“Everything you've heard about that man is true”: a tribute to 'the fifth Beatle', George Martin
Every evening at 6pm, a gin and tonic was brought to him.
High on a mountainside on the Caribbean island of Montserrat, overlooking a valley leading down to the ocean, stood a recording studio. George Martin, who’d built it, liked to let his hair down when he made albums there. Within reason, that is.
The famously suave producer, renowned for his cut‑glass accent, had a well‑known distaste for rock ’n’ roll excess. His routine at AIR Montserrat was much more civilised: every evening at 6pm, a gin and tonic was brought to him by a butler in a white jacket. Martin, an immaculate dresser himself, would relax in shorts and flip‑flops.
“You could walk out of the studio, take three steps and you’d be in a swimming pool,” says Midge Ure, who recorded at AIR Montserrat in the ’80s. “It was a glamorous, luxurious environment. It was your place; nobody else went there. Very chilled, very British in its weird little way.” Gold and platinum discs rolled in.
Ure’s band Ultravox had persuaded Martin to produce their 1982 album Quartet. The 56‑year‑old “Fifth Beatle” wasn’t used to synthesiser bands, but he surprised them with his knowledge of new technology. Ure: “I remember him timing the gaps between snare hits on a LinnDrum and saying, ‘If we delayed it by 15 milliseconds, it would have a slightly more human feel.’ Nothing fazed him.”
Prior to Ultravox, Martin had worked on Montserrat with Cheap Trick and the heavy metal band UFO. In the ’70s he’d produced Cleo Laine, the Mahavishnu Orchestra and Jeff Beck. On paper, his CV since his Abbey Road heyday looked eccentric – and was notable for its sparseness of ex‑Beatle solo projects – but then, out of the blue, Paul McCartney reached out to his old mentor and invited him to produce Tug Of War (1982).
Source: David Cavanagh/uncut.co.uk
