George Martin

George Martin produced almost every record the Beatles made, and the argument about whether he was a collaborator or a technician has never quite been settled, including by him. He was a carpenter's son from north London, played piano by ear, served in the Fleet Air Arm, studied oboe and composition at the Guildhall, and joined EMI's Parlophone label in 1950, where he spent a decade producing classical recordings and comedy records for Peter Sellers and the Goons. That comedy work mattered: it made him fluent in tape manipulation and sound effects years before rock producers were. He signed the Beatles in 1962 after every other major label had turned them down, told them their drummer would not do, and suggested that Please Please Me be played faster. His training supplied what they could not write down - the string quartet on Yesterday, the piccolo trumpet on Penny Lane, the score for Eleanor Rigby, the two differently pitched takes of Strawberry Fields Forever spliced together because Lennon wanted both, and the orchestral crescendo on A Day in the Life, which he conducted from an instruction to go from the lowest note to the highest. He also said afterwards that they would have found another way without him. He fell out with EMI over royalties, founded AIR Studios, produced Ferry Cross the Mersey, America and Jeff Beck, and worked on until his hearing failed. He was knighted in 1996 and died in 2016. He arranged and produced four James Bond themes, including Live and Let Die. His son Giles remixed the Beatles catalogue for later releases, working from the original tapes his father had recorded. Paul McCartney called him the fifth Beatle, a title Martin himself always declined.

• Lived: 1926 CE – 2016 CE
• Nationality: British
• Roles: artist