THE BEATLES

Location: Third floor, 57 Green Street, W1K 6RH. All four lived there. (blue, red)

The Royal Court Hotel, 7-12 Sloane Square, SW1W 8EG. Initially, The Beatles usual hotel.

John Lennon

Epstein s death hit Lennon harder than the other Beatles, he blamed himself for having introduced him to pills. His marriage to Cynthia collapsed subsequently, while his creative relationship with the other Beatles went into decline.

Paul McCartney

In jazz the bass was used to play countermelodies. In a manner that paralleled Jack Bruce, McCartney played the instrument in a more melodic manner than was then standard, thereby making it more prominent.

In 1972 McCartney's Hofner was stolen from the back of a van in Notting Hill. In 2024 the musician was reunited with the instrument after a man found it in his attic in Sussex.

Location: Top floor, 57 Wimpole Street, W1G 8YW. In March 1966 he moved out. He had lived there for two and a half years. (purple, red)

Website: www.paulmccartney.com

Ringo Starr

Website: www.ringostarr.com

Albums

Please, Please Me (1963)

At their first recording George Martin did not know how good a drummer Starr was. A session drummer was brought into to do the drumming on Please, Please Me. Starr recorded the track on one of his own solo albums.

In 1963, at E.M.I.'s Manchester Square headquarters building, Angus Bean took a photograph that became the cover shot for the Please, Please Me album.

Yesterday

McCartney woke up one morning with the tune for Yesterday. He assumed that it had already been written. After a few weeks of no one being able to identify it, he felt able to regard it as being his own.

At the time, McCartney had become interested in the work of Delia Derbyshire at the B.B.C. Radiophonic Workshop. As a result, he gave serious consideration to making the song into a modern electronic composition.

E.M.I. wanted to release Yesterday as a single in the U.K., however, the band regarded themselves as being a rock n roll band and blocked the idea. However, they allowed it to be a single in the United States. Margaret Asher held the song in a high enough regard that she took to using it as a test piece at the Guildhall School of Music.

Rubber Soul (1965)

Other acts, such as The Who, The Beach Boys, and Bob Dylan were being innovative. The Beatles responded with Rubber Soul (1965).

Revolver (1966)

In 1965 Lennon took L.S.D. unwittingly when it was slipped into his coffee, while he was visiting the home of the dentist who treated both him and Harrison. He did not enjoy the experience. However, at the end of the year he took the drug again. This time, he believed that the experience he had was profound. He believed that he met God. He went on to embrace the counterculture. The following day he started writing a song that became Tomorrow Never Knows. The title was one of Ringo's pet phrases. The song was the first one to be recorded in the sessions that led to Revolver. The album was recorded on four tracks. Drawing inspiration from Motown's James Jamerson, McCartney broke away from his musical closeness to Ringo and started to play more melodic, lead bass lines. Apparent in Rain and Paperback Writer. It was revolutionary that a rock music record should contain Eleanor Rigby, a song that consisted of a voice and eight string players.

McCartney songs described the mundane. Lennon s presented, through the prism of his own inner world, how people might end that mundaneness. Harrison's interest on songwriting had grown. A number of his songs ended up on the album. However, he was unable to nail the biting Indian-style guitar solo on Taxman. McCartney did it in a single take.

Recorded in the spring of 1966. It was issued that August.

It was the Beatles appreciation that they could not play Revolver s songs live prompted them to focus on albums.

Eleanor Rigby

Mrs Asher had arranged for him Paul to take piano lessons with one of her colleagues at the Guildhall School of Music. As a child, he had been turned off piano lessons by being asked to practice scales. That he was still expected to do them prompted him to stop the lessons. Mrs Asher had a music room in the basement. It was where McCartney wrote Eleanor Rigby. The lessons informed his composition of the song. For the strings, Paul asked for some E Minor chord stabs to be used. George Martin was to claim that these were inspired by from Bernard Herrmann's score for the move Psycho (1960). McCartney came to view that there might be a degree of connection between Eleanor Rigby and the mummified mother in the film.

Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)

George Martin regarded Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) as being the peak of The Beatles achievement.

The Cover

Peter Blake was paid 200 for the Sergeant Pepper cover

Sergeant Pepper was the first album to have its lyrics printed on the cover.

A Day In The Life

The Beatles and the Rolling Stones found themselves being taken up by a number of fashionable young aristocrats. Prominent among these was the Hon. Tara Browne (1945-1966), who was an heir to the Guinness fortune. He was socially precocious and during a spell of living in Paris had come to known the likes of Samuel Beckett, Jean Cocteau, and Salvador Dali. His mews home in Eaton Row became somewhere that band members went to if they wished not to be pestered by fans. It was in Browne's company that Paul McCartney was reputed to have taken L.S.D. for the first time.

Browne proved to be inclined to invest in fashionable ventures. He had an interest in a number of boutiques. He was one of the backers of Sibylla, a discotheque of unprecedented technological sophistication. The opening was attended by all four Beatles, three of the Rolling Stones, as well as the likes of David Bailey, Michael Caine, and Mary Quant. However, the venture proved to be ill-fated for some of those who were invested in it. Kevin MacDonald, one of the owners, killed himself by jumping off a roof. A few weeks later, Browne, reputedly having taken some L.S.D., drove his turquoise Lotus Elan through a red light in Redcliffe Gardens and crashed the vehicle into a parked van. He was killed. Suki Potier, a fashion model, was a passenger in the car. She suffered only minor bruises.

By happenstance, John Lennon, while browsing a newspaper, read an account of the coroner's court proceedings about the death and was prompted to write A Day In The Life. This became the closing track on Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967).

Location: 18-19 Eaton Row, SW1W 0JA (red, brown)

Redcliffe Gardens, SW10 9EX (blue, orange)

Sibylla, 9 Swallow Street, W1B 4DF (blue, red)

It's Getting Better

McCartney wrote most of It's Getting Better. Lennon added the line It can t much worse .

Strawberry Fields Forever

Martin s favourite memory of working with the group occurred in 1966. It was the first time he heard Strawberry Fields Forever (1966). Lennon played it for him on an acoustic guitar. Two different arrangements of the song were produced. The band asked him to combine them. This he proved able to do by varying the speed of the recordings.

The song was intended for what became Sergeant Pepper s. However, the band bent to E.M.I.'s wish that it be a single. They then stuck to the policy of not including previously released material on a new album. To their chagrin, Capitol included it in the American version of Magical Mystery Tour.

The White Album (1968)

The Beatles returned India with plenty of songs. They recorded these and wanted to release a double album. Martin was of the view that some of the songs were weak by their standards. Subsequently, he appreciated they seeking to fulfil their contractual obligations.

Abbey Road (1969)

On 9 August 1968 the photograph of the Beatles crossing the Abbey Road zebra crossing was taken for the Abbey Road album.

Let It Be (1970)

The Beatles, influenced by Bob Dylan's and The Band's Basement Tapes recordings, sought to achieve an unaffected honesty on Let It Be. They asked Martin to adopted a stripped-down approach. While the LP had strong individual songs it was not of their best quality as a whole. Lennon had worked on a recording of Instant Karma with Phil Spector. Without consulting anyone else, he gave the American the tapes of the Let It Be. These were redubbed. The first that MacCartney or Martin knew about reworking was when they heard the album on its release.

Martin developed a reputation for being the Fifth Beatle . MacCartney was always prepared to appreciate his gratitude for Martin's work on the band's record. Lennon much less so. During the recording of the album Let It Be he effectively sacked Martin and brought in Phil Spector to finish the record. Martin felt a degree of relief.

The Bootleg Beatles

The Bootleg Beatles was founded in 1980. The band has existed for far longer than The Beatles did.

Website: https://bootlegbeatles.com

Business

N.E.M.S.

Location: 13 Monmouth Street, WC2H 9DA. In 1963 the building became Epstein's first office in London. (red, orange)

5-6 Argyll Street, W1F 7TE (blue, yellow)

24 Chapel Street, SW1X 7BY. Epstein rented a two-bedroom flat at Waddon House, Williams Mews off Lowndes Square. He was burgled there. He bought No. 24 Chapel Street. (purple, yellow)

Tony Barrow

Tony Barrow (1936-2016) was the group's press agent from 1962 until 1968. Before going to university the Liverpudlian had secured himself a record review column in The Liverpool Echo newspaper that he had written under a pseudonym. While keeping up the column, he joined the staff at Decca, where he wrote sleevenotes and the text on album covers. In 1961 Brian Epstein contacted him to ask him to mention the group the column. Barrow told that first they needed to put out a record. He helped secure the band an audition at Decca. They failed this.

The band signed to E.M.I.. Epstein asked Barrow for advice about publicity for the release of Love Me Do. For a fee of 20 the publicist put together a one-off press kit. This so impressed the manager that he set out to hire the man. He persuaded him to join N.E.M.S. by offering to double his salary to 32 a week. Barrow nurtured a band of compliant Fleet Street journalists. They proved to be willing not to mention the fact that Lennon was married. The publicist was also assiduous in wooing the regional and provincial press. He coined the phrase the Fab Four .

Barrow appreciated McCartney's co-operativeness and regarded him as being the natural showman in the group. Despite having to smother numerous stories that were caused by Lennon's anti-social behaviour, Barrow ended up becoming closest to him. The ice between them was broken after a drunken late-night conversation in The Speakeasy. During it they talked about non-showbusiness matters, such as mortgages. The musician's was somewhat larger than publicist s.

In July 1966 Lennon's remark that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus now remark was made to Maureen Cleave, an Evening Standard journalist. It did not cause a stir in Britain. The following month, on the eve of what was to prove to be the group's final American tour, Barrow felt able to offer the interview to the American teen magazine Datebook. The quote triggered a hullabaloo. He countered this by ensuring that a press conference that they gave in Chicago was televised. During it, the clearly shaken Lennon, made a short apology.

Barrow left the Beatles when they set up Apple. His sensibilities were still very much rooted in Tin Pan Alley pop. He became a freelance music publicist. He left the industry after being perplexed by Punk.

Apple

Neil Aspinall (1941-2008) attended the Liverpool Institute grammar school with McCartney. On leaving school, he trained to become an accountant. He moved into a house in West Derby that was owned by the Best family. He helped Mona Best run the Casbah teenage club.

In July 1961 Aspinall became the Beatles road manager, driving their white Commer van.

In August 1962 Epstein sacked Best. Aspinall sought to end his association with the group but Best persuaded him to remain with them.

As the band grew to be more famous Mal Evans started working with Aspinall. Evans was a telephone engineer who had worked as a doorman at The Cavern.

Apple Corps was set up. A number of the Beatles lived on Montague Square. The district had been known as Apple Field. In January 1968 Aspinall became the company's administrator, a post he retained until his death. He was never given a job title because Martin did not think that he had the social graces with which to deal with E.M.I.'s senior management.

In 1969 Allen Klein became involved in the Beatles affairs. Lennon gave him a free hand but told him to leave Aspinall and Evans alone.

In 1973 Klein was dismissed.

In the post-Klein Apple, Aspinall was wary of overexposing the Beatles.

In 1976 Evans was shot dead by a police officer in Los Angeles.

In 2007 Aspinall left Apple.

In 2007 Apple Corps and Apple Inc. came to an agreement whereby the latter acquired all Apple trademarks, licensing some of them back to the former.

Location: 23 Ovington Square, SW3 1LJ (purple, turquoise)

3 Savile Row, W1S 3PB (purple, turquoise)

95 Wigmore Street, W1U 1FB. Apple Records's first home. (orange, turquoise)

Apple Boutique

The interior of the Apple Boutique was designed by the interior decorator Kenneth Partridge (1926-2015). He had been hired by Lennon to do a makeover of Kenwood, his 27-room house on the St George s Hill estate in Weybridge. Partridge had come to know the group through Epstein.

Location: 94 Baker Street, W1U 6FZ (purple, red)

Allen Klein

In March 1964 Allen Klein proposed to Epstein that the Beatles should sign to R.C.A. in America. The manager was unresponsive.

In December 1968, during the recording of the Rolling Stones Rock n Roll Circus Jagger recommended Klein to Lennon. The following month Lennon hired the American to be his manager. The following month Harrison and Starr signed similar contracts. McCartney refrained from doing so. He preferred to use the advice of Lee and John Eastman.

Klein secured a 25% royalty for the Beatles from E.M.I./Capitol. McCartney conceded that he made more money for the group in eighteen months than Epstein had made for them in six years.

In 2009 tapes of some interviews that the writer Ray Connolly had conducted with Lennon became public. These revealed that in September 1969 it had been Lennon who had first moved to break up the Beatles. However, this was kept quiet in order not to damage the sales of Let It Be.

In February 1971 McCartney launched a High Court action against Klein. The court ruled in McCartney's favour.

In 1971 Klein organised the Concert for Bangladesh at Madison Square Gardens. It was to be several years before he paid the money that it raised to U.N.I.C.E.F..

In March 1973 Lennon s, Harrison s, and Starr's management contracts with Klein expired. None of them were renewed.

In January 1977 litigation between Apple and Klein's ABKCO was finally settled.

Fans

The bands that derived their names from Beatles lyrics included Tangerine Dream. The name was a misheard version of tangerine trees in Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.

The polymath Don Letts's pre-Punk activities included amassing a large collection of Beatles-related items. Following his involvement with punk, he disposed of the collection.

Beatlemania

The term Beatlemania was coined by The Daily Mirror newspaper after The Beatles had topped the bill 13 October 1963 edition of the Sunday Night At The Palladium television variety show.

MPL Communications

Sir Paul McCartney is a force within the music publishing industry. His solo material and the copyrights that he has acquired are held through MPL Communications. However, the knight does not control the 259-song Beatles catalogue, which was co-owned by Michael Jackson, who bought it from Robert Holmes Court in 1985. The American singer and a rival submitted bids that were of an equal amount. The entertainer swung the deal in his favour by flying to Australia and giving a private performance for the vendor.

Location: 1 Soho Square, W1D 3BQ (red, pink)

Website: www.mplcommunications.com

Magic Alex

Magic Alex Mardas was the son a major in the Greek secret police. In Britain he worked as a television repairman. He shared a flat with John Dunbar, the first husband of Marianne Faithfull. Through her, he came to know the Rolling Stones. He built a psychedelic light box for Brian Jones. This was fitted with Christmas lights that flashed randomly. Jones introduced him to John Lennon. Mardas provided the Beatle with one. The musician used it when he was under the influence of L.S.D.. He introduced Mardas to the other three. They liked him as well and he became part of their entourage.

Mardas took against Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and warned two of the Beatles of his concerns about the man. In turn, George Martin had a low opinion of Mardas. The band established Apple Electronics as a futuristic electronics development business. A studio that he built for them, that he had claimed would be better than Abbey Road, had to be abandoned after a single session. Mardas brokered one of the few deals in which the band made a profit; it involved the purchase and sale of a Greek island. When Allen Klein took over the band's management, he closed the scheme down. Mardas won a number of libel suits about the honesty of his dealings with the Beatles.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

In 1959 Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (1918-2008) founded the International Meditation Society. It had a base in London.

In September 1966 Harrison went to India to study the sitar with Ravi Shankar.

In February 1967 Pattie Harrison attended a lecture on TM at Caxton Hall. Her concern about The Beatles increasing drug use prompted her to steer them towards the Maharishi.

On 4 August 1967 the Beatles heard the Maharishi speak at the Hilton Hotel in Park Lane. They subsequently attended a TM course at Bangor University, going there by train involved boarding the Mystical Express at Paddington station.

On 17 August Brian Epstein died.

In February 1968 the Beatles went to the Maharishi's ashram at Riskikesh in India for a three-month stay. Ringo came early; Paul left after ten weeks; and John's friend Alexis Mardas disliked the way in which the Maharishi clearly had a taste for worldly things. Lennon wrote Sexy Sadie about him.

34 Montagu Square

In 1965 Ringo Starr bought a lease on a flat at No. 34 Montagu Square. He and his first wife Maureen lived there for only a few months before moving to Weybridge. In 1966 Paul McCartney moved into the flat.

Chas Chandler moved into the flat. He brought Jimi Hendrix with him.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono posed naked in the flat for the record sleeve of the Two Virgins (1968) album.

In 1968 the police conducted a drugs raid on the flat. Lennon was convicted. The freeholder required Starr to surrender his lease.

Location: 34 Montagu Square, W1H 2LJ (red, blue)

Movies

A Hard Day's Night (1964)

Allan Williams (1930-2016) was a plumber by trade if not by training. He set up the Jacaranda coffee bar, which students from the Liverpool College of Art frequented. They included John Lennon and Stuart Sutcliffe. He was closely associated with the band in 1960-1. It was he who arranged for them to work at the Indra club in Hamburg. The character of the manager in the movie A Hard Day's Night (1964) was in in large part based upon Williams. He was a friend of the playwright Alun Owen (1925-1994), who wrote the screenplay. In his later years he became a frequent speaker at Beatles conventions.

For A Hard Day's Night (1964), the costume designer Julie Harris (1921-2015) got the Beatles out of their collarless jackets and into proper shirts and ties. She also dressed them in Help! (1965).

Yellow Submarine (1968)

The Beatles were contractually obliged to provide United Artists with a third movie. They had not enjoyed filming Help! (1965). As a result, they were receptive to the idea of a cartoon movie being used to fill their contractual obligation. However, they were wary of it at first and declined to allow their own voices to be used. Yellow Submarine was produced by Al Brodax. The art director was the Czechoslovakian exile Heinz Edelmann (1934-2009); Eric Segal and the Liverpudlian poet Roger McGough were amongst those who worked on the script. As it became apparent that the film was going to be original, The Beatles sought to involve themselves. Their wish was met by the creation of a short real-life segment that was added to the end.¹

¹. Segal, a Classics professor at Yale University, was to go on to have an international bestseller with his novel Love Story (1970).

Partners

Pattie Boyd

George Harrison met the model Pattie Boyd, while she was working as an extra on the movie A Hard Day's Night (1964). In January 1966 they married. She and George became vegetarian together. Her concern about The Beatles increasing drug use prompted her to steer them towards the Maharishi.

It was Boyd who found Friar Park near Henley-on-Thames as a home for them. The house had been the home of Sir Frank Crisp. Restoring the building and gardens developed into a passion for Harrison. The grounds included a 9m-tall model of the Matterhorn at his country seat. This contained underground caves that were connected by rivers, a herd of cast-iron goats, and a population of several dozen gnomes.

The cover of his album All Things Must Pass (1970) featured gnomes.

In parallel, Harrison's interest in his wife ebbed; his attitude not being helped by his cocaine and alcohol use. She was banned from picking any flowers in the garden.

In 1974 Boyd left Harrison for Eric Clapton.

Linda Eastman

In May 1967 the photographer Linda Eastman went to the Bag O Nails club in Soho to shoot Georgie Fame. There Paul McCartney met her for the first time. A week they met in Brian Epstein's Belgravia home for a party to unveil the Sergeant Pepper album.

In September 1968 McCartney flew Eastman to London for a date. Six months later they married. Procul Harum's A Whiter Shade of Pale became the couple's song.

Location: 8 Kingly Street, W1B 5PQ (orange, grey)

Yoko Ono

Yoko rebuffed John's first advances. She regarded him as being her social and artistic inferior.

Recording

The Beatles recorded 186 songs for E.M.I. over the period 1962-70

Norman Hurricane Smith (1923-2008), was George Martin's principal recording engineer. On 6 June 1962 he engineered the Beatles audition.

At the end of 1965 Smith worked on the Rubber Soul album and was then promoted to be a producer and so stopped being a member of the band's production team. He had overseen the recording of 180 tracks. At Martin's behest, Geoff Emerick (1945-2018) succeeded him as the Beatles's engineer. He proved to be willing to ignore the Abbey Road rigmarole and proved able to devise a number of highly experimental recording techniques for Revolver. He received grammies for his work on Sgt Pepper and Abbey Road. He had a low opinion of both George Harrison and Ringo Starr as musicians and was closest to Paul McCartney, who had become the musically dominant figure within the band. He found the band's internal tensions distressing and walked out during the recording of The White Album. McCartney was able to persuade him to supervise the construction of a studio within Apple's headquarters, after Magic Alex had made a hash of doing so, and he engineered the single The Ballad of John and Ono, the band s final No. 1 single. He participated in the recording of the Let It Be album. The sessions were largely amicable.

George Martin

In early 1962 Brian Epstein sent George Martin a demo tape of The Beatles. The producer gave a withering critique but still chose to audition the band. He then signed them to Parlophone. The reasons as to why exactly he did so are not clear. At the time, it was the industry orthodoxy that individuals singers were always more popular than groups. One theory that was an instance as his being punished by Sir Joseph Lockwood, the Chairman of E.M.I.. Martin's first marriage was disintegrating and he had had an affair with his secretary, who in 1966 became his second wife. The producer himself claimed that he was prompted to do so after he detected a strange quality in their roughness that he had not encountered before. He liked the fact that in person they were clean although their hairstyles were off-putting to him. He watched them perform in Liverpool and appreciated that collectively they conveyed a remarkable energy. He did not regard Peter Best's drumming as being good enough. The percussionist was soon replaced by Ringo Starr. Ultimately, he regarded them as being a project that at worst Parlophone could only lose a limited amount of money on. Realising that he would only have a limited budget to break them with, he persuaded Dick James to set up Northern Songs as a music publishing business.

Musical influences were exchanged. Upon one occasion played a recording of Ravel's Daphnis and Chlo Suite Number Two to John Lennon. The piece was nine-minutes-long. The Beatle's response was Yeah, it's great. The trouble is, by the time you get to the end of the tune you can t remember what the beginning's like. As he and they grew to one another humour played a large role in their relationship. Lennon and Harrison were awed that he produced records for The Goons.

The band took to calling him a toff ; Lennon sometimes referred to him as Biggles . Martin regarded their backgrounds as being not dissimilar from his own. In addition, they were all essentially musical autodidacts.

The band's first recording with Martin was Love Me Do. When it was finished the producer still had his doubts about the band. It managed to enter the charts put peaked in a low place. It was then rare for performers to record songs that they had written. He regarded Lennon & MacCartney's initial compositions as being too derivative. However, he allowed himself top persuaded to let them record Please, Please Me. At the end of the session in which the song was taped, Martin felt able to declare Gentlemen, you have just made your first No. 1 record! He was correct.

Martin was impressed by the Glenn Miller-like sophistication of the major sixth singing chord of She Loves You. Harrison played the sixth while the other two played the third and the fifth.

Martin s initial role as a producer was more executive than musical. However, the group's swift advances and the remarkable develop of Lennon and MacCartney's songwriting meant that they started to drawn on musical and technical skills. The role of the producer was reinvented.

Martin added a finesse to the band's very substantial talent. He employed the best musicians to supplement them. His work probably hastened their breakthrough and made their impact greater than it might have otherwise been. He proposed the Yeah, yeah, yeah chorus for She Loves You. He proposed that Yesterday should include a string quartet. He wrote Eleanor Rigby's string quartet. A sitar was employed on Norwegian Wood. The off-kilter character of the steam organs on Being For The Benefit of Mr Kite! was created by cut the tape into sections and then throwing the pieces into the air. They were then stuck together. As a result, some portions ran forwards and others backwards. A 41-piece orchestra was hired for A Day In The Life. The musicians were informed that he wished to hear the sound of chaos . This was created in E chord by having them start playing their instrument's lowest note and building to its highest over the course of 24 bars. They were told to ignore what the people next to them were playing.

Initially in the studio Martin guided The Beatles in the studio. They soon learned much of what could be done. His role switched to trying to fulfil their requests. He enabled them to work in sounds that previously would have only been part of the avant-garde. In retrospect, he stated that he had been their interpreter.

The Beatles became wealthy. However, Martin remained a salaried label employee. He attempted to negotiate a royalty payment arrangement with E.M.I.. The company turned him down. At the close it did not pay him a Christmas bonus. He went freelance and with John Burgess, Ron Richards, and Peter Sullivan set up Associated Independent Recordings (A.I.R.). The Beatles insisted that he should continue to produce their records. Therefore, E.M.I. found that it had to use his services and had to pay him a 0.2% royalty. In 1970 Martin opened AIR Studios. Cilla Black was the first person to record there.

Non-Beatles George Martin

George Martin (1926-2016) was born in Highbury the son of a carpenter. When the Depression hit his son was reduced to becoming a street corner newspaper vendor. However, he was six-years-old his parents acquired a piano. He was fascinated by the noises that it could make. Musically, he became self-taught. He managed to secure a place at Bromley County School. His clipped accent was the result of a deliberate decision that he made when sixteen to improve his vowels. He had cultivated a self-assured patrician manner. He formed a small dance band. However, in 1943 his future was put into suspension by his need to serve in the military. His time in the Fleet Air Arm had reinforced his belief in self-discipline. He was commissioned as an officer and acquired polished manners; he had a profound dislike of rudeness although was capable of swearing upon occasion. Following his demob he secured a place at the Guildhall School of Music to study composition and orchestration. His secondary instrument was the oboe, which he was taught by Margaret Asher (n e Eliot), the mother of Jane Asher, who was to be the girlfriend of Paul McCartney. After graduating, he worked as an oboist. In need of a regular income he took a job in the B.B.C. Record Library.

In 1950, on the strength of a recommendation from Sidney Harrison, who had taught him at the Guildhall, Martin secured a job as recording manager with E.M.I. s Parlophone Records. The label had a diverse roster but no major acts. He was soon put in charge of its Classical output. He also worked on jazz recordings. He learned the old school recording techniques. However, he was also open to innovation. In the studio he proved to be able to employ and out of it how to be able hold his drink when socialising with some of the artistes. In 1955 he was appointed to head the label. His first hits were with songs by Flanders & Swann, whom he first saw perform in a theatre in Notting Hill. In 1957 he extended its range to include comedy records. Peter Sellers's Any Old Iron reached No. 17 in the singles chart. Martin worked with the likes of Peter Cook, Spike Milligan, Dudley Moore, and Flanders & Swann. During one recording with Sellers the actor kicked a chair that flew into Martin's shins. The producer let out a shriek of pain. It ended up on the record. Parlophone had a mobile unit. Martin used this to record Scottish dance bands and Jimmy Shand. However, he appreciated that it could be used closer to home. Revue culture was having some major West End and Broadway successes.

The market for comedy began to decline. Martin responded to this development by extending Parlophone's range to pop music. In 1961 he produced his first No. 1 single. It was You re Driving Me Crazy. It was a 1920s pastiche that was performed by the nine-piece band the Temperance Seven. From 1959 to 1962 Adam Faith, whom Martin did not produce, had been the label's principal act. In spring 1962 the singer's popularity nosedive. As a result, Martin was looking for an act along the lines of Cliff Richard & The Shadows.

Martin s openness to innovation gave him an experimental side. The work of the B.B.C.'s Radiophonic Workship prompted him to record the single Time Beat under the alias Ray Cathode. He was open to Rolf Harris using aboriginal instruments on his records

Epstein made a trip in the United States. Among the records that he brought back with him was Dionne Warwick's version of Burt Bacharach and Hal David's song Anyone Who Had Heart. He played it to Martin who believed that it would be ideal for Shirley Bassey. The Liverpudlian was resolute that Cilla Black would record it. Her recording reached No. 1 in the charts. Bacharach and David wrote Alfie for her.

Martin recorded a number of other Merseybeat acts, many of them playing Lennon & MacCartney compositions. As a result, over the 1963-4 financial year bands that he recorded topped the charts for 40 weeks.

During the recording of the album Let It Be Lennon effectively sacked Martin and brought in Phil Spector to finish the record. Martin felt a degree of relief. He appreciated that he would be able to indulge in the professional promiscuity of working with a wide range of artists for short periods of time; America was the act that he worked the most with. A factor in this shift of work pattern that he had damaged his hearing during his time working The Beatles.

He proved to be modest about his achievements.

In 1973 MacCartney resumed working with Martin. The latter produced the orchestral version of the James Bond song Live and Let Die.

In the mid-1970s AIR Studios was acquired by the Chrysalis group of music companies. Martin became active in a number of them.

A new AIR Studios opened in a former church in Hampstead.

Martin was knighted in 1996. The following year he helmed Elton John's re-recording of Candle In The Wind to mark the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. It was producer's 30^th No. 1 single. He announced that he was retiring. However, the temptation to produce an all-star Beatles tribute album drew him back to the studio. He co-produced The Beatles soundtrack for Love (2006), the Cirque du Soleil show in Las Vegas.

Only eight years of his half-century-long recording career involved The Beatles.

Location: AIR Studios, Lyndhurst Hall, Lyndhurst Road, Hampstead, NW3 5NG

214 Oxford Street, W1C 1DA (purple, orange)

Website: www.airstudios.com

The Royal Variety Performance

In 1963 The Beatles played in the Royal Variety Performance at The Prince of Wales Theatre. John Lennon asked the people in the cheap seats to clap their hands and the rest of them to rattle their jewellery

Location: The Prince of Wales Theatre, 31 Coventry Street, W1D 6AS (blue, brown)

Website: www.princeofwalestheatre.co.uk

The Stones

Studio 51 jazz club in Great Newport Street was a trad jazz venue that was open to r n b. In September 1963 Lennon and McCartney bumped into the Stones, who had been practising there. The band was in need of a song to record. They all rejoined to the club where Lennon and McCartney demonstrated the as yet unfinished I Want You To Be Your Man. The Stones liked it. The pair finished the song in the space of a few minutes. The band recorded it the following day. Upon its release it gave them their first chart hit, reaching No. 12 in the singles chart.

Location: Studio 51, 10-11 Great Newport Street, WC2H 7JA (blue, grey)

Touring

Because of the hysteria with which they were greeted, The Beatles stopped performing live. On 29 August 1966, in San Francisco, they gave their final live concert performance to a paying audience.

The band's appreciation that they could not play Revolver's songs live prompted them to focus on albums.

The additional time that was available meant that they spent more time recording. It was a factor in their music becoming more experimental.

David Backhouse 2024