George Martin- Interview- Pt. 1 (Please Please Me/With The Beatles) • 9/8/93 [RITY Archive]

okay this is uh september 8 uh september 9th september 9th 1993 interview with george martin at air studios september 8th september 8th september 8th september 8th okay that's what's your arm jet lagged september 8th okay here we go this is an interview with george martin air studios george i want to first talk to you about the please please me album which was the first album that you worked with the beatles on i'd like you to describe how you initially came to meet the group what you thought of them as personalities etc and there's a famous comment about george harrison's uh saying that i don't like your tie would you comment on that please well it all began i guess in 1962 when i first met them they came down to london because i'd heard a tape of brian epstein showed me played me which wasn't very good um this was what everybody else had heard because every other record company had turned them down and it was not great so i said i can't really judge it on this i'll have to see them so he brought them down from liverpool very reluctantly because they'd done this thing quite a few times before i'd gathered later and i met them and i worked with them in abbey road and i listened to them performing and the songs they performed then that where i own uh weren't very good you know there were things like one after 909 and p.s i love you and those kind of songs there was a version of please please me which was dire very slow roy orbison type mournful ballad and needed about three tons of dynamite behind it before you overhear it but i fell in love with the group and i i was intrigued by the sound the sound of the guitars and the bass guitar and drums and it's something that we're so used to now but in 1962 it was a comparatively new sound and so i we made a recording of them and i brought them into the control room i said look have a listen to this see what we've done to you and um is there anything you don't like let me know george harrison looked at me and said don't like your tie for a start and of course the other ones just pummeled him and said you shouldn't say that you fool you madness but we got all like ours on fire why do you feel the beetle is a very tight unit took to you do you feel as a result of your background with the goons and peter sellers how did they perceive you as a producer i i found out that i mean they were they knew who i was i was i was comparatively famous to them and of course they were completely unknown and the reason for that was that i'd made a lot of comedy albums with people like peter sellers and spike milligan the goons and a lot of other comic characters and they knew this and they they knew the albums i'd made and they thought they were great so i was a kind of hero to them and a small hero but i was i was they looked they were prepared to like me and as i was prepared to like them it was pretty good ask you to uh share your impression of the classic front album cover of the first album which was shot at emi house in manchester square uh we we made the first album which was please please me because please please me was the first uh song that hit it was a second record we issued and we speeded it up by this time i got it got them going on it and it was a very good title and i really realized very early on that we needed an album pretty damn quick and i knew what they could do i mean i'd seen all that stuff at the tavern i said look we need this album out very quickly if we're going to cash in on the single success you've got to come down and make an album and just roll off the titles like a like a broadcast and i think it was in february of 63 that we made the album and we did it in one day we started at 10 in the morning and finished 11 at night and uh i just worked them very hard and just recorded them almost like a like a broadcast you know we all i had was two tracks which actually wasn't even a two-track machine it was really a stereo machine that i converted and the reason for that was i kept their voice and their backing separate so i could later compress it together to make it a really good hard mono sound the idea of stereo didn't exist we didn't make stereo records in those days and so this album was done extremely quickly and i had to find an extremely quick cover and my first thought was to take them to the zoo i was a fellow of the zoo i've been i still am i i like animals and they happened to be around the corner of maybe road studios so i rang up the zoo and i said look i think it'd be a good idea if i took a photograph of the new group i have in front of the insect house i mean very corny idea but i was desperate and the zoo very smoothly said we don't allow commercial enterprises that sort i'm sorry we would never consider that a rock group in front of our insect house so they dismiss me so i had to think again and um they were in manchester square i said look we get a shot of you on the stairs you know i'll have a angus mcbain to come and take a shot of you looking out and that's it that's how we did it and it was really off the cuff stuff and i just told angus what to shoot and he did okay i know you partially answered this question so i'll combine this with the final question on the please please me album i was going to ask you to recall recording the first lp the fact that it was one day this is unparalleled of course in the world i wanted to get your recollections on that but let's go right to tell me about the session ending last track uh weren't there just two takes of twist and shout because john's voice was ravaged nearly shot could you talk a little bit about that yeah well of course one of the um one of the important songs in the cavern with the beatles was something that always got the crowd really going and that was a song called twists and sharp and it was a cover job by an american group and uh john used to perform it and really tear his lungs apart and his larynx apart it was a sound of tearing canvas when he's saying and i knew that if i had to record him i had i would only get a couple of takes because he could never do it more than two or three times without destroying his voice so in fact i left that until the very end of the day we did all the other songs anna chains misery and all that so all the songs on the please please me album and then 10 30 10 o'clock at night i say okay john time for twist and shout and he did a great take and i said okay let's try and make it better more vigorous great and so he did another take and i still pushed him and of course in the third take he said why why did you say to me it's all gone and that was it take two with the master okay all right anything at the end i'm glad it's gonna end anything you want to add for it's interesting that you know in interviews john always was very unsure of his voice i mean did that kind of surprise you in in the rest of the beatles he always i know wanted something done to his voice and he he's even spoke about twist and shout kind of being embarrassed by his vocal performance where i've read so many musicians saying that is the best most heartfelt emotional performance i mean there was that dichotomy where he was confident about his abilities but then unsure as well did was that surprising for you that well he always he always downgraded his voice he didn't like his voice and john didn't like most things i mean john didn't like his own voice and he didn't like much of the stuff we did many years many years later i was having dinner with him in the dakota with yoko and we were chatting about old times and he suddenly said to me he said you know if i had my way i'd do everything all over again i said do you really mean that we're talking about 300 odd songs you know you really mean that everything yeah absolutely everything i said what a song like strawberry fields he said especially strawberry fields i said you amaze me and it was obvious that john always had that ideal that could never quite be reached he had a a picture in his mind that was always better than reality he lived in a kind of dream world maybe he's got it now i hope so okay let's move on to with the beatles this was the second lp released uh in the uk we're doing these in the uk released order of course they're all different in the states we'll get into that in a minute with the beatles your opinion first of all of the classic half shadow cover photo by robert freeman let's talk about that please with the beatles was the second album we made and it was done in the same years please please me and so it was quick you know pretty pretty hard on the heels the first one because we were building up a tremendous success every every single that we brought out in england was number one and still america refused to let us in the capital records which uh which emi owned still didn't think that our records were right for america so every number one we made still didn't get get released by a capital and with when we started doing with the beatles um it was a little bit more ambitious than the first one because it wasn't done in one day the boys had a little bit more time to prepare their tracks but it was still pretty basic and pretty basic songs but still pretty good and when it came to doing the cover they came forward with an idea obviously they thought our shots up the upper staircase weren't too great which i quite appreciated and um they had been working in germany with stuart suckliff of course who died and his girlfriend was astrid and she was a photographer and she had actually taken a photograph of the beatles in half light with with the light shining on half their faces rather like a moon shadow and they liked this idea and they spoke to robert freeman about it who's a very good photographer we used bob felt it was a great idea too and he recreated that idea for with the beatles and that black and white cover became probably one of the best known covers of all time because it was so distinctive showing that just the half phase okay now you've um explained what the recording process was like on that particular album uh give us an idea of uh how the beatles would present new songs to you before you would cut an album by the time we did um the album with the beatles we got into a fairly set routine um before i met them they didn't know much about recording studios but they learned fast and my speciality was organizing them getting them tidy um if i listen to a song i would arrange it so it was a bit more commercial than the way they presented it to me and so our general routine was for me to hear a song and learn it and if it was john or paul they would generally stand in front of me with their acoustic guitars and just sing it so i could hear it and i would sit perching myself in an eye store okay amaze me come on let me hear it and they would sing it to me and then i would go back and i'd go over to the piano say okay the these are the chords and this is the melody and they say no you've got a slightly different chord there i would i would get to know the song and then i would go to them and say okay well i don't think it's a good idea to start like that i think we should start this way i would take something out of song and make it an introduction and which we probably use the tag for the end and i say well the song lasts for one minute 10 seconds you need it longer than that we've got to repeat something we've got to have a solo to spend the time out what are we going to do a guitar seller whatever you know and that was the way it was organized in with the beatles days pretty primary stuff really but effective and it did sell with the uh recording of with the beatles it marks george harrison's first solo composition don't bother me any comments on that because up until that time it was all cover material and lennon mccartney material well as i said before the beatles um i didn't say it before so i'll start again well the beatles initially didn't show a great deal of talent in songwriting when i first met them at any rate the songs they offered me weren't very good and love me do was the best i could find as the first run but once they had a success with please please me they seem to blossom the songwriters they they from me to you followed and she loves you and so on and each one was a great song great commercial song and they all wanted to write their own material they all wanted to perform their material and george harrison was no exception and he was struggling with songwriting too and of course i didn't focus on him as much as i focus on the other two because the other two were a very strong team and george was a loner so um but we wanted him to be part of it i would like ringo to have been writing songs too but he showed nothing there and george's first contribution was don't bother me well it was a pins enough song but it wasn't going to set the world light but because it was george we wanted it on the album okay let me get to the big question which was uh along with many successive beetle albums this album with the beatles was later truncated in america and called meet the beatles what did you and the beatles think of this practice that was happening where how capital would change the albums and also incorporated in this discussion if you would give us where in the time frame i want to hold your hand was recorded because obviously it was the song in america that launched them from the meet the beatles album but it was not one of the first couple of songs that they recorded we none of us were very happy with what was happening with capital records in america to begin with we'd been turned down so many times and it was only on the fourth attempt that they actually agreed to release us when they couldn't resist the build-up that had happened i mean they turned down please please me um i forgot my second media familiar they turned down from please please me from me to you she loves you they turned on three three great records and i had to get them released on small labels in order to try and build up some interest and eventually that the damn burst and they had to release i want to hold your hand and that kind of flooded the american market and i went over to america with them in the early days of 64. and i saw the effect of this this flood of talent and when it was complete saturation and no matter where you turned your dial in on the radio in new york at any time of the day you would hear a beatles song being played it was amazing really um at that stage capital then said okay we've discovered a great group and they became the proprietors and the owners and the the the big people which i resented great deal in fact they kept me out of all press conferences they wouldn't let me they wouldn't let me get any other prayers um which is rather funny really and also at that time they wanted to change uh albums now there was a certain amount of logic here because the american copyright laws are different from the english copyright laws in england at that time you paid your copyright royalty as a total amount on the album which was divided equally by the number of tracks so if you had six tracks on the album you've got one sixth of the total you had 14 tracks you've got one fourteenth the total in america each track carried a definite sense number of cents for each in royalty and we were issuing 14 tracks on an album because we want to give good value for money and the american company said we can't do that because it'll cost us too much in copyright royalties we'll only issue 11 tracks so they became three extra tracks with each album which they then tended to save up in order to put out another album sometime so that all the albums got out of phase with england it should never have been allowed to happen but it did now sequencing is a vital process and a record and in essence this butchering of the british albums for the american market do you think it deluded the power and impact of the of each lp i'm sorry okay sequencing is a vital aspect to any record obviously so in the essence of this butchering of the british pressings in america do you think this had any uh effect on diluting the power and impact of each lp i can't really say that it has diluted the power of the beatles in america because they were invincible so but i certainly didn't approve of the sequencing they did i didn't think the american albums were as good as the british albums i think but i'm biased aren't i um i i'd much rather listen to the british albums and of course that's what we hear nowadays because they've they're being translated they have been translated to cds in the original form okay we're going to ken hold on one second we're going to go into the next record let me ask you though before we go into a hard day's night uh since you were with the beatles in america what were your impressions of them when they did the ed sullivan show and the first uh were you at the carnegie hall show or were you at the taping of the headset it was at the washington show okay talk about that and were you at the ed sullivan show or did you see it on television i was with them at the adventure talk about that yeah so pick it up from when they did the edsel okay well once they'd made a big success um i went over with them to see what was happening and i saw the effect for myself in america which was wonderful for me and i kind of became a groupie with them and i went down to florida and i saw them with cassius clay fooling around and saw them when they went on the ed sullivan show and i mean it was a very brief appearance but it obviously had a tremendous effect upon the american audience i saw them at the washington concert where they were in the round and they were in this stadium with audience all around them and after every few numbers they would all rotate so they presented themselves to each face of the audience and i was sitting in the show enjoying it and clapping along with the rest and a little kid beside me was amazed to see this old man well i was pretty old i was about 37 but it was old to him um you know enjoying the show and he said excuse me sir do you like the beatles i said i really do he said i think they're great too and he was so pleased that this rather square englishman was rooting with him too you

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Published: Mon May 03 2021