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The Beatles · S4 E4
George Martin
A classically trained producer at Parlophone who makes comedy records for Peter Sellers. He hears the Beatles' tape, meets the band, and knows. He says yes
June 6, 1962. Four musicians from Liverpool walk into EMI Studios on Abbey Road for the first time, and the man behind the glass is a producer who has never made a rock and roll record in his life.
The Beatles, Eleanor Rigby (1966). A string octet, no guitars, no drums, and a producer who scored every note of the arrangement by hand. George Martin's classical training turned a Paul McCartney melody into something that had never existed in pop music before.
Eleanor Rigby, The Beatles (1966)
Paul arrived at the session with the melody and a set of lonely characters waiting for their names. George Martin scored the string arrangement himself: a double string quartet playing with a hard, staccato attack inspired by Bernard Herrmann's Psycho score. None of the Beatles play a single instrument on the recording. Martin later called it the closest he ever came to writing a classical composition inside a pop song.
Sources
Martin, George. "All You Need Is Ears." St. Martin's Press, 1979.
Lewisohn, Mark. "The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions." Hamlyn, 1988/2018.
George Martin: The Essentials
The Audition Nobody Expected
On June 6, 1962, the Beatles set up in Studio Two at Abbey Road and played for George Martin. He listened politely, asked technical questions, and privately thought their original songs were weak. But when he invited them up to the control room and asked if there was anything they didn't like, something shifted: the Beatles stopped performing and started being themselves.
Sources
Martin, George. "All You Need Is Ears." St. Martin's Press, 1979.
Lewisohn, Mark. "Tune In." Crown Archetype, 2013.
TAP TO REVEAL: What did George Harrison say when Martin asked if there was anything they didn't like?
In My Life, The Beatles (1965)
The piano solo in 'In My Life' sounds like a harpsichord, but it's actually George Martin playing a grand piano at half speed. When the tape was played back at normal tempo, the notes rang out faster and higher, creating an Elizabethan quality no keyboard could produce naturally. This is George Martin in a single moment: classical instinct, studio trickery, and a total disregard for what pop music was supposed to sound like.
In My Life, The Beatles (1965)
Read the lyrics while you listen. John wrote this as a bus tour of his Liverpool childhood, naming streets and places before Paul helped him strip it down to pure emotion. The result is one of the most personal songs in pop music, produced by a man who understood exactly how to frame it.
What type of records was George Martin best known for producing before the Beatles?
George Martin has said yes, but there's one condition the band doesn't see coming. In August 1962, Pete Best picks up the phone and hears the worst news of his life.
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