As it happened, the new year had not been entirely kind to George. For the past several months, he had been devoting long hours between Beatles sessions to Twang!!, a new musical from the redoubtable Lionel Bart, the West End composer behind Oliver! Bart’s latest work promised a burlesque musical revue of the Robin Hood legend. Given his work with the British comedy masters of the day, Martin seemed like a perfect complement for Bart’s zany vision. Martin had subsequently been inked to prepare the soundtrack album for release with United Artists, the American record and film conglomerate who had signed him to a multirecord deal back in September 1964. He was no stranger to the theatrical world, having recorded live performances of Beyond the Fringe and Flanders and Swan during his Parlophone days. But Twang!! was less dependent upon Martin’s expertise as producer and musical director. Working with Bart wasn’t that different from collaborating with the Beatles, who had no formal training and couldn’t compose in notation. As Martin later wrote, “There have been many great musicians who couldn’t write a pop tune to save their lives. Equally, the pop world in particular has seen many who have known nothing of music but could write great tunes. Lionel Bart, for example, can’t play an instrument.” Instead, “he just whistles his tunes as he thinks of them.” Musicals like Twang!! tended to take on lives of their own, and Bart’s show was no different.11
Things had seemed promising on October 9, 1965, when George and the bandmates celebrated John’s twenty-fifth birthday with the cast at Lionel’s home to commemorate the musical’s opening. But a preview performance in Manchester’s Palace Theatre offered a glimpse of the horrid events to come. Indeed, the preview performance had gone so badly that the director, Joan Littlewood, promptly jumped ship. By the time that Twang!! opened in the West End’s Shaftesbury Theatre in December 1965, disaster was clearly imminent. Collapsing under the weight of a poorly written script and—worse yet—a weak rendering of Robin Hood’s typically charismatic personage, Twang!! closed in January 1966 after just forty-three performances. For his part, Bart lost his entire fortune in the fiasco. In an incredible irony, by the time that Martin’s United Artists original cast soundtrack was released that same January, the musical had already been mothballed. When the show closed, London critics were already condemning Twang!! as “the worst musical for years.” Bart’s theatrical disaster would not soon be forgotten. In 2015—sixteen years after the one-time musical impresario’s death—the Telegraph ranked Twang!! as seventh on its roster of the ten worst musicals of all time.12
January also saw the release of Cilla Black’s new single “Alfie” backed with “Night Time Is Here.” Like “Anyone Who Had a Heart,” which notched a number-one hit for Black and Martin in 1964, “Alfie” had been penned by the legendary American songwriting team of Burt Bacharach and Hal David, who had been inspired to write the song by the upcoming British film of the same name. Since 1957, Bacharach and David had landed thirty-three top-forty hits in the United States and United Kingdom alone, many of them with Dionne Warwick, the American chanteuse who was the principal interpreter of their music. Given the film’s London setting, the film’s producers recommended that Bacharach and David seek out a British singer for “Alfie.” Black seemed like a natural choice, since Bacharach had personally selected Black to sing the Bacharach-David confection “Anyone Who Had a Heart.”
For her part, Black initially jumped at the chance to interpret another Bacharach-David composition: “When Burt Bacharach first wrote to me from New York to tell me that he and Hal David, inspired by the film Alfie, had written another song especially for me, I was very excited and immediately ditched my plans to record an Italian ballad. When the demo disc arrived, however, I didn’t like the song at all—and I hated the idea of singing about a guy called Alfie. That name, I thought, was really naff.” Set for a UK release in March 1966, the movie starred Michael Caine in an unseemly role about the life and times of a narcissistic womanizer. Hoping that she could extricate herself from recording the song, Black announced that she’d only record “Alfie” if Bacharach prepared the arrangement. To her surprise—and Martin’s great pleasure—the songwriter called her bluff, even agreeing to join Black and Martin in London, as he had done previously with “Anyone Who Had a Heart.” When pushed even further, Bacharach offered to play the piano accompaniment himself if Black would agree to sing “Alfie.” “By this time,” Black later wrote, “coward that I was, I couldn’t back out.”13
Unbeknownst to Black, Bacharach had previously offered “Alfie” to Sandie Shaw, the reigning female vocalist of the Swinging Sixties who had previously struck pop gold with Bacharach and David’s “(There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me.” Shaw was a shrewd choice, regularly making the round of British television programming on such hit shows as Top of the Pops, Thank Your Lucky Stars, and Ready Steady Go! After Shaw and her manager, Eve Taylor—who also represented Adam Faith, another AIR client—turned down the song, Bacharach offered it to Black. Martin and Epstein were eager to try their hand at another Bacharach-David composition, and Martin produced the session at Abbey Road during the autumn of 1965. Having commandeered the massive Studio 1 at Abbey Road, Martin arranged for a forty-eight-piece orchestra to join Black and Bacharach for the session, which Epstein filmed for promotional purposes.
With Bacharach conducting the orchestra and Martin in the control room, Black was joined on the recording by the Breakaways, her regular troupe of female backup singers who, like Black herself, hailed from Liverpool. The session turned out to be a protracted affair in which Black performed take after take of the song, never seeming to meet Bacharach’s expectations. After eighteen takes, it was Martin who finally interrupted the proceedings. As Black recalled, Bacharach likely “would have continued way beyond this number if George Martin hadn’t become exasperated and said, kindly but firmly, and in front of everyone, ‘Burt, what exactly are you looking for here?’” Always the perfectionist, Bacharach answered, “That little bit of magic.” Without missing a beat, Martin looked at Bacharach and replied, “I think we got that on take four.” Released nearly four months in advance of the movie’s UK premiere, “Alfie” was deployed by the movie’s producers to build up buzz. To Martin’s delight, Black’s version of “Alfie” did just that, registering a UK top-ten hit over the coming months, although it barely succeeded in cracking the US Billboard’s Hot 100, where it languished at a paltry number ninety-five. But for Black, “Alfie” turned out to be a godsend, becoming one of her signature songs and, years later, prompting the title of the singer’s autobiography, What’s It All About?14
While Martin was pleased with Black’s continuing popularity, he was on the lookout for more non-Beatles successes to add to his curriculum vitae. Acutely aware of the necessity of signing new talent, Martin flew to New York City in February. Over the next fortnight, he auditioned a few acts as potential clients for AIR but spent most of the trip attempting to ferret out new songs for his existing roster, falling back on his pre-Beatles mode of going to places like London’s Tin Pan Alley or, in the latest case, New York City’s Brill Building to check out the wares of professional songwriters. His visit managed to capture the attention of Cash Box, the weekly industry trade magazine that, as with the vaunted Billboard, tracked the sales activities of the hitmakers of the day. Described as the “musical director of the Beatles,” Martin was reported by Cash Box to be on a mission “to seek-out and bring back material to be cut by the artists who are being recorded by AIR.” Martin told Cash Box that there is a “dearth of great songs” and that he was on the lookout for material for new recordings from the likes of Matt Monro and Cilla Black. But Munro and Black were existing artists in his stable, of course. And what Martin really needed was new talent outside of AIR’s existing roster. In March, Martin and his partners began making key moves in this direction with the hiring of Tony King, who had previously handled promotion for Decca Records before working exclusively for Andrew Loog Oldham and the Rolling Stones. Promoting AIR and its
interest in signing new talent was a priority, and King’s profile fit the bill. But as Billboard reported in early March, King inked a deal with AIR with the express promise from Martin and his partners that King would be able to produce his own acts in the near future.15
As it happened, some of AIR’s first recordings were performed by a quintet of mods out of North West London—Kentish Town, to be exact—called the Action, whom George had signed when he was still in EMI’s employ. Purveyors of an underground culture founded on a penchant for style and fashion, the mods often clashed with the rockers, their rival subculture, in a series of riotous conflicts in the mid-1960s. With the experimental mores of Swinging London already coming to the fore, the Action seemed like the perfect act for George and AIR to catch pop music’s newest wave. In many ways, the Action typified the more edgy “London sound” associated with such contemporary bands as the Who, the Small Faces, the Kinks, and the Rolling Stones. While the Beatles lorded over the mainstream UK charts and BBC airwaves during this era, the mods and the rockers duked it out on pirate radio stations like Radio Caroline and Swinging Radio England. George was convinced that the Action were the next big thing, and he had signed them as Parlophone artists—and one of AIR’s inaugural clients—shortly after leaving the EMI Group in 1965. Originally known as the Boys, the Action worked a crisp, driving beat with a hard-edged sound that George deployed to great effect on their searing debut single, “Land of a Thousand Dances” backed with “In My Lonely Room.” Originally written and recorded by Chris Kenner, “Land of a Thousand Dances” proved to be a veritable flop in spite of receiving strong critical notices. For his part, George was floored, having learned to trust his hitmaking instincts after several years of working to transform Epstein’s stable of artists into chart-toppers. While the Action’s version of “Land of a Thousand Dances” failed to make even the slightest dent in the UK charts after its October 1965 release, the song would strike gold in the United States in 1966 with Wilson Pickett’s rhythm-and-blues hit record. Not to be discouraged for long, George had entered the new year with big plans to navigate the Action to the top of the UK charts. In February 1966, he prepared the Action’s next single, “I’ll Keep Holding On” backed with “Hey Sha-Lo-Ney,” for a Parlophone release. But like its predecessor, the Action’s latest single failed to chart, as did their July 1966 follow-up, “Baby, You’ve Got It” backed with “Since I Lost My Baby.” A remake of Maurice and the Radiants’ 1954 rhythm-and-blues classic with Chess Records, “Baby, You’ve Got It” seemed like the perfect vehicle for the Action given its dance-music overtones and hard-driving tempo.16
While the Action’s failure to crack the UK charts had left George more than a little flummoxed, he enjoyed decidedly more success, albeit short-lived, with David and Jonathan, who had been AIR’s first official signing. A pop duo out of Bristol, David and Jonathan were composed of Roger Greenaway and Roger Cook. Drawing their names from the biblical story of the friendship between Hebrew King David and Prince Jonathan in the first book of Samuel, the duo had first come to George’s attention as the songwriters behind the Fortunes’ top-ten UK and US hit “You’ve Got Your Troubles,” as well as “This Golden Ring.” As it turned out, the pop duo owed the genesis of their name to George’s fiancée and longtime assistant, Judy. “We couldn’t call them the Two Rogers,” George later wrote, “and we didn’t like Cook and Greenaway, so Judy hit on the idea of the biblical characters David and Jonathan, really as an example of two people who were very close friends.” David and Jonathan made their AIR debut with “Michelle” backed with “How Bitter the Taste of Love” on EMI’s Columbia label. Produced and orchestrated by Martin, the duo’s cover version of “Michelle,” the standout Lennon-McCartney composition on the Beatles’ Rubber Soul album, landed a top-fifteen showing on the UK charts. Greenaway later recalled that “George Martin asked us to do ‘Michelle’ as the Beatles weren’t releasing it as a single. He did the whole orchestral arrangement and worked out our harmonies. Roger Cook has a range of three octaves, he can sing high or low, and I had a high voice. I was perfect for harmonies above him and he was perfect for harmonies below me.” Given his expertise in vocal arrangement, George was able to devise the harmonies that really made David and Jonathan’s vocals stand out. David and Jonathan continued their wave of success with “Lovers of the World Unite” backed with “Oh My Word,” which topped out at number seven, demonstrating in the process that George’s ear for spotting new talent was as sharp as ever.17
Yet with a paucity of new artists on AIR’s roster, George continued his tour of the existing acts in his stable. As 1966 continued to roll forward, he reached several years back to Rolf Harris, the Australian entertainer with whom he’d scored a major hit with “Sun Arise.” Harris was thrilled to be working with Martin, especially on the peculiar novelty tracks that had recently begun to characterize the musician’s output. As Harris later recalled, “George Martin was into weird things long before the Beatles. He did those comedy tracks for Charlie Drake, and I was given to George because nobody else could figure out what to do with me.” With Martin in the control booth, Harris had recorded “Jake the Peg” back in 1965. He enjoyed a hit with the novelty song back in his homeland, and his career was back on track. The song’s irreverent lyrics about a three-legged man managed to catch fire with his audience, who enjoyed his stage antics. During his live performances of the song, Harris often donned a peg leg in order to enhance the comedic effect. Working with George, he recorded the long-player The Man with a Microphone on the strength of the momentum that he had established with “Jake the Peg” back in Australia. In a clear attempt to hearken back to Harris’s earlier success, Martin produced the entertainer’s performance of “That’s What They Call the Didgeridoo,” a reference to the Australian indigenous instrument that Martin had simulated on “Sun Arise” by virtue of recording two cellos, a double bass, a piano, and Harris’s guttural sounds. A collection of comic skits and wacky compositions, The Man with a Microphone failed to chart in the United Kingdom and Australia alike, leaving George at a loss about how to recapture the success that they had enjoyed years earlier with “Sun Arise.”18
During this period, George also parceled out time to repackage his 1965 United Artists release, George Martin Scores Instrumental Versions of the Hits, for distribution on EMI’s Columbia TWO label. Compiled in the same manner in which he assembled his collection of Help!-themed instrumentals for Columbia TWO in mid-1965, the album was titled . . . And I Love Her and credited to George Martin and His Orchestra. With a comely model peering out seductively from its cover art, the album featured George’s easy-listening arrangements of such songs as the Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night–era “If I Fell” and “I’m Happy Just to Dance with You,” the Rolling Stones’ “Time Is on My Side,” Petula Clark’s “Downtown,” and the Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,” among others. Although his long-players never set the world on fire—much less generated enough sales to make a serious dent in the record charts—George’s easy-listening arrangements served a vital purpose by making inroads into adult demographics beyond the teenaged set. In a similar vein, George produced his old friend Ron Goodwin’s latest long-player. One of Martin’s first clients from his earliest days with Parlophone, Goodwin had enjoyed considerable success as a composer and conductor of movie soundtracks, including such films as 633 Squadron, Of Human Bondage, and, most recently, Those Magnificent Men in Their Flaying Machines. Titled Adventure, Goodwin’s new album offered selections from his film scores, which he had conducted with the Ron Goodwin Orchestra and with Martin up in the booth. For his part, Goodwin was an unabashed admirer of Martin’s, later describing him as a “first-class record producer and a very good musician. He was very well-informed technically about what you can and can’t do in a recording studio, and he had a wonderful, natural talent for handling people. I’ve never seen him get upset on a session and I’ve never seen him upset anybody else. If anything went
wrong, George knew how to handle it in such a way that the other person doesn’t realize what’s happening.” And to Goodwin’s mind, this latter aspect made him “the ideal producer.”19
In March, Martin completed postproduction work on Black’s new long-player, titled Cilla Sings a Rainbow. By the time that Cilla Sings a Rainbow was released on the Parlophone label on April 18, George would be hard at work on a project that would shift the trajectory of his career yet again. But in the interim, Black’s latest long-player marked yet another strong showing for her collaboration with Martin, with the album topping out at number four on the UK charts, besting Cilla, which had captured the number-five position. The album was chock-full of cover versions, including some of the original compositions that Martin had secured for the chanteuse during his recent trip to New York City. Cilla Sings a Rainbow included yet another Bacharach-David number in “Make It Easy on Yourself,” as well as a cover version of Lennon-McCartney’s “Yesterday.” Although it was not even a year old at this point, “Yesterday” was already well on its way to becoming the most covered song in pop-music history. For Black, the album’s great highlight was the jaunty “Love’s Just a Broken Heart (L’Amour Est Ce Qu’il Est),” which had been arranged by Martin, of course, and composed by Mort Shuman, Kenny Lynch, and Michele Vendome. For Black, it was especially poignant when the “Love’s Just a Broken Heart” backed with “Yesterday” single notched the number-two spot on the UK charts. As she later wrote, “It was in many ways a surprise to lots of people that I was still having hits. I was supposed to be a flash in the pan, after all. This was the number I would sing when I topped the bill on Sunday Night at the London Palladium.” The album’s colorful cover art was shot by Robert Whitaker, a London photographer known for his pop-art designs and surrealistic vision.20
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