May, 2016 RollingStoneAus.com | Rolling Stone | 37GETTY IMAGES
Sellers,” says producer Peter Asher, who worked brief-
ly at Apple. “We thought he was coolbeforethe Beatles.”
When the Beatles signed with EMI, they were assigned
to the Parlophone label, which Martin oversaw. At first,
Martin wasn’t interested in working with them, but he
changed his mind after hearing them at work. “I thought,
‘What an odd choice for the Beatles’,” says Beck. “But EMI
wantedaguytocorraltheirtalents.Hesawtheirharmo-
nies and their potential.”
At Martin’s suggestion, the Beatles replaced drum-
merPeteBestwithRingoStarrandmadesignificant
early improvements to their sound, emphasising hooks
andharmonies.“Thefirsttimehereallyevershowed
that he could see beyond what we wereofering him was
‘PleasePleaseMe’,”McCartneytoldRolling Stonein
1974.“ItwasoriginallyconceivedasaRoyOrbison-type
thing, you know. George Mar-
tinsaid,‘Well,we’llputthe
tempoup.’Weallthoughtthat
wasmuchbetter,andthatwas
abighit.”
Martin didn’t mere-
ly oversee the Beat-
les’ sessions at EMI (later re-
named Abbey Road). With the
bearingofastrictbutwell-
mannered schoolteacher, he
guided them into expand-
ing their boundaries. Against
McCartney’s initial wish-
es,Martinpushedforstrings
on “Yesterday”, which led to
the Beatles using orchestra-
tion or horns (“Yellow Subma-
rine”, “Eleanor Rigby”) and
tape loops (“Rain”, “Tomor-
row Never Knows”). “John
[Lennon] would make crazy
requests,” recalls Asher, “and
instead of going ‘no’, which
was the predominant attitude
at the time, George would say, ‘What if we do this?’ Some-
times you’d fi nd George having a cup of tea, which was
the right thing to do at that moment – to let them fi gure
out the course they were on. It was his skill in bringing
out the genius of the Beatles and allowing them the time
to experiment.”
As Lennon told Rolling Stone in 1970, “If Paul
wanted to use violins, he [Martin] would translate it
for him. Like ‘In My Life’, there is an Elizabethan piano
solo in it, so he would do things like that. We would say,
‘Play like Bach’, or something, and he would put 12 bars
in there. He helped us develop a language, to talk to mu-
sicians.”
The Beatles were fast learners. “They knew nothing
at all about recording to begin with,” Martin told RS
in 1976. “They got the techniques right of , very soon.”
That learning curve would sometimes lead to friction.
McCartney was irked when one rave review of Sgt. Pep-
per gave Martin much of the credit, and the increasing
antagonism w ithin the band made life di cult for Mar-
tin. During the testy White Album sessions, engineer
Emerick quit – and saw weariness in Martin as well. “I
said to George, ‘I’m leaving, I can’t do this anymore’,”Emerick recalls. “And he said, ‘If I wasn’t going on hol-
iday in two weeks, I would have done the same thing.’
Itwasthatbad.”
As Martin toldRolling Stone, “John said, during
Let It Be,‘I don’t want any production gimmicks on this.
I want it to be an honest album... .’ It just became ludicrous.
You’re trying to get the perfect one, live – it’s ridiculous....
I thought we were through then. I wasn’t happy, and I
didn’t want to go on.” Martin reunited with the band,
though, for its glorious, immaculately produced fi nale,
Abbey Road.
After the Beatles broke up, Martin worked with a
widerangeofacts,scoring some of his biggest post-
FabFourhitswithAmerica’s “Sister Golden Hair”, “Tin
Man” and “Lonely People” (Martin and America’s Gerry
Beckley played the piano solo together on the latter).
Beckley remembers seeing Mar-
tin cringe when a band in a res-
taurant broke into a cheesy cover
of “Hey Jude”. But Martin also
clearly treasured his past. “There
were times when he would say,
‘Let me go into the closet’, and
he’d come out with the bell from
‘Yellow Submarine’ or ‘Penny
Lane’,” says Beckley. “Bits like
that, you’re in awe.”
Martin reunited with McCart-
ney for “Live and Let Die” and
later albums like Tu g o f Wa r, and
as a producer he ventured into
proto-New Age (the Paul Winter
Consort), prog (the Mahavishnu
Orchestra) and New Wave (Ul-
travox). He reinvigorated Beck’s
career on the landmark albums
Blow by Blow and Wired. Beck re-
calls fi rst hearing Blow by Blow’s
string-drenched finale, “Dia-
mond Dust”: “George came waft-
ing in and said, ‘This reminds
me of a French love movie.’ I said, ‘You’ve just spoiled
the whole ef ect. I might not put it on the album!’ But I
thought it was beautiful. To work with a man of that ped-
igree – he gave me a career.” One of Martin’s last rock
albums was Cheap Trick’s All Shook Up, in 1980. “He’d
never roll his eyes,” says guitarist Rick Nielsen. “He’d say,
‘Go for it, Rick!’ He saw more in us than we saw in our-
selves.”
In 1996, Martin was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II,
becoming Sir George Martin, and kept busy in the new
century, conducting orchestral concerts of Beatles music,
serving as chairman of a British FM station, and writing
a memoir, Playback. In 2006, Martin and his son Giles
oversaw the soundtrack for Love, the Cirque du Soleil
Las Vegas production that used Beatles music and char-
acters. But Martin grew frail (he used a motorised scoot-
er in Vegas) and suf ered from hearing loss. Throughout
his life, he championed the Beatles – not as emblems of
the Sixties counterculture, but as pure, brilliant music:
“I saw the music growing, but I rather saw it like Salva-
dor Dalí’s paintings. I didn’t think the reason for it was
drugs. I thought it was because they wanted to go in an
impressionistic way.”THE CONDUIT
Martin with the
Beatles in 1963