The fifth Beatle

The Beatles’ catalogue provides an exhaustive case study on how technical innovation can redefine the production process – from microphone placement to mastering. It also showed definitively how collaboration with an inspired producer can extend to songwriting, arrangement and instrumentation. From his early suggestion that She Loves You start with its euphoric chorus, to the painstaking string score that transformed I Am The Walrus, George Martin’s contributions went far beyond his genius with studio gadgets. “He was always there for us to interpret our strangeness,” summed up George Harrison perfectly, on the 1992 Pepper documentary.

We leave the last word on the Beatles producer to his son, Giles, whose bold mash-ups, edits and collages of Fab Four songs on the 2006 Love album form their own fascinating reference for the computer generation. “He was brilliantly musical. Dutiful in his approach and sensitive, and at the same time groundbreaking,” Giles told the Guardian in summer 2016. “‘Take a sad song and make it better’ is what my dad did, and that’s his legacy. Every time you hear a Beatles song, he’s part of that.”