Sound Pictures

by Kenneth Womack

  With Under Milk Wood having finally received a proper debut to George’s satisfaction, he began to contemplate the hearing loss that had slowly descended upon him over the past several years, perhaps even longer. He later admitted, “I first noticed a loss of certain high frequency sounds in the mid 1970s.” By the early 1990s, his handicap had become much more acute. “I have to accept the fact that I will never recover my hearing,” he lamented. “Music and recording have been my passion, so it’s ironic that my progressive deafness has been caused by years and years of listening to music at too high a level.” Yet in keeping with his working-class roots, he vowed to continue his production efforts until his impediment fully prevented him from doing so. One of the first productions at AIR Lyndhurst involved George’s work with Japanese artist Yoshiki, who recorded his first classical album, Eternal Melody, in the main studio in February 1993. With arrangements by Martin, Gavin Greenaway, and Graham Preskett, the music was conducted by Martin and performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra.14

  The following month, March 1993, George’s rock-musical production of the Who’s Tommy, directed by Des McAnuff with choreography by Wayne Cilento, opened on Broadway’s St. James Theatre for nearly nine hundred performances. Invited by Pete Townshend to undertake production duties, Martin recognized the inherent risks: “It was an ambitious and dangerous project, a real gamble, because Broadway musicals are the most expensive shows to stage and the outcome could be a flop.” Fortunately for Martin and Townshend, McAnuff had assembled a top-drawer cast chock-full of talented singer-actors. In a rave review in the New York Times, Frank Rich wrote that Tommy, “the stunning new stage adaptation of the 1969 rock opera by the British group the Who, is at long last the authentic rock musical that has eluded Broadway for two generations.” For the soundtrack, George “booked the big studio at Electric Lady in New York for a weekend. I’d organized it so that we didn’t waste a moment because we couldn’t interrupt the theatre run.” With fewer than two days to capture the original soundtrack recording, George conducted the session as if it were a live show, bringing one performer in after another to maintain a semblance of the Broadway production. George’s production of the Tommy soundtrack later earned a Grammy Award for Best Musical Show Album, his fourth statuette overall and his first since “Live and Let Die” nearly two decades earlier.15

  With his hearing continuing to deteriorate, George decided to take advantage of the moment and revive the George Martin Orchestra for a series of one-off concerts for the first time since From the Beatles to Bond and Bach in the 1970s. The highlight for George was conducting a concert in Brazil in October 1993 with more than eighty thousand in attendance. As a thunderous deluge came down from the sky, he soldiered on with the concert at an outdoor venue in the Quinta Da Boa Vista national park in Rio, where music lovers braved the elements to enjoy the show, merrily singing along with George’s classic scores. For Martin, the most stirring moment of that unforgettable evening occurred when he took the stage alone, sat in front of the grand piano, and played an instrumental version of “Here, There, and Everywhere,” only to receive a standing ovation from the rain-soaked audience.

  In addition to producing an LP of old standards for The Glory of Gershwin, for which the producer scored a top-thirty hit with Kate Bush’s “The Man I Love” in July 1994, George’s work in the mid-1990s was dominated by one Beatles “event” after another. EMI had come to learn the evergreen power of the Beatles’ back catalog by this point—and especially after the success of the 1987 CD releases—and the record conglomerate was eager to jump back into the fray. EMI’s latest Beatles foray had been made possible by recent legal settlements between the label and the band, which paved the way for a host of new projects. In contrast with the CD releases, EMI made sure to approach George with plenty of lead time to carry out production work for Live at the BBC, a planned compilation devoted to the bandmates’ numerous early to mid-1960s performances on the BBC Radio’s Light Programme. Working with renowned BBC producer and archivist Kevin Howlett, George described the project as “an assembly job more than anything else” as he made his way through hundreds of hours of performances. Composed of fifty-six songs, the LP offered what George later deemed to be the antithesis of the shoddy Hollywood Bowl concerts, with the Beatles playing clearly and audibly at the top of their game for the Light Programme. Released on November 30, 1994, Live at the BBC topped the UK charts and netted a number-three showing on Billboard’s album charts. Writing in Rolling Stone, Anthony DeCurtis hailed the double album as “an exhilarating portrait of a band in the process of shaping its own voice and vision.”16

  As George later wrote, Live at the BBC held a very specific purpose for EMI, acting as a kind of “prelude” for the long-planned Beatles Anthology project. Some five years in the making, the Beatles’ Anthology consisted of a carefully coordinated preparation and release of a book, three albums of unreleased recordings and studio outtakes, and a television miniseries broadcast in the United Kingdom and the United States. Set to commence with the television program and concomitant album release in December 1995, the Anthology project found its origins in The Long and Winding Road, Apple executive Neil Aspinall’s ninety-minute documentary on the history of the band. Completed in 1971, The Long and Winding Road project lay dormant throughout the decade, with the bandmates’ involvement only beginning around 1980, when, according to Yoko Ono, they had begun making plans for a reunion concert and recording new material. The background for The Long and Winding Road was made public in a 1980 legal deposition related to the Beatles’ lawsuit against the Beatlemania musical. John Lennon’s December 1980 murder put an end to any further work by Aspinall or others on The Long and Winding Road, but eventually the surviving Beatles involved themselves in the Anthology project in 1990, after the 1989 resolution of a long-standing lawsuit between McCartney and the other surviving Beatles regarding the unequal payment of royalties.

  Directed by Geoff Wonfor and Bob Smeaton, the Anthology documentary took some five years to compile. Produced by Aspinall and Chips Chipperfield, the Anthology television miniseries consisted of six hours of interviews with George and the Beatles, as well as a host of archival footage. Aspinall and Chipperfield, like Menon before them, recognized the value of Martin’s input in understanding the Beatles’ remarkable musical achievements, and the producers kept Martin front and center throughout the project, affording him with a broad canvas for constructing the three double albums’ worth of outtakes and rarities. For the project, George was ably assisted by Geoff Emerick, his loyal AIR colleague and, of course, an eye- and earwitness to the storied recordings back in the 1960s. Working from July 1994 through May 1995, Martin and Emerick culled through thousands of hours of material in compiling the six Anthology CDs. In addition to the tapes in EMI’s vaults, George searched for rare lacquers that may have eluded the Beatles’ grasp over the years, only to discover that the original recording of “Love Me Do” from his first session with the band back in June 1962, complete with Pete Best sitting in on the drums, had been socked away in his attic. Judy had happened upon the lacquer by accident during a bout of spring cleaning more than three decades after the recording had been made.

  Working with Geoff was a great boon for George, with the two old friends and colleagues quickly establishing a routine. As Emerick later recalled, “George Martin sat in one control room with Abbey Road archivist Allan Rouse, painstakingly listening to every single Beatles recording all the way through. When George came upon a segment he thought worth including, it would be sent upstairs to me in another control room, where I would pull the multitrack masters from their original boxes and remix it.” For George, working on the Anthology was a revelation. In previous years, George had often argued that sifting through all those unused takes was a fool’s errand, that only the mastered recordings were of significance to the Beatles’ incredible story. But the Anthology project proved him wrong. “It was an extraordinary experience,” he later observed
. “I was re-living my life, really, listening to outtakes, compositions worked out on the spot, studio chatter, and so on. Quite dramatic in a way.” He was most gratified when he found something unusual as he rifled through the vaults. In such moments, “the boys got very enthusiastic,” he wrote. “Sometimes Ringo [Starr] would come in, sometimes George [Harrison] would come in. Paul would come in more often because he lived around the corner. Sometimes, though very rarely, all three of them would come in at once, and on those occasions a big buzz would go round Abbey Road; the staff would be goggle-eyed to see the four of us reminiscing and chatting about old times.”17

  As part of the Anthology project, Yoko had provided four of John’s demos for potential completion by the surviving bandmates, who came to be known as the Threetles. Years later, Martin’s hearing would be cited as the reason he opted not to produce the demos with Harrison, McCartney, and Starr. But in truth, he wasn’t asked. “It’s all water under the bridge,” he later explained, but “I wasn’t too unhappy about not being asked because I was a bit uncomfortable about the idea of John’s voice being used that way.” Instead, the Threetles tapped Jeff Lynne of ELO fame, as well as the producer of Harrison’s best-selling solo album Cloud 9 and one of the guitarist’s Traveling Wilburys bandmates, to handle production duties, with Emerick sitting in as engineer. On the strength of the resulting singles releases, which included “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love,” the Anthology project proved to be a massive success, with the television miniseries chalking up impressive ratings and the three Anthology double albums each topping the US charts and resulting in top-five showings in the Beatles’ homeland. In his November 1995 New York Times review on the occasion of the release of Anthology 1, Jon Pareles got to the heart of George’s accomplishments with the band: “Although they were well rehearsed, as the Anthology’s outtakes show, the Beatles hid their craftsmanship behind exuberance. Even in songs proclaiming innocuous romantic sentiments, or in a corny novelty ‘Bésame Mucho,’ the Beatles’ rock had a sense of freedom. In the band’s first years, it was more the freedom of bending rules than of breaking them. Thirty years later, what comes through is the Beatles’ optimism that they could get away with anything if they did it skillfully.” In his December 1996 Rolling Stone review of Anthology 3, Parke Puterbaugh gently takes George to task, writing that “for more than two decades after the Beatles broke up, the band members and their producer, George Martin, insisted that everything of quality that they created in the studio was already a matter of record—that there was nothing left worthy of reconsideration, much less release.” If nothing else, Puterbaugh concludes, Anthology 3 shows “that those who make history are often the least qualified to judge it.”18

  While Martin may have been disappointed about not being invited to produce the Threetles’ “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love” singles, he would very shortly get his chance to shine, as well as to reconsider his own reservations about producing Lennon’s ghostly sound. In 1998, EMI’s Rupert Perry invited Martin, with Ono’s blessing, to score an orchestral accompaniment to Lennon’s demo for “Grow Old with Me,” one of his very last compositions. For George, working with the demo proved to be a challenge given that John frequently recorded his demos by placing his tape recorder on top of his piano at the Dakota, resulting in the instrument being louder than the vocal. “What I did was construct an arrangement where I could take out the whole of John’s track when he wasn’t singing, rather than leaving the track in throughout and then trying to smother it,” George wrote. In the end, “it was strange working with John’s dead voice,” and as for working with John’s demos in such a fashion, “I’m still not sure I approve!” With his twenty-eight-year-old son, Giles, playing bass guitar on “Grow Old with Me,” George superimposed an orchestral score onto the track at Abbey Road, and it was released in November 1998 on the John Lennon Anthology box set.19

  In the late 1990s, with his hearing in a continual state of erosion, George still managed to produce a smattering of acts when they caught his fancy. In 1997, he produced Céline Dion’s top-twenty UK hit “The Reason,” while also working with Paul on several songs for the ex-Beatle’s Flaming Pie long-player, including the orchestration for “Beautiful Night” and “Somedays.” George also coproduced “Calico Skies,” which he found to be particularly affecting. At the time, Paul’s wife, Linda, was battling valiantly with breast cancer, and the sessions for the song were especially poignant as George prepared a string quartet for a version of the song that would later appear on Paul’s Working Classical album. “I will hold you for as long as you like,” Paul sings. “I’ll hold you for the rest of my life.” On April 17, 1998, Linda succumbed to her illness at age fifty-six. A few months later, a memorial service was held at the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, with all three surviving Beatles in attendance. George and Judy were there, too, to bid farewell to their friend. In the church that day, a congregation of seven hundred sang “Let It Be,” the tender ballad about Paul’s mother, Mary, who had lost her own battle with breast cancer in 1956, when Paul was just fourteen years old. The moving service ended with David Bailey’s emotional recitation of a poem by Spike Milligan:

  It was heaven. You were 7 and I was 8.

  And we watched the stars suspended

  Walking home down an apple lane

  Me and Rosie, a doll, a daisy chain

  On an evening that would never come again.20

  During the previous autumn, George had felt the deep pull of God and country to orchestrate a tribute marking the untimely death of yet another woman of renown. On August 31, 1997, Diana, Princess of Wales, had died at age thirty-six in a Paris automobile accident. The nation had been plunged into a period of national mourning, and Elton John, who had been a close friend of the princess, wanted to pay tribute to her through song. Working with his longtime lyricist Bernie Taupin, Elton swiftly revised his 1973 song “Candle in the Wind,” a composition originally written to memorialize the life and loss of Marilyn Monroe, to fit the occasion. At the time, George and Judy were relaxing on their boat near the Turkish coastline when Elton telephoned him and asked him to produce the record, which the musician planned to release as a charity single. For his part, George was no stranger to venerating fallen leaders through song, having produced Millicent Martin’s moving tribute to President John F. Kennedy with “In the Summer of His Years” within days of his assassination in November 1963. With no time to spare, George and Judy made their hasty return to the United Kingdom, where, on Saturday, September 6, Elton performed his new version of the song, recast as “Candle in the Wind 1997,” at Diana’s funeral at Westminster Abbey. For Elton, the experience was heartbreaking and intense. He later described playing the song that day in the packed cathedral—and with some two billion television viewers glued to their screens—as “one of the most difficult things he’d ever done.” For George, who watched the live feed a few miles away, it had been nothing short of “beautiful.”21

  With Giles in tow, George waited for Elton to make his entrance at Townhouse Studios in West London that same day. When Elton arrived, George suggested that he record the song exactly as he had played it earlier that day at the funeral. Within three takes, Elton had captured his vocal and piano accompaniment. At first, the pop star had suggested superimposing a synthesizer part onto the composition, but George had something else in mind. With Elton’s portion of the recording having been completed, George began writing a score that called for a string quartet and an oboe. By the time that the session players arrived at eight o’clock that evening, the producer was ready to conduct the overdub, which featured a quartet composed of Peter Manning, Keith Pascoe, Levine Andrade, and Andrew Schulman, along with oboist Pippa Davies. By the time the musicians had departed, George had already begun mixing the record for release, and on Saturday, September 13, the single was in the shops. In the UK and US marketplace, “Candle in the Wind 1997” debuted at number one, with Elton’s single becoming the biggest seller in UK his
tory and second only to Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” stateside. All told, “Candle in the Wind 1997” sold thirty-three million copies around the globe. But for George, it occupied a very different place in his personal legacy as the last single he would ever produce.

  As the twentieth century came to a close, George’s life had fallen into a familiar routine of humbling tributes and heartbreaking goodbyes. More often than not, he and Judy would find themselves bidding farewell to lifelong friends. Yet on other occasions, they would bear witness to one accolade after another. There were few more affirming moments than George’s knighthood on June 29, 1996, when, with a few gentle movements from a sword, Queen Elizabeth II recast the couple as Sir George and, by definition of his stately honor, Lady Judy. Years later, George couldn’t help but joke about the perfunctory nature of the experience. After kneeling in front of Her Majesty, he wrote,

  She picks up a sword from a cushion, touches your right shoulder with it, and then describes a huge arc around your head (presumably to avoid cutting it off) and touches the other shoulder. Then she returns the sword to its cushion and you arise as Sir George. She places the insignia around your neck, chats to you and, to finish, funnily enough, she pushes you away. Then you go and have a good lunch. It’s nice. It’s all very old fashioned. And not without its humor. There was a military band playing in the Minstrel’s gallery, and the tune that I heard as I received my accolade from the Queen? “Hi-ho, hi-ho, it’s off to work we go. . . .”22