According to the New York Times and other venues, George Martin, the hugely talented arranger and producer whose contributions to the Beatles’ albums got him dubbed “the fifth Beatle”, has died at 90. He was in fact SIR George Martin, knighted for his work. It’s hard to imagine the Beatles without him: songs like Eleanor Rigby, Penny Lane, In My Life, Yesterday, Strawberry Fields Forever, and the underappreciated Good Night would have been very different without him.
Twi**er is full of encomiums for the man; here’s a tw**t by Ringo:
God bless George Martin peace and love to Judy and his family love Ringo and Barbara George will be missed xxx 😎✌️🌟💖☮
— #RingoStarr (@ringostarrmusic) March 9, 2016
There’s also a lovely statement by Paul McCartney on his website, which includes this:
It’s hard to choose favourite memories of my time with George, there are so many but one that comes to mind was the time I brought the song ‘Yesterday’ to a recording session and the guys in the band suggested that I sang it solo and accompany myself on guitar. After I had done this George Martin said to me, “Paul I have an idea of putting a string quartet on the record”. I said, “Oh no George, we are a rock and roll band and I don’t think it’s a good idea”. With the gentle bedside manner of a great producer he said to me, “Let us try it and if it doesn’t work we won’t use it and we’ll go with your solo version”. I agreed to this and went round to his house the next day to work on the arrangement.
He took my chords that I showed him and spread the notes out across the piano, putting the cello in the low octave and the first violin in a high octave and gave me my first lesson in how strings were voiced for a quartet. When we recorded the string quartet at Abbey Road, it was so thrilling to know his idea was so correct that I went round telling people about it for weeks. His idea obviously worked because the song subsequently became one of the most recorded songs ever with versions by Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye and thousands more.
Martin himself was a talented musician, and the first thing I thought of when I heard of his death was his piano playing on the bridge of one of the most beautiful Beatles songs, “In My Life”. From Wikipedia:
The song was recorded on 18 October 1965, and was complete except for the instrumental bridge .At that time, Lennon had not decided what instrument to use, but he subsequently asked George Martin to play a piano solo, suggesting “something Baroque-sounding”. Martin wrote a Bach-influenced piece that he found he could not play at the song’s tempo. On 22 October, the solo was recorded with the tape running at half speed, so when played back at normal pace the piano was twice as fast and an octave higher, solving the performance challenge and also giving the solo a unique timbre, reminiscent of a harpsichord.
You can hear that bridge between 1:28 and 1:47 in the original recording:
Martin worked with many other groups; his contributions were immense, and the Times piece details many of them, giving statements of remembrance and sorrow from his friends and admirers—including the Prime Minister.
George and the lads:
This is incredibly sad. Their music was such a hugely important part of my childhood, even though I grew up after they had broken up. It served as such a key bonding element in my relationship with my parents, which I think is true of many kids of my generation.
Side note: When I saw this headline I thought for a second it was referring to George R.R. Martin, and I almost had a heart attack thinking that he died before completing the A Song of Ice and Fire series. I am a nerd.
Thanks for posting “In My Life”. It is my favorite Beatles tune. Nice to be reminded of that great Martin bridge contribution.
I wonder how many people (who haven’t heard about the half-speed tape) have been puzzled as to just what it was? Mandolin?
cr
And as for George Martin’s post-Beatles work, the third album by Stackridge, from 1974, might be his best. The album was called “Pinafore Days” in the States, but its original UK title is “The Man in the Bowler Hat.” It could be said that this album, which obviously has Martin’s fingerprints all over it, might be the best record that the Beatles never made.
Thank you! I can’t recall that I’ve ever heard of Stackridge, but now they are playing on my computer here at work!
It’s just lovely music. I love how this site leads me to new discoveries, especially when it’s new music.
Back when popular music had structured, fully developed melodies. Yesterday indeed.
Funny thing though, I never quite understood why “Yesterday” became such a HUGE hit. It’s an okay song but not a great one. I can think of better Beatles songs written by McCartney: “For No One” (love Martin’s horn arrangement); “Fool on the Hill”; and “Mother Nature’s Son.”
I can understand why it’s such a hit. It has such an unusual and highly distinctive and catchy ‘shape’. (Not sure of the right word to use there. ‘Rhythm’? ‘Verse structure’? ‘Form’? I’m sure everyone who knows it will know what I mean).
cr
Reblogged this on The Logical Place.
Sir George will be sorely missed. This clip may not appeal to most here, I reckon, but it is a demonstration of George Martin’s farsightedness–his genre-busting abilities. The guy doing the fantastic work on the drum kit is Narada Michael Walden, one of the more successful producers across many genres… a true business insider. Geoff Emerick (of Sgt. Pepper, Abbey Road & Dark Side of the Moon fame) also did the sound engineering for this album, which George Martin considered to be one of his very finest. Many of its personnel were launched into the stratosphere by it. (e.g. Walden, Jean-Luc Ponty, Gayle Moran, Ralphe Armstrong.)
Interesting about the cello and the other strings. Someone dear to me is a cellist, and I wonder if she knows about this …
Shame that the lads took Let It Be away from Sir George, giving it to Phil Spector to lush up with excessive orchestration. (Another sour note for those misbegotten recordings.)
Am I the only one who read the title of this post and thought “But who’s going to finish Game of Thrones?!”
Martin was active until quite recently. He mastered the remix of Beatles songs used in the Cirgue du Soliel show “Love” and worked on recent albums by Celine Dion (a delightful person whose music I don’t especially like) and Hayley Westenra.
” . . . the underappreciated Good Night . . . .”
Underappreciated because it had a gorgeous string arrangement? (Re: “Yesterday”) I have gathered that, to rock purists, strings are verboten.
IIRC, some several years ago when he announced his retirement, he said he was losing his hearing. As with a singer losing her/his voice, so a producer with his hearing.
It almost makes you believe in spooky stuff. Three lads from Liverpool form a skiffle band. They all prove to be incredible songwriters. They meet a producer, mainly known for comedy records, and their collaboration turns pop into art.
The orchestrations for “Eleanor Rigby” (though Martin called it simple) and “I Am The Walrus” are brilliant. A complete departure from the lush strings used in pop before the Beatles.
Nerd note. The comedy artists George Martin worked with prior to meeting the Beatles (all familiar to brits of a certain age): Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan, Jonathan Miller, Peter Cook, Bernard Cribbins, Charlie Drake, Terry Scott, Bruce Forsyth, Michael Bentine, Dudley Moore, Flanders and Swann, Lance Percival, Joan Sims, Bill Oddie.
Martin also worked with the young John Cleese, who was part of the “Cambridge Circus” revue in the early ’60s. Martin recorded the original cast album.
If anyone truly deserved the title of “Fifth Beatle” it was Sir George Martin. He helped make a great pop/rock group that much more exceptional.
Although I was 8 years old when the Beatles broke up, I didn’t really become aware of them until a few years later (well, I had been in Japan from April 1967 to December 1969). I had been hearing their songs for years, from various sources, but it wasn’t until about 1975 that I finally sussed that a lot of my favorite songs were all from one particular group that had broken up in 1970 (my parents were of the same age range as the Beatles, my mom actually born exactly a year after Paul, and my dad born about two months before Ringo) but they listened to country of easy-listening pop, and I was left to discover the Beatles on my own and they remain my favorite recording act of all time.