It was a day unlike any other day. But this day was different.
We were glued to our television sets. Black and White. Only three major channels. ABC. NBC. And tonight it was CBS.
The Ed Sullivan Show, specifically, and while most young girls were screaming passionately at the top of their lungs, the boys were discovering their life paths. Most boys wanted to be the boys in the band. And this night, the band was The Beatles. Yeah, yeah, yeah, most of the guys wanted to be the band because, it was assumed that the band got all the girls. And all the attention. To this five year old kid, I wanted to be Ed Sullivan. The man who introduced great talent to the world.
I met Beatles’ producer, George Martin at the infamous Sardis restaurant in New York City. A celebration honoring the return of The Who’s legendary “Tommy” to Broadway. It was a charity engagement, which charity I do not recall, but I went to have a few words with Pete Townshend, who conceived the rock opera.
Little did I know that one hour into the party, my friend told me about the affair confronted me, telling me that Sir George Martin was ten feet away from where I was standing on the second floor of the restaurant.
“My God! The Father of God!” I thought.
Going over to say hello to him, he asked me if we could talk a bit later. Naturally, Yes! I’ve waiting my entire life to meet him!
Sir George tapped me on the left shoulder, “Hello, you wanted to have a word with me?”
I looked at him, shook his hand, introduced myself and said, “I’ve waited over thirty years to say these two words to you!” He asked for the words: and said “Thank you!”
He patted my shoulder this time, and said, “Well, Thank you!”
It was all that music we grew up with that I felt compelled to thank him for. Afterall, he produced the soundtrack to my early childhood.
A few years later, I had the idea to ask for an interview. I wanted to know what made him tick. And these “ticks” made others talk. I had to know how he came up with such brilliant arrangements, and was the man who signed the Beatles to EMI.
George Martin has produced the Beatles, America, Jeff Beck, The Mahavishnu Orchestra and even Peter Sellers’ comedy records. He’s considered a “producer’s producer.” Not only does he get the best out of the artists he works with, he’s humble too. Maybe it comes from confidence, having the knowledge of the instruments of the orchestra, how they work both individually as well as together.
But with confidence comes conviction. The sheer and utter faith in one’s ability to shape sound. In this brief yet informative conversation, we spoke with George from his home in England, where he assured us that a great recording should always start with a great song, and that despite the unfortunate situations of our creative industries being taken over by marketing companies and non-creative corporate conglomerates, a great song will last forever.
In the early part of the 1960’s, a young music manager named Brian Epstein was contracted by four musicians from Liverpool to secure them a record deal. While just about every record company he spoke with passed on the band, it took incredible persistence for Epstein to continue pursuing a dream that would go down in the history books forever.
Essentially, it was the creation of a very special team that enabled the Beatles to become as big as they became, and, while the time was ripe for such a band to succeed, it’s doubtful something like this could ever happen again, as if there was only one time in the history of the Universe where these stars would unite.
Brian had the vision to solicit the attention and support of an EMI staff producer, George Martin, who, in the past had produced orchestral soundtracks as well as comics such as Peter Sellers. Martin’s knowledge of orchestration—and–most essentially, the relationship between all of the components of the orchestra enabled him to create the type of records he produced, and at a time where music technology was starting to grow, they didn’t have the tools and technology of today’s digital studios, instead, they were forced to create by pulling ‘rabbits out of their hats,’ and invent new ways of producing records.
While one can find it amazing to listen to their later works, one wonders what was going on in the mindset of Producer George Martin, what he saw in the band, and how he empowered them to be better than great, to be the best they could be. And considering the lack of technology available to them, that some of the Magical Mystery Tour they encountered, was the journey they made during their recording process.
“First of all, I’ve never really experienced dealing with people who don’t have a musical education, ” Martin said from his home in England. “But having said that, there are some very successful record producers who just are not great musicians. But I think that it is an enormous help to be a musician and to know what the guys in the studio have to do, to have some experience in knowing what they go through. It is definitely an asset to know the terrors and the difficulties that a musician goes through so you can understand how to handle them. I think there are so many facets to being a record producer that are important. It is like teaching in a way. I started out as a musician, and I got involved in the recording business by chance.”
“I really wanted to write music for films. Orchestrating music was very important to me. In regard to the studio business, I did realize that I had the ability to get the best out of people and making them better if I hadn’t known them.
I think that a producer has to look inside the person and say “what is there that I need to get out of them and how to get them to release it?” You got to get inside the person.”
“Each artist is very different. There is a lot of psychology in it. I learned that diplomacy and tact were important when I really didn’t have those attributes and made a few mistakes. Then the ability to shape music and know what will appeal so you can take a bit of raw material and shape it knowing that it is good the way it already is, however, it could be better if we did something with it.”
But then is it a producer’s main job to continually ask the questions “What if?” during the process? Is asking questions an essential part of production?
“Yes, of course,” he admits. ” You see, that is one of the problems today. Technology has been getting more sophisticated and cleverer and more complicated with each day that goes by instead of years, and it is quite mind-boggling what you can do with it. It’s a far cry from where I started when you had to do everything by the seat of your pants and some rubber bands, mast tape and ceiling wax. Now everything is right in front of you and available for a price and because of that, it is really easy, given the tools, to produce first class sounds, and you can create a song that doesn’t sound wonderful, in a back room. This stifles creativity because you don’t have to work for it, it’s already there! When you’re hungry and you have to work hard for something, you can be more creative than when something is handed to you on a plate. Technology has helped music and creation, but we shouldn’t abuse technology.”
But as someone who has spent a lifetime within the trenches of the music industry, one wonders what qualities are needed in order to fully develop talent, or to develop the creativity of another person, even if they’re not in the creative fields.
“The record industry is very different today. The people who actually run the record companies today don’t make records. They are marketers. They take the product off the street while the producers are finding the talent. It’s rather like comparing it to Hollywood when you had great studios and talent and now you have nothing more than finance companies organizing and buying independent films and projects. I guess I was lucky in a way because timing is everything and I came into the business at a very important time when the recording changes were coming out of mechanical into the electrical into electronic and Stereo was coming in and people were getting sophisticated in their thinking, but it wasn’t too sophisticated. When people say to me “I can’t believe that you made that record on a four track” I say that it was an advantage because having the constraints that you had, you had to work through it, you had to work harder, you had to think more to get the effects you wanted. I feel that having the constraints really helped me in many ways.”
Other than the constraints that faced him, it was essential for him to have a full music background. And sometimes it takes a little creative ‘borrowing’ of ideas from another source in order to fully realize the shape of something new to come.
For example, the string arrangements of “Eleanor Rigby.”
“The production and the scoring are two separate things. But my role model for that was Bernard Hermann who did the scores for Alfred Hitchcock. He was a great film score. I got the idea for the jagged strings from, I think, Fahrenheit 451. And it was very, very effective. Also, the harmonies that Paul gave me gave me a bit of Benjamin Britten.”
What can a person in any field of work or industry learn from the creative alchemy of George Martin?
“I think that learning how to make change in anything is important, whether you make cars or records. You will find that a person will be doing a better job when they learn their craft before they attempt to work at it, and don’t bullshit people. Don’t pretend you know something prior to doing it. Have confidence. You have to have confidence or people will walk all over you.