George Martin
“I just made my own music. And I made it rather well! I found I was able to listen to tunes and then pick them out on the piano. Music felt completely natural, and I didn’t think there was anything special about it.”
The begining
Perfect pitch
Also known as absolute pitch, perfect pitch refers to a person’s natural ability to identify or play a particular musical note without benefit of a reference tone.
“I started playing things like ‘Liebestraum,’ and various Chopin pieces, by ear. Where that gift came from, I don’t know. There were certainly no professional musicians anywhere in the family. They just assumed ‘George is the musical one . . . let him get on with it.’”
Excerpt From
Maximum Volume, Kenneth Womack
Maximum Volume, Kenneth Womack
George Martin and Paul McCartney
This ability to distinguish between various sounds and intuitively understand their musical interrelationships would emerge as an asset throughout his formative years and beyond.
George Martin and Paul McCartney, Abbey Road, 1967
1940s
WWII
“I remember one day [after a bombing] a house about five doors down wasn’t there anymore. And the house next door to it, on the first floor, there was a bathroom exposed, and the bath was dangling, holding on from its pipes. And I thought, ‘Well, gosh, that could have been us.’ But you accepted it.”
Excerpt From
Maximum Volume, Kenneth Womack
George Martin in choir with Sheena in Aberdeen, King's Collage Chapel
Photo From
Maximum Volume, Kenneth Womack
Courtesy of Gregory Paul Martin
It was the summer of 1943, and George was promptly accepted into the Royal Navy. He was barely seventeen years old. When he announced to his mother that he had been inducted into the Fleet Air Arm—“Mum, I’ve joined up”—Bertha went pale and burst into tears. “Oh, my God, you’ll be killed,” she exclaimed, pleading with him that his enlistment couldn’t possibly be true. But there was no turning back, of course. ”
1945
Aircraft control
“In Trinidad, there was no radar,” George recalled, “and when you took off from an aircraft carrier you were on your own. Two and a half hours later you had to find the ship again, relying on your own navigational sense, and on the winds. You found your own winds, worked out what they were doing to the aircraft, and then navigated by dead reckoning.”
Excerpt From
Maximum Volume, Kenneth Womack
The Beatles and George Martin at EMI Studio Two, recording the final overdubs of guitar, bass, tambourine and backing vocals for "With A Little Help From My Friends"
Abbey Road
September 1950
A letter from the head of Parlophone Records, a subsidiary of the EMI Group
If George knew precious little about Parlophone at the time, he could hardly be blamed. “I had no idea what EMI stood for,” he later admitted. “I didn’t know what it was.”
Excerpt From
Maximum Volume, Kenneth Womack
November 28, 1950
George wore his old navy greatcoat as he cycled across London toward 3 Abbey Road
Nestled among the stately Edwardian homes of London’s St. John’s Wood, the studios had originally been built in 1830 as a luxurious residence that included five reception rooms, nine bedrooms, a wine cellar, a substantial garden, and servants’ quarters.
Excerpt From
Maximum Volume, Kenneth Womack
December 1954
Preuss, the Head of Parlophone, grabbed a microphone in Studio 1 and announced his retirement during the annual EMI Christmas party.
April 1955
Retirement dinner
That same evening George learned that he would be promoted to head of Parlophone Records.
“I thought that someone would come in and be put above me, so I was shaken to the core when they said I could have the job.”
At twenty-nine years old, he became the youngest label executive in EMI’s history.
1962
Crucial meeting
Never one to turn down the opportunity to seek out new artists, George took a meeting in February 1962 with Brian Epstein, a novice talent manager out of Liverpool.
Studio Two, EMI Studios, 1964
Overrun with other appointments away from EMI House, George was late for the meeting.
When he arrived, he and Brian retired to the A&R man’s fourth-floor office, where Brian lapsed into his well-honed pitch about his Liverpool beat band.
When he arrived, he and Brian retired to the A&R man’s fourth-floor office, where Brian lapsed into his well-honed pitch about his Liverpool beat band.
Excerpt From
Maximum Volume, Kenneth Womack
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“To start with, he gave me a big ‘hype’ about this marvelous group who were doing such great things in Liverpool. He told me how everybody up there thought they were the bee’s knees. He even expressed surprise that I hadn’t heard of them—which, in the circumstances, was pretty bold. I almost asked him in reply where Liverpool was." - George Martin.
“According to George, “Brian thought I was the bee’s knees. He was always on the lookout for new acts, reasoning that if he passed them over to me, I would be able to make a hit record with them. Brian saw us as a dream team: he would manage the artists, I would record them, and Dick James would publish the songs.”
Excerpt From
Maximum Volume, Kenneth Womack
Brian Epstein and George Martin in Miami, 1964
1970
AIR Studios
Despite the vast sales chalked up by the Beatles’ records worldwide, Martin was seeing none of the financial rewards, just a weekly salary from Parlophone. What he did next changed the record industry forever.
George Martin assembled a supergroup of record producers for some of the UK’s top acts – Ron Richards, John Burgess, Peter Sullivan and himself – to form Associated Independent Recordings, or AIR. They proposed a new arrangement where AIR would fund the production of new releases, relieving record labels of the cost, and in return take a royalty on sales.
Excerpt from
airstudios.com
AIR Studios eventually opened in October 1970 with a star-studded two-day party fuelled by 450 bottles of Bollinger champagne.
Not far from Park Street, on the fourth floor of the Peter Robinson department store at Oxford Circus, was an old banqueting hall that George Martin decided could accommodate two spacious studios.
Not far from Park Street, on the fourth floor of the Peter Robinson department store at Oxford Circus, was an old banqueting hall that George Martin decided could accommodate two spacious studios.
Excerpt from
airstudios.com
AIR Studios, London
1979
AIR Montserrat
AIR’s studio facility on Montserrat, a tiny British Overseas Territory in the eastern Caribbean, has passed into rock folklore.
A little bit of a history
In 1977 George Martin fell in love with the island and decided to build the ultimate, get-away-from-it-all recording studio. Opened in 1979, AIR Studios Montserrat offered all of the technical facilities of its London counterpart, but with the advantages of an exotic location.
For more than a decade, AIR Montserrat played host to recording sessions by a who’s who of rock and pop. More than 70 albums were recorded there in ten years
Excerpt from
airstudios.com
Then, in 1989, disaster struck when Hurricane Hugo hit the island, destroying 90% of its structures. The building and its equipment were irreparably damaged, and, perhaps aware that record labels wanted their stars closer to home, George Martin called it a day.
Excerpt from
airstudios.com
Polaroids by Linda McCartney: Paul McCartney and George Martin
He was obviously so much more
"I’ve never seen George Martin work, but like you I’ve heard it. With his other acts – Cilla Black, Billy J. Kramer and the like – he was your competent producer. With the Beatles he was obviously so much more: the glue, the guidebook, the translator, the subtitles to brilliant foreign ideas."
-Stoned, Andrew Loog Oldham
-Stoned, Andrew Loog Oldham
