Martin, Sir George (3rd January 1926-8th March 2016)

He was a composer, musician, arranger, conductor and record producer born George Henry Martin in Highbury, London, England to a family where his father was a craftsman carpenter and his mother had been a nurse during WWI.

He suffered scarlet fever when he was five years old and around that same time he moved with his family to Aubert Park in Highbury to a house that had electricity. When he was 6 years old he took his first piano lessons but they only lasted for six lessons after his mother and teacher had a disagreement. He carried on learning the piano on his own and wrote “The Spider’s Dance” when he was only eight. He was a student at several schools and won a scholarship at St. Ignatius’s College in Stamford Hill. He was evacuated to Welwyn Garden City with the other students at the start of WWII. He then became a student at Bromley Grammar School after his parents left London and while there he performed the piano with the Four Tune Tellers which were a local dance band. He also acted with the Quavers troupe.

He went back to piano lessons and music notation with money he’d earned with the band but first went to work as a quantity surveyor and then as a temporary clerk at the War Office. When he was 17 in 1943 he volunteered for the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm but although training in Gosport he didn’t see combat as the war had finished before he would be called. He also worked as an aerial observer and petty officer and did aerial training in Trinidad. In 1948 he married Jean “Sheena” Chisholm at the University of Aberdeen and they later had Alexis in 1953 and Gregory Paul in 1957. They would later divorce in 1965. In 1966 he married Judy Lockhart Smith at Marylebone Registry Offuce and had their children Lucie in 1967 and Giles in 1969.

He made his first appearance on BBC radio in a Royal Navy variety show in 1945, playing his own composition. He had risen to an officer but left the service in 1947. That same year he used his veteran’s grant to study piano, oboe, orchestration and composition at the Guildhall School of Music and graduated in 1950. He then went to perform the oboe with local bands and went to work at the classical music department of the BBC.

Later in 1950 he became Oscar Preuss’s assistant, who had been EMI Parlophone’s head since 1923. He first managed the classical record catalogue and Baroque ensemble sessions. With Peeter Ustinov and Karl Haas he became a co-founder of the London Baroque Society. At the same time he signed up the composer Ron Goodwin and produced his first record which made it to No. 3 in the UK charts. In 1953 he gained his first comedy recording success was with Peter Ustinov and Anthony Hopkin’s single “Mock Mozart”.

Oscar Preuss retired in 1955 which saw him taking over the label and he initially recorded classical, jazz, regional music and original cast recordings. He worked with The Goons on an “Unchained Melody” parody and the next year he produced “Nellie the Elephant”. He signed up the singer Dick James who later became a music publisher for Elton John and The Beatles and capitalised on the skiffle boom in 1956 by signing the Vipers Skiffle Group. He went on to sign Jim Dale in 1957, who made it to No. 2 on the UK chart with “Be My Girl” but even though Dale had seen success he decided to pursue a career as a comedian. Also in 1957 he worked with Peter Sellers with the successful and acclaimed “Any Old Iron” and Songs for Swingin’ Sellers and later with Spike Milligan on Bridge on the River Wye. In the late 1950s he supplemented his income by having his artists record music which he had published.

In 1960 he produced the controversial novelty cover of “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini” and in 1961 produced 2 singles for Paul Gadd, aka Paul Raven, aka Gary Glitter. That same year he saw success when The Temperance Seven topped the charts with “You’re Driving Me Crazy” and Charlie Drake reached No. 14 with his novelty “My Boomerang Won’t Come Back”. In 1961 he was successful with the Beyond the Fringe cast album and in 1962 there was further success when Bernard Cribbins reached the Top 10 with “The Hole in the Ground” and “Right Said Fred”.

He and Brian Epstein, who was the manager for music artists from Liverpool, had a good working relationship and in 1962 started working with The Beatles. He would produce their No. 1 “Please, Please Me” single which would become the start of one of the most successful recording studio partnerships ever. He would become the arranger and write and/or perform the instrumentation, playing the keyboards and piano on many of the group’s recordings and eventually become described as the Fifth Beatle, by band members and others alike. His many successes with The Beatles included 2 Grammy Awards for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band as Album of the Year and Best Contemporary Album.

He continued working with Liverpudlian acts who often performed at the Cavern Club and later often referred to as the Merseybeat sound. After producing Gerry and the Pacemakers he saw them achieve the accolade of being the first UK act to have their first three singles become chart-topping songs with “How Do They Do It?”, “I Like It” and “You’ll Never Walk Alone” in 1962 and 1963. In 1964 they topped the charts once more with “Ferry Cross the Mersey”.

The group Fourmost had a UK Top 10 hit with “Hello Little Girl” and a Top 20 hit with “I’m in Love”, both in 1963 and both written by Lennon & McCartney. Their 1964 “A Little Loving” became their biggest hit and achieved No. 6 in the UK chart.

Next was Cilla Black in 1964 who topped the charts with “Anyone Who Had a Heart”, that was Britain’s 1960’s top selling song by a female artist, along with “You’re My World”. Further success came with “Alfie” which reached No. 6 in the UK chart. Also in 1964 he produced Shirley Bassey’s James Bond theme “Goldfinger”.

He also produced Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas who had No. 1 hits with “Bad to Me” and “Little Children” and Top 5 entries when they covered “Do You Want to Know a Secret” and “I’ll Keep You Satisfied” in 1963 and 1964, with all except “Little Children” being written by Lennon & McCartney.

His work with all of these artists saw him transforming EMI’s Parlophone label and becoming the producer, with Brian Epstein as the manager, of 37 weeks of the 1963 No. 1 hit singles. By 2023 he was referred to as the producer that had the most No. 1 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the US.

In 1965, after many clashes with EMI over salaries and commissions on record sales he left the company in 1965 and started his own company named Associated Independent Recording and, as many of his associated acts were still under contract to EMI, gave EMI the right of first refusal on any AIR productions. Special arrangements were made with for Beatles recordings released in the UK and the US. EMI did try and get him back in 1969 but he refused and from 1973 they could only negotiate with him through his legal representatives.

In 1967 he was commissioned to write the official opening theme for the new BBC Radio 1. He also wrote music for the film score for A Hard Day’s Night which won him an Academy nomination in 1964. He went on to write music for many other film scores between 1962 and 1981 including Ferry Cross the Mersey, Yellow Submarine, Pulp and Honky Tonk Freeway.

Following the break up of The Beatles in 1970 he produced Ringo Starr’s Sentimental Journey in 1970 and Paul McCartney‘s Ram in 1971. He then worked with Wings and arranged the orchestral production on “Live and Let Die”, also writing the score for the film of the same name, which earned him the Grammy Award for Best Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s) in 1974.

Also in the 1970s he produced four albums for America and their hit singles “Tin Man”, “Sister Golden Hair” and “Lonely People”. Others artists he produced were Jeff Beck, Gary Brooker, Jose Carreras, Cheap Trick, Celine Dion, Elton John, The King’s Singers, Kenny Rogers, Neil Sedaka, Sting, UFO, Ultravox and the guitarist John Williams among others,

In the 1980s he continued to work with Paul McCartney on Tug of War in 1982 and the duet “Ebony and Ivory” with Stevie Wonder was nominated for 5 Grammy Awards. He also worked with him on 1983’s Pipes of Peace, 1984’s Give My Regards to Broad Street and 1997’s Flaming Pie. In 1995 he oversaw the post-production of the Beatles Anthology and in 1998 Yoko Ono asked him to write an orchestral arrangement for John Lennon’s “Grow Old With Me”.

During the 1990s he conducted and was the string arranger on “Ticket to Heaven” by Dire Straits and in 1992 worked on the musical production of The Who’s Tommy with Pete Townshend. In 1996 he received the Recording Academy Trustees Award and that same year he received a knighthood.

in 1997 he made his final single production when he produced the best-selling British single of all time to date “Candle in the Wind ’97” by Elton John, following the death of Princess Diana. Later that year he arranged a benefit concert Music for Montserrat which included artists such as Jimmy Buffett, Eric Clapton, Phil Collins, Elton John, Paul McCartney and Sting. 1997-98 saw him hosting and co-producing the three-part documentary BBC series The Rhythm of Life. Also in 1998 he released his final album In My Life with cover versions of a collection of Beatles’ songs by actors, singers and musicians, from which Jeff Beck later won a 2010 Grammy Award for his version of “A Day in the Life”. In 1999 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

In the new millennium He was a consultant for Party at the Palace for the Queen’s Golden Jubilee in 2002. A few years later he and his son, Giles, remixed 80 minutes of Beatles music for Love which was a Cirque de Soleil and Beatle’s Apple Corps Ltd Las Vegas stage performance and he contributed the orchestration for a demo version of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”. The work on the production won Grammy Awards for Best Compilation Soundtrack Album and Best Surround Sound Album in 2008. In 2011 the documentary film Produced by George Martin was aired.

As a writer he published his All You Need is Ears in 1979 and in 1993 Summer of Love: The Making of Sgt. Pepper and in 2002 Playback. In 2001 he also released the six CD set Produced by George Martin: 50 Years in Recording, which later accompanied the 2011 the TV documentary film Produced by George Martin.

On 8th March 2016 he died in his sleep at home in Wiltshire, England when he was 90 years old. On 11th May his memorial service was attended by Sir Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Olivia Harrison, Yoko Ono, Bernard Cribbins and Sir Elton John along with many others.

The Beatles Recordings
Got to Get You Into My Life (John Lennon/Paul McCartney)
Capitol, 4274, S45-X45624 (US 45 PS)

Sources:

Martin, Sir George (3rd January 1926-8th March 2016)

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