LONDON — George Martin, the Beatles’ urbane producer who quietly guided the band’s swift, historic transformation from rowdy club act to musical and cultural revolutionaries, has died, his management said Wednesday. He was 90.
Too modest to claim the title of the fifth Beatle, the tall, elegant Londoner produced some of the most popular and influential albums of modern times — “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” “Revolver,” “Rubber Soul,” “Abbey Road” — elevating rock LPs to art forms: “concepts.”
Martin won six Grammys and was inducted in 1999 into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Three years earlier, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.
Former Beatle Paul McCartney said Martin had been “a true gentleman and like a second father to me.”
“If anyone earned the title of the fifth Beatle it was George,” McCartney said. “He was the most generous, intelligent and musical person I’ve ever had the pleasure to know.”
Ringo Starr tweeted earlier: “God bless George Martin peace and love to Judy and his family love Ringo and Barbara. George will be missed.”
Martin both witnessed and enabled the extraordinary metamorphosis of the Beatles and of the 1960s. From a raw first album in 1962 that took just a day to make to the months-long production of “Sgt. Pepper,” the Beatles advanced rapidly as songwriters and sonic explorers. They composed dozens of classics, from “She Loves You” to “Hey Jude,” and turned the studio into a wonderland of tape loops, multi-tracking, unpredictable tempos and unfathomable segues.
Never again would rock music be defined by two-minute love songs or guitar-bass-drums arrangements. Lyrically and musically, anything became possible. Besides the Beatles, Martin worked with Jeff Beck, Elton John and Celine Dion.
Born in north London in 1926, Martin was a carpenter’s son raised in a three-room flat without a kitchen or bathroom.
He was a gifted musician who mastered Chopin by ear. None of the Beatles could read music, so they depended on Martin’s classical background.
Martin is survived by wife Judy and four children from two marriages.
