Giles Martin: The Beatles Revisited

Giles Martin certainly comes from an enviable musical pedigree. His father, the legendary producer Sir George Martin, had more number one hit records, and broke down more barriers in the recording studio, than anyone in the history of recorded music. But for anyone who maintained the idea that Martin's son inherited his father's mantle when The Beatles' Love project was announced in 2004, the success of that Grammy-winning, multi-million selling album (initially created for the Cirque Du Soleil Las Vegas show) quieted any critics. Since then Giles Martin has overseen several key Beatles related projects, including The Beatles' groundbreaking game for Rock Band, as well as Martin Scorsese's George Harrison: Living In The Material World documentary and companion album. He also acted as executive producer on Paul McCartney's 2013 album New , in addition to making time to score films like Noble , which recently premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. His latest project is the mono and new surround mixes for the newly restored version of The Beatles first film, A Hard Day's Night , which was recently released in theaters, as well as on Blu-Ray/DVD.

Tell me a little bit about your background and how you ended up in your dad's profession.

I originally wanted to be a composer. That's what I was driven towards. I started writing music for commercials when I was in college, although I studied literature. When I was about 16 years old, my father started losing his hearing — he needed someone to be his ears, if you like. He didn't want me to go into the profession, in any shape or form. I was quite good academically at English. He wanted me to get a proper job, I suppose. He didn't want it to be exposed that he was losing his hearing, since he wanted to go on working, so I started working as an assistant, out of necessity on his part.

This was around the time of The Beatles' Anthology?

Yes, the Anthology era. [1995] I was hanging around in the studios with him during school time and he'd want me to come in and listen to things. At first it was sounds like cymbals, because that's where his hearing loss was. He'd have a quiet word with me and explain certain things. I remember he asked me who I thought should be engineering Anthology . I thought he should get Geoff Emerick [ Tape Op #57 ] to do it, because it just made sense. Also, when Paul [McCartney] wrote asking for a producer [for what became Chaos and Creation in the Backyard ], around 2005, my dad asked me [my opinion] and I suggested Nigel Godrich because I thought he'd be good. He's not as much a music producer as he is an engineering producer. That worked out well. Eventually I had some success writing and producing while working with different artists. I worked on Anthology 2 with my dad, because it came at a break between my studies. I was perfectly happy working away on my own thing; I had no aspirations to do Beatles work. When the Love project came up, I had a concept. My dad wasn't around because he wasn't well at the time, and Neil Aspinall [head of Apple Corps] asked me if I could experiment with something that hadn't worked in the past. I said that I reckoned I could create something by just chopping the tapes up. I'd heard the tapes, because I'd worked on Anthology , and tracks sounded live to me. Since it was live recordings, I figured we could create a live show out of the tapes. It became much more psychedelic as we got more into it, but that was the plan.

Was the Love project a mash-up idea from the beginning, or did you think of it in terms of complete songs at that point?

No, it was a mash-up from the beginning. I wanted to create a live feel. I know that's a ridiculous thing to say, a live feel by doing mash-ups, but I already knew that I could get the drum solo. I already had the concept of the show opening with the drum solo from "The End," which I knew I could combine with "Get Back." It sort of worked out from there. The piano chord from "A Day In The Life" going into it... it just worked backwards. I knew when I spoke to Neil that I could do it. I wasn't sure if other people would like it or not, but I knew that I could get it to work. I didn't really have much connection with The Beatles at all before that. It came from doing the Love show, which thankfully was critically acclaimed. Working with The Beatles continues to surprise me. I didn't really feel deserving of it. It's quite a big mantle to have. I remember after I did my demo of Love , with four or five tracks, everyone got enthusiastic. I remember saying to a friend of mine that I'd been asked to do this thing, but I wasn't sure if I should do it. I didn't know if it was because of my dad getting me the job, or because it was passed down. I'd avoided deliberately doing any kind of Beatles projects that felt passed down to me, probably to my detriment. I just didn't want to go down that route. This friend of mine, who's a producer and engineer, asked me if I had any idea how many people would love to be working on this. He said that if I turned it down I'd be completely crazy. I figured if I could put the teenage bitterness to one side and stop thinking about what other people would think, I could just enjoy myself and be honored that I had the chance to work in that situation. So that's what happened.

Let's backtrack a bit and talk about the Hayley Westenra album Pure , which you worked on before you worked with The Beatles. What did that entail, and how was that different from the Beatles work?

When I started to pursue this, everybody thought I knew what I was doing, but I had no idea. Honestly speaking, I wasn't very good. I didn't have a huge talent, and I think I made some pretty terrible records. I ended up getting a job working for Rob Dickins, who was head of Warner [Music UK]. I made some pretty bad records for him. He taught me a lot — he would play me "No Scrubs" by TLC and tell me that he wanted projects to sound like that . I'd have a computer set up with Logic, and it made me realize that there are no excuses for not making things sound good. People don't care. You can't say that you didn't have the right speakers or whatever. People won't care. The benchmark is there; that's what he and my dad taught me. The expectation is so high. I learned how to make voices sound good, which is the most important thing. If you can make a record and the voice sounds good, you're halfway there. Then I left Rob Dickins to do the Queen's Jubilee Concert in Buckingham Palace. After that, I couldn't get any work. My manager told me that the only thing he could get me was Hayley Westenra, a 15-year-old classical singer. I told him, "No. I want to do rock and roll." He said that there wasn't anything out there. They sent me a vocal track. I put some strings, guitar, and piano in the back of it, and they really liked it. The album sold two million copies in the U.K. It really wasn't my style of music. A friend of mine said that once you learn how to make things sound good, it gets kind of boring. There are thousands of people who know how to make a record with the right EQ on it, and it's going to sound professional. With Hayley Westenra, she was just a really nice girl — she still is. The funny thing with that was that I remember Paul McCartney telling me, "Well done with that record," because it sold massively in the U.K. It sort of gave me success. I was offered so many classical, and crossover classical, records by everyone. I was the person to go to. I turned them down and didn't get paid for six months, because by then I knew I wanted to do The Beatles' Love project. I knew in my mind that it was going to work, and that's what happened.

How have your views of using technology evolved? Certainly you must be a cut and paste guy, having grown up in a world far removed from the one your dad lived in.

I wasn't, actually. I started in the studio when I was young, so I had to learn later how to use computers. A lot of the young guys who have heard the Love project, or other things I've done, think I'm some sort of guru, and you can hear their sighs of disappointment when I try to operate Pro Tools. I mean, I can do a mix, but when people start talking about using shortcuts it's like, "I know undo!" The Beatles' thing was interesting, because I thought when I did it that I'd do what everyone else does and create a tempo map. But as soon as I found out how to chop things in time, it didn't sound good to me. I actually used it like a tape machine. My sessions had no grid, nothing. I just did it by feel.

You didn't use a grid for Love ?

No. I just found it too constricting. I wanted the songs to move.

Really? But surely there was some stretching...?

Yeah, if there was a song coming after another song, it had to follow the tempo. Then, when that [new] song took over, that would be the song in charge.

But that was stretching...

I had to do it all in my head. It's just more of a creative thing. I'm not anti-technology, in any way. I know Geoff Emerick is actually, slightly, anti-technology. I embrace it thoroughly. But the idea is the important thing, whether you're chopping up tape or doing it in the computer. It can sound bad both ways, no matter how good your technology is.

It's interesting you would say that. Do you have favorite pieces of gear and D/A converters?

I'm distrusting of someone who walks in the studio, looks around, and says, "I can't work in here." I think that you should just use what you have. There's no reason why anyone should complain anymore. That said, I don't like certain types of monitors. I don't trust them.

Yeah. Let's talk about what you do like.

I use Adam S3-As, which are older monitors. I like them because they're very good on vocals and snare drums. They have a ribbon tweeter; they're not good at top and bottom, but that's something you can worry about later. If you can get the mids right, you're generally okay. I use those, and I've used them for ten years. I haven't gone wrong so far.

What about D/A converters, plug-ins, and that sort of thing?

I used to use Apogee. I really like Apogee, and I like Bob [ Clearmountain , Tape Op #84 ] and Betty Bennett, who look after Apogee. Recently I've been working with Pro Tools, and I've been using the HDX system. I've had some great experiences. I've played the game because I've been working on 5.1 mixes. I find that the discrete 5.1 digital world is great for film, but for music it sometimes suffers. In the Scorsese film, George Harrison: Living In The Material World , and when I was doing A Hard Day's Night , I ended up putting it on an 8-track, 2-inch tape because I liked the fact that it sounded like it gelled a bit better.

I think most people are pretty familiar with the 5. 1 mixes that are on The Beatles' Anthology, and are probably familiar, as well, with the 5. 1 mixes on the Help! DVD and Blu-Ray.

And I did Magical Mystery Tour between that.

Right, you weren't involved with the 5. 1 mixes on either Help or Anthology, correct?

Magical Mystery Tour was the first 5.1 I did. Yellow Submarine (1999) and the others were done much earlier. I was doing Love, I think, when they were doing those. So no, I wasn't involved in those. They're pretty good.

You were obviously very familiar with what was there on the multitrack tapes. I assume that everything had been digitized over the last few years while you were working on Love.

Yeah. We re-digitized a lot of the tracks at a higher rate, with better converters. You can always do better. We were quite diligent with that.

I talked to Jimmy Page [ Tape Op #102 ] a week or so ago, and he wouldn't even tell me the rate that he recently did the Led Zeppelin remasters at. He said they were at a "very high rate" because he's worried about someone coming along in 20 years when he's not around.

We have pretty much everything at 192 kHz, 24-bit.

What were the technical obstacles that existed when you were making the 5. 1s?

The obvious technical thing is that we didn't have six tracks [of audio]. That's over-simplistic, as you know, but "She Loves You" is just mono. We tried doing various things. It's done on a track-by-track basis. The tracks were designed to be mono — in the purest sense. Go back to when you're initiating how you record a track; you have to envision in your mind how you're going to hear it. You can only really envision what you know, unless you're very forward thinking. The Beatles were certainly forward thinking, but they weren't thinking about surround [sound] when they made A Hard Day's Night . The thing with film is that you're watching dialogue. It's coming out of the central channel, even if you have left and right speakers. It's almost like hitting a mono with a toffee hammer. You have shards of sound around you, but you have a central focus.

When I went to the screening of A Hard Day's Night, I was alone, so I walked around the room and literally put my ear up to the speakers to hear what you'd done. It's almost as though the left and right channels are the band, and the center is the vocal, with a bit of background band and percussion, maybe. The rear is fairly ambient sounding.

Yeah. I'm mixing for the film. I'm not mixing for some sort of crazy release. It's not like the Love thing. I'm mixing for the film, so I want to make people feel like they're hearing the records they know, but I want the audience to feel closer to them. That's my goal. I want them to feel what I feel when I listen to the tape in the studio. I want people to feel the energy. That's the other key thing to me. The Beatles weren't old when they recorded those songs. I want that to come out. Sometimes we'd put songs on playback in [Abbey Road's] Studio Two to create ambient sound, and then record the band in the room to create surround that way.

Is that what you did for "She Loves You"?

I think so, yeah. It also has crowd in it. We did that for everything, just to see if we wanted to use it. It's easy, once you have it set up. You're trying to create a world. I don't believe you want to be in a situation where you feel like you're turning around to hear sounds. You want to have a situation where there's expanded stereo. We compared the 5.1 to the stereo and the mono in the mix room all the time. You want the 5.1 to be composed, not distracting. We wanted it to sound the way that we remembered hearing it. When I did the George Harrison film there was concern from various people, I think even Martin Scorsese himself, that I should have more of a hand in "All Things Must Pass" to modernize it. I thought, "No." I wanted it to sound the way I remembered it, and how I remember it is as a soaring, beautiful piece of music. The 5.1 lets you do that. It takes it closer into your head; just the nature of facing forward and having speakers behind you. This is what people forget about. They think about 5.1 as hearing strings in the back, or whatever. With 5.1 the sonic image gets closer to your forehead, if that makes sense. You can get things to move closer.

In a lot of movies, you have dialogue and then the music will jump a couple of decibels.

Yeah. I think that it has to complement the film. From the reviews I saw, I think it does that. We pieced together scenes, kind of like archaeology, finding the speech tracks for the film. I also worked thinking that if the music were too clean, it wouldn't sound like it was part of the film. My concern was that it had to all fit together as one piece. The thing I've learned from film, and working with really good film mixers, is that what you don't want to do is to surprise people too much sonically. You want to comfort people and take them on a journey. If you do anything that's just showing off, you'll take people out of the suspension of disbelief that they're under.

What shape were the tapes in? Did you do what you did with Love , where you lined everything up from separate session tapes?

I wish we had done that, but Hard Day's Night was done before they started bouncing 4-tracks. So that wasn't there. We used techniques to try to extract guitars slightly. We were developing new techniques that aren't there yet. This golden chalice of de-mixing isn't quite there, but we're getting closer. I don't want to use the words "stereo spread" because that doesn't work either, but we developed some pretty new techniques. I can widen a mono track and instruments. As soon as it's not good for the track, or as soon as you start hearing anomalies going on, you have to stop. On A Hard Day's Night I used techniques to try to make it as real as possible. There's an element of de-mixing going on, because otherwise, if I wanted the vocals on the center, as I do, and you've only got one other track, you're going to have everything in the center. As you said, I put the band left and right and the vocal center, and then maybe the room sound from Studio Two in the rear. As my dad always said about mixing; it's an attempt to create a version that's the best live performance that there is. The further intention is to paint new pictures. I would say that this new version of A Hard Day's Night isn't painting new pictures. It's the former.

There was a clarity and definition to George Harrison's 12-string on "I Should Have Known Better" in the scene where they're in the luggage cage. The 12-string seemed just a little sharper.

"I Should Have Known Better" was one of the songs that I kept going back to. Bizarrely, it was one of those tracks that is much brighter than you remember it. John [Lennon]'s voice sounds great, but the track is way bright. I went back to it loads of times. I think we try and go for clarity. We try to hear the instruments, because that makes it sound more live.

Were some tracks more challenging than others? "A Hard Day's Night" sounded like it may have been harder to deal with sonically.

I would say "A Hard Day's Night" was the most difficult, because as soon as you move the vocals to the center on that song, it changes the way the song sounds. I went back to it so many times. The drums on "A Hard Day's Night" are very sizzly.

Ringo [Starr]'s cymbal work is all over that record, isn't it?

Yeah, it's all over it. As soon as I moved the vocal over to the left, it solved everything and it sounded great. But then, for me, that went against what I was trying to do, if that makes sense. I thought, as a film experience, that I wanted it to be the way that the film was made by [director] Richard Lester. So I'd agree with that. I can't defend it. Hands up!

I'm trying to pick out the things that I could tell were challenging.

That absolutely was. It was quite challenging. The most challenging thing actually was the spoken word. That's the most challenging thing, because it sounds so distorted.

What did you do? Were you able to locate a lower generation source?

We had a CD reissue that's cleaner sounding, but it has no top on it. We had a lot more hiss going on with ours than they did on theirs. But for me, I'd rather have a bit more hiss and make it sound natural than trying to be too clean. Another hard thing was the weight and expectations of the people who are going to be listening to your work. The Beatles are going to hear this, and there are also people who really, really care about the outcome.

You seem to have a sense of the mantle of The Beatles' legacy. You have to please them, but you are aware, too, that there are people out there who care an awful lot about the music, even picking the mixes apart. How does that weigh on you, or factor into your work?

When you're doing the work, you can't think about it all the time. Otherwise you'd be paralyzed with doubt. You're working by yourself, with your engineer, and you've got concepts and ideas that might be wrong or right. But you try everything you can think of then you step back and think, "Okay, [how would this sound] if I were a Beatles fan?" It's now become their music as well. It's become music that belongs to the generations. The last thing that I want to do is any harm. Somebody said to me that Love was their favorite Beatles album. It's not a Beatles album! It's them, but it's not. On one hand, if I can make people discuss things and listen to music — not just listen to it, but hear it — that's great. That's what drives me. If people don't like what I do, it's generally because they love the originals so much and they can't bear to hear anything else. I respect that. I listen and respect what people have to say. You have to. You can't be distracted by it, but you have to honor it.

You had to have a sense of that summer of 1964 and what was going on at the time. I'm sure you've heard stories from Paul, Ringo, your Dad, and anyone else around them. What is your feeling about that time, having lived with A Hard Day's Night over the last year or two?

I think it's energy and commitment. I think that '64 was the year my dad had 32 number one records in the U.K. with different artists. If you look at the '64 tour diary of The Beatles, it's just fascinating. It's actually on the Internet . You look at it and think, "When did they record?" I remember looking at it thinking that it was just completely bonkers. You see a four-day gap, and they made an album there.

Yet it's the first record they'd made that was all Lennon/McCartney originals, plus all those B-sides and EPs.

For me, that's the most shocking thing. They seemed to warp time. I sat down with Paul last year, and we talked a bit about it. He quite enjoys it. He's the same person, really. My dad is still the same person. But you just get older. There was no ceiling in anything they did in '64, and that revealed itself in '66 and '67. They had their heads down. Their ambition was to take over the world with great music. The only way they could do that was by shouting and being as energetic as they could in front of a microphone. Even when they sang quietly they were loud. That's what shocked me most when I got the tapes out. They're gentle because they're great and have emotion, but they always have a ruggedness to them.

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