1. Bernard Cribbins – Hole in the Ground (1962)
Let’s imagine, if we can, that George Martin had been a staff producer at EMI, but the Beatles had never happened. Would he still be remembered as a great record producer? Probably by fewer people – but, yes, he would. He was Abbey Road’s Joe Meek or Phil Spector – a tinkerer, an adventurer, a playful sonic experimentalist – only he was operating against the odds in a solidly conservative environment. That he was far more polite – and less prone to handling firearms – than his groundbreaking contemporaries came across in his sound, and explains how a bunch of his pre-Beatles productions (this, the Goons’ Ying Tong Song, Terry Scott’s My Brother) became favourites on BBC Radio 1’s Junior Choice.
2. Ray Cathode – Waltz In Orbit (1962)
In 1967 Paul McCartney and John Lennon both hung out with the first lady of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Delia Derbyshire (Paul in the studio; John, allegedly, at an orgy), but Martin had been drawn to the BBC-sanctioned den of avant garde benevolence before Love Me Do was even recorded. The melancholic Waltz in Orbit, a frail, beguiling single that predates the Dr Who theme by two years but also predicts much British electronica of the 90s – especially Aphex Twin and Broadcast – and so can claim to be more than three decades ahead of its time. The pseudonym Martin used was, appropriately, equal parts Peter Sellers and Warp Records.
3. Cilla Black – It’s For You (1964)
Cilla was taken very seriously by Martin, so much so that he refused to bump an Abbey Road studio booking in early 1967 for the Beatles (a huffy McCartney went off to record the arrangement for She’s Leaving Home with Mike Leander instead, leaving Martin feeling rather hurt). This lovely, tricksy ballad, Cilla’s fourth single, is largely given a Soho jazz club feel (not verité by any means – check the over-miked drum rolls and booming double bass) but on the instrumental section it breaks out into something else: rainswept, joyous and entirely English. It’s the sound of 60s Britain outside of the London bubble, humdrum but carefree, the 99% of the country that wouldn’t start swinging until the 70s.
4. The Beatles – A Day in the Life (1967)
Where to start? He encouraged the Beatles to record their own songs from their debut single. He indulged McCartney’s admiration for the Fahrenheit 451 score on Eleanor Rigby; he took two versions of Strawberry Fields in different keys and tempos, glueing them together at Lennon’s behest (“You can fix it, George”) to help create the greatest double-A side single of all time. With A Day in the Life, Martin laid the blueprint for every multi-part single from MacArthur Park to Bohemian Rhapsody to Paranoid Android. Imagine the song without Martin’s touch and you have little more than demos for Plastic Ono Band and the first McCartney solo album (great as they may be).
5. America – Tin Man (1974)
His being a member of the Beatles’ principal cast seemed to somehow work against Martin in 70s Britain, where he continued to work with Cilla, Rolf Harris and Matt Monro (notably on his pocket kitchen sink tale We’re Gonna Change the World). In the US, however, a Martin production was regarded as the gold standard, and its rarity highly prized. After working with the largely forgotten Seatrain, he produced this piece of sunny west coast fluff, as durable yet moreish as ice cream and still a US oldies radio staple.
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