD and Blu-ray on 10 September 2012.

Martin's contribution to the Beatles' work received regular critical acclaim, and led to him being described as the "Fifth Beatle." In 2016, Paul McCartney wrote that "If anyone earned the title of the fifth Beatle it was George".

In November 2017, the Craig Leon-produced album George Martin – Film Scores and Original Orchestral Music was released. The album of new recordings collected a selection of Martin's compositions together for the first time, including previously unheard pieces Belle Etoile and sketches from the feature film The Mission (1986) which were not used in the original soundtrack.

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