For Martin, it seemed like an incredible guarantee for Menon to make, especially since the producer had only become involved in the project a few months earlier. Worse yet, Menon’s pledge to “preserve the original mixes” held very little validity given that EMI had no intention of releasing any additional mono mixes after the first four Beatles CDs. For George, the latter issue didn’t pose any ethical quandaries for him, as he had begun taking great care with both the mono and stereo mixes for Beatles LPs by the advent of 1965. While he had no issue with the quality of the February 1987 CD releases, George was especially concerned about the existing stereo mixes for the second batch, which included Help!, Rubber Soul, and Revolver. As for the latter, George didn’t foresee any issues for Revolver—or Sgt. Pepper, for that matter—because his own production skills during the 1960s were progressively “getting better along with the technology”; hence, the albums from 1966 onward required considerably less attention during the CD format shift. But the original 1965 stereo remixes for Help! and Rubber Soul were virtually useless, in George’s opinion, because they sounded “very woolly, and not at all what I thought should be a good issue.” To remedy the situation, George returned to the original four-track tapes and remixed them for stereo. Looking back, “I was beginning to think in terms of stereo by the time Rubber Soul came along,” said George, but listening to his 1965 remixes left him “somewhat embarrassed” about the results. In keeping with Menon’s dictum about maintaining authenticity, Martin resisted any urges to make wholesale balance changes in order to enhance his stereo remixes. Instead, he met EMI’s mandate by focusing on cleaning up the individual sounds in the mixes, a feat that he accomplished by going back to the original four-track source tapes. “My intention was not to change anything,” he later explained, but “I was able to harden up the sound and cut down on some background noise.”4
With George having rehabilitated the second CD batch, the rest of the releases proved to be smooth sailing. Menon’s plan worked virtually to a tee, with several of the Beatles’ long-players zinging back onto the album charts. Not surprisingly, the most notable and vaunted release of the year belonged to Sgt. Pepper, which made its appearance as a CD two decades after the LP’s original, breathtaking debut. With a national “It was 20 years ago today” campaign reaping dividends, Sgt. Pepper enjoyed the highest placement of the lot, notching a number-three appearance that summer of 1987. Sgt. Pepper was the pinnacle of EMI’s event-driven marketing plan, with the band attracting legions of new listeners via the album’s CD release. As for George, he simply couldn’t imagine that the Beatles had another resurgence in them after the hoopla associated with the group’s digital debut. “I think we’re going to see the end of the hype now,” he remarked at the time. “This is the last day. This is June the 1st, 1987. Tomorrow, we’ll be forgotten for another 20 years. Then you’ll have to really dig me up!”5
Even still, the walk down memory lane had been an emotional experience at times for George. After listening to the original mixes and attendant studio chatter with the 1960s-era Beatles productions, he found himself transfixed as he made his way through the old tapes. “It is fascinating listening,” he observed. “You listen to the outtakes, you listen to the endless tucks and tails, and a lot of times I was in the studio performing with them, and I hear John’s voice talking to me, and me talking back, and it’s been absolutely fascinating. I’ve been going back to my youth.”6
Never one to only reminisce, George wasted little time in busying himself with other projects. That same year, he mixed Paul McCartney’s latest single, “Once Upon a Long Ago,” for release. Produced by Phil Ramone, “Once Upon a Long Ago” scored a top-ten UK hit and was distributed along with All the Best!, a compilation of the ex-Beatle’s solo and Wings hits. In 1988, George produced yet another album at Montserrat: Say Something, a solo release by Andy Leek, the singer-songwriter front man for Dexys Midnight Runners. For Martin, working with such diverse artists, from Kenny Rogers and Paul McCartney to Andy Leek and others, was a nonissue for him. “I don’t go for a conscious style,” he observed. “It’s just that you do what you do the way that you do it, and I don’t know any other way. It’s as simple as that really. It’s not any desire to achieve a trademark or anything, it’s just the way I go about making records.” In this way—and like his Beatles days—George’s production often “disappeared” into the music, relegating any sense of style to the recording artist, where, to the producer’s way of thinking, it rightfully belonged.7
In 1988, George undertook one of the most significant non-Beatles projects of his career, a long-held ambition to bring renowned Welsh poet Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood to life as a musical production. The narrative had originally come to life as a 1954 BBC radio drama starring Richard Burton not long after the poet’s untimely death in December 1953. Directed by Andrew Sinclair, a film version was subsequently released in 1972. Working on extant evidence that Thomas planned to append music to his story line, Martin approached Douglas Cleverdon, the producer of the original radio drama, about turning Under Milk Wood into a musical production with the 1954 script about the fictional Welsh village of Llareggub (derived from “bugger all” spelled backward). In support of his project, Martin assembled an all-star cast, including renowned Welsh actor Anthony Hopkins, as well as Jonathan Pryce, Bonnie Tyler, and Harry Secombe, one of the original Goons. In April 1988, George conducted a performance of his score for Under Milk Wood at the Barbican with the London Symphony Orchestra and, buoyed by the bravura reception, continued to develop the project even further. With additional music provided by Elton John and Mark Knopfler, Martin pushed the project forward, planning to create a full-fledged stage performance of Under Milk Wood composed of Thomas’s original libretto, Martin’s score and the new music from John and Knopfler, and the producer’s star-studded cast of voices.
But before George could proceed, a series of circumstances interceded in his professional life that threw AIR into disarray. Since 1970 and the grand opening of AIR Oxford Street, the company had been ascending to greater and greater heights on the strength of its studio-driven revenues, whose growth accelerated with the addition of AIR Montserrat to the company’s portfolio nine years later. But in 1989, the edifice of AIR’s business model was assaulted, first, by the forthcoming end of the company’s twenty-one-year lease on the Oxford Street property, which the owners intended to redevelop. Hence, the lease was set to expire in 1991. George and his partners were at a crossroads, and many of his advisers “thought we should now forget the studio business and concentrate on other aspects of showbiz. I said the choice was a simple one—either we rebuilt somewhere in London or we closed down the whole operation. And if we opted to rebuild, we had two options: either we should get smaller,” George reasoned, “or we should aim for the top, going for a studio that would embrace classical music, film scores, and post-production sound facilities.” Knowing that the latter option was considerably expensive, George dispatched Dave Harries to find a potential site that might be economical to develop given the city’s historically exorbitant real-estate prices. And Harries did just that, discovering a deserted Congregational church in Hampstead, North London, which had fallen into disuse for nearly two decades. Known as Lyndhurst Road Congregational Church, the massive, hexagonal space promised to be a unique environment in which to conduct recordings large and small and with a range of different kinds of acts and projects. Standing in the derelict building not long after Harries made his discovery, Martin fell in love with the concept. In order to test his thinking about the facility’s potential, he enlisted several colleagues to visit Lyndhurst Hall with him, including a trio of consultants in the form of John Kurlander, Haydn Bendall, and Mike Jarrett. Years later, Kurlander, who had risen to the post of chief engineer for EMI Classics, would remember standing in the midst of the dusty and dilapidated church as Martin shared his grand vision for the studio. For his part, Kurlander knew that Martin was relying on his EMI competitors to
validate his decision to renovate the old building into a world-class recording facility. But even then, as he stood inside the derelict old church, Kurlander knew that Martin was on to something really special, the kind of production palace that they had all been aspiring to throughout their professional lives.8
Working with his advisers, George estimated the build-out costs for the deluxe studios that would come to be known as AIR Lyndhurst at £8 million. After reporting the requisite expenses to his board, George was met with understandable concern over the company’s ability to provide the hefty capital to bring his latest dream to fruition. After AIR board member Chris Wright suggested that they bring in an equal partner on the project, George contacted Japanese music industry scion Kazunaga Nitta, who arranged for a partnership with prodigious car and home stereo manufacturer Pioneer Electronics, and the deal was on. Pioneer moved quickly, supplying the necessary capital in short order, but AIR Lyndhurst, with the requisite church redevelopment and George’s yen for cutting-edge technology at the fore, would be a complex project. The studio wouldn’t be open for business until 1992 at the earliest, and as George himself noted, “building work is always fraught with unknown hazards.”9
George was in fine fettle in the spring of 1989 when he delivered the Berklee College of Music’s commencement address. The esteemed Boston-area institution feted George in fine style, and he even sat in on several production courses. Years later, students would recall the incredible opportunity to work with George during that special week leading up to his commencement address. As the story goes, at one point George visited a production class, pried up a reel of tape, cut it into strips, and laid it out in front of the students. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he reportedly told them, leaving them to their own devices to be creative and make something—old school with masking tape—out of the tape loops. For his April 1989 address to the graduates, during which he received an honorary doctorate in music, George noted that in his own professional life he had “had my share of success and failure, rejection, and acceptance,” but he also recognized the importance of timing to anyone’s fortunes, whether they be for good or ill. “I was lucky enough to join the record industry at a time of change,” he remarked. “I took a job at Abbey Road studios to give me a bit more money, and I became hooked on the fascination of recording. I was lucky enough to arrive at the right time, and to become part of a team that was learning as it was developing. It was hardly science in those days. We flew by the seat of our pants, and improvisation was the order of the day. That timing, that luck, is something that we all need. Everyone has opportunities of one sort or another throughout their lives, and one cannot expect to benefit from every one. The trick,” he concluded, “is to recognize the break when it comes and to take advantage of it.” For George, that aspect was the heart of the matter: to be able to realize, in the moment, that something may be worth pursuing, even as evidence and opinion seem to suggest otherwise.10
For George, timing would shortly rear its ugly head in devastating and far-flung ways. As work continued to forge ahead with AIR Lyndhurst in North London, disaster struck thousands of miles away in the Caribbean in the form of Hurricane Hugo. On Sunday, September 17, 1989, the category-four storm battered Montserrat, killing ten residents, destroying nearly every home, and leaving eleven thousand of the island’s twelve thousand inhabitants homeless. In the process, the hurricane dealt AIR Montserrat what eventually would amount to a deathblow. At first things seemed to be optimistic for the ten-year-old studio. Shortly after the hurricane struck, studio manager Yvonne Kelly reported that AIR’s facilities were some of the few buildings to survive the onslaught, remarking that the studio was “built like a bunker” and adding that “the next band that’s got the guts to come out to record, we’re ready for them.” But as it turned out, Kelly’s hopeful outlook was unwarranted. Several weeks later, George visited the site to survey the damage for himself. Standing inside AIR’s main studio, he opened a piano keyboard only to discover that the keys were covered in mold. In that moment, George knew that the studio’s electronics couldn’t possibly have survived. “I realized then we were done,” he later recalled. Not long afterward, George released a statement in which he lamented the loss of AIR Montserrat, which he attributed not only to the hurricane’s destruction but also to a rapidly shifting business model in the record industry. “After 10 great years of recording there the music business had changed,” he proclaimed. “The moguls running the business no longer wanted their artists miles away, outside their control. That coincided with the devastation caused by the hurricane and sadly the studios had to close.” Any hope that AIR Montserrat might be resurrected was dashed only a few years later, when the island’s Soufrière Hills volcano erupted, burying the colony under a layer of lava and mud. George and Judy were vacationing on the island during the initial eruption. At first, they were mesmerized by the volcanic display: “I saw a ribbon of gold coming down through the clouds,” George wrote. “‘Bloody hell,’ I said. ‘Come and take a look at this, Judy.’ We were only a mile or so away from it, and there was lava coming out of the volcano. We were actually thinking how lovely it looked! Silly idiots that we were.” But as the eruptions continued over the next few years, the devastation mounted, leaving the island in a state of ruin. The studios remain there today, rotting and decaying at the hands of the island’s elements.11
As it happened, one of the last LPs recorded at AIR Montserrat was the Rolling Stones’ stellar comeback LP Steel Wheels, one of nearly seventy hit albums produced over the years at George’s island paradise. In September 1997, George convened a benefit concert, titled Music for Montserrat, to raise relief funds for the island’s citizenry in the wake of its volcano’s eruption. For the event, George assembled an all-star roster of musicians who had recorded on the island over the years, including Paul McCartney, Phil Collins, Jimmy Buffett, Mark Knopfler, Sting, Elton John, Midge Ure, and Eric Clapton, among others. The bravura event also featured Carl Perkins, who died a few months later at age sixty-five. Arranged and produced by George, the concert provided relief funds through DVD sales. The producer also spearheaded plans to establish a cultural center on Montserrat, which opened in 2006. As the concert’s grand finale, Martin conducted a full orchestra as McCartney led the assembled glitterati in a performance of the Abbey Road medley, followed by an all-star “Hey Jude” sing-along.
If George had any plans to gradually slip into the waiting arms of history at this juncture, they were a secret known only to him. In the spring of 1992, he starred in ITV’s television documentary The Making of Sgt. Pepper as part of the network’s twenty-fifth-anniversary celebration of the landmark LP. Broadcast in the United Kingdom on June 14, 1992, The Making of Sgt. Pepper featured Martin playing unreleased outtakes from the original sessions as he narrated his way, song by song, through the story of the album’s production. A few years later, Martin made astute use of the documentary’s contents, which he commemorated with the book-length publication of Summer of Love: The Making of Sgt. Pepper. Retitled as With a Little Help from My Friends in the American marketplace, George’s latest memoir was ghostwritten by novelist William Pearson, who assisted the producer in compiling his memories of recording Sgt. Pepper. Writing in the Guardian, Nicholas Lezard praised the book “as an invaluable insight into their creative process, and a riveting description of how [George and the Beatles] rewrote the book about studio recording. Martin can’t write for toffee, but if you’re keen this shouldn’t matter a whit.” Although also taking issue with the volume’s stylistic shortcomings, Robin Blake lauded Summer of Love in the Independent for its attention to the recording details and instrumentation associated with Sgt. Pepper’s legend-making songs. “The fogeyish George Martin was the Beatles’ record producer,” Blake remarked, consigning George and his achievements with the Fab Four to some distant yesteryear, “but he was much more—musical arranger, collaborator, a man who could convert the boys’ ideas into staves and dots.”12
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p; During the same month in which The Making of Sgt. Pepper debuted on British television, Martin got down to business converting the “staves and dots” of McCartney’s latest musical ideas into notation. Working in Abbey Road Studio 2, George conducted orchestral overdubs for Paul’s new composition “C’mon People,” a peace anthem slated for his upcoming Off the Ground album. George had previously scored a string arrangement for “Put It There” on Paul’s Flowers in the Dirt LP.
In December 1992, George marked AIR Lyndhurst’s grand opening with a performance of Under Milk Wood. Titled as An Evening with Dylan Thomas, the bravura opening was held as part of the Prince’s Trust, with Prince Charles in attendance, along with Anthony Hopkins, Jonathan Pryce, and Harry Secombe returning to their original roles, and Catherine Zeta-Jones and Tom Jones lending their voices to the cast. As for the new studio itself, George could barely contain his elation, proclaiming AIR Lyndhurst to be “the biggest and the most expensive and the most complicated, but also the most beautiful studio I’ve ever had. It’s certainly my last one; I won’t do any more after this! There are lots of other studios I’ve worked in I still enjoy, but I like my own one best of all.” When the studio officially opened for business a few weeks later, it quickly gained its niche, just as George had predicted, as a premier recording facility for film and orchestral work. Years later, Simaen Skolfield caught up with George at AIR Lyndhurst. To Skolfield’s delight, the producer gave him and his young children a grand tour of the facilities, where selections from the Harry Potter films had recently been recorded. As they visited the main hall, with its majestic studio appointments, Martin invited Skolfield’s ten-year-old son to try his hand at the grand piano that featured on the latest Harry Potter soundtrack. As Skolfield later recalled, his son was stunned by the experience of sitting with Martin at the piano. But for his part, Skolfield was blown away by the great facility. “It was absolutely beautiful,” he later recalled.13
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