The Beatles LOVE Sir George Martin
The Beatles were the Fab 5, really: John, Paul, George, Ringo...and George. George Martin, the music producer who transformed the Beatles' sound from cute and danceable pop to a musical art form that virtually all musicians (across virtually all genres) have been emulating ever since, was the essentially "instrumental" 5th Beatle.
With the tragic deaths of John Lennon and George Harrison (Lennon was shot and killed in NYC in 1980, and Harrison died of brain cancer in 2001), only three of the five remain: Paul, Ringo and George Martin.
But they've still got the LOVE that they once proclaimed is "all you need." And they've still got the songs, as yet another generation of music lovers is fast discovering. And they've still got George Martin, who has the midas touch, like perhaps no other, in the recording studio, editing and mixing tracks.
With LOVE, "[Martin] has won over critics with a daring new album based on the Fab Four's music, but at the age of 80, [and losing his hearing], he is finally calling it a day.
"'It is the last I should think I shall do, because in two months' time I will be 81 and I am thinking of taking early retirement.'
"LOVE, a collaboration between Martin and his son Giles, is the soundtrack to a Cirque du Soleil Beatles show in Las Vegas.
"Using the latest technology, the Martins have 'layered' songs on to one another so that 'Strawberry Fields Forever' also features elements of 'Penny Lane' and 'Hello, Goodbye', while 'Come Together' is combined with 'Dear Prudence'.
"The 26-track CD from EMI features only original Beatles music with the exception of George Martin's string arrangement for 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps'." —CNN.com
Martin, who produced every Beatles album except Let It Be (legendary producer/engineer Glyn Johns was tentatively at the helm in the studio at this time, a time in the Fab 4's career that Martin has described as "rudderless") was enlisted to fashion LOVE with his son Giles, who wrote jingles in college before producing Kula Shaker, INXS and Hayley Westenra's Pure, the fastest-selling classical album in U.K. history.
McCartney and Starr gave their blessings whole-heartedly to the project.
Said McCartney, "We encouraged them to mess around as much and more than they wanted," he said in a video prepared for Friday's (11/17/06) launch of Love ahead of its release on Nov. 20. "The Beatles stuff getting showier and newer...It's like magic."
Magic indeed.
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