New Book 'George Martin: The Scores' Reveals How the Beatles Producer Did It
George Martin became the world’s most legendary producer with the Beatles, the studio wizard who teamed up with four lads from Liverpool to transform music. Now his music has been collected in a lavish new book, George Martin: The Scores, which will be published in April by Curvebender. It’s the first collection of his music manuscripts, opening up his personal archives. The Scores honors the late Sir George Martin on the occasion of his centenary — he was born 100 years ago, on Jan. 3, 1926.
The three-volume book includes dozens of his original handwritten scores for classics like “Strawberry Fields Forever,” “A Day in the Life,” “Here Comes the Sun,” “Yesterday,” “Live and Let Die,” and more. It also has a foreword from one of his biggest fans and closest collaborators: Paul McCartney.
George’s son Giles Martin, an acclaimed producer in his own right, tells Rolling Stone, “It’s a book of art, if you like, because his scores are very beautiful. There’s a fluidity to it. There’s a vibrancy to looking at that music on a page.”
The Scores is a project that began in the producer’ final years, before his death in 2016. “It was a very poignant project,” Giles says. “It was an idea I had with the Curvebender guys. Actually, when my dad was ill, I thought this would be a good thing to keep him going — let’s do a book of his scores.”
Martin was deeply involved in the project, despite his declining health. “He liked the idea, and then he died. I mean, he was 90,” Giles Martin says. But the producer dug deep into his vaults. “What it is, essentially, is a selection of his scores that we have taken and perfectly reproduced, in the same way that the ‘Yesterday’ score was done all those years ago. It’s a book of his scores with commentary — a deep dive into each arrangement, the history behind it, and a deep dive into how it was done.”
These are the manuscripts Martin saved after the recording sessions. Since they were his working sheet music in the studio, they include his handwritten edits, for an inside look at his creative process. Some have his ideas for alternate arrangements that didn’t make the final cut. The book also comes with an album: orchestral re-recordings of his scores, for a closer listen to his work. They were done in Studio Two at Abbey Road, the room where Martin made so much magic happen with the Beatles.
Source: Rob Sheffield/rollingstone.com
