For Martin, working with the likes of Webb and Sedaka found him reflecting upon the strange path that his career had taken across the past few years, when he more often than not worked with music veterans whose professional lives had been established in previous eras, even having been “made” by other producers at very different junctures in their own careers. With the exceptions of America and Jeff Beck, the vast majority of his efforts were one-off projects like El Mirage and A Song. For George, it was “like a series of one-night stands after being married to the same woman all your life.” This point was driven home on October 18, 1977, when he attended the British record industry’s Britannia Centenary Awards at London’s Wembley Conference Centre. Programmed as part of the year-long celebration associated with Queen Elizabeth II’s silver jubilee, as well as a means for marking a century since Thomas Edison invented sound recording, the awards ceremony honored the most significant British musical attainments of the past twenty-five years. The event was embroidered with a variety of performances, including Martin leading a rendition of “A Hard Day’s Night,” along with Cliff Richard singing “Miss You Nights,” Procol Harum playing “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” and Simon and Garfunkel reuniting to sing “Old Friends.”22
For George, the awards ceremony itself was an embarrassment of riches. The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band bested a field that included Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon in winning the Best Album statuette, while George’s former client Shirley Bassey took home the award for Best British Female vocalist. Best British Group honors went to the Beatles, of course, in a category that also included Pink Floyd, the Rolling Stones, and the Who. When it came to the Best Producer award, George took home the statuette, easily besting a field that included Glyn Johns, Gus Dudgeon, and Mickie Most. For George, it was nevertheless a moment laden with irony. As he later recalled, “The award immediately preceding mine was a special one for Outstanding Contribution to the British record industry. The man who mounted the rostrum to receive it was, you’ve guessed, Len Wood.” The comedy was further compounded when George later studied the statuette, which was actually Paul Simon’s award for Bridge Over Troubled Water. Meanwhile, Simon had Martin’s Best Producer statuette. “How typical of the record industry to make a mistake like that,” George later remarked. Enjoying the levity of the circumstances, “Paul [Simon] and I agreed to keep each other’s award.”23
As work continued on building AIR’s Montserrat studio complex, with a projected grand opening slated for the spring of 1979, George frequently visited the island to keep tabs on construction, eager to see his dream for a residential recording studio come to life in the tropical locale. As he awaited the completion of AIR Montserrat, George busied himself with one of the most complex productions of his post-Beatles career—and one that he had begun to regret almost from its onset. The idea had been the brainchild of Robert Stigwood, the Australian music mogul behind RSO Records and the Bee Gees, and who had flirted with someday managing the Beatles in the waning months of Brian Epstein’s life. Armed with a hefty $12 million budget, Stigwood had assembled a star-studded cast to mount a feature film based on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The idea had begun to germinate after the Bee Gees recorded cover versions of “Golden Slumbers”/“Carry That Weight,” “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window,” and “Sun King” for the recent musical documentary All This and World War II. Written by Henry Edwards, the story line behind Stigwood’s opus follows one Billy Shears as he tangles with an unfeeling record industry bent on corrupting his music, as well as his beloved hometown of Heartland. Selections from the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper and Abbey Road albums establish a rock opera, with American comedy legend George Burns providing the narration.
With television and film director Michael Schultz signed on for the project, the casting for Stigwood’s film was brilliant in scope, with Peter Frampton playing the lead, having just landed Frampton Comes Alive! as the best-selling live album in the history of the record business. Meanwhile, he was flanked by his band—“the Hendersons,” in an obvious reference to “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!”—who were composed of the Bee Gees, the central players in the blockbuster Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. The cast was rounded out by Steve Martin, the American comedian whose Wild and Crazy Guy comedy LP ruled over the airwaves, even notching a number-two showing on Billboard’s music charts. Not surprisingly, the buildup to Stigwood’s film was incredible by the time it was released in July 1978, with the Bee Gees’ Robin Gibb going out on a limb and unadvisedly proclaiming that “there is no such thing as the Beatles now. They don’t exist as a band and never performed Sgt. Pepper live in any case. When ours comes out, it will be, in effect, as if theirs never existed.”24
With such inspired casting on the movie’s side, Stigwood was confident that RSO Records would enjoy yet another smash-hit LP in the same vein as its Saturday Night Fever and Grease soundtracks. But George had his druthers from the start. In 1976, Stigwood had approached him to serve in a multifaceted capacity as musical director, conductor, and arranger, not to mention as producer of the eventual double-record soundtrack release. With some twenty-four songs and hundreds of performers shifting in and out of the soundscape, Martin’s work was cut out for him, and he sagely enlisted Emerick to act as his engineer and right-hand man throughout the project. At the urging of Judy and with the promise of a sizable fee, George had agreed to the project after becoming inspired by the success of Tom O’Horgan’s 1974 off-Broadway production of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band on the Road. But for George, it was also a matter of professional ego and respect for the legacy that he shared with the Beatles. As the producer later wrote, “I couldn’t bear the idea of what someone else might do with the music if I turned it down.”
In retrospect, said George, “I shouldn’t have done it.” For Martin, the central issue involved the movie’s all-star lineup of performers. A number of the artists were experienced, top-flight musicians, including the likes of the Bee Gees, Peter Frampton, and Billy Preston, while others, like comedians Steve Martin and Frankie Howerd, didn’t have the vocal caliber to which Martin had become accustomed. As the producer later wrote, “I had not realized until after I had agreed to my contract that I would be required to do things musically that I did not approve of. Nor did I have a say in the casting, so I found myself coaching unknowns on songs which frankly did not suit their voices, songs which were sacred to me.”25
As Martin brought Stigwood’s Sgt. Pepper in for a landing, he could already see the writing on the wall. Preternaturally confident in the studio, he found himself increasingly bewildered and uncertain about the soundtrack’s direction. To make matters worse, many of the sessions had been marked by discord, with Frampton and the Bee Gees not surprisingly developing tensions over their competing generic interests, with the brothers Gibb riding high on the disco wave at the time and Frampton acting the part of a 1970s-era rock god. After he had completed his scoring and orchestration duties, Martin and Emerick carried out their mixing and editing duties at Hollywood’s Trident Music, where a certain George A. Martin was assigned as their assistant tape editor. Years later, George A. Martin recalled working with the vaunted producer in the autumn months of 1977. At one point, the younger Martin recorded George as he performed a piano transition for the soundtrack. After they had finished, George A. Martin said, “We make a good team. We should go on the road. We should be George Martin and George Martin.” Not missing a beat, George joked, “No, I want top billing!” At one point, George A. Martin observed as the other George and Geoff mixed the score. The assistant editor was surprised and flattered when they asked him to listen to a playback of the instrumental backing track for “A Day in the Life.” When the music concluded, Martin and Emerick turned to face the younger man, asking expectantly, “What do you think?” For his part, George A. Martin could only sit there in awe, replying, “Wow. It’s just fabulous.”26
As the 1970s came to a close, George threw himself into AIR Montserrat, determined to see his dreams of a studio paradise become a reality. While he was smitten by the convivial environment that the West Indies promised, he was really jazzed about the technology. He had spent years at EMI Studios longing for the advancements that would make his artists’ tracks truly shine, and now that he was his own boss, he wouldn’t accept anything less than state of the art. As he noted when the studio opened in 1979, AIR Montserrat was an embarrassment of riches—and potentially too rich, even for his musical imagination. “The studio has both 24- and 32-track machines, but I personally am not over-enthusiastic about 32-track. I can cope quite nicely, thank you, with 24; and, if more are really needed, I prefer to use our locking device to harness two 24-track machines together, giving up to 46 tracks.” But while he was willing to spare no expense on his island getaway, he was conscious of the incredible cost of building the studio of his dreams. “Our first console at AIR London, built by Rupert Neve who makes the Rolls-Royce of recording desks, was 16-track, and cost $35,000. At the time, we thought that was a lot of money. The Montserrat console, by contrast, cost $210,000.” It was a handmade console, custom-designed to George and his partners’ specifications, with an incredible fifty-two inputs, twenty-four or thirty-two outputs, depending on the tracking, and twenty-four separate monitors.28
But if George held any doubts about AIR Montserrat’s potential for enjoying the same level of success as Oxford Street, his concerns were shortly allayed by the onrush of celebrated clientele clamoring to work on his island retreat. In short order, the studio became the regular stomping grounds of the likes of the Police, Dire Straits, Elton John, Eric Clapton, and Stevie Wonder. And the locals were blown away by the economic impact. As one islander later remarked, AIR’s “involvement with the island was such a positive note for Montserrat, as it struggled compared to other Caribbean islands to attract tourists.” Yet another said, “I grew up having to explain where the British colony of Montserrat was, yet thanks to George, Montserrat is now known as the home of some of the best music of the 1980s.” One of those artists was the Rolling Stones, who thought of AIR Montserrat as a second home. As lead guitarist Keith Richards once remarked, “Everything is there. A great bar, great restaurant, great cook. The studio itself is like a plus. It’s the best place to live on the island!”29
George wasted little time in making himself feel at home on Montserrat, buying a home there and frequently bringing his family for extended sojourns beside the Caribbean Sea. The first album that George himself recorded at Montserrat was America’s Silent Letter. George had righted his ship after the Sgt. Pepper debacle with Gary Brooker’s No More Fear of Flying, the inaugural solo album by Procol Harum’s former front man. For the title track, George assembled layers of saxophones and brass, creating a hard-driving tapestry in the same vein as the Beatles’ “Good Morning, Good Morning.” With Silent Letter, George was attempting to turn the band’s fortunes around after their lackluster LP Harbor. Throughout the decade, he had been instrumental in transforming the band, which was now a duo featuring Gerry Beckley and Dewey Bunnell, into a world-class act. He had even remixed pre-Martin tracks such as “A Horse with No Name,” “I Need You,” and “Ventura Highway” for their greatest hits album, titled History. For George, Silent Letter was a make-or-break opportunity. When the album failed to crack Billboard’s Top 100 albums, the writing was on the wall. George and the bandmates politely parted ways, with America shopping for a new producer to try to change their fortunes yet again.
That same year, George finally put pen to paper and compiled his memoirs. For much of the 1970s, he had been regularly approached by agents and publishers attempting to make their mark on the burgeoning Beatles book trade. Not surprisingly, given his signal role in the bandmates’ story, George was a big fish in what, at least at the time, was still a fairly shallow pond. At a relatively youthful fifty-three, George may have even felt somewhat loath to begin a tour down memory lane. But with the promise of a sizable advance, he ultimately landed a deal with London’s esteemed Macmillan publishing house. To assist him in the process of capturing his memories, Jeremy Hornsby was commissioned to serve as his coauthor. The University College–trained Londoner had worked in a similar capacity for British actor Pete Murray, whose memoirs were published as One Day I’ll Forget My Trousers in 1976. Years later, Hornsby would recall the experience of “ghosting” Martin’s biography with a special fondness, writing that the producer’s “first requirement was that alternate chapters would combine to form a vade mecum (handbook) for any aspirant record producers; and so it was. Typically of the man, he wanted his experiences to benefit others.” Hornsby also recalled, “I have never met anyone who combined modesty, courtesy and generosity in such measure; the last of these was typified when we came to discuss terms. Unlike any of the other ‘ghosting’ projects with which I have been involved, he insisted first that my name should be on the cover with his, and secondly that the proceeds should be split 50-50. The many days I spent with him working on the book were among the most enjoyable and instructive in my life.”30
Given his jaunty style, Hornsby seemed like the perfect voice for telling the story of Martin’s incredible career. After conducting a lengthy series of in-depth interviews with his subject, Hornsby captured the contours of Martin’s life, from his earliest years in impoverished North London and his days in the Fleet Air Arm through his work as Parlophone A&R head and beyond. Naturally, the lion’s share of the resulting book, titled All You Need Is Ears, concerned George’s life and times with the Beatles. For music fans and scholars alike, his memoir was a revelation. For many readers, All You Need Is Ears marked the first occasion when they caught a gli
mpse of life inside Abbey Road during the Beatles’ heyday. Structurally, the book suffered at the hands of Martin’s alternating-chapters scheme, which created a jarring lack of chronology as the producer and his ghostwriter abruptly shifted from one anecdote to another, often flitting across the decades between chapters. Buoyed by strong reviews and an insatiable book-buying public hungry to learn more about life in Martin and the Beatles’ hit-making factory, All You Need Is Ears became a modest best seller for Martin and Hornsby.
As 1979 came to a close, George enjoyed a series of bittersweet moments before ushering in a new, less certain decade. His dreams of creating a tropical studio paradise were coming up aces, already promising to match if not exceed the revenue that AIR enjoyed from Oxford Street. But at the same time, his series of “one-night stands” was starting to take its toll. It had been a full decade since his Abbey Road triumph, and while the 1970s had seen a vast number of incredible highs with America, Jeff Beck, and Live and Let Die, among others, George was all too conscious of his unhappy experiences with one-off, less fulfilling projects and, most recently, the Sgt. Pepper fiasco. Only months away from celebrating his fifty-fourth year, he felt the first pangs of mortality. Always a robust man, still taking his skiing jaunts with Judy and impressively athletic, he took note when his old nemesis Norrie Paramor died at age sixty-five in September 1979. Like Oscar Preuss, Martin’s Parlophone mentor, Paramor had barely made it into retirement before an untimely death. It had been seventeen years since Martin had torpedoed the Columbia producer in a secret interview with David Frost that later saw Paramor pilloried on national television as the man who was making pop culture “ordinary” through his collaboration with Cliff Richard. Paramor likely never knew that it was Martin, his opposite number at EMI’s Parlophone label, who had done him in. Paramor worked with Cliff Richard until 1972, although by then they were no longer the hit-making machine of their 1960s heyday. In 1977, Paramor had gathered the Shadows, Richard’s onetime band, one last time to record “Return to the Alamo,” with the producer’s orchestra providing accompaniment. When he learned of Paramor’s death, Martin was sitting with his eldest son, Gregory, in an English pub. “Well, he’ll never be bigger than me now,” said George, soberly raising his glass to the man who had fueled his own ambitions and fiery inner competition all those years ago.31
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