Even before the legendary Beatles producer Sir George Martin died in March, his son Giles found himself the recipient of a staggering family inheritance. For years, the 46-year-old, a producer in his own right, has acted as a custodian of the music of the Beatles.
In recent months, he has been in charge of several major Beatles-related assignments: new high-definition mixes for the DVD compilation Beatles 1+; restoration of audio from early Beatles concerts for an upcoming Ron Howard documentary about the band’s touring years; and preparing the Beatles’ catalogue for streaming beginning last Christmas.
Martin is well aware that Beatles devotees the world over are placing his efforts under an extraordinary amount of scrutiny. “I do a mix, or change something, and I’m analyzed and criticized by everyone,” he says, speaking from northern Spain where, he says only half-jokingly, he is “escaping the Beatlemaniacs”.
Martin has non-Beatles assignments too, in film (he worked on Kingsman: The Secret Service) and as “Sound Experience Leader” for Sonos, the wireless speaker specialists. But he acknowledges that he and the music of the Beatles are by now inextricably linked.
“It’s a mixed feeling,” he says. “Do I really want to have this around my neck? I mean, to be the son of George Martin and then doing all the Beatles stuff? I remember voicing this concern to a producer friend and he said to me, ‘If you don’t do it, someone else would love to do it.’
“At the same time, I feel deeply honored to be trusted by them, and by my dad, to be the person that protects it, makes sure standards are kept, and also innovates.”
Most recently, Martin has been revisiting and revising his work on perhaps his most high-profile Beatles project. Cirque du Soleil’s Love has been seen by an estimated 8 million people in more than 4,500 performances since it opened in the purpose-built Mirage Theater in Las Vegas in 2006. The show sees Cirque du Soleil’s performers enact their acrobatic feats to the accompaniment of Beatles songs, from I Want to Hold Your Hand and Help! through to Something and Get Back.
The show’s soundtrack, also released as an album in 2006, consists of fresh mixes of some songs, together with new sonic collages and mash-ups concocted by Giles Martin. Drive My Car, for example, is sliced and diced and combined with The Word; Within You Without You is laid over Tomorrow Never Knows; and the sinister waltz of I Want You (She’s So Heavy) barges into Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite! The mixes are audacious musical feats worthy of comparison with the most impressive Cirque du Soleil routine.
The show has been given a makeover for its forthcoming 10th anniversary, to be officially celebrated on Thursday 14 July, with brighter costumes and characters (the Blue Meanies, the grinning beasties from the animated feature Yellow Submarine, have joined the party), an overhaul of the theatre’s audio-visual technology and new imagery from the Beatles’ film and video archive. For his part, Martin has spruced up the songs and setlist – adding, among other things, Twist and Shout to inject some rock’n’roll energy into the early parts of the show.
There are those who balk at the very idea of Love – mostly those who resist the populist entertainment of Cirque du Soleil. A number of George Martin obituaries referred to the show as if it were the result of a lapse of judgment.
It has ample rewards, though, for the open-minded Beatles fan: the way the opening Hammond organ notes of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds flicker to life like fireflies at dusk, or the sensual, ménage à cinq aerial choreography of Something. One of the most effective set pieces, to A Day in the Life, might be interpreted as being about John Lennon’s relationship with his mother, its climactic piano chord signifying the devastating finality of death. With more than 8,000 speakers in the theatre, Love is, at the very least, a spectacular listening party.
“The intention was always to make sure a) the Beatles are happy; b) I don’t screw anything up; and c) the people who actually own and care for the music, the fans, they’re stimulated by it,” says Martin. “Love was really a mission in making people listen and not merely hear.”
Giles Martin first started tinkering with the Beatles’ music in the early 90s, when he was still a student. He was brought in to sessions for the Beatles Anthology albums to provide a second pair of ears for his father, who had been gradually losing his hearing. In 1996, Giles again collaborated with his father on In My Life, a compilation of Beatles tracks that featured an all-star roster of performers at the mic, including Sean Connery (performing a spoken-word version of the title track) and Jim Carrey (contributing keyboards and manic vocals to I Am the Walrus).
When a Cirque du Soleil/Beatles show was first conceived – George Harrison pitched a collaboration to Cirque founder Guy Laliberté in 2000 – the initial idea was to create new dance remixes of the old songs, with Fatboy Slim pegged as someone who might oversee the musical side of things. When Giles Martin heard of those plans, he suggested an alternative approach, one that used only the music the Beatles themselves had created. It would be “the gig that never happened”, he says.
Martin spent three months working on his mixes, on spec, before the project even got the green light. “I really thought I would get fired. I didn’t think anyone in their right mind would approve of it, so I just enjoyed it, really.”
For Martin, it was thrilling to get inside the original Beatles recordings, hearing the quirks of isolated vocal and instrumental tracks. “You don’t quite believe, with these iconic records, that somebody actually sat down and played it. To hear someone talking under a count-in and then playing the bit you know so well … wait a second, this wasn’t magically put on a tape machine – there is actually someone doing this?” At the same time, Martin was nervous about how his experiments would be received, feeling like he was “painting a moustache on the Mona Lisa … I thought, Oh my God, I’m going to get lynched for this.’”
As it turns out, Love remains one of Cirque du Soleil’s most popular productions. The show’s grand opening in 2006 was also the occasion of the biggest ever reunion of the Beatle extended family, with Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono, Olivia Harrison, Barbara Starr, Cynthia Lennon, Julian Lennon, Sean Ono Lennon, Dhani Harrison and George Martin in attendance.
With the death of George Martin, the production has assumed a new poignancy. Though Martin Sr had reservations about the project initially, he warmed to it, and father and son ended up working closely together on it.
“I would sit and chop things up and create stuff and think about the show, he would come in on Thursday, and I’d play him bits and we’d talk about it, and just have a nice time together. Regardless of whether the show was a success or not, I would always be so grateful for that. Very few people have the chance of going through their dad’s dirty laundry for two years.”
The show also features George Martin’s string arrangement – which he composed at age 80, when his hearing had almost completely deteriorated – for George Harrison’s acoustic demo of While My Guitar Gently Weeps. The song, with that arrangement, was performed at George Martin’s memorial service.
There’s another reason to recognize George Martin’s indelible contribution to the Beatles catalogue in the coming weeks. Next month marks the 50th anniversary of Revolver, a high point of his relationship with the band. The album shines with his production genius: the macabre strings on Eleanor Rigby, the eerie yelps of backwards guitar in I’m Only Sleeping, the Goons-esque revelry and sound effects of Yellow Submarine and the startling sonic seance that is Tomorrow Never Knows.
“He is …” Martin stops himself. “He was brilliantly musical. Dutiful in his approach and sensitive, and at the same time groundbreaking. ‘Take a sad song and make it better’ is what my dad did, and that’s his legacy, really. Every time you hear a Beatles song, he’s part of that.”
His father was also humble about his legacy until the end, Martin says.
“He knew he was going to die, I knew he was going to die, and I said, ‘Dad, you signed the Beatles. Just think about that. If you did nothing else, just imagine how much you’ve given to the world.’ And he said, ‘You know? I did the best I could.’”
{ SOURCE: The Guardian | https://goo.gl/1sCHul }
