The man nicknamed "the fifth Beatle" died in England Tuesday at the age of 90.
Like politics, history itself creates strange bedfellows. Working separately on different continents, both Sir George Martin and Phil Spector reconceived the function of the record producer, making him (or her) a central figure in the pop creative process. But one could not imagine a more stark contrast in temperaments between paranoid, abusive gun nut Spector (now serving a prison sentence for second degree murder) and the courtly, legendary Beatles producer Martin, who died Tuesday evening at his home in England at the age of 90.
Indeed, when one considers all the eccentric if not aberrant figures of rock lore, both in front of the mic and hovering backstage, Martin can be seen as the not-odd-man-out in a gallery of rock legends. Over a productive career that spanned more than a half a century, no scandal ever attached itself to Martin, unless you're terribly outraged that he cooperated in allowing Beatles music to accompany a Cirque du Soleil show. Nevertheless, in his quiet, gentlemanly way, Martin, along with Spector before he went fully off the rails, forever redefined the role of the record producer. And his love of melody and devotion to the classical verities notwithstanding, Martin, largely by dint of being enthusiastically open-minded, was more of a groundbreaking musical radical than Spector ever hoped to be.
The stories of Martin's early doubts, alternating with enthusiasm for his first rock 'n' roll charges, the foursome from Liverpool called the Beatles, are the stuff of rock 'n' roll legend. Martin was a house producer at Parlophone, an offshoot of EMI, with voluminous classical, pop, and comedy experience and a wary interest, by the end of the 50s, in the emerging rock 'n' roll genre. At first the Beatles looked to him like a slightly more promising carbon copy of the scads of "beat" groups capitalizing on what everyone considered a fad. The anecdotes that create thumbnail sketches of Martin and the Beatles' early rapport are equally beloved by rock nerds. Preparing them for an early session circa 1962, Martin encouraged the lads to let him know if there was anything they didn't like, and guitarist George Harrison quipped, "Well for a start I don't like your tie." The laughter at the first "Love Me Do" session was apparently infectious, and the sheer fun of working with the Beatles was part of what fully sold Martin on the group.
At any rate, the ever-formal Martin—it had been only recently at England's EMI/Parlophone that the recording engineers had stopped wearing white lab coats in the control rooms—kept his ties and cracked a whip. (Martin had a brief flirtation with Nehru jackets during the psychedelic era, but really barely let his hair grow out despite the changing fashions). It was he who insisted that drummer Pete Best simply wasn't ready for the studio, and his charges obediently let him go and recruited the more seasoned Ringo Starr (then and now the oldest Beatle). John Lennon and Paul McCartney had conceived "Please Please Me" as a Roy Orbison torch song (slow it down in your head and give it a drum-roll march beat and indeed you can extrapolate some resemblance to Orbison's "Running Scared") but Martin insisted that they snap up the tempo. Once the band had completed it his way, he confidently told them "Congratulations gentlemen. You've just made your first Number One [single]." And he was right.
What made all the difference—and what resulted in records that either proved rock wasn't a fad or ensured that it would not be—was that Martin was an essentially good and sympathetic man who not only liked the Beatles but recognized their talent and potential. They learned from him—on his website today, Paul McCartney fondly recalled how Martin convinced him that a string quartet backing was the way to go for "Yesterday"—and he learned from them. While he was able to whip off a credibly baroque-era harpsichord solo for "In My Life" like it wasn't no thang, Martin didn't shrug off McCartney when he came into the studio raving about modernist composer Stockhausen, or when Harrison studied with Ravi Shankar or started experimenting with analog synthesizers. Nine out of 10 other older musos in Martin's orbit would surely have dismissed tape collages (an early form of sampling, if you think about it) as just so much unmusical nonsense. Martin, trying to please John Lennon's request for a sonic kaleidoscope on "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite," got the razor and the tape and went to work. He and the Beatles introduced more avant-garde techniques and sounds into popular music than any pioneers before or since.
Of course, as in any mentor/acolyte relationship, there were strains, and these natural growing pains exacerbated as the Beatles themselves began to abrade each other. Recording a chorus of saxes for his song "Savoy Truffle," George Harrison had them peaking a little on the into-the-red side, and Martin warned him that this would result in distortion. Harrison reportedly shot back that he knew, and that it was what he wanted. When the band was being torn apart by clashing personalities and business hassles, it attempted to return to its unsupervised roots by recording without Martin; the resultant "Get Back" was such a hash that the group resolved to make peace with one another and Martin, and end its recording career with a bang. That was Abbey Road.
As incoming tributes will no doubt make even clearer, all musicians who benefited from his kindness, acumen, and judgment—it was not for nothing that he titled his 1979 autobiography All You Need Is Ears—treasured their George Martin sessions.