I think no-one can overestimate George Martin and his work!

George Martin was so much more than just a producer. He was a creative force in his own right.

My vote goes for Peter Best, as he was hired fifth, after Stu. He spent two full years with the band, helping them define their sound.

He spent more time on stage, playing live with them, than Ringo.

George Martin by far!

There aren't any fifth Beatles, but George Martin was the person most crucial to creating their sound apart from John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Wonderfully talented producer.

Here's a piece I wrote about Sir George:


SIR GEORGE MARTIN. The Beatles’ recording manager, often dubbed ‘the fifth Beatle.’ He was born in London in 1926. George joined the Fleet Air Arm when he was 17 and at the age of 21 was to enter the Guildhall School of Music for a three-year course, during which time Jane Asher’s mother, Margaret, tutored him on oboe.
     It was during his course at the Guildhall that he married his girlfriend Sheena, a former Wren. The couple was to have two children, Bundy and Gregory.
     After working for a spell in the BBC Music Library, he was offered a job in 1950 working as an assistant to Oscar Preuss, head of the Parlophone label, which was part of EMI Records. EMI had several pop labels, such as Columbia and HMV, but Parlophone specialised in classical, jazz, comedy and middle-of-the-road music.
     Oscar’s secretary was Judy Lockhart-Smith, who became George’s secretary when Preuss retired in 1955.
     When he was appointed head of Parlophone, Martin continued other duties, acting as A&R man and also producing recording sessions. He attended a revue in Notting Hill, performed by the duo Michael Flanders and Donald Swann, called At The Drop Of A Hat. He recorded an album of it, together with other Flanders and Swann productions, and also recorded another revue Beyond The Fringe. The artists Martin recorded were off-beat and unlike the artists on the pop labels of EMI such as Columbia and HMV. He had success with Peter Sellers with The Best Of Sellers and also the singles Goodness Gracious Me and Bangers And Mash with Sellers and Sophia Loren. He recorded classical, jazz and comedy records and among the artists he recorded were Peter Usinov, Bernard Cribbins, Sophia Loren, Johnny Dankworth, Cleo Laine, the Temperance Seven, Stan Getz, the Goons, Sir Malcolm Sargent, Sir Adrian Boult, Jimmy Shand, Shirley Bassey and Matt Munro.
     The classically trained A&R man was more at home with artists of this nature. In 1957 he was taken to the 2 I’s coffee bar in Soho to see Tommy Steele, but decided to turn him down. Decca Records signed him the next day and Steele became Britain’s first major rock ‘n’ roll star.
     It was purely by chance that he became involved with the Beatles. Despite all the flak Decca were to receive in hindsight because they didn’t sign up the group, they were the only company to travel to Liverpool to see them perform and to give the band a recording audition. The three pop labels of EMI, in addition to Pye, Philips and the other major and minor record companies, had turned the Beatles down flat without even allowing them the opportunity of such an audition.
     Sid Coleman called Martin’s office, but George was out. He chatted to Judy Lockhart-Smith, George’s secretary, and arranged for Brian Epstein to meet Martin. Even then, the situation was not straightforward. Epstein, continually frustrated by his failure to obtain a recording contract for the group, began to apply what pressure he could.
     Alistair Taylor, Brian’s assistant at that time, confirms that Parlophone began to play around with Epstein to the extent that he became frustrated and threatened to withdraw his NEMS record store business if EMI didn’t give the Beatles a recording contract.
     Taylor was to tell writer Ray Coleman: “EMI took them on sufferance because Brian was one of their top customers. I saw Brian in tears, literally, because Martin promised to phone back, and day after day went by and George Martin was never available, always ‘in a meeting’. I saw Brian thumping the desk and in tears because George Martin hadn’t phoned back.”
     According to Taylor, when Epstein finally got hold of Martin he told him that NEMS as a shop would jettison EMI’s HMV, Parlophone and Columbia labels.
     Martin admitted that EMI had nothing to lose financially by taking on an unknown group such as the Beatles. He said: “To say I was taking a gamble would be stretching it, because the deal I offered them was pretty awful.”
     He then arranged an audition for Wednesday 6 June 1962. It was Ron Richards. Martin’s assistant, who actually took on the role of recording manager at the session. He was the one who usually dealt with the pop-style records and produced the discs for acts such a Paul Raven (later to become Gary Glitter), Shane Fenton & the Fentones, Jerry Lordan and Judd Proctor.
     After he’d recorded four numbers with them, Richards was intrigued by their original material and, having listened to Love Me Do, sent for George Martin, who was in the canteen. Martin then took over the rest of the session.
     It was while listening to the playback that Martin told them: “You must listen to it, and if there’s anything you don’t like, tell me, and we’ll try and do something about it.” George Harrison replied; “Well, for a start, I don’t like your tie.”
     Over the succeeding weeks, Martin had to decide whether to sign the group. Initially he’d began thinking in terms of altering the structure to that of the more conventional line-up of the time – a lead singer with a backing group in the style of bands such as Cliff Richard & the Shadows. He was attempting to figure out who should be the frontman – John or Paul, a case of Paul McCartney & the Beatles or John Lennon & the Beatles. Finally, he decided to leave them as they were, and at the time seemed to have no quibble about Pete Best – although in hindsight, in his books, he has slightly altered the opinions he held at the time.
     Having found he had nothing to lose by signing the Beatles, Martin presented them with a contract that paid a paltry royalty. Although their records were to make immense fortunes for EMI in subsequent years, the Beatles didn’t receive a better slice until Allen Klein intervened.
     When the Beatles returned to Abbey Road studios on Tuesday 4 September, they’d ousted Pete Best and replaced him with Ringo Starr. Ron Richards began rehearsing them in the afternoon and decided on two songs for the evening recording session: How Do You Do It? and Love Me Do. George Martin produced the session and insisted they record the Mitch Murray song, which Richards had obtained from Dick James. The Beatles were reluctant to do so and produced a lacklustre version.
     Engineer Norman Smith was to comment: “I’ve a feeling that Paul wasn’t too happy with Ringo’s drumming, and felt that it could be better. He didn’t make a good job of it.”
     This seemed to be confirmed by Richards, who was sole producer of the Tuesday 11 September session and had booked a session man, Andy White, to play instead. This wasn’t such an unusual move. As Richards was to remark: “I used him, (White) a lot at the time – he was very good.”
     Martin was also unhappy with Ringo’s drumming. He had commented that he was dissatisfied with the Beatles’ drum sound when he’d originally heard them. This was mainly because Martin and other A&R men were used to a different style of drumming in the recording studio, where they used show drummers rather that ones from rock ‘n’ roll bands. It wasn’t unusual for A&R men to employ a session drummer and this shouldn’t have reflected badly on the ability of either Best or Starr.
     Richards was used to working with White and preferred him at the session and a worried Ringo thought, “They’re doing a Pete Best on me,” when he noticed White in the drum seat. When the first number P.S. I Love You was recorded; an unhappy Ringo sat next to Richards in the control box until the producer asked him to play maracas on the track. When they cam e to record Love Me Do, Richards asked Ringo to play tambourine. Fortunately for Ringo, a cut of Love Me Do, he'd performed on the initial session was to be used and the versions by both White and Ringo were released.
     If the version with Ringo had not been released they would never have got away with the suggestion that it was Peter Best who was ‘not a good enough drummer.’
     When Love Me Do was issued, both Martin and Epstein were disappointed at Ardmore & Beechwood’s promotion of the record and Epstein decided to sign with another publishing company. It was Martin who steered him into the arms of Dick James and a contract that was to lose Lennon and McCartney the rights of their songs forever.
     For their second single, Martin wanted them to release the Mitch Murray composition How Do You Do It? He told them it would turn them into a household name and was upset when they said they didn’t like the number and would rather record one of their own songs. Martin ticked them off and told them: “When you can write material as good as this, then I’ll record it. But right now we’re going to record this.”
     When they performed their new interpretation of Please Please Me, following advice he had given them about improving the song, he acknowledged that their own composition was better than How Do You Do It? and Please Please Me provided them with their first chart-topper.
     Epstein then presented Martin with a string of acts: Gerry & the Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer, Cilla Black and the Fourmost, almost guaranteeing him amazing success as an A&R man. They year 1963 brought him unprecedented acclaim, making him the first A&R man ever to achieve the top three places in the record charts with I Like It by Gerry & the Pacemakers at No.1, Do You Want To Know A Secret? By Billy J. Kramer at No. 2 and From Me To You by the Beatles at No. 3, with Martin’s Mersey productions being placed at No. 1 for 37 weeks of the year.
     This was largely due to the popularity of the artists and the songs themselves, not to any specific input that George contributed. Almost any A&R man would have had the same success given the artists and the material.
     Yet he was not entirely supportive of all the new acts he was presented with. Billy J. Kramer still resents to this day the disparaging remarks made about him by Martin in his autobiography All You Need Is Ears. Also, when Brian Epstein brought him the song Anyone Who Had A Heart for Cilla Black to record Martin wanted Shirley Bassey to perform it as he didn’t think Cilla was capable, even though it was to give her a No. 1 hit.
     His knowledge of the Mersey acts, if his autobiography is anything to go by, is quite rusty. To take one example, he stated that Brian brought him a singer “named Priscilla White. All her friends called her Cilla and Brian, for some reason best known to himself, didn’t like the idea of Cilla White, so he’d gone to the other end of the spectrum and called her Cilla Black.” She had first been dubbed Cilla Black in a 6 July 1961 issue of Mersey Beat and had used the name ever since –a considerable time before Brian ever met her and over two years before she met Martin.
     Having achieved such unprecedented success for EMI, George was taken aback when the company didn’t even give him a Christmas bonus. When asked why, he was told that his salary of 3,000 pounds per annum was quite adequate and he was therefore not entitled to a bonus. Discovering that his productions had made a profit of 200,000 pounds for EMI during 1963, he suggested that he should receive some form of commission or bonus. Being refused either he left the company. The Beatles, who had been signed to the company by Martin with such a disgracefully low royalty arrangements, couldn’t do the same.
     So, 14 years after joining EMI, Martin left to form Associated Independent Recordings (AIR), taking a number of EMI’s leading A&M men with him, including Ron Richards, John Burgess and Peter Sullivan. In addition, a large number of the acts agreed to continue having their records produced by the new company. They included the Beatles, Gerry & the Pacemakers, the Fourmost, Billy J. Kramer, Cilla Black, P.J. Proby, the Hollies, Peter and Gordon, Adam Faith and Manfred Mann.
     This resulted in a staggering loss of revenue for a company that didn’t have the foresight or generosity to pay a modest bonus to the person who had completely transformed their fortunes.
     Although the artists still had their product released by EMI, the independent producers now received a percentage commission on the recordings.
     The success he’d achieved through the luck of having such a stable of acts placed in his hands established his reputation as the most successful A&R man in the world and the offers poured in for him to orchestrate music for movies. He even began recording in his own right with the George Martin Orchestra.
     He released singles based on Lennon and McCartney numbers and an album, A Hard Day’s Night: Off The Beatle Track. He composed a number of instrumental versions of their numbers for the soundtrack album of A Hard Day’s Night. Other ventures included his album George Martin Scores Instrumental Versions of the Hits. Virtually all of his individual projects over those years were with Beatles or Beatles--related material.
     Martin admitted that any A&R man could have achieved the same success with the Beatles during the first few years of their recording career. However, his real participation and input came in what were regarded as ‘the studio years’, when they ceased touring, and particularly in the production of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
     This process evolved gradually. In the first stage of their recording career, which Martin called the first era of recording, John and Paul would play their numbers on acoustic guitars and George would make his suggestions. This was called a ‘head arrangement’, and it was to change at the next stage of their career, which occurred with Yesterday. This number was the first Beatles track to use orchestration and was the first record on which George scored music for them, in addition to being the first time that instruments other than those used by the Beatles were included. With Yesterday, George began to exert a greater influence on their music, and as their records grew more sophisticated his input became more important.
     By this time George had divorced Sheena and he married his secretary, Judy, in August 1967. Brian Epstein hosted a dinner party for the couple in his Charles Street house, with the Beatles and their wives and girlfriends. George and Judy were to have two children, Lucy and Giles.
     The close relationship in the studio foundered when the studio takes for the Get Back project were handed to Phil Spector for him to fashion into Let It Be. Ominously, this was the Beatles thirteenth album.
     George became the subject of a BBC TV documentary, A Little Help From My Friends, filmed at London’s Talk Of The Town club on 14 December 1969 and transmitted on 24 December.
     Although he was to run a successful studio at AIR, Martin could never escape his association with the Beatles, and in the succeeding years people would be hard pushed to name his other record successes or any major artists he created.
     In November 1976 Robert Stigwood approached him to compose the musical score for the movie Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The film proved a box-office disaster.
     Bhaskar Menon, President of Capitol Records contacted him in 1977 to listen to tapes from their vaults of recordings of the Beatles Hollywood Bowl concerts in 1964 and 1965, which Martin had supervised. With the aid of Geoff Emerick, he worked on the tapes at AIR Studios, enhancing them for commercial release by transferring the three-track recording to multi-track tape and remixing and filtering until they had cleaned up the sound. The album The Beatles At The Hollywood Bowl was issued in May 1977.
     All You Need Is Ears, his autobiography, written with Jeremy Hornsby was published in 1979. In 1993 he became involved in the production of a documentary on the making of Sergeant Pepper for London Weekend Television’s South Bank Show and his book Summer Of Love: The Making Of Sgt Pepper, was published the same year.
     Martin then became involved in his biggest Beatles venture since the 1960s: the three sets of double-CDs which were to comprise the Anthology releases, with 150 tracks which Martin selected from the Abbey Road vaults. With the help of Geoff Emerick and the latest state of the art technology, he enhanced the numbers for the series, with Anthology 1 being issued in November 1995.
     The Beatles also recorded a new single Free As A Bird, with Real Love on the flipside, which was released at the same time as the double-CD. This release saw Paul, George and Ringo perform together using demo tapes John had recorded in New York in the 1970s. However, the Beatles selected Jeff Lynne rather than Martin to produce their new recordings.
     When New York Times critic Allan Kozinn asked Paul McCartney why they chose Lynne rather than Martin, Paul commented: “George is a very noble guy, and he’s old now, and he will tell you that his hearing’s not as good as it used to be. So when it came to who to work with, George Harrison brought up the fact that George Martin’s hearing wasn’t as good as it was. So George Martin was OK on all the old stuff. But perhaps for new stuff it required someone whose hearing was 100 per cent.”
     In January 1996, at the age of 70, George decided to retire after producing a tribute-album featuring Beatles songs performed by a variety of celebrities. He announced his retirement, saying “I am an old man and I don’t want to do any more music.” He also cited increased deafness.
     His Beatles tribute album was released on 15 March 1998 on Echo Records He produced it with his son Giles. The tracks were: Come Together, Robin Williams and Bobby McFerrin; A Hard Day’s Night, Goldie Hawn; A Day In The Life, Jeff Beck; Here, There And Everywhere, Celine Dion; Because, Vanessa-Mae; I Am The Walrus, Jim Carrey; Here Comes The Sun, John Williams; Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite, Billy Connolly; The Pepperland Suite, George Martin; Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End, Phil Collins; Friends and Lovers, George Martin; In My Life, Sean Connery; Ticket to Ride, the Petropolis Choir and Blackbird by Bonnie Pink.
     In February 1999 he began a multi-media eight-city lecture tour of America called The Making of Sgt. Pepper, which opened on 18 February in Massachusetts and ended in Las Vegas. A month later was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame during a ceremony at the Waldorf Astoria, New York.

Very interesting article, as always Bill. Just one point though; Real Love wasn't the flipside of Free As A Bird, but a single A Side in it's own right.

Many thanks. I appreciate any mistakes that can be pointed out. It's invaluable.

Thanks Bill; I hadn't been at all aware that Brian Epstein had threatened to pull EMI's labels off NEM's shelves if EMI didn't give The Beatles a try, or that George Martin had turned down Tommy Steele. Great article. And personally, I think of "Free As A Bird" and "Real Love" as a single myself; that's how they're stored in my computer's media library!  

Dear Geoff,
While George Martin went to see Tommy Steele and didn't bother, it was Dick Rowe of Decca who went to the 2 Is and signed Tommy and he became the biggest British rock and roll star of the Fifties. I knew Dick and he told me that he had never said '"Guitar groups are on their way out" as Epstein said he did. In fact, it was to the contrary. It also wasn't Dick who turned down the Beatles, as he was accused of. Mike Smith had just joined his team which was to seek new talent and Mike auditioned two groups on the same day, the Beatles and Brian Poole & the Tremeloes. He wanted to sign them both up, but as he was new to the game, Dick said he could pick one act and Mike chose Brian Poole. This was possibly because they came from nearby Aldershot and he could get them into the studio within an hour, whereas the motorways weren't built at the time and it would have taken the Beatles eight hours to get down from Liverpool
Virginia and i were sitting behind Dick and George Harrison when they were judging a beat competition at the Philharmonic Hall in Liverpool and we heard George tell Dick that they'd just been down to London and heard a great group called the Rolling Stones, who were "almost as good as our own Roadrunners." Dick left the competition and rushed down to London to sign the Stones.
Dick told me he was writing his autobiography, but died before it was finished. I've been in touch with his son, but the manuscript no longer exists.

Wow, the things you've seen and heard! Amazing.

Re: your George Martin article, which I very much enjoyed:

Quoted Text

he left the company. The Beatles, who had been signed to the company by Martin with such a disgracefully low royalty arrangements, couldn’t do the same.

I always wondered why the Beatles couldn't renegotiate their contract, since they were signed to slave wages as an unknown act. Was this just Brian being a gentleman? Legally and certainly ethically, I think EMI would have yeilded.

Quoted Text

This resulted in a staggering loss of revenue for a company that didn’t have the foresight or generosity to pay a modest bonus to the person who had completely transformed their fortunes.

And I'm happy to note that most companies are just as idiotic and shortsighted today. *sigh*

Excellent chronicling of pop music history, as usual, Bill.

These three sentences alone could be the basis of two complete books:

"If the version with Ringo had not been released they would never have got away with the suggestion that it was Peter Best who was ‘not a good enough drummer.’
     When Love Me Do was issued, both Martin and Epstein were disappointed at Ardmore & Beechwood’s promotion of the record and Epstein decided to sign with another publishing company. It was Martin who steered him into the arms of Dick James and a contract that was to lose Lennon and McCartney the rights of their songs forever."

Thanks for sharing.

Quoted from Bill Harry

While George Martin went to see Tommy Steele and didn't bother, it was Dick Rowe of Decca who went to the 2 Is and signed Tommy and he became the biggest British rock and roll star of the Fifties. I knew Dick and he told me that he had never said '"Guitar groups are on their way out" as Epstein said he did. In fact, it was to the contrary. It also wasn't Dick who turned down the Beatles, as he was accused of.

It's odd how things work out; George Martin turned down Tommy Steele but signed The Beatles; and Dick Rowe took the rap for a decision made by someone else before signing the other great English rock and roll band of that era himself. Those wrong decisions were reasonable calls though; George Martin's forte wasn't rock and roll, and The Beatles' audition for Decca Records wasn't such that it wouldn't have left doubts in an A & R man's mind. It's only hindsight (and lazy journalism) that makes those decisions look foolish.

Sorry to hear that Dick Rowe never lived to publish his memoir; given the time and circumstances he lived through, it might well have been very interesting indeed (and I wonder what he made of Andrew Oldham!)

One of my all time favourite Mersey groups was the Big Three. They comprised Adrian Barber, Johnny Hutchinson and Johnny Gustafson. Adrian, of course, made the famous 'coffin' amps, and the Beatles asked him to make one for them. When they signed with Brian Epstein, he booked them for the Star cCub in Hamburg, but said that the Star Club wanted a quartet, so he supplemented the group with Brian Griffiths. Adrian told me, "We are supposed to be the Big Three, not the Big Four" and left. Brian Griffiths was a brilliant guitarist and the group didn't suffer from his presence and I thought both line-ups were great. The Beatles were a great live group when they were John, Paul, George and Pete and don't let anyone tell you different!

Quoted from Bill Harry

Adrian told me, "We are supposed to be the Big Three, not the Big Four" and left.

I love the willfulness of that; it's the exact opposite of go-along career maneuvering.