The term wall of sound had first been used by American journalists at the turn of the century to describe the sonic totalitarianism of Wagner—Spector’s greatest musical influence as a boy. Spector packed the studio full of musicians—as many as five guitarists, two bass players, two drummers, three pianists, and various strings. He was obsessed with percussive feel, often squeezing up to ten percussionists into the crowded room to play shakers, chimes, castanets, bells, tambourines, maracas, any kind of high-frequency sparkle. Before rolling any tape, he would usually spend hours moving between the control room and studio suggesting subtle changes. As the musicians got tired and began trundling along in unison like migrating caribou, Gold Star’s echo chambers created a sonic picture as wide-screen as classical music.
In awe of Spector’s massive-sounding hits with the Ronettes, Motown retaliated in the summer of 1963 with Martha & the Vandellas, whose lead singer, Martha Reeves, was a Motown secretary. By January 1964, the Supremes finally got their first pop chart appearance.
Culturally, it’s hard to say for sure when the sixties really began. Television imagery, flashing between JFK’s assassination, Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream,” and the Ronettes singing “Be My Baby,” always suggests that somewhere around that pop-crossover year of 1963, a sea change was under way. As Bob Dylan saw it, “the early sixties, up to maybe ’64–’65, was really the fifties, the late fifties. They were still the fifties—still the same culture.”
What’s for sure, this wasn’t really about Vietnam or miniskirts. America had seen it all before—Korea, flappers, you name it. What was different in the sixties was the underlying baby boom. Never before did pop music fit so neatly into age strata. Viewed from a demographic angle, it’s easy to see why early-sixties pop was so juvenile and why it matured so rapidly throughout the decade. That sacred cow of the postwar memory, the sixties, was in fact the diary of a lucky generation—growing up and taking over.
12. THE INVASION
After two world wars that never reached its shores, America woke up on February 7, 1964, to the sound of screaming. Just four months after JFK’s assassination, the door of Pan Am flight 101 opened—then Beatlemania swept across the land like the outburst of a deadly virus.
Wearing helmets made of hair, the four invaders were quickly reinforced by the Dave Clark Five, Manfred Mann, Herman’s Hermits, the Animals, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, Them, and the Who. In several successive waves, British bands came, conquered, and changed American tastes forever.
Phil Spector, ever the client prospector, accompanied the Beatles on their historical flight across the Atlantic. Who knows what he was hoping for? The beat boom abruptly ended his brief reign over the teen kingdom; the Beatles made doo-wop as cold as an old toy on Christmas morning. From here on in, only Motown would be strong enough to hold back these lovable pranksters from Liverpool, who at one point in April 1964 held all of the Top 5 positions on America’s Billboard Hot 100.
Although a surprise attack for American record companies, the British Invasion woke up the market from a period of relative cooling. Industry sales figures had risen sharply from $213 million in 1954 to $603 in 1959, thanks to the combined success of LPs and rock ’n’ roll. That spurt had leveled off to below $700 million in 1963, suggesting that early sixties teen-pop hadn’t been able to maintain the same public excitement as Elvis. Now, as tens of millions of American teenagers entered their most turbulent years, Beatlemania spun the record business faster than ever before.
To this day, the Beatles remain holders of arguably the greatest achievement in pop music: twenty-seven No. 1 singles in America. Behind this extraordinary phenomenon was an unusual kind of record man, more than a studio producer—George Martin. Having joined Parlophone in 1950 and signed the Beatles in 1962, he’s the key eyewitness of the British record industry’s mutation from insular classical to global pop. Needless to say, most of George Martin’s studio exploits have become museum exhibits, especially in Britain, where he is a national hero. For some reason, though, even the British have largely ignored his personal story—a humbling tale of self-becoming that makes the Beatles legend all the more providential.
Despite his gentlemanly mannerisms, George Martin was born, in 1926, on the wrong side of Britain’s class divide. A family of four, the Martins lived in a two-room apartment in Drayton Park—no electricity, no bathroom, no kitchen, no water. His mother cooked on a stove on the landing and gave him baths in a tin tub. One toilet on the ground floor was shared by all three families in the building. Martin senior was a carpenter, a simple craftsman, who in the Great Depression was without any income for eighteen long months until he found a job selling newspapers in Cheapside. In later years, George Martin vividly recalled the sight of his forlorn father standing in the rain at his newsstand. The Martin family, to put it bluntly, barely fit the description of working class.
As a boy, however, George Martin understood he had a special gift. Although there were no musicians in his family and no instruments at home, he began playing on any piano he could find, teaching himself scales, chord progressions, and diminished chords and their inversions. Born with perfect pitch, he could recognize notes and figure out Chopin pieces by ear.
His first quasi-religious awakening occurred at a school concert at which the BBC Symphony Orchestra performed Debussy’s L’après-midi d’un faune. Its abstract textures lifted George Martin’s young imagination into the heavens. For the rest of his life, the French piece brought him back to that old school hall where he was first kissed on the head by the gods of music.
Chasing his muse through his teenaged years, he formed his own dance band, the Four Tune Tellers, and reinvested his earnings into classical piano lessons. However, with the outbreak of war and his school’s move to the North of England, he was forced to work as an errand boy in the War Office. At the age of seventeen, in summer 1943, he broke his mother’s heart by joining the naval air force. While training in the South of England, he had his first of several lucky encounters. At the end of a concert in Portsmouth given by a pianist called Eric Harrison, he waited for the crowd to disperse and, when nobody was left in the hall, began playing on the piano. Eventually he felt a presence in the room.
“What was that you were playing?” asked the musician.
“One of the things I’ve been writing myself,” replied Martin with embarrassment.
“Oh, you compose, do you?”
“Well, I try to, though I haven’t had much training.”
“I think you should do something about it,” the musician suggested while writing down the name of a contact at a state-funded music organization called the Committee for the Promotion of New Music.
Throughout these formative years moving from base to base, Martin was teaching himself how to read and write music. Sailing across the Atlantic on a Dutch liner with three thousand German prisoners locked in the hold, he briefly saw the skyscrapers of Manhattan before being dispatched to Trinidad. In the suffocating heat, while being taught how to operate amphibious aircraft, he began writing a Debussy-like symphony. As part of his pilot training, he was taught social etiquette at banquets in the beautiful Painted Hall in Greenwich. During the two-week course, one eccentric officer constantly reminded the trainees that a true gentleman imposes strict hygiene and regularity on his bowel movements. Undisciplined eating habits were the slippery slope to slobbery.
Back in England as the Allies closed in on Berlin, Martin received a three-page letter analyzing the composition he had mailed to the mysterious address. “You must write more of this,” concluded its author, Sidney Harrison, professor of piano at the Guildhall School of Music in London. “Keep sending it to me, and we’ll correspond.” George Martin had found the man he later called his “fairy godfather.”
The musical correspondence continued. “You really must try to take up music seriously,” Harrison repeated.
“But look, I’m twenty-one, can I really take up music now?” wrote Martin
.
“Of course you can,” assured Harrison. “You can go and study for three years at a music college. I’ll tell you what to do. You come along to the Guildhall, and play your compositions to the principal, and if he likes them as much as I do, you’re in.”
Martin was unsure, but as the war ended, he woke up to a frightening realization: He had no qualifications, no employable skills. So in February 1947, he cycled to the Guildhall and played piano for its principal, Eric Cundell.
“Very well. Come and start next year,” said Cundell.
“How on earth do I pay for it?” asked Martin, blushing with embarrassment.
“As a man serving in the navy, you’re entitled to further education. We’ll apply for a grant.”
Martin plunged into the otherworldliness of classical music as his mother died of a brain hemorrhage and his wife, Sheena, began suffering from agoraphobia. Surviving on a grant of £160 per year, he learned the crafts of orchestration, musical theory, harmony, counterpoint, and conducting. After three years, he got a job at the BBC Music Library archiving sheet music. There, in 1950, he received another mysterious letter.
Invited to meet a certain Oscar Preuss, Martin parked his bike on Abbey Road and entered the impressive mansion. In a large office with a coal fireplace and a grand piano, the old man explained that through a mutual friend, Sidney Harrison had made the recommendation. For the modest sum of £7 4s per week, George Martin, aged twenty-four, was hired as a recording assistant for Parlophone, an EMI sublabel.
Although EMI Records had fallen into a dark age under the poor management of its chairman, an Australian cycling fanatic named Sir Ernest Fisk, Oscar Preuss turned out to be an inspirational mentor who, conscious of nearing retirement age, acquainted Martin with record industry history and the mean-spirited machinations of EMI’s bureaucracy. Things began to change, however, when a new EMI chairman, Sir Joseph Lockwood, was appointed in 1955. Astute, adventurous, and gay, Lockwood thought little of his predecessor’s conservatism. Identifying America as the heartbeat of the musical world, Lockwood made his first big move and acquired Capitol for $9 million. It was in this spirit of rejuvenation that Preuss and Lockwood handed Parlophone over to George Martin, who chose as his niche “the label for humorous people.” Setting up mobile equipment in theaters, Martin recorded sketches and novelty songs from a new generation of daring comedians, including Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Spike Milligan, and Peter Sellers.
Rock ’n’ roll landed on EMI’s plate thanks to a licensing deal with RCA. Clocking up fifteen Elvis smash hits, EMI’s 7-inch sales rocketed from 1 million to 7 million during 1957. George Martin looked on jealously as his colleagues at Columbia sold 5.5 million Cliff Richard records between 1958 and 1960. He was desperate for his own pop star. In a moment of ill-judged honesty, he admitted to Lockwood that he had stupidly turned down Elvis clone Tommy Steele, who went on to sell millions of records for Decca. Haunted by the blanched disappointment on Lockwood’s face, Martin remained desperate—until in April 1962 he got a fateful telephone call.
“George, I don’t know if you’d be interested,” said Syd Coleman, a veteran publisher, “but there’s a chap who’s come in with a tape of a group he runs. They haven’t got a recording contract, and I wonder if you’d like to see him and listen to what he’s got?”
“Certainly,” Martin replied. “I’m willing to listen to anything. Ask him to come and see me.”
“Okay, I will. His name is Brian Epstein.”
The Beatles had been turned down flatly by Pye, Phillips, and Columbia; Decca had given them two auditions before passing. A disillusioned Epstein had dropped in to the HMV store on Oxford Street to get his tape copied onto an acetate. Listening to Epstein’s sob stories, the technician suggested he walk upstairs to see Syd Coleman, who in turn suggested, “Why don’t you go round and see George Martin at Parlophone? He deals in unusual things. He’s had a big success with the most unlikely recording acts. I’ll give him a ring and make an appointment, if you like.”
At Martin’s new office on Manchester Square, Epstein launched into his pitch and even feigned surprise when Martin admitted he’d never heard of the Beatles. Seeing straight through Epstein’s routine, Martin had to stop himself from asking, “Excuse me, where is Liverpool?” When Epstein played the acetate, though, Martin warmed to the harmonized vocals—which, despite the weak songs, were promising enough to justify a test recording.
Because the Beatles were performing in Hamburg at the time, it wasn’t until June 1962 that they turned up at Abbey Road. George Martin instantly liked the musicians. Devout fans of Peter Sellers, they laid on the humor, knowing George Martin was a close friend and collaborator. As they performed, Martin’s sensitive ears were disturbed by the drummer, Pete Best; despite being the most handsome, he couldn’t nail the beat. Taking Epstein aside, Martin warned, “I don’t know what you’re going to do with the group, but this drumming isn’t good enough for what I want. If we do make a record, I’d much prefer to have my own drummer.” Martin’s grave judgment validated what the other three Beatles already wanted, to replace Pete Best with the hilarious Ringo Starr.
A contract was drawn up—a one-penny royalty, four singles per year, for a five-year term, allowing Parlophone a yearly get-out option. It was by no means a generous deal, but after so many refusals, Parlophone was their last chance in London. Hoping to identify the band’s star, George Martin took the train to Liverpool and descended into the Cavern, a revolting dungeon where sweat dripped from the ceilings onto cramped youngsters who regularly passed out in the heat. As he observed the Beatles in their natural habitat, Martin realized there was no front man—their offbeat gang format was the whole appeal.
Success wasn’t going to come easy. When “Love Me Do” was released in late 1962, EMI’s promotions division ignored it. Thanks mainly to the Epstein family’s record shop, NEMS, heavy sales in Liverpool got the record a chart position at No. 17. Relations between manager and producer got off to a frosty start, however, when even NEMS couldn’t get reorders. “What on earth is happening with EMI?” barked Epstein into the phone. The only way forward, Martin argued, was a brilliant follow-up and the help of an aggressive, well-connected music publisher. Martin suggested an old friend, Dick James, who had just set up his own company and urgently needed a hit.
Dick James convinced Brian Epstein to set up a separate company, Northern Songs, owned 50 percent by James with the other 50 percent divided between the Beatles and Epstein. It was a clairvoyant move; he even added a 10 percent handling fee to run the company from his main company, Dick James Music. Grateful for the introduction, James quietly offered Martin a cut. “It’s very kind of you to think of me like that,” Martin replied. “But on the other hand it isn’t ethical … I think it would be wrong to split my interests.”
For their follow-up, the Beatles speeded up a ballad called “Please Please Me,” with George Martin adding its opening hook and triumphant finale. When the winning take was in the can, Martin pressed the intercom button. “Gentlemen, you’ve just made your first number-one record!” Dick James secured the Beatles an appearance on Britain’s only music-oriented TV show, Thank Your Lucky Stars. EMI staffers, waking up to the record’s potential, ensured it was regularly aired on their flagship station, Radio Luxembourg.
As soon as “Please Please Me” went No. 1, Martin called the band into Abbey Road. “Right, what you’re going to have to do now, today, straight away, is play me a selection of things I’ve chosen from what you do in the Cavern.” By eleven o’clock that night, an entire album was on tape and, as hoped, the LP went straight to No. 1. One title from the album, “Twist and Shout,” seemed popular, so Martin released an additional EP with three other titles. It, too, went to No. 1. From that dream launch, original songs just kept pouring out; “From Me to You” and “She Loves You” sold 750,000 copies in four weeks. “We had opened the vent,” says Martin, “the oil had started gushing up, and the well, which I had original
ly thought might soon dry up, simply kept on producing more and more.” Just four months after their debut LP, they rushed out a second, With the Beatles, containing eight original songs and three Motown covers. It stayed at No. 1 in Britain for twenty-one weeks.
Apart from the Beatles, Epstein managed other Liverpudlian acts—Gerry & the Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer, and Cilla Black—all signed to Parlophone. In 1963, the Epstein/Parlophone roster occupied the No. 1 spot for a total of thirty-seven weeks. Copying the formula, London’s record industry embarked on a gold rush into the North of England. Pye found the Searchers; English Columbia found the Animals; Martin’s new assistant found the Hollies in Manchester. Suddenly anything Northern became chic—singers, comedians, writers. It’s an often-forgotten fact that the British invasion of America in 1964 began as a Northern invasion of London in 1963.
The next problem was America. Although EMI owned Capitol, the Beatles’ first singles had to be licensed to independents, VJ and Swan. According to rumor, even Atlantic’s Jerry Wexler turned down the Beatles as “too derivative.” Capitol’s Dave Dexter replied rudely, “I got ’em in, they’re a bunch of long-haired kids. Forget it. They’re nuthin’.” When “Please Please Me” was No. 1 in England, Capitol president Alan Livingston sent a curt reply to George Martin, “We don’t think the Beatles will do anything in this market.” Capitol rejected two more Beatles singles, “From Me to You” and “She Loves You.” When Beatlemania began bleeping on the radars of the American media, Livingston conceded, “We’ll take one record and see how it goes.” The record was “I Wanna Hold Your Hand”—which went on to sell 15 million copies.
The game changed in January 1964, while the Beatles were in Paris playing two weeks of shows at the Olympia. Early one morning, Martin was awakened by a ringing telephone. It was Brian Epstein, audibly drunk. “I’ve just left the boys celebrating, and they’re as thrilled as I am.” A brief silence for theatrical suspense. “We’re number one in America on next week’s charts. It’s quite definite. I’ve just been on the phone to New York.” Martin sank back into his pillow and laughed at the ceiling. The adventure was entering a whole new dimension.
Cowboys and Indies: The Epic History of the Record Industry Page 15
