RIP George Martin

[Philip Perkins]

Really RIP…..

[Marc Wielage]

Very sad to see this a few hours ago. Martin was (by all accounts) a good guy, truly a gentleman and an immensely influential producer and engineer over the years. He was the first major engineer I know of who started a large independent recording studio and was able to produce artists and get royalties based on album sales (something EMI denied him when he produced the Beatles for the first 5-6 years). Martin's books on his adventures as an engineer and producer in England were remarkable. 

[glenn]

I listen to his work almost every day. When I do it makes me want to do a better job. His work is just perfection nothing less.

Glenn

[Ze Frias]

Sad to hear of his passing. The world has benefitted greatly from his contribution. RIP.

[old school]

First "Producer" I ever heard of. Best in many regards I've ever heard. The big band in the sky just got an upgrade. RIP Sir George.

CrewC

[mikewest]

Yes a remarkable man who cut his teeth on light entertainment music and the comedy recordings of Peter Sellars,

these were issued on the Parlophone label owned by EMI.

 

mikw

[soundmanjohn]

Sad to hear of his passing: he's been a part of my musical life since I was very young and in his memory I'd like to recommend you listen to his recording of this beautiful melody that so inspired the producers of the film 'Ghost'. In my view, it's by far the greatest version.

 

 

I think you'll agree that it paved the way for his future with The Beatles - it's the chains that did it for them.

 

Regards,

John

 

[Jim Feeley]

Nice John! The best of the online remembrances I've seen so far is this one. Ten minute (or less) read. Minor quibbles aside, it seems (from my great distance but long-time admiration) to capture something essential about Martin and his work.

TRIBUTES

March 9, 20163:41 p.m.

Remembering George Martin, Architect of the Beatles

By Bill Wyman

One of the truisms of the recording industry is that the powers that be will always resist technological change. When George Martin, then in his 20s, joined, in 1950, the British giant EMI, the biggest and grandest record label in the world, he was a classical music aficionado and one of no little talent. Back then, records were vinyl platters that played at 78 revolutions per minute and lasted a maximum of four minutes and 15 seconds. A typical piece of classical music, then the central product of the industry, was divided up into musical chunks of that size, and technicians like Martin would split up, say, the movement of a symphony, sometimes crudely duplicating chords after the switch-over to give listeners a reminder of where the melody had left off.

Not long after, a new technology emerged: the LP record, which could last 20 or 30 minutes, allowing classical music fans, for example, to hear a full movement, or even two, of a symphony. EMI was adamantly opposed to it, consumers be damned, and over the first half of the 1950s it lost its dominance of the U.K. recording market.

This was a lesson not lost on Martin, and was a major part of what became a charmed life for him, one that he graciously acknowledged was driven at key points by the machinations of a fairy godfather completely unrelated to his natural talents.

Martin came of age precisely when a medium perfectly suited to his sensibilities came to the fore: electronic recording. He was old enough to slipstream into one minor cultural revolution (British comedy in the 1950s) and yet just barely still young enough to hitch a ride when that major one — electronic recording, arguably the definitive one of the century — emerged. He fell into those things through a patchwork of coincidence, luck, mettle, and (that word again) talent. He could discourse on Ravel (his favorite artist), Bach, electronic microphones, tape setups, pop music, and record-industry machinations even as his patrician mien eventually made him the friend of stars and royals.

 

Rest of the piece (along with another example of his Goon Show work) here:

http://www.vulture.com/2016/03/remembering-george-martin-shaper-of-the-beatles.html