You would think that a few minutes listening to We Can Work It Out; From Me To You; Please Please Me; And I Love Her or any other of dozens of sparkling, fifty-year-old songs would be enough of a tribute to a dead ninety-year-old but no, not for the New People, the FlashMourners, the Necro-Babblers,
they've been out and about today, messaging, tweeting the dead, thanking Sir George Martin for his life. What the fuck's the matter with them? Talking to the dead. He can't read the Guardian, filled with messages to him, and even if he could read I'm sure he wouldn't be polluting his everlasting life with Oh-No-ing Twitterites.
they've been out and about today, messaging, tweeting the dead, thanking Sir George Martin for his life. What the fuck's the matter with them? Talking to the dead. He can't read the Guardian, filled with messages to him, and even if he could read I'm sure he wouldn't be polluting his everlasting life with Oh-No-ing Twitterites.
I'VE JUST SEEN A FACE
That documentary was just broadcast again, George Martin and his missus and son in their country pile, talking about this or that aspect of their own perpetual Beatlemania; Fab Macca fabbing his arse off, like he does, in reminiscence with Sir George - Hey, and do you remember when John said this and I went like that and you were just like so out there and Linda was just like being Linda, You Kno-o-o-w, like she did. He's the proof, Sir Paul, that a fierce musical intelligence can't be transposed to the real thing, not even with a string quartet. But why should it, if everybody was as good at what they do as Paul McCartney is at what he does then the world would be a place of very different properties.
Ringo was there, too, guffawing with Sir George, although never in the same shot as Sir Paul, clapping his hands to illustrate the miracle of his drumming, looking every inch the luckiest man alive, which he is.
He always came across as polite and benign, did George Martin, with none of the bombast and hauteur of much lesser showbusiness people but I bet that inside he's a proper Mean Mr Mustard - utterly, eternally pissed-off that it was the Beatles and EMI who made all the money, and he didn't, and that after his years of patient tutelage and inspiration the ghastly moptops took the Let It Be tapes from him and gave them to junkie-murderer, Phil Spector, for him to fuck them up. I suppose it's like that for a jobbing producer, dealing with a roomful of posturing egomaniacs, especially a quartet of pilled-up psycho-Scousers, and there's a novel, a real novel in that relationship, a proper musician, polishing a beatgroup turd into a brilliant, dazzling global enthusiasm. Now that he's dead, maybe his missus will spill some Fabster beans, about how he really felt.
As to the ubiquitous Fifth Beatlehood, conferred upon anyone who knew them and then died, leaving the newspapers scratching their heads for something to say, well, Sir George was only the third- or fourth- or fifth-Fifth Beatle. There was Stuart Sutcliffe, often referred to as the FB but who was actually an original Beatle; there was Pete Best, the original Beatles drummer sacked by George Martin, with, it must be said, a fervent lack of loyalty from John, George and Paul, I betcha Pete isn't tweeting fond farewells to Martin, tonight; Mal Evans and Neil Aspinall, Beatles roadies and gofers, have both been called the Fifth Beatle, as has their Hamburg friend, musician Klaus Voorman. Brian Epstein, their manager, who quite literally made it all happen for them, when he died he was called the Fifth Beatle. And now, Sir George Beatle. Be a pretty packed studio, wouldn't it, with all those Fifth Beatles.
The true fifth Beatle, of course, is known to all, and she joins us now. When her husband was killed a quarter of a million Lennonites descended on Central Park, New York, chanting and singing and praying and weeping, until Yoko complained that they were keeping her awake and would they all just fuck off;
Yok-ho, too, is artist,
an' pwophet an' genius,
like Joh', only more.
To create new rock a' roh century
Yok-ho need sleep.
Noh-won wi' be watchi' us
Why doh we do it in de roh.
Look a' lightbulb, an' breathe, see, is art; screech-screech-screech, bang-bang-bang, see, is rock-ah-roh symphony. Yok-ho is work of art. Joh' was quite good but Yok-ho is real McHoy. Is like Joh' say, evewybody go' somethin' to hide, cep' for me a' my mohn-key.
Shake i' up, baby
Twiss an' shou'
Man call George? Ah so, twiddle knob an' push butto'. Is no-one.
Fifth Beatle is Yok-ho. An' first Beatle, an secon' Beatle. Beatle is all Yok-ho. An' Joh.
But mainly Yok-ho.
Climb ladder an' see apple, is Beatle magic. Breathe. An grow beard, is Beatle art. Everyone is Beatle, come togetha an' worship Beatle Queen Yok-ho. God-Empress Yok-ho write all Beatle song, Bang-bang-bang, screech-screech-screech,
Joh' is dead, Joh' is dead,
Long live Yok-ho Ono-Beatle.
Fifth, first and always.
That was Yoko Ono for us, there, at 84 years young;
the original rock-chick,
still screeching after all these years.
NOT FADE AWAY
There's a lacquer you can buy for brass, stops it tarnishing.
George Martin sprayed some such over those early Beatles songs.
The chord structures and the harmonies are all their own, McCartney could sing - and eventually play - anything; Lennon, like Keith Richard, sang great harmony and the other two were at least adequate.
Somehow Martin wrought a coalescence, which although produced and engineered as far as then possible, retained and retains a smiling effervescence, complex and deceptively simple; George Martin was, accidentally, the greatest pop record producer of his own time and in my judgement he is too modest, the Beatles were extremely fortunate to have known him. Martin wasn't a Fifth Beatle, he was far more important than that.
BABY, YOU'RE A RICH MAN.
Everybody did very well out of the Beatles; their managers and publishers, their wives and staffs made fortunes, the quartet for a time were demi-gods, McCartney still is; journalists prospered from Beatlemania and unlicensed retailers made fortunes from BeatleTrash and today I, among millions of others, still occasionally enjoy their early tracks, in between Byrd and Tallis, Handel and Beethoven. I listen up-close, on the laptop's soundbar, to sounds as fresh as morning dew. I buy the odd Anthology and rarity and in some sleepless nights, trawl youtube for filmed studio performance. New generations also buy into BeatleProduct and most of this bonanza is owed to George Martin's toe-tapping, singalong knack and his personal dexterity in directing and assisting, for so long, a group of uncouths whose nemesis was writ large from the start.
I do wish he had jumped ship before the ghastly Sergeant Pepper destroyed rock'n'roll forever - or at least until Punk came along - but I only have to hear Hide Your Love Away or I'm Looking Through You to joyfully forgive him that one lapse in judgement.
Seems fair, too, that he lived long, happily and prospered, dying among his family, largely untouched by showbusiness.
It only comes to about eight hours of music, the whole Beatles canon, and both he and the surviving Fabsters have individually produced much more than that, but as far as most people are concerned they may as well not have bothered with any of that other stuff.
It was a phenomenon of the time, Beatlemania and there has been nothing approaching it since, in scale or impact; it was marketing, it was teenage hormones, it was non-deferential and pseudo-revolutionary but most of all it was the music, the peg from which these other things hung.
Creating them, perhaps unwittingly, George Martin was the hidden face of the Swinging Sixties; it wasn't the times which produced the music, it was the music which, for good and ill, produced the times.
NecroBabbling at George Martin online seems such a betrayal.
The true fifth Beatle, of course, is known to all, and she joins us now. When her husband was killed a quarter of a million Lennonites descended on Central Park, New York, chanting and singing and praying and weeping, until Yoko complained that they were keeping her awake and would they all just fuck off;
Yok-ho, too, is artist,
an' pwophet an' genius,
like Joh', only more.
To create new rock a' roh century
Yok-ho need sleep.
Why doh we do it in de roh.
Look a' lightbulb, an' breathe, see, is art; screech-screech-screech, bang-bang-bang, see, is rock-ah-roh symphony. Yok-ho is work of art. Joh' was quite good but Yok-ho is real McHoy. Is like Joh' say, evewybody go' somethin' to hide, cep' for me a' my mohn-key.
Shake i' up, baby
Twiss an' shou'
Man call George? Ah so, twiddle knob an' push butto'. Is no-one.
Fifth Beatle is Yok-ho. An' first Beatle, an secon' Beatle. Beatle is all Yok-ho. An' Joh.
But mainly Yok-ho.
Climb ladder an' see apple, is Beatle magic. Breathe. An grow beard, is Beatle art. Everyone is Beatle, come togetha an' worship Beatle Queen Yok-ho. God-Empress Yok-ho write all Beatle song, Bang-bang-bang, screech-screech-screech,
Joh' is dead, Joh' is dead,
Long live Yok-ho Ono-Beatle.
Fifth, first and always.
That was Yoko Ono for us, there, at 84 years young;
the original rock-chick,
still screeching after all these years.
NOT FADE AWAY
There's a lacquer you can buy for brass, stops it tarnishing.
George Martin sprayed some such over those early Beatles songs.
The chord structures and the harmonies are all their own, McCartney could sing - and eventually play - anything; Lennon, like Keith Richard, sang great harmony and the other two were at least adequate.
Somehow Martin wrought a coalescence, which although produced and engineered as far as then possible, retained and retains a smiling effervescence, complex and deceptively simple; George Martin was, accidentally, the greatest pop record producer of his own time and in my judgement he is too modest, the Beatles were extremely fortunate to have known him. Martin wasn't a Fifth Beatle, he was far more important than that.
BABY, YOU'RE A RICH MAN.
Everybody did very well out of the Beatles; their managers and publishers, their wives and staffs made fortunes, the quartet for a time were demi-gods, McCartney still is; journalists prospered from Beatlemania and unlicensed retailers made fortunes from BeatleTrash and today I, among millions of others, still occasionally enjoy their early tracks, in between Byrd and Tallis, Handel and Beethoven. I listen up-close, on the laptop's soundbar, to sounds as fresh as morning dew. I buy the odd Anthology and rarity and in some sleepless nights, trawl youtube for filmed studio performance. New generations also buy into BeatleProduct and most of this bonanza is owed to George Martin's toe-tapping, singalong knack and his personal dexterity in directing and assisting, for so long, a group of uncouths whose nemesis was writ large from the start.
I do wish he had jumped ship before the ghastly Sergeant Pepper destroyed rock'n'roll forever - or at least until Punk came along - but I only have to hear Hide Your Love Away or I'm Looking Through You to joyfully forgive him that one lapse in judgement.
Seems fair, too, that he lived long, happily and prospered, dying among his family, largely untouched by showbusiness.
It only comes to about eight hours of music, the whole Beatles canon, and both he and the surviving Fabsters have individually produced much more than that, but as far as most people are concerned they may as well not have bothered with any of that other stuff.
It was a phenomenon of the time, Beatlemania and there has been nothing approaching it since, in scale or impact; it was marketing, it was teenage hormones, it was non-deferential and pseudo-revolutionary but most of all it was the music, the peg from which these other things hung.
Creating them, perhaps unwittingly, George Martin was the hidden face of the Swinging Sixties; it wasn't the times which produced the music, it was the music which, for good and ill, produced the times.
NecroBabbling at George Martin online seems such a betrayal.
