George Martin
Sir George Henry Martin was an English record producer, arranger, composer, conductor, and musician. He was commonly referred to as the "fifth Beatle" due to his extensive involvement in each of the Beatles' original albums. Martin's formal musical expertise and interest in novel recording practices facilitated the group's rudimentary musical education and desire for new musical sounds to record. Most of their orchestral and string arrangements were written by Martin, and he played piano or keyboards on a number of their records. Their collaborations resulted in popular, highly acclaimed records with innovative sounds, such as the 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Martin's career spanned more than sixty years in music, film, television and live performance. Before working with the Beatles and other pop musicians, he produced comedy and novelty records in the 1950s and early 1960s as the head of EMI's Parlophone label, working with Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan and Bernard Cribbins, among others. In 1965, he left EMI and formed his own production company, Associated Independent Recording.
AllMusic has described Martin as the "world's most famous record producer". In his career, Martin produced 30 number-one hit singles in the United Kingdom and 23 number-one hits in the United States, winning six Grammy Awards. In recognition of his services to the music industry and popular culture, he was made a Knight Bachelor in 1996.
Early years
Martin was born on 3 January 1926 in North London to Henry and Bertha Beatrice Martin. He had an older sister, Irene. In Martin's early years, the family lived modestly, first in Highbury and then Drayton Park. Harry worked as a craftsman carpenter in a small attic workshop, while Bertha cooked meals at a communal stove in their apartment building. In 1931, the family moved to Aubert Park in Highbury, where they lived with electricity for the first time.When he was six, Martin's family acquired a piano that sparked his interest in music. At eight years of age, he persuaded his parents that he should take piano lessons, but those ended after only six sessions because of a disagreement between his mother and the teacher. Martin created his first piano composition, "The Spider's Dance", at age eight. Martin continued to learn piano on his own through his youth, building a working knowledge of music theory through his natural perfect pitch.
As a child, he attended several Roman Catholic schools, including Our Lady of Sion, St Joseph's School, and at St Ignatius' College, where he won a scholarship. When World War II broke out, Martin's family left London, with his being enrolled at Bromley Grammar School. At Bromley, Martin led and played piano in a locally popular dance band, the Four Tune Tellers. The pianists George Shearing and Meade Lux Lewis influenced his style. He also took up acting in a troupe called the Quavers, and, with money earned from playing dances, he resumed formal piano lessons and learned musical notation.
Despite Martin's continued interest in music and "fantasies about being the next Rachmaninoff", he did not initially choose music as a career. Aged 17, in 1943, Martin volunteered for the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Navy, having been spurred on by their exploits in the Battle of Taranto. He trained at HMS St Vincent in Gosport. The war ended before Martin was involved in any combat, and he left the service in January 1947. On 26 July 1945, Martin appeared on BBC Radio for the first time during a Royal Navy variety show; he played a self-composed piano piece. As he climbed rank in the Navy, Martin consciously adopted the middle-class accent and gentlemanly social demeanour common for officers.
Encouraged by the pianist and teacher Sidney Harrison, Martin used his veteran's grant to attend the Guildhall School of Music and Drama from 1947 to 1950. He studied piano as his main instrument and oboe as his secondary, being interested in the music of Sergei Rachmaninoff, Maurice Ravel, and Cole Porter. Martin also took courses at Guildhall in music composition and orchestration. After graduating, he worked for the BBC's classical music department, also earning money as an oboe player in local bands.
Career
EMI and Parlophone
Martin joined EMI in November 1950 as an assistant to Oscar Preuss, the head of EMI's Parlophone label. Although having been regarded by EMI as a vital German imprint in the past, it was then not taken seriously and used only for EMI's insignificant acts. Among Martin's early duties was managing Parlophone's classical records catalogue, including Baroque ensemble sessions with Karl Haas; Martin, Haas, and Peter Ustinov soon founded the London Baroque Society together. He also developed a friendship and working relationship with composer Sidney Torch and signed Ron Goodwin to a recording contract. In 1953, Martin produced Goodwin's first record, an instrumental rendition of Charlie Chaplin's theme from Limelight, which made it to no. 3 on the British charts. Despite these early breakthroughs, Martin resented EMI's preference in the early 1950s for short-playing 78 rpm records instead of the new longer-playing and 45 rpm formats coming into fashion on other labels. He also proved uncomfortable as a song plugger when occasionally assigned the task by Preuss, comparing himself to a "sheep among wolves".Preuss retired as head of Parlophone in April 1955, leaving the 29-year-old Martin to take over the label. However, he had to fight to retain the label, as by late 1956 EMI managers considered moving Parlophone's successful artists to Columbia Records or the His Master's Voice, with Martin possibly to take a junior A&R role at the His Master's Voice under Wally Ridley. Martin staved off corporate pressure with successes in comedy records, such as a 1957 recording of the two-man show featuring Michael Flanders and Donald Swann, At the Drop of a Hat. His work boosted the profile of Parlophone from a "sad little company" to a highly profitable business over time. As head of Parlophone, Martin recorded classical and Baroque music, original cast recordings, jazz, and regional music from around Britain and Ireland. He became the first British A&R man to capitalize on the 1956 skiffle boom when he signed the Vipers Skiffle Group after seeing them in London's 2i's Coffee Bar. Martin's first hit production came in 1956 in the Johnny Duckworth Band's jazz parody "The Three Blind Mice".Martin produced numerous comedy and novelty records. His first success in the genre was the "Mock Mozart" single, performed by Peter Ustinov with Antony Hopkins. In 1953, Martin produced Peter Sellers' debut in music, the failed single "Jakka and the Flying Saucers". Two years later, Martin worked with BBC radio comedy stars the Goons on a parody version of "Unchained Melody", but the song's publishers blocked it from release. The Goons subsequently left Parlophone for Decca, but Sellers, a member of the group, achieved minor success with Martin in 1957 with "Boiled Bananas and Carrots"/"Any Old Iron". Recognising that Sellers was capable of "a daydreaming form of humour which could be amusing and seductive without requiring the trigger of a live audience", Martin pitched a full album to EMI. The result, The Best of Sellers, has been cited by the music historian Mark Lewisohn as the first British comedy LP created in a recording studio. Martin scored a major success in 1961 with the Beyond the Fringe show cast album, starring, among others, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore; the show catalyzed Britain's satire boom in the early 1960s.Martin courted controversy in summer 1960, when he produced a cover of the teen novelty song "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini" and released it mere days after the release of the record in the UK, opening him to public accusations of piracy. Nonetheless, his first British no. 1 came a year later, in May 1961, with the Temperance Seven's "You're Driving Me Crazy". He later earned praise from EMI chairman Sir Joseph Lockwood for his top-10 1962 hit with Bernard Cribbins, "The Hole in the Ground". Though Martin wanted to add rock and roll to Parlophone's repertoire, he struggled to find a "fireproof" hit-making pop artist or group.
When Martin visited Liverpool in December 1962, the Beatles' manager Brian Epstein, whom he had cultivated a working relationship with, showed him successful local acts like Gerry and the Pacemakers and the Fourmost. Martin urged Epstein to audition them for EMI. Gerry and the Pacemakers scored their first no. 1 with their version of "How Do You Do It?", which Martin produced, in April 1963. Martin also produced the Epstein-managed Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, the Fourmost, and Cilla Black. Between the Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers, and Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, Martin-produced and Epstein-managed acts were responsible for 37 weeks of no. 1 singles in 1963, transforming Parlophone into the leading EMI label. His work with such Liverpudilian artists contributed to the development of beat music.