George Martin RIP

... thank you, I was trying to remember which programme this was from!

Kevin Eldon is a big Beatles fan apparently so it probably was meant to be affectionate

I had a sense late last year that he'd go this year.

Watch the first couple minutes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZDWgQHRE78

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB4n6rAvHU8

RIP
what a great producer

I just read the monster pt 1 of the Beatles bio by Mark Lewisham and really found the parts about Martin (and Brian Epstein) to be the most interesting

I'm reading it too and before going to bed last night and checking the political thread I got to the scene in which Martin hears the audition tape.

I love that book so much.

Finished Placemats book, guess maybe I should finally read this.

it's so good

They could have easily been churned through the meatgrinder on another label & someone else's watch
yeah i think this is so true -- martin obviously believed in the beatles' talent, as opposed to just believing in the "phenomenon" ... lesser producers would've just wanted to stick with the formula.

One of the major puzzle pieces that fell into place for me reading the Lewisohn book was learning that one of Martin's heroes was Meade Lux Lewis. I always wondered how a conservatory-trained musician, who professed to knowing little about rock 'n' roll, was able to play such credibly driving piano on "Long Tall Sally" -- he likely heard the connection between Little Richard and Lewis.

... lesser producers would've just wanted to stick with the formula.

That's what's so crucial -- he never said "no" or "that can't be done." Sitar? Sure. A song consisting mostly of tape loops? Why not?

After they recorded the two versions of "Strawberry Fields," John wanted to use both. George said, "How?" John said, "I dunno, but I bet you'll figure it out."

The crux of the Lewisohn book to me was how much of the Beatles story was incredible timing/luck. From getting the Hamburg gig to hooking up with Martin (shepherd, steward and skilled technician). So many things had to go right for the Beatles to even happen, and that's taking into account that the book stops more or less with the release of the first album. I'm looking forward to Lewisohn getting beyond capturing the band as is to enabling the band's vision.

The crux of the Lewisohn book to me was how much of the Beatles story was incredible timing/luck.

Ian McDonald doesn't hold back in Revolution In The Head on their timing/luck finding Martin:

Left to his own devices, [Epstein] would have been at a loss to develop the group's creativity. Doing that would require someone highly qualified yet unhampered by the hidebound UK studio scene of 1962. By a coincidence so unlikely as to be positively mind-boggling, The Beatles were about to encounter such a man.

this was mentioned as an early George Martin production in the Beatles book, Nadia Cattouse - "Long Time Boy", love this song...people should post their fav non-Beatles Martin stuff would be interested

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUBg4nR3Rss

did he and George ever reconcile?

RIP.

Thanks for your Beatles-related work, AIR Studios and your work with Ultravox.

who else has bought this one for a buck hoping it'll be some amazing hidden gem?
http://www.superseventies.com/oaaa/oaaa_americanflyer.jpg

This is cool...George Martin meets Brian Wilson, and remixes "God Only Knows":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnVyCuc9_P8

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I haven't heard it, but I have heard No Place Left To Run by UFO, which is shit!

i love some of these Sellers records, esp the Olivier "Hard Day's Night"

http://www.avclub.com/article/back-day-george-martin-made-some-wild-records-pete-233455

that "A Hard Day's Night" parody I checked out of the library on some Goon Show comp or other a loooong time ago and I wept from laughter

RIP

AHDN even funnier if you've seen Lord Larry's Richard III at least twice

Yeah, I used to own the American Flyer album. Can't remember a single thing about itzzzzzzz.....

This Seatrain record (first Martin production post-Beatles iirc) was one of the first 45s I ever owned.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=War3BgTQ68Q

american flyer was sold back by me but quick

i love this, god forgive me
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQ6UI_8h-YY

Perhaps it's time to play the second side of Yellow Submarine.

― Jesperson, I think we're lost (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, March 9, 2016 1:07 AM (14 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes! i loved those as a kid. all the orchestral stuff he did w the Beatles is still some of my favorite stuff ever.

RIP producer genius

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'Reap The Wild Wind' is fabulous and you have nothing to be embarrassed about.

I mentioned it in my own quick obit.

It seems a little strange to say this, but when I heard about Martin's passing earlier, the first album I reached for was Quartet rather than any Beatles record, but that may have something to do with the fact that I've heard those Beatle records so many times that I very rarely feel the need to actually listen to them again. Quartet isn't my favourite Ultravox album either, but there's still quite a lot of good stuff on it.

A very early example of multi tracking..

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OHfseN9nSVE

was going to mention the goons...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqqNsyHajb0

also ivor cutler!

Ure was insufferable by the time of Quartet.

There's three songs on it that I'm not so keen on: 'Serenade', 'We Came To Dance' and 'The Song (We Go)', I absolutely love the rest.

I briefly once met the charming ne'er-do-well son from his first marriage. Looked exactly like him. He wrote a scandalous memoir and was allegedly disowned because of it. He once had a little acting career and is now an astrologer.

I always enjoyed Ray Cathode, his pre-Beatles collaboration with Maddalena Fagandini of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhVYEgMrxOg

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2007/04/ray_cathode_aka.html

Why am I feeling like there's been so little fuss made over this?

response did seem a little muted tbh -- maybe just because he was 90?

This strangely neglected topic

Not neglected, just oddly muted.

like a french horn

I was always rather beastly to the George Martin RIP thread.

apparently a bunch of ppl thought it was the game of thrones guy who died

RIP, geez

RIP. Just the fact that he allowed the Beatles to perform their own songs at that time is startling. He didn't even like "Love Me Do", but he gave them a shot.

Lewisohn's book (in addition to really fleshing out Martin's pre-Beatles story) basically says the Beatles were already signed by EMI by the time they met Martin. They were essentially foisted on him because he was having an affair with his secretary, which his boss wasn't happy about.

Why am I feeling like there's been so little fuss made over this?

Because you aren't living in the UK perhaps?

... because I heard more than enough.

Because he was 90, and a producer, not a musician.

he played keys on multiple Beatles albums. i consider that a musician.

Yeah, and it's telling that the post-touring moments the Beatles rave the most about are those where they're really challenged as a unit ("Happiness Is A Warm Gun") or playing together like in the old days ("Yer Blues," the 3-guitar thing at the end of Abbey Road).

Stopping playing live definitely messed up their group dynamic, but it had gotten pointless: for a band that had prided themselves on their shit-hot live shows, playing inaudibly to an audience that cheered wildly at everything, regardless of quality, must've been really frustrating. I do wonder what would've happened if they'd started using a monitor system and/or moved up to Marshalls or something, though.

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Saturday, March 12, 2016 4:00 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

They also quit just as the industry started to come up grips with the sound systems needed for bigger crowds and venues, and the hippie crowds that would have come out in say a theoretical show in like 68 would have behaved way different than a Beatlemania teenybop crowd so I feel like a lot of their purported problems with playing live would have evaporated

Oh, don't get me wrong, I fully understand the reasons why they quit touring, and I agree that they achieved some great things in the studio that they couldn't have possibly put together unless they'd had the time and focus to do so. I also agree that they never really stopped working as an ensemble, The Beatles in particular features a lot of ensemble playing, but the excitement and adrenaline rush that characterised, say, 'It Won't Be Long' and 'Any Time At All' begins to appear far less frequently, aside from the odd track like 'Helter Skelter' and 'Birthday' ... but I suspect even these would have benefitted far more from being performed by a band that had just come off the road, rather than by a band that hadn't actually played in front of an audience for a couple of years. While being in the studio helped some of their tracks gain a richness they wouldn't normally have had, I think their performances suffered a little from not having an audience to vibe off.

They also quit just as the industry started to come up grips with the sound systems needed for bigger crowds and venues

They actually played one show with a powerful sound system, and with stage monitors -- the first ever, supposedly -- in Atlanta in '65. The band raved about it, and Epstein offered the local soundman a job doing the Beatles' live sound (which he turned down):

http://www.cbs46.com/story/24667227/beatles-atlanta-65-the-most-memorable-show-of-the-tour

To be fair, though, it wasn't just sound issues that caused 'em to quit touring. By the time they got off the road in 1966, they'd been through enough threats to their safety that I'm guessing that this was the main reason, above all, that they stopped. McCartney seemed to be able to brush it off after a while, Lennon had no issues with performing live as a solo artist but thought the idea of performing with The Beatles again was "daft", and Harrison was undoubtedly the most burned out by it all.

the excitement and adrenaline rush that characterised, say, 'It Won't Be Long' and 'Any Time At All' begins to appear far less frequently

a lot of this is probably chemical. a lot of those early Beatles songs were written when they were popping speed pills. for a couple of years they had some insane schedules so maybe they kept that up to handle the work load.

While being in the studio helped some of their tracks gain a richness they wouldn't normally have had, I think their performances suffered a little from not having an audience to vibe off.

which, funny enough, is one of the reasons they quit playing live in the first place. they couldn't vibe off the audience bc it was just a wall of screaming. they couldn't even hear themselves!

Yeah, in '66 they played shitty in Japan, got manhandled and robbed in the Philippines, then had to deal with death threats from the Klan in the US. In that context, "I can't really hear myself" is a minor concern. Also, they'd already finished Revolver when they went on tour; going from their most positive studio experience to their most negative live experiences made the choice pretty clear.

xp

x-post:

Yeah, as I said, I'm aware of that I completely understand why they stopped touring, I just think there's an excitement in their work when they were a touring band which started to disappear when they weren't... I think McCartney, in a way, recognised this, which I suspect was one of the reasons he wanted The Beatles to tour again towards the end, but I think Lennon and Harrison were so soured by the experiences of touring in '66 that it put them off entirely.

I think that was the thing about the Get Back project, actually... most of the band didn't actually want to go back!

*and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXF66qZgSR8

"Blue Jay Way" production is amazing, MMT has always been a magical sounding record to me. This is futuristic music? It is electronic sounding, almost like dark hip hop. Also that ambient mellotron intro which is featured at the end of "Flying" and fades into the BJW organ drone. So killer.

Maybe it is proto industrial? The intro feels a little like Throbbing Gristle.

When I first started seriously investigating the Beatles discography, I often found myself surprised by how Harrison managed to craft so many pop songs based on Indian classical music and/or drones. 'Blue Jay Way' is a fantastic example of this approach, and I too love the production on it... it's possibly the darkest•sounding psychedelic track the band ever did.

Also, I'm not much into the US configurations of Beatles albums, but expanding Magical Mystery Tour into a full-length LP with assorted 1967 singles and B-sides on side two was a stroke of genius, IMO. I'm glad they kept it that way when the 1987 reissues happened!

I've always thought that the Yellow Submarine/MMT/Lady Madonna sessions should have been released as one album. Would have been a nice cohesive mix bridging Pepper and the White album.

1. Magical Mystery Tour
2. Baby You're a Rich Man
3. It's Only a Northern Song
4. Flying
5. Fool on the Hill
6. Blue Jay Way
7. Your Mother Should Know
8. I Am the Walrus

9. Hello Goodbye
10. Hey Bulldog
11. The Inner Light
12. All Together Now
13. Lady Madonna
14. Across the Universe
15. It's All Too Much
16. All You Need is Love

The version of 'Across The Universe' on Let It Be is superior to the "wildlife" on Past Masters, but I don't think they ever did a decent recording of it. I think Lennon had a point when he criticised the way that song was treated.

For me, "Lady Madonna" is like the first definitively post-psychedelic period record, so it doesn't feel like it fits the on MMT or the Yellow Sub soundtrack. All the Yellow Sub songs are '66 or '67 recordings except for "Hey Bulldog," which kind of feels like it could go either way for me - on one of the psychedelic records or on the White Album. "Lady Madonna" feels like a White Album song to me.

Yeah, 'Lady Madonna' feels as though it would fit in snugly on The Beatles, without a doubt!

I've hesitated to jump into all the speculation/Beatles fun stuff in this thread (generally of high quality) just cause, y'know, RIP thread and all. But I'm only human, so: yeah, leave off Lady Madonna/The Inner Light and you actually have a pretty reasonable record there, and closer to a 'period' running time anyway. Heck, leave out All You Need Is Love as a standalone single, and finish with It's All Too Much... very good record IMO.

"Hey Bulldog" could easily have bumped "Glass Onion" and made its way onto the Beatles too. I always thought "Hey Bulldog deserved better than b-side treatment.

Yeah, but it was the first time Yoko had seen John at work in the studio with the Beatles, and he got somewhat embarrassed at doing something as silly as that.

I hate to be that guy, but Hey Bulldog was recorded three months before Yoko and John became a couple. She definitely wasn't attending Beatle sessions until the white album.

'Hey Bulldog' is definitely one of my favourites and I agree that it deserved better than just been snuck away on Yellow Submarine. It would have made an excellent single.

Anyone else watched Under the Volcano yet? It looks at George Martin's studio built on a remote Caribbean island in 1979 and is ultimately destroyed by a volcano. Lots of anecdotes provided by The Police, Elton John, Earth, Wind and Fire, Paul McCartney and Duran Duran. Fascinating if you can get past the colonialism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWf7_eXZ-bo

this always seemed like the New Jerseyof recording studios to me, wasnt brothers in arms recorded there?

gets a shout-out in the trailer! with a costanza-esque "and it didn't take me very long, either" aside.

Been watching this this am – have been interrupted a bunch of times and still have a bit to go but it’s definitely enjoyable.

Agreed. I stopped at the part where Nick Rhodes observes how tropical tranquility + Nick Rhodes are chalk and cheese.

Indeed that also describes the color of his skin.

All in all, I really enjoyed it. For all the colonialism stuff, Martin didn’t exactly abandon the island after he closed the studio. According to Wikipedia, it appears he did quite a bit of fundraising in the heads that followed.

Relatedly, I was a bit surprised there was no mention of Chris Blackwell’s Compass Point Studios which Alex Sadkin ran until he died in a car wreck in the late 80’s. Looking at their webpage, it says:

“But in 2010, several unfortunate local incidents occurred at or near to Compass Point Studios,
and both Blackwell and Manning determined that it was unwise to continue operations in The Bahamas.”

Does anyone know what those “unfortunate local incidents” were?