Beatles Producer George Martin on His Last Record: ‘I’ve Been Very Lucky’
It’s hard to imagine what the last 48 years would have sounded like without him. Simply stated, no producer has impacted music like Sir George Martin has. This week, the 72-year-old knob-twiddler/guru is officially hanging up his headphones with the release of In My Life, a selection of some of his favorite Beatles songs sung by his “friends and heroes.”
The 12 tracks on the album – including Goldie Hawn’s breezy cover of “A Hard Day’s Night,” longtime collaborator Jeff Beck’s instrumental take on “A Day In the Life” and Jim Carrey’s maniacal “I Am the Walrus” – are a fitting refrain to a career that saw Martin release more than 700 pop, jazz, folk, soundtrack, classical and comedy recordings.
Among the output, 30 Number One singles and sixteen Number One albums in England, as well as 22 Number One singles and 19 Number One albums in the States. Oh yeah, he also signed the Beatles. Rolling Stone Network sat down with the legendary record maker on the eve of his retirement. Some have gone, but he has certainly remained.
How does this record fit into the scheme of your life?
It is my last record. That’s absolutely certain. Not to be too dramatic about it, it’s just that somebody somewhere sometime has to call it a day. You know, I was 24 when I first started producing records and I’m now 72. That makes 48 years of recording, and I’ve been very blessed because I’ve worked with the best people in the world and I’ve had a marvelous amount of success. I’ve been very lucky.
In a lot of ways this record symbolizes your career. You have the comedy aspects, the instrumental aspects. Was that the idea behind it?
Yeah, I mean my life has been a mixed bag and this album certainly has been a mixed bag and it covers quite a lot of ground. But the essence of making an album like this was to have fun, really. I thought if I’m going to have a last record, I might as well enjoy it. And that’s why I selected some friends to start with, to work with, people I knew I’d get on well with. And then heroes, who I felt I’d get on well with.
Speaking of which, Jim Carrey was an interesting choice.
I didn’t know that Jim could sing. I was taking a gamble here. I contacted him and said, “look I’ve got a crazy idea. Would you like to talk about it?” And when I was in Los Angeles I went and had lunch with him. He went for the idea. He told me he could sing, so I got ’round a piano with him and ran through this song. I needed someone who, first of all, could get their tongue around all these very difficult words. Someone would could sing with a good sense of rhythm, someone who’d give a bit of a zany quality to it, because it needed that. John Lennon originally did it fairly straight. I mean, there was no overt humor in there. But I think if you’re going to do an alternative version, you might as well bring out the humor on it anyway, and Jim Carrey certainly did that. Again, it was a sense of fun that we were imbued with and we certainly had a great time doing it. Jim came over to England to record it and he brought over a whole gang of friends. Actually, he was on his honeymoon at the time, to be honest….