George Martin
He may have started his career producing comedy records, but he had the last laugh on the music industry with his innovative recording techniques.
Despite his working-class upbringing–or maybe because of it–the youngest child of Bertha and Harry Martin needed to use his imagination when considering a life beyond North London where he began his life in a tiny apartment with no electricity and no running water over a semi-detached house. Although he was considered a musical prodigy at a young age, his parents couldn’t afford music lessons for both his sister Irene and George. So, he tried to teach himself on the piano that Irene practiced on. Quickly, his parents discovered that he was the natural musician with the gift of perfect pitch.
When the Great Depression hit, his carpenter father went without work for two years, forcing his mother to work as a seamstress and a maid. The family struggled to make ends meet, his mother breaking down in tears once when young George asked for her money for ice cream and she didn’t have it. When George was five years old, he contracted scarlet fever and his mother insisted that he recuperate at home rather than send him to a hospital. As a nurse in the First World War, she had experienced the horrors of the public health care system and didn’t want to subject her boy to it.
Throughout all their economic hardships, George’s parents tried to give him and his sister the best of everything that they could afford. Even though the family struggled, the two children were always properly fed and clothed. Both children admitted to having a “normal childhood” despite living in poverty.
As the family’s fortunes improved in 1931, when his father got a job as a craftsman carpenter making custom furniture, the family moved to an apartment above a working dairy, which included electricity for the first time in his life. The new apartment also included a piano purchased from his mother’s uncle. The piano offered an escape for young George. He would spend hours on it, picking out tunes he heard on the radio, playing completely by ear. At the age of 8, he started writing simple melodies, including compositions called “The Spider’s Dance,” “Opus 1” and “Opus 2.” He spent all his spare time playing the piano, thoroughly enjoying the sounds he could make with his own two hands and his imagination. It all came naturally to him.
At age 11, his world changed almost overnight when George earned a scholarship to attend St. Ignatius College, a Jesuit school where the headmasters were humorless priests. Along with strict discipline, the school offered young George the opportunity to sing in a choir, as well as attend concerts with the BBC Symphony Orchestra hosted by the school. Surrounded by music, George started discovering the inner workings of music composition and started writing down his melodies on sheet music.
With a group of friends, he organized a band–the Four Tune Tellers–to play accompaniment for drama productions at the school. On weekends, the band featuring George on piano, his sister providing vocals, and friends playing guitar, double-bass, and drums. The band developed an impressive fan base, performing regular gigs at pubs, clubs, and socials in London, sometimes two shows a week. With the money he made from performances, George finally started taking music lessons. George absolutely loved performing live shows even as the interests of his friends started to wane.
After his high school graduation, his parents encouraged him to apply for a job in the civil service for the job security, but with the Second World War literally at their doorstep, he had other ideas. He always dreamed of flying airplanes, but when the time came, he couldn’t afford the apprenticeship fee at the deHavilland Aircraft Company. Instead, he settled for a job as a filing clerk in the War Office. By the time he turned 18, he felt that he would soon be drafted into the war, so he decided to enlist in the Navy to train as a pilot. George shipped out to the HMS St. Vincent, a training station at Gosport on the southern coast of England.
His flight training started in Trinidad, taking over nine months to complete. Throughout the training, he found flying an airplane to be an exhilarating feeling, even more thrilling than making music. While earning his wings, George continued to entertain his mates by tickling the ivories in the navy canteen.
It was following a two-week trip from Trinidad to New York, travelling along with British officers who spoke proper English and displayed the rules of etiquette, that George became self-conscious of his North London cockney accent. For the first time in his life, he felt his working-class accent made him appear awkward and unrefined. He immediately set about changing his voice to sound more like the BBC announcers he heard on the radio. The whole process took him years, but he was determined to change his image permanently.
Around the same time, he caught the eye of Jean Chisholm, also known as “Sheena,” the leading soprano in the church choir. Along with a shared love of music, Sheena discovered that despite being able to play anything by ear, George couldn’t read music. George also discovered that, despite her being a classically-trained musician, Sheena hated performing. The two were a perfect fit.
After being honourably discharged from the service, George and Sheena got married on 3 January 1948. The young couple moved to a London apartment so that he could study music composition and orchestration at Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He had hoped to become a music teacher, but when he finished his three-year program, he couldn’t find work. In desperation, he wrote letters to music companies, hoping to find any opportunity in the music industry.
He eventually received a reply from Oscar Preuss, the head of Parlophone Records, who offered him a job as his personal assistant. Although he struggled at first with the business of music, he eventually became a confident producer, working with symphony orchestras and classical musicians. He also started working with comedians, such as Peter Ustinov and Peter Sellers, producing their comedy records. He discovered he had a knack for writing short orchestrations to accompany the comedy skits and loved the challenge of working with magnetic tape–a brand new innovation at the time. With comedy recordings, he had the freedom to experiment with the taping process, using multiple tracks and overdubs to achieve a new sound.
Within five years, Preuss retired and George took over as head of Parlophone Records, becoming the youngest executive at EMI Music. He was riding high in his professional and personal life. He and Sheena had a daughter, Alexis, and a son, Gregory, and the family moved to a semi-detached home in Hatfield, a thriving London suburb. He seemed to have it all.
However, as the head of Parlophone, he was constantly on the lookout for the “next big thing,” which in the late 1950’s was rock’n’roll groups. One day, a young man by the name of Brian Epstein visited him and played for him a tape of a group from Liverpool. George didn’t find anything special on the tape, but agreed to bring the boys in for an audition at the Parlophone Abbey Road Studios.
After listening to the four songs they recorded for him on 6 June 1962, George was still not impressed. At the end of the long day, he spent more than 20 minutes picking apart everything he hated about their music, from Pete Best’s erratic drumming to John Lennon’s strained vocals. He finally asked if they had anything that they didn’t like. After a beat, George Harrison said: “I hate your tie.” The room erupted in laughter and the musicians started sharing anecdotes about the music business. George Martin decided to offer them a contract based on their personalities, rather than their music. He believed that he could help improve their music in the studio and that their natural charm would win over audiences.
As the producer of The Beatles (and other British performers), George Martin produced 30 number-one hit singles in the United Kingdom and 23 number-one hits in the United States, and won six Grammy Awards.