Martin Birch
Martin Birch (27 December 19489 August 2020) was a British music producer and sound engineer. He became renowned for engineering and producing albums recorded predominantly by British rock bands, including Deep Purple, Rainbow, Fleetwood Mac, Whitesnake, Black Sabbath, and Iron Maiden. Biography Birch was born on 27 December 1948 in Woking, Surrey. He began his career in music as an audio engineer with Jeff Beck, Fleetwood Mac and Deep Purple, producing and engineering eleven albums for the latter. In 1980, coming from the "Deep Purple camp", he was called upon by Black Sabbath for Heaven and Hell. The band's previous albums had been self-produced and they were happy to let Birch, who had worked with Ronnie James Dio before, produce them. His "bright midrange" on the album is especially noted. He began a long tenure working exclusively with Iron Maiden in 1981, producing and engineering Killers and retiring from working with other bands for a while. Birch also produced and engineered albums for numerous artists. These included Deep Purple-related projects (Rainbow, Paice Ashton Lord, Whitesnake, Roger Glover, and Jon Lord), but also encompassed Wayne County & the Electric Chairs. On Fleetwood Mac's album Mystery to Me (1973) he is also