Referred to as “the fifth Beatle,” producer George Martin famously steered the Fab Four’s recording career from their Beatlemania days through their psychedelic phase. Martin revolutionized pop music in the process. Much has been written about his ties to The Beatles. Let’s take a look at five fascinating facts about George Martin that don’t have to do with The Beatles.
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1. Martin Took Oboe Lessons From the Mother of Peter and Jane Asher
As a child, Martin learned to play the piano, dreaming of being the next Sergei Rachmaninoff. When German warplanes blitzed England, Martin was inspired to enlist in the Naval Fleet Air Arm. He was an aerial observer whose primary duty was reconnaissance. Upon his demobbing, he Studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama Conservatory in London. He studied piano and oboe.
His Oboe instructor was Margaret Eliot, mother of Peter and Jane Asher. In 1950, Martin was hired by EMI Records at 3 Abbey Road, St. John’s Wood. Parlophone was the smallest arm of EMI with artists such as Roberto Inglez, Mandy Miller, Bob Harvey, Sidney Torch and His Orchestra, The Five Smith Brothers, Jimmy Shand, Humphrey Lyttleton, Karl Haas, and Ray Cathode—hardly household names. Martin learned as he worked on sessions recording novelty records, South American Music, Music Hall Performers, Orchestras, and comedy skits. He was put in charge of classical and baroque music, as he served as the assistant to the head of the label, Oscar Preuss.
2. He Was Put in Charge of Parlophone Records in 1955
When Preuss retired, Martin was promoted to the head of the label. At 29, he was one of the youngest label heads and had to fight to keep his job as plans emerged to move all of the acts to the more profitable HMV or Columbia labels, where Martin would take on a junior A&R role.
Despite not having a successful mainstream artist, Martin turned the label into a profitable division recording comedy and novelty records. He signed Dick James, later publisher for The Beatles and Elton John, who had a hit with “The Adventures of Robin Hood.” Martin signed skiffle band The Vipers and had other success with “My Boomerang Won’t Come Back” by Charlie Drake, “You’re Driving Me Crazy” by the Temperance Seven, and “Right Said Fred” by Bernard Cribbins.
[RELATED: Just How Important Was George Martin to The Beatles?]
3. Through Working on Comedy Records, Martin Was Preparing for the Pop Music Revolution to Come
Martin started working with comedians Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers, who first gained fame on BBC Radio on The Goon Show, as well as actresses Irene Handl and Sophia Loren. Albums such as The Best of Sellers and Milligan Preserved would influence a wave of young comedians who would grow up to be in Beyond the Fringe, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and The Young Ones. Those comedy records also reached the ears of a young John Lennon. During those comedy sessions, Martin was constantly experimenting with studio tricks and speeding up tape.
He told Monty Python alum Michael Palin in 2011, “Those recordings with Peter, Spike, and Irene Handl helped me in two ways with The Beatles. First of all, I didn’t know them from Adam. But they knew me. Because they Were Goons fans, they knew all of the stuff I made, the Peter Sellers stuff. That was the first help. Once the boys decided they would not perform anymore, they wanted just to work in the studio, building up Sgt. Pepper became a bit like working on a Peter Sellers record. Because you were building a picture in sound.”
4. He Started to Lose His Hearing in the 1970s
After a hugely successful run producing The Beatles, Billy J Kramer & The Dakotas, Gerry and the Pacemakers, and Cilla Black, Martin continued producing other acts such as John McLaughlin and the Mahavishnu Orchestra, America, Jimmy Webb, and Jeff Beck.
Martin remembered in 2010, “I first became aware of something wrong in the ’70s. I was approaching my 50s. I was in my control room at my studio in London, and one of the engineers came in and said, ‘Do you mind if I just check these tape machines?’ I said, ‘Do that.’
“They would put in different tones of different frequencies and adjust them so the machines were really accurate. I heard all the tones going through and took no notice, and then I looked up and saw that all the needles are going. I said, ‘Bill, what’s that frequency you’re putting through?’ He said, ’12 kilohertz.’ And I said, ‘Oh, shit.'”
5. He Recorded an Airplane
In 1977, while producing El Mirage by Jimmy Webb, Martin recorded the singer’s Caproni A21 Sailplane.
Webb said in 2011, “I remember saying to George one day, I said, ‘That line, I said that’s crazy, If you see me getting smaller, I’m leaving. It keeps reminding me of a sailplane. Would you think it would be crazy if we recorded my sailplane?’ And he said, ‘Well, no, that wouldn’t be crazy at all. I can see how we could do that. We could take a mobile truck out to the landing field, and we’ll place microphones every 50 yards, every 100 yards, no, every 65 yards. We’ll use stereo microphones.”
Webb continued, “I went up to 10,000 feet. I put the nose down on the glider, and I flew it right straight at the ground. About 50 feet from impact, I pulled it out of the dive and leveled off at about 20 feet, and I went through this trap of stereo microphones at about 200 miles an hour.
Martin started a new company called Associated Independent Recording (AIR) Studios and opened a studio in Montserrat in 1979. The Police, Elton, John Dire Straits, Duran Duran, Stevie Wonder, and Paul McCartney all recorded there. Martin died in 2016.
Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
