All you need is George
‘During the height of Beatlemania his salary was €3,000, and he was denied a Christmas bonus’
GRAEME THOMSON BIOGRAPHY Maximum Volume: The Life Of Beatles Producer George Martin Kenneth Womack Chicago Review Press, €28
Unless you’ve been living in a yellow submarine, you’ll be aware that 2017 marked 50 years since the release of The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. But what of the man who produced all but one of the group’s albums and who was – creatively at least – the undisputed Fifth Beatle?
The late Sir George Martin wrote a memoir some years ago – the wonderfully titled All You Need Is Ears – but Kenneth Womack goes deeper into his life. Maximum Volume is the first of a twovolume study of an interesting and sometimes conflicted man living in remarkable times. There was much more to Martin than The Beatles. A gifted musician and arranger, he was Spike Milligan’s best man and firm friends with Peter Ustinov. He produced Shirley Bassey’s Goldfinger, and became painfully estranged from his mother after she chased his first wife around the kitchen with a carving knife.
Though he appeared the quintessential upper-middle-class English gent, Martin’s urbane bearing was a carefully cultivated construct. Born into a povertystricken family in north London, he grew up in a tiny flat lacking a toilet, kitchen and electricity, sharing a fold-down bed with his sister. An acute sensitivity to class and status remained throughout his life. He upgraded his accent while serving in the Royal Navy. By the time he graduated from the Guildhall School of Music, Martin was a transformed character. His first marriage ended following a long affair with his well-heeled assistant at Abbey Road studios, Judy Lockhart Smith. He was reportedly ‘dazzled’ by her cut-glass accent and cultivated upbringing.
As A&R manager at Parlophone in the Fifties, Martin was already a risk-taker, working with The Goons and Bernard Cribbins on a series of comedy singles. ‘Let’s paint, instead of having photographs,’ was his mantra, self-expression favoured over clinical reproduction.
It was a philosophy that proved perfect for The Beatles, the unpromising Scouse beat band on whom he took a punt, and for whom he became an amiable, occasionally steely and wholly trusted schoolmaster figure, patiently working to realise their more outré ideas. He was meagrely rewarded for it. During the height of Beatlemania his salary was £3,000, and he was denied a Christmas bonus.
Few areas of Beatles history have been left uncharted, but fleshing out the life of the band’s key collaborator in the studio proves a worthwhile task. Womack’s approach is unfussy, thorough and authoritative, although a little too forensic at times. The final 200 pages cover just four years, giving the reader chapter-and-verse on what seems like every recording session Martin ever attended. At such points, this informative, likeable book is less A Taste Of Honey, and more It’s All Too Much.