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George Martin
From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist
George Martin was born in 1926 in north London. When he was six a piano came into the house, and he taught himself to play. As a teenager he played in a small dance band. After his service in the navy he studied piano and oboe at the Guildhall School of Music. In 1950 he joined the record company EMI, and in 1955 he became head of the small label Parlophone. There he produced classical music, jazz and above all comedy records, including with Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan.
Music and breakthrough
In 1962 he had The Beatles audition, after they had been turned down by Decca. It was the start of a collaboration that lasted until the end of the group. Martin had a classical training, whereas the Beatles had little musical schooling. He wrote most of the orchestral and string arrangements and played piano or keyboards on many tracks. On Eleanor Rigby the Beatles only sing, and the accompaniment is a string arrangement by Martin. Together with the engineers at Abbey Road Studios they were always searching for new sounds, as on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967). That is why he was called the fifth Beatle.
Influence
In 1965 Martin started his own production company. After The Beatles he worked with, among others, Paul McCartney, America, Kate Bush and Jeff Beck, and wrote music for the Bond film Live and Let Die. In 1997 he produced Elton John's Candle in the Wind. He produced thirty number 1 hits in Britain and was knighted in 1996. Martin showed how important a producer can be to the sound of a band. He died in 2016.
Listening
Discography
Studio albums
- 1966George Martin Instrumentally Salutes The Beatle Girls
In School of Rock
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- Mixtape 3: The BeatlesNL Reader
Mentioned in other articles
- The studio as instrument Technology
With the producer George Martin and EMI engineers, they used tape loops, tape played backwards, varied tape speed and ADT, a trick with which a second tape recorder automatically doubles a voice.