George Martin RIP

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

x-post:

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

x-post:

'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.

Wish you'd told the BBC that. (xp)

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

― flappy bird,

are you fucking kidding me

Yet another pointless and downright stupid post from the nest of flappy bird, this surely must be some kind of record.

If the question was about why this is getting less notice than Bowie's passing, that seems like a reasonable answer to me, tbh.

(I don't even count on music tech students to know the names of major producers when they come in.)

I'm wtfing at George Martin, a trained oboist and piano player and string arranger, wasn't a musician.

If only flappy bird would come over and post some silliness on the 'Mats thread to unite the crowd which is otherwise currently involved in a little narcissistic of small differences tiff over what songs are good and bad on Don't Tell A Soul.

Oh, yeah, I'd definitely call him a musician (and this is definitely getting more coverage than the deaths of most trained oboists and piano players and string arrangers).

x-post to Tom:

I'm very much in the UK! I haven't seen how the BBC have been reporting it, but knowing the BBC I would have expected them to give this quite a great deal of attention and I suspect they have. The reaction of the British media was not what I was talking about, though. I was mainly talking about discussion on here and elsewhere amongst dedicated music fans.

maybe cos the works most people know Martin from are mostly from a 6 year period

Reminds me of a a similar eye-rolling moment when a guy I was in band with said to the owner of the rehearsal studio, "oh, you're a musician too?

A lot of dedicated music fans don't really care about the Beatles though. (xxp)

(xp) nowadays it's all about owners of rehearsal studios saying to guys in bands, "oh, you're an engineer too?"

lol

what is a dedicated music fan and where do i apply

You seriously never had a Beatles phase, Tom?

I mean, okay, at this stage I've heard Beatles stuff so much that I don't really need to listen to it anymore, but I can still acknowledge the great work Martin did even though I'm tired of it. I mean, the guy produced 'Tomorrow Never Knows'!

feel like i've seen the same (5 Beatles songs that George Martin made his mark on) article a dozen times by now.

they all talk about him doing the tape loop stuff in Mr. Kite but nobody seems to mention that btw he was also playing along with the Beatles on all the live takes, which meant playing a harmonium, which is a hand-pumped air organ, requiring you to constantly pump air otherwise you get no sound at all.

let's see your "non-musician" put up with 4 hours of that.

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?