Sir George Henry Martin was an English record producer, arranger, composer, conductor, and musician.
140 Facts About George Martin
2.
George Martin was commonly referred to as the "Fifth Beatle" because of his extensive involvement in each of the Beatles' original albums.
3.
George Martin's career spanned more than six decades in music, film, television and live performance.
4.
George Martin held a number of senior executive roles at media companies and contributed to a wide range of charitable causes, including his work for The Prince's Trust and the Caribbean island of Montserrat.
5.
George Martin was born on 3 January 1926 in Highbury, London, to Henry and Bertha Beatrice George Martin.
6.
At age 5, George Martin contracted scarlet fever; Bertha, a nurse during the First World War, treated him at home.
7.
When he was six, George Martin's family acquired a piano that sparked his interest in music.
8.
George Martin created his first piano composition, "The Spider's Dance" at age eight.
9.
George Martin continued to learn piano on his own through his youth, building a working knowledge of music theory through his natural perfect pitch.
10.
At Bromley, George Martin led and played piano in a locally popular dance band, the Four Tune Tellers.
11.
George Martin was influenced at this time by George Shearing and Meade Lux Lewis.
12.
George Martin took up acting in a troupe called the Quavers.
13.
George Martin endured the London Blitz during this time, inspiring an interest in aircraft.
14.
George Martin worked briefly as a quantity surveyor, and later for the War Office as a Temporary Clerk, which meant filing paperwork and making tea.
15.
In 1943, at the age of 17, George Martin volunteered the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Navy, having been inspired by their exploits in the Battle of Taranto in 1940.
16.
The war ended before George Martin was involved in any combat, and he left the service in January 1947.
17.
George Martin did nine months of aerial training in Trinidad, becoming a petty officer and aerial observer.
18.
On 26 July 1945, shortly after receiving his officer commission, George Martin appeared on BBC radio for the first time during a Royal Navy variety show; George Martin played a self-composed piano piece.
19.
George Martin studied piano as his main instrument and oboe as his secondary, being interested in the music of Rachmaninoff and Ravel and Cole Porter.
20.
George Martin took courses at Guildhall in music composition and orchestration.
21.
George Martin joined EMI in November 1950 as an assistant to Oscar Preuss, who had served as head of EMI's Parlophone label since 1923.
22.
George Martin developed a friendship and working relationship with composer Sidney Torch and signed Ron Goodwin to a recording contract.
23.
George Martin proved uncomfortable as a song plugger when occasionally assigned the task by Preuss, comparing himself to a "sheep among wolves".
24.
Preuss retired as head of Parlophone in April 1955, leaving the 29-year-old George Martin to take over the label.
25.
George 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.
26.
George Martin's work transformed the profile of Parlophone from a "sad little company" to a highly profitable business over time.
27.
In 1957, George Martin signed Jim Dale, hoping the singer would prove Parlophone's answer to British rock and roll star Tommy Steele.
28.
George 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.
29.
In early 1962, George Martin collaborated with Maddalena Fagandini, then working at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, to create two electronic singles, "Time Beat" and "Waltz in Orbit", which were released as records by the pseudonymous Ray Cathode.
30.
George Martin earned praise from EMI chairman Sir Joseph Lockwood for his top-10 1962 hit with Bernard Cribbins, "The Hole in the Ground".
31.
George Martin earned another top-10 hit with Cribbins that year, with "Right Said Fred".
32.
When George Martin visited Liverpool in December 1962, Epstein showed him successful local acts like Gerry and the Pacemakers and the Fourmost; George Martin urged Epstein to audition them for EMI.
33.
George Martin agreed to sign the Beatles' Cavern Club associate Cilla Black.
34.
The soundtrack album featured music by Gerry and the Pacemakers, the Fourmost, Cilla Black, and George Martin-orchestrated instrumental music.
35.
In 1955, George Martin worked with BBC radio comedy stars the Goons on a parody version of "Unchained Melody", but the song's publishers objected to the recording and blocked it from release.
36.
George Martin edited out the 'K' every time the word Kwai was spoken, with Bridge on the River Wye being the result.
37.
George Martin scored a major success in 1961 with the Beyond the Fringe show cast album, which starred Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett, and Jonathan Miller; the show catalyzed Britain's satire boom in the early 1960s.
38.
George Martin frequently used comedy records to experiment with recording techniques and motifs used later on musical records, such as recording magnetic tape at half-speed and then playing it back at normal speed.
39.
George Martin advocated that the Beatles' penny-per-record royalty rate be doubled; Len Wood agreed to this, but only if the Beatles signed a five-year contract renewal in exchange.
40.
When George Martin countered that EMI should raise the royalty without conditions.
41.
Wood grudgingly acquiesced, but George Martin believed that, "from that moment on, I was considered a traitor within EMI".
42.
George Martin admitted to looking with "something close to desperation" for similar success.
43.
George Martin believed that Paramor's habit of forcing Columbia artists to record his own songs as B-sides was unethical.
44.
In December 1962, George Martin complained to EMI managing director Len Wood that he "would not wish to recommend Capitol Records to any impresario who was thinking of launching a future British show in the States".
45.
George Martin alleged that when he and the Beatles traveled to New York to make their American debut in February 1964, Livingston kept George Martin away from the press to minimize EMI's role in the Beatles' success.
46.
Short of startup capital and with many of AIR's associated acts still under contract to EMI, George Martin negotiated a business arrangement with EMI that would give EMI the right of first refusal on any AIR production.
47.
George Martin arrived during the recording of "Love Me Do"; between takes, he introduced himself to the Beatles and subtly changed the arrangement.
48.
The verdict was not promising as Richards and George Martin complained about Pete Best's drumming, and George Martin thought their original songs were simply not good enough.
49.
George Martin suggested the Beatles record a full album, a suggestion Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn called "genuinely mind-boggling", given how little exposure the Beatles had achieved so far.
50.
Nine days later, George Martin overdubbed a piano part to the song "Misery" and a celesta on "Baby It's You".
51.
George Martin altered the arrangement of "From Me to You", substituting the Beatles' idea for a guitar intro with a vocalized "da-da-da-da-da-dum-dum-da", backed by overdubbed harmonica.
52.
George Martin liked the song but was skeptical of its closing chord, a major sixth cluster, which he found cliche.
53.
George Martin and recording engineer Norman Smith changed the studio microphone arrangement for "She Loves You", giving the bass and drums a more prominent sound on the record.
54.
George Martin tweaked the arrangement by having part of the chorus open the song as an intro, so "it grabbed people".
55.
Martin and George Harrison played piano and guitar, respectively, at half-speed for the song's solo, which was then played back at normal speed on the record.
56.
George Martin received an Academy Award nomination for best film score.
57.
When Ringo Starr fell ill with laryngitis just before the Beatles' 1964 world tour began in early June, George Martin recruited session drummer Jimmie Nicol as a temporary replacement.
58.
George Martin observed that the Beatles were "war weary" during many of these sessions, and the album included six covers because Lennon and McCartney had not written enough songs to fill out the record.
59.
George Martin contributed piano on their cover of "Rock and Roll Music".
60.
The group by now had grown confident in the studio, and George Martin encouraged them to explore new ideas for songs, such as an outro to "Ticket to Ride" that was at a faster tempo than the rest of song.
61.
George Martin played the song in the style of Bach to show McCartney the voicings that were available.
62.
George Martin himself recorded a Baroque-style piano solo on John Lennon's "In My Life", recording the tape at half-speed and playing it back at normal speed so the piano sounded like a harpsichord.
63.
George Martin composed the notes of the guitar solo Harrison played on "Michelle", which won the 1967 Grammy Award for Song of the Year.
64.
George Martin sensed a shift in how the group was recording albums:.
65.
In early January 1966, the Beatles and George Martin gathered at CineTele Sound Studios in London to re-record vocal and instrumental tracks from the band's August 1965 concert performance at Shea Stadium.
66.
For Paul McCartney's "Eleanor Rigby", George Martin scored and conducted a strings-only accompaniment inspired by Bernard Herrmann's score for the Alfred Hitchcock thriller Psycho.
67.
George Martin added a honky-tonk piano solo on "Good Day Sunshine".
68.
Lennon asked George Martin to combine takes 7 and 26 of the song, even though they were recorded at different tempos and in different keys.
69.
McCartney hummed the melody that he wanted, and George Martin notated it for David Mason, the classically trained trumpeter.
70.
George Martin orchestrated a larger brass and woodwind score with trumpets, piccolo, flutes, oboe, and flugelhorn.
71.
George Martin was involved as arranger throughout the album, starting with an overdubbed clarinet section on "When I'm Sixty-Four", recorded in December 1966.
72.
George Martin scored the brass overdubs for the album's title track, as well as on "Good Morning Good Morning".
73.
For "Within You Without You", George Martin arranged a score that combined Indian and Western classical music.
74.
George Martin played instruments on several songs, including the piano on "Lovely Rita" and the harpsichord on "Fixing a Hole".
75.
The first Beatles song that George Martin did not arrange was "She's Leaving Home", as he had a prior engagement to produce a Cilla Black session, so McCartney contacted arranger Mike Leander to do it.
76.
George Martin called this "one of the biggest hurts of my life", but still produced the recording and conducted the orchestra himself.
77.
George Martin applied heavy tape echo to John Lennon's voice in "A Day in the Life".
78.
George Martin worked with McCartney to implement the 24-bar orchestral climaxes in the middle and end of the song, produced by instructing a 45-piece orchestra to gradually play from their instruments' lowest note to their highest.
79.
Five days later, at EMI Studios, George Martin overdubbed a piano, while Lennon added vocals and a banjo part.
80.
The band asked George Martin to write an orchestral score for the song, starting with the beginning of "La Marseillaise".
81.
George Martin learned the day before the broadcast, during a rehearsal, that a TV camera would be live in the EMI Studio One control room to show George Martin, Geoff Emerick, and Richard Lush operating the controls for the recording.
82.
George Martin composed the film's orchestral scores, which comprised the second half of the film soundtrack.
83.
George Martin composed these pieces while the Beatles retreated to India during the spring of 1968.
84.
George Martin claimed to take inspiration for the score from Maurice Ravel, "the musician I admire most".
85.
However, George Martin chose to re-record the album's score after the film's release, delaying the soundtrack's release until January 1969.
86.
George Martin scored a fiddle arrangement on Ringo Starr's first composition, "Don't Pass Me By".
87.
George Martin played celesta on the album's closing track, "Good Night", and conducted its orchestral arrangement.
88.
George Martin recommended the Beatles choose the 14 best tracks from the sessions and issue a standard LP.
89.
George Martin scored a 36-piece orchestra for "Hey Jude"'s extended coda.
90.
The Beatles and Preston performed on the roof of Apple Records on 30 January 1969, while George Martin recorded the impromptu concert in the building's basement studio.
91.
George Martin began at this time to consider that the Beatles might be finished as a commercial act.
92.
George Martin supervised the final Beatles recording session on 3 January 1970, when the group recorded "I Me Mine".
93.
George Martin was critical of these embellishments, calling them "so uncharacteristic of the clean sounds the Beatles had always used".
94.
However, the Beatles did not inform George Martin they planned to record a new album until later in the spring, when McCartney asked if George Martin would produce it for them.
95.
George Martin soon set to help the Beatles develop the second side of the album into a "medley" of songs, akin to a rock opera.
96.
George Martin guided the band using his knowledge of classical music to conceive a fluid, cohesive series of songs with repeating themes and motifs.
97.
George Martin composed and orchestrated orchestral arrangements for four of the album's songs.
98.
George Martin took particular pride in the symphonic medley on side two, claiming later, "There's far more of me on Abbey Road than on any of their other albums".
99.
George Martin next worked with Paul McCartney to score orchestral arrangements on four songs for the 1971 album Ram.
100.
George Martin then paired with McCartney and his band, Wings to produce the "Live and Let Die" theme song for the 1973 James Bond film of the same name.
101.
McCartney and George Martin used leftover material from Tug of War to start a new album, Pipes of Peace, which was released in 1983.
102.
George Martin produced the soundtrack album to McCartney's 1984 film, Give My Regards to Broad Street.
103.
George Martin recorded orchestral overdubs for McCartney's 1990 "Put It There" and 1993 "C'Mon People" singles.
104.
George Martin provided additional orchestration on several tracks on McCartney's 1997 album, Flaming Pie, and co-produced the song "Calico Skies".
105.
In 1998, at Yoko Ono's request, George Martin scored an orchestral arrangement to the 1980 John Lennon demo of "Grow Old with Me", which appeared in the John Lennon Anthology.
106.
George Martin oversaw post-production on The Beatles Anthology in 1994 and 1995, working again with Geoff Emerick.
107.
George Martin explained this by saying that the old console created a completely different sound, which a new console could not accurately reproduce.
108.
George Martin received the 2008 Grammy Awards for Best Compilation Soundtrack Album and Best Surround Sound Album.
109.
George Martin helped us develop a language to talk to other musicians.
110.
George Martin reunited with other artists from his Parlophone days, such as Matt Monro, Rolf Harris, and Ron Goodwin, though these reunions often failed to produce the same success as earlier records had.
111.
George Martin continued to produce novelty music acts, such as the Scaffold, the comedy rock group featuring Paul McCartney's brother, Mike McGear.
112.
George Martin recorded the Master Singers, whose "Highway Code" single became a minor hit in April 1966.
113.
Additional artists that George Martin worked with include singers Celine Dion, Kenny Rogers, Yoshiki of X Japan, Gary Brooker, Neil Sedaka, and the a cappella vocal ensemble the King's Singers; guitarists Jeff Beck, John McLaughlin, and John Williams; 1960s duo Edwards Hand; and the bands Seatrain, Ultravox, UFO, Cheap Trick, and Little River Band.
114.
George Martin produced the album The Man in the Bowler Hat for the eccentric British folk-rock group Stackridge.
115.
George Martin worked with Paul Winter on his Icarus album, which was recorded in a rented house by the sea in Marblehead, Massachusetts.
116.
Winter said that George Martin taught him "how to use the studio as a tool", and allowed him to record the album in a relaxed atmosphere, which was different from the pressurised control in a professional studio.
117.
In 1988, George Martin produced an album version of the play Under Milk Wood, with music by George Martin, Elton John, and Mark Knopfler; Anthony Hopkins played the part of "First Voice".
118.
In 1979, George Martin opened AIR Montserrat, a studio on the Caribbean island of Montserrat.
119.
In 1991, George Martin contributed the string arrangement and conducted the orchestra for the song "Ticket To Heaven" on the last Dire Straits studio album, On Every Street.
120.
In 1992, George Martin worked with Pete Townshend on the musical stage production of The Who's Tommy.
121.
George Martin won the Grammy Award for Best Musical Show Album in 1993, as the producer of that album.
122.
George Martin produced "Candle in the Wind 1997", Elton's tribute single to the late Diana, Princess of Wales, which topped charts around the world in September 1997 and became the best-selling British single of all time.
123.
On 15 September 1997, George Martin arranged a benefit concert for the island of Montserrat, which had been devastated by volcanic activity.
124.
George Martin served as a consultant to the June 2002 Party at the Palace at Buckingham Palace Garden for the Queen's Golden Jubilee.
125.
In 2010, George Martin was the executive producer of the hard rock debut of Arms of the Sun, an all-star project featuring Rex Brown, John Luke Hebert, Lance Harvill and Ben Bunker.
126.
George Martin used the pseudonyms Lezlo Anales and John Chisholm, before settling on Graham Fisher as his primary pseudonym.
127.
George Martin's earliest composing work was incidental music to accompany Peter Sellers's comedy records.
128.
George Martin composed, arranged, and produced film scores beginning in the early 1960s, including the instrumental scores of the films A Hard Day's Night, Ferry Cross the Mersey, Yellow Submarine, and Live and Let Die.
129.
George Martin was commissioned to write an official opening theme for BBC Radio 1's launch in September 1967.
130.
In 1979, George Martin published a memoir, All You Need is Ears, that described his work with the Beatles and other artists, and gave an informal introduction to the art and science of sound recording.
131.
George Martin edited a 1983 book called Making Music: The Guide to Writing, Performing and Recording.
132.
On 25 April 2011, a 90-minute documentary feature film co-produced by the BBC Arena team, Produced by George Martin, aired to critical acclaim for the first time in the UK.
133.
In 1946, George Martin met Jean Chisholm, a fellow member of the Royal Navy's choir.
134.
Bertha died three weeks later of a brain hemorrage, and George Martin felt responsible for his mother's death.
135.
George Martin met Judy Lockhart Smith on his first day of work at EMI Studios in 1950, when she served as secretary to Parlophone director Oscar Preuss.
136.
George Martin chose to retain her as secretary when he assumed direction of Parlophone in 1955, and they commuted together from Hatfield each day.
137.
George Martin spent his later years with Judy at their home in Coleshill, Oxfordshire.
138.
George Martin died in his sleep on the night of 8 March 2016 at his home in Wiltshire, England, at the age of 90.
139.
George Martin's death was announced by Ringo Starr on his Twitter account, and a spokesperson for Universal Music Group confirmed his death.
140.
George Martin was one of a handful of producers to have number one records in three or more consecutive decades.