George Martin, the Beatles\u2019 urbane producer who quietly guided the band\u2019s swift, historic transformation from rowdy club act to musical and cultural revolutionaries, has died, his management said Wednesday. He was 90.<\/p>\n
Manager Adam Sharp said in a statement that Martin \u201cpassed away peacefully at home\u201d on Tuesday evening.<\/p>\n
Martin was too modest to call himself the \u201cfifth Beatle,\u201d but Paul McCartney said Wednesday that \u201cif anyone earned the title … it was George.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was a true gentleman and like a second father to me,\u201d McCartney said.<\/p>\n
Martin produced some of the most beloved songs and most popular and influential albums of modern times \u2014 \u201cSgt. Pepper\u2019s Lonely Hearts Club Band,\u201d \u2018\u2019Revolver,\u201d \u2018\u2019Rubber Soul,\u201d \u2018\u2019Abbey Road\u201d \u2014 elevating rock LPs from ways to cash in on hit singles to art forms, \u201cconcepts.\u201d<\/p>\n
From a raw first album in 1962 that took a day to make to the months-long production of \u201cSgt. Pepper\u201d just five years later, Martin would preside, assist and sometimes stand aside as the Beatles advanced by quantum steps as songwriters and sonic explorers.<\/p>\n
They composed dozens of classics, from \u201cShe Loves You\u201d to \u201cHey Jude,\u201d and turned the studio into a wonderland of backward tape loops, multi-tracking, unpredictable tempos, unfathomable segues and kaleidoscopic montages. Never again would rock music be defined by two-minute love songs or guitar-bass-drums arrangements.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce we got beyond the bubblegum stage, the early recordings, and they wanted to do something more adventurous, they were saying, \u2018What can you give us?\u2019\u201d Martin told The Associated Press in 2002. \u201cAnd I said, \u2018I can give you anything you like.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
His own talents were duly recognized. He was nominated for an Academy Award for producing the soundtrack to the Beatles\u2019 \u201cA Hard Day\u2019s Night.\u201d He won six Grammys, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999. Three years earlier, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.<\/p>\n
Besides the Beatles, Martin worked with Jeff Beck, Elton John, Celine Dion and on several solo albums by Paul McCartney. In the 1960s, Martin produced hits by Cilla Black, Gerry and the Pacemakers, and Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas and for a 37-week stretch in 1963 one or another of his recordings topped the British charts.<\/p>\n
But his legacy was defined by the Beatles, for the contributions he made, and for those he didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Before the Beatles, producers such as Phil Spector and Berry Gordy controlled the recording process, choosing the arrangements and musicians; picking, and sometimes writing the songs (or claiming credit for them). The Beatles, led by the songwriting team of McCartney and John Lennon, became their own bosses and were among the first rock groups to compose their own material. Inspired by native genius, a world\u2019s tour of musical influences and all the latest stimulants, they were seekers of magic who demanded new sounds.<\/p>\n
Martin was endlessly called on to perform the impossible, and often succeeded, splicing recordings at different speeds for \u201cStrawberry Fields Forever,\u201d or, for \u201cBeing for the Benefit of Mr. Kite,\u201d simulating a calliope with keyboards, harmonica and a harmonium that the producer himself played with such intensity he passed out on the floor. Martin would have several good turns on the keyboards, performing a lively music hall solo on McCartney\u2019s \u201cLovely Rita\u201d and a Baroque reverie (at studio-heightened speed) on Lennon\u2019s \u201cIn My Life.\u201d<\/p>\n
His bearing was infinitely more patrician than the Beatles\u2019, but he grew up working class. Born in north London in 1926, Martin was a carpenter\u2019s son raised in a three-room flat without a kitchen, bathroom or electricity.<\/p>\n
He was a gifted musician who mastered Chopin by ear, a born experimenter enchanted whenever he discovered a new chord. After World War II service in the Fleet Air Arm, he attended London\u2019s Guildhall School of Music, studying composition and orchestration, and performance on the oboe and piano.<\/p>\n
\u201cMusic was pretty well my whole life,\u201d Martin wrote in his memoir, \u201cAll You Need is Ears,\u201d published in 1980.<\/p>\n
Hired by the EMI division Parlophone Records in 1950, Martin initially worked on classical recordings with the London Baroque Ensemble. The technology was primitive, with recording on wax cylinders with machines which weren\u2019t driven by electricity, but by weights. Named head of Parlophone in 1955, he also worked with Judy Garland, jazz stars Stan Getz, Cleo Laine and John Dankworth, and with Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan of the \u201cGoon Show,\u201d an absurdist comedy troupe much loved by the Beatles.<\/p>\n
The Beatles, none of whom could read music, depended on Martin\u2019s classical background. They might hum a melody to the producer, who would translate it into a written score, as he did for a trumpet solo on McCartney\u2019s \u201cPenny Lane.\u201d For McCartney\u2019s \u201cYesterday,\u201d Martin convinced the composer that a bluesy string quartet would serve the song\u2019s tender remorse.<\/p>\n
Artistically, Martin would never approach such heights again. But he did manage commercial success with the pop groups America and the Little River Band and produced two top James Bond themes \u2014 Shirley Bassey\u2019s \u201cGoldfinger\u201d and McCartney\u2019s \u201cLive and Let Die.\u201d<\/p>\n
Martin intended for the production and scoring of Elton John\u2019s \u201cCandle In The Wind \u201897,\u201d a tribute to the late Princess Diana, to be his last project. But in 2000 he produced \u201c1,\u201d a multimillion-selling compilation of Beatles\u2019 No. 1 songs, then followed with a six-CD retrospective of his recording career.<\/p>\n
McCartney said that with his passing, \u201cthe world has lost a truly great man who left an indelible mark on my soul and the history of British music.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP writers Jill Lawless, Gregory Katz and Robert Barr in London contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
George Martin, the Beatles\u2019 urbane producer who quietly guided the band\u2019s swift, historic transformation from rowdy club act to musical and cultural revolutionaries, has died, his management said Wednesday. He was 90. Manager Adam Sharp said in a statement that Martin \u201cpassed away peacefully at home\u201d on Tuesday evening. Martin was too modest to call […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-9181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9181\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9181"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=9181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}