Being old
skool means watching DVDs rather than downloads. I bought a BBC documentary on George
Martin a few months ago and finally gave it a spin a few nights ago.
It was great.
The inevitable Beatles sections were skillfully integrated with the bio details,
having his wife present and being interviewed by Giles, his son, were excellent
decisions. The judicious Beatle stories avoided all the well known stories and
instead centred on a few tracks like Eleanor Rigby. As time goes by nothing in
the Beatles canon is really obscure but it was nice to hear him credit the
violin sweeps in ER to both McCartney and the Psycho composer Bernard Herrmann
(yes composer of Psycho would have been better, I agree) and GM nil.
It helps, of
course, that the man’s a gentleman from a bygone era (a father figure to us all
definitely), but the documentary is not a hagiography. Old George is definitely
human! He can be curmudgeonly and resentful at times – the pay rate he received
while he and the Beatles were making musical and social history was derisive,
and he is presented smilingly by Giles as a highly competitive individual. His
well practised comment that Let It Be should be
listed as ‘produced by George Martin,
over produced by Phil Spector’ is said with a wry smile still.
The surprises
for me were the early years of abject poverty when his parents lived in London
(George the cockney deliberately changed his accent to sound like the posh BBC one) and the
extent of his pre and post Beatles work. I knew about the comedy records with
the Goons but not that Macca knew them so well. I also knew about producing America and
UFO but not Jeff Beck’s Blow By Blow. The clip of Cilla belting out Alfie with
Burt Bacharach was fantastic too. The girl has serious pipes!
The
documentary made me wonder what else I’ve missed by him actually.
Minor moan - I did find
myself wishing there was more footage of GM with the 2012 model Ringo and the
2012 model Macca. The obvious affection between them is special and we won’t
have the great man around forever so we kinda need to gorge on the relationship
while we can.
