How I Was Inspired By George Martin, The Fifth Beatle

I’ve just found out that Mr George Martin, the fifth Beatle and most honorary of sirs, has passed away and instead of feeling sad, I feel completely uplifted to remember all of his amazing works.

At the age of 15 I became totally obsessed by the Beatles, and have never really known anything like it before or since. I had actually picked ‘Strawberry Fields’ as one of my top 3 songs of all time in music class a year before, and I was also a huge fan of ‘Twist & Shout’ as a result of my love affair with Ferris Bueller. But my familiarity with the Beatles was restricted to their more poppy hits like ‘Hey Jude’ (which I loved) and ‘Yellow Submarine’ (which I never really did).

And then one day, in November 1995, I started watching the anthology documentary series, and I was amazed by just how BIG the fab four had been. And also how incredibly innovative! And then, on 24th November of that year, my life changed. I watched and listened as the song ‘A Day In The Life’ played out and I had never heard anything like it. It struck me as being the most remarkable piece of music I had ever heard – the audacity of splicing two songs together, the otherworldly dream sequence, and the audacity of that orchestral build up and transition. And then there was John’s voice, so haunting, so honest, so vulnerable.

A lifelong love affair ensued. Starting with the Red and the Blue albums, which I got all my mates into whilst holidaying in Shagaluf! My friends reciprocated by buying me the White Album for my 17th birthday. Whilst initially a little lukewarm, by my 4th listen, I was hooked. Big style. ‘Happiness Is a Warm Gun’, ‘Sexy Sadie’, ‘Helter Skelter’, and my favourite track of all time, ‘Rocky Raccoon’.

Soon after, I had every album, and I was listening to them non-stop as I burned around the streets in my Boy Racer Nova SR, complete with modified parcel shelf and 6 x 9 speakers blaring out John, Paul, George and Ringo and ridiculous decibels!

I stayed up all night with my dear friend Jeff, watching all the anthologies in one marathon session on VHS, armed with a 24 pack of beer and an endless array of snacks. My appreciation for these guys went up even more, now that I knew the material so well. And my appreciation for George Martin was immense. He was a production god who understood exactly how to coax the most out of these four unpolished legends.

Over the next few years, I listened to them on repeat all the time, went up to Liverpool twice for a Beatles weekend, listening to covers bands playing every song in their repertoire, and even getting on stage of the Cavern to sing Rocky Raccoon with the band – amazing!!! Somewhere in the ether someone has a videotape of that gig!

Whilst at University, we transformed our house into the ultimate party house and I even converted the cellar into a fully functioning bar, but nothing took more pride of place than the wall in which I painstakingly wrote out the entire lyrics of Across The Universe in calligraphy. Every morning I would wake up and look at those lyrics, my favourites of all time.

Little did I know that John wrote those lyrics whilst on a meditation retreat, and that one day I would find myself undergoing similar transformational experiences and feeling the exact same sentiment and enjoying uncannily similar experiences. After every retreat experience, I would find myself walking around in a state of total bliss, humming the tune to this song as I enjoyed feeling like a young Jedi, I even sang the song to my colleagues during a rare bit of downtime during teacher training. I don’t know any song that captures the joy of an enlightened state more.

Interestingly, George didn’t produce this song, I can only imagine how his delicate touch would have made the song even more amazingly profound!!

When one considers the haunting finesse of his orchestration of ‘Eleanor Rigby’, and his moving string arrangement of ‘Yesterday’, one cannot help realise that as good as the core compositions were, it was the scores to these tunes that really made a difference.

But most importantly of all was his ability to articulate all these increasingly innovative and sometimes bizarre ideas of the boys into something that was simultaneously accessible and yet groundbreaking.

From Revolver onwards, the studio work became ever more interesting, and to think that all this work was only ever done on 4 and 8 track mixing desks, is something I will never fully understand how they did it. It was an art that is lost to modern music.

George Martin didn’t take any sh*t from his young protÃƒÆ’Ã†’©gÃƒÆ’Ã†’©’s. If it wasn’t good enough. He would tell them. If it could be improved, he would help them find the improvements that would take a composition from very good to truly world class. And always, he was able to translate their humour and light-heartedness into the records. His work with the Goons had no doubt helped, and when one reviews his career prior to the Beatles, it’s as if his entire trajectory was purpose built to play the perfect foil to the greatest musical artists in popular music history.

Even later in life, he set to work crafting the music of the Beatles into a 21st century opus on behalf of Cirque de Soleil and the ensuing album, Love, lovingly crafted by George and his son Giles, is a magnificent tour de force of many of the most riveting musical morsels that his former charges had produced.

Genius is on overused term. But in George’s case, he fully owns it. What an absolute legend of a man he was. As a talent, and as a gentleman. George, your legacy will live for as long as humans walk the earth. Thank you for the music.

As a special celebration of the life and work of George Martin, we are going to be holding a special savasana disco in honour of George, beginning with the Beatles ‘Love’ and then playing some of the greatest and most enticing morsels of his canon.

Kick off at 8pm on Thursday 10th March at meditation HQ. Let the melodies and harmonies light up our lives in celebration of one of music history\’s greatest contributors.