Original subtitles

The first impression in the office, the bicycle clips and a beret.

- And my naval greatcoat. - Yes.

- With the epaulettes removed. - Yeah. Well, that was all right.

But the bicycle clips and the beret were definitely...

I'm sorry I didn't conform to your standards, love.

What was it like meeting Mum for the first time at Abbey Road?

Because she was working there when you started.

Yeah.

She'd gone straight there from secretarial college.

She greeted my arrival in a very cold manner.

In fact, she told me later that she thought I was very square.

Definitely uncool.

Lovely now.

I'll put my suntan cream on.

But eventually, I fell for her.

And, seemingly, she seemed to care for me.

- Don't knock in the black. - Put the black in.

He missed it.

You are very competitive, as a person, and ambitious,

and it's not a criticism at all,

and it's interesting to hear that you had a band,

and you went to record your own piece of music.

- Yeah. Yeah. - And titled it.

In case it was played.

I actually wanted to be a classical composer,

and I wanted to be Rachmaninoff II.

Richard Addinsell's Warsaw Concerto became a pet piece of mine,

I used to play it a lot.

And I thought, "Well, that's the way to go."

You know what it is, that music?

It's Warsaw Concerto. I got the records.

Perhaps that music will bring back a lot of things.

I hope so.

I'd like to know what he's thinking about now.

- Would you like some tea? - I'd love some.

- I'll be mother. - Yes, milk.

I like afternoon tea, it's a very civilised thing.

And where is your oboe?

I had to sell it, I needed the money,

to buy a house, in fact.

My first house was the money from the oboe.

You've still got yours?

Oh, yes, of course.

- You treasure it, do you? - Yes.

- You don't play it, though, do you? - Yes, I do.

- Do you really? - Well, you never forget.

No, you never forget, but...

Gosh, I don't think I could play one now.

I'll give you one lesson...

- Would you really? - ...for nothing.

Do you know, I might take you up on that?

Yes, why not.

You spent three years at the Guildhall.

You must've been surrounded by people

from a completely different background to you.

There can't have been many ex-servicemen joining the Guildhall at that stage,

or were there?

I felt a little bit out of place,

- because I was older than most of them. - Yeah.

You'd had no real music education until then?

No.

Did you find that the late arrival into the classical musical scene

meant you weren't completely institutionalised by the rules, as it were?

It's possible that I hadn't been, kind of, over-educated in music,

so I had a kind of naiveté as well.

If you look at that Yesterday score,

it's pretty naive, but it does work.

It's very, very simple writing.

But it couldn't be anything else.

If it were, it would destroy what the point of the song is,

which is utter simplicity.

I did this in an afternoon.

I had in my mind what I had to do,

and it was just straightforward.

The Guildhall wasn't just a school of music,

it was a school for music and drama,

and I think that that in itself was tremendous help to me in later years,

because I was comfortable with actors as well as being comfortable with musicians.

And when it came to working with Sellers or the Beyond the Fringe crowd, or whoever,

it was okay, we were partners.

I suddenly got this letter, out of the blue,

saying would I be interested in coming to an interview

at EMI Studios, Abbey Road, St John's Wood.

Never heard of the place, never heard of EMI.

And I got the job

at seven pounds, four shillings and threepence a week.

Going back to the fact that you're competitive and ambitious, did you think...

- I wish you wouldn't keep saying that. - I know.

I'm sure that's the case.

Did you think at that stage, "Right, now I'm finally getting somewhere?"

No.

Then what did you want at that stage?

- I still wanted to be Rachmaninoff II. - Right.

You hadn't moved on then.

Gradually I got hooked,

gradually I didn't want to leave it.

It enabled me to be creative.

I could manipulate things,

and I could do things,

and that I found very enjoyable.

Roberto Inglez.

He played at the Savoy.

Roberto Inglez, everybody thought was Spanish,

or South American,

in fact, his name was Bob Inglis, from Scotland,

but he specialised in South American music.

Bob Harvey.

Yeah, Bob Harvey used to play in a nightclub.

Fairey Aviation Brass Band.

Sidney Torch And His Orchestra.

The Five Smith Brothers.

Oh, yeah, they were Geordies.

And Jimmy Shand.

This wonderful man Karl Haas, of the London Baroque Ensemble...

He was always completely broke.

He had no money at all.

He was a sweet man, really.

The Archers.

That's the recording I made with Sidney Torch And His Orchestra.

I can't remember who wrote it.

It was part and parcel of what we used to do with Sidney,

I mean, I remember recording Coronation Scot,

which became the theme tune of the Paul Temple series.

Those were the days when orchestral records sold well.

When the session started,

I walked through the orchestra to Sidney Torch,

and I said, "Good morning, Mr Torch.

"My name is George Martin and I'm Oscar's assistant,

"and he's asked me to take the session this morning."

I said, "Nice to see you."

He said, "Oh, all right. Don't get in the way, will you?"

Did any part of you think, "I'm going to be in line for this job?"

No, because I was young, I was still in my 20s.

All the people who ran the labels were older, the youngest was about 50.

Did you think George would get the job?

No, I didn't really, I didn't know what was going to happen.

I supposed I did think he might get the job,

but it wasn't sure.

Oh, dear.

They said, "We've been wondering what to do with Parlophone,

"now that Oscar is gone, and eventually we've decided

"that we should give the stewardship of Parlophone to George Martin."

You could've knocked me down with a feather. Blimey.

Suddenly, I was head of Parlophone, and I had to make it work.

- This meant choosing the artists... - Yeah, everything.

...and repertoire? Right. From the start.

I wasn't paid much, but I was given a free run.

Do you have any preference for whom you hit?

Well, no, sir, I'm not a snob, rich or poor alike,

I think I'll hit any of them.

But, wait a minute, don't you ever get hit back?

Well, no, sir, it's against the rules, that.

Good evening.

I have a picture of Queen Victoria.

No, thanks, I'm trying to give them up.

I don't think you'll ever do it, I've tried and failed.

- May I come in? - But I'm outside.

Well, you come in, then.

That was the comedy soundtrack of my youth.

And I was going to ask you

how it was that you, best known for your music,

became a comedy producer in the first place?

Desperation, really.

How desperate were you, then?

Confess.

At EMI that time, there were four labels,

only three active ones,

HMV, Columbia and Parlophone,

and Parlophone was the poor relation,

HMV and Columbia were the big boys.

They had people like Elvis Presley, Columbia had Doris Day,

and all sorts of great American artists.

Little Parlophone had Humphrey Lyttelton, when he was a young man,

John Dankworth, when he was a young man.

And the Scottish Country Dance Association.

There's a quote here by Degas, where he says,

"Drawing is not what one sees, but what one must make others see."

And, in a way, that's what we do in sound.

The recording is not what one hears

but what one must make others hear.

They were designed to not be a photograph,

but to be an impression of what life was really about.

So that actually would give more depth in that painting

than a photograph could ever do.

And when I came to working as a producer,

up to that time people had been making records as faithfully as they could,

reproducing the original sound,

and what they were doing was making photographs.

And I said, "You don't need to do that. Let's paint instead of having photographs."

Hello.

I've been watching you. I say I've been watching you feeding the birds.

I think you're marvellous.

- Aren't they sweet? - Yes.

I don't know how anyone can be cruel to dumb animals, do you?

Irene Handl is absolutely wonderful, I mean, perfect with Sellers.

- It was her idea. - Oh, really?

She said, "Well, I've got something I might suggest to Peter."

I said, "Have you written it?" She said, "No, it's all here."

I'd quite forgotten, it's virtually a monologue on her part.

I was gonna say, Sellers' very unselfish performance, really.

- It still holds up. - It holds up very well, I think.

You come here often, do you?

Well, I come here quite often, as I said, to feed these birds,

because I love the open air.

Well, it's very nice, isn't it?

I mean, it's private without being insulated, if you know what I mean.

I can see you're like me. I will not go into a public park

and mingle with the hoi polloi.

I quite agree, I like to keep myself to myself.

It's such a different time,

I mean, it was a time before television.

- You only had radio and you had records. - Sure.

So you dealt purely with the ears.

So you had to build up little town pictures,

and make people imagine that they were there.

- Do you know Dalston at all? - No, no, I don't.

Oh, well, they call it the Frinton of East Eight,

so that will give you some idea.

I was just gonna ask you back to din-dins with me.

Well, I'd love to come, please ask me...

They keep a smashing table at the Royalton, you know.

We nearly always have a second vegetable, and always croutons with the soup.

And if you ever feel like having half a bottle of Beaujolais,

they practically fall over themselves backwards bringing it in for you.

I loved doing that kind of work,

because you can lose yourself in it,

you don't follow any rules,

except your own hunch that you think is right.

An album that I remember very well was Milligan Preserved,

I remember playing that at Oxford,

and about a year later, I started doing cabaret,

it was the first time I'd ever done any comic performing of any kind.

That was an inspirational album,

because it was so free and different.

I don't know what it felt like to make it,

whether it was a complicated business with Spike's good or bad days,

but it had some wonderful things in, very different from Sellers.

Well, it was really your kind of stuff.

Oh, a song divine,

sung by a beautiful, tall, willowy creature called Miss Patricia Ridgeway.

Despite her fair face, fair figure and fair voice,

she only had one small piece of toast for breakfast,

but when you consider what this young girl has eaten in her lifetime,

43 whole bullocks,

81 prime Hereford cows,

1,000 acres of potatoes,

207 sacks of Spanish onions,

eight warehouses of brown bread...

I don't know if you ever looked at the back of that LP.

All of the sleeve notes were in Arabic.

I don't remember that. That's very...

- You couldn't get it away with it now. - Very Python. Very Python.

Let me put the microphone to her tumtum so you can hear...

I didn't realise it then,

but George Martin was the chap they sent all the weirdies to.

He was very tall.

Yes, I thought he was a very tall person.

He had a great air of serenity and authority about him.

Excuse me, it's not emotion, it's hay fever.

An extraordinary man, Rolf.

I loved him from the very moment I saw him.

I made him work a bit harder though, I got him to write a bit more,

'cause it was a bit boring.

He said, "It's boring."

And I said, "That's the way the aboriginal music is,

"it repeats and repeats, it becomes mesmerising."

He said, "That's right, that's what I said, boring."

It was almost a music-hall record, you know.

It's a sketch with music, isn't it?

You just imagine all this going on.

- You were sort of born a Cockney. - Yeah.

All right, guv'ner.

And you're now...

True, true.

I don't think I spoke quite like that.

All right, cor blimey. Apple and pears.

And you went from that to being the gentleman of the music industry.

That's a bit of an exaggeration.

But your voice changed.

Actually, I was very conscious of the voice change,

because when I was about 16, I decided that I spoke appallingly,

and because I was in the dramatic society,

I consciously tried to speak like the BBC people did.

- And I think I pulled it off. - I think you have done.

This is Drayton Park.

And my house was actually over there,

but it's long since been demolished,

and these are new buildings.

But my house looked very similar to these.

They look pretty good now,

but I can assure you that when we lived in them, they were very rundown.

You can see there are four floors,

and there was a family on each floor.

I remember standing up, being dressed, and looking down,

and a little ice cream van came past,

and I said, "Mummy, I'd love an ice cream."

I turned round and she was crying.

I said, "What's the matter?"

She said, "Darling, I haven't got tuppence for an ice cream."

And then I gathered that we weren't very well off.

I also have a vivid memory of a very, very cold winter,

and my feet were freezing,

and he knew this,

and we didn't have a hot water bottle,

so he got an old can, which used to hold petrol or oil,

and cleaned it out and filled it with hot water,

wrapped it in towels and put it by my feet at the bottom of my bed

to give me warm feet.

That's one of the memories I have of my dad.

Were you driven to get away from that background?

I don't think so,

I mean, I didn't say to myself, "My God, I've got to get out of this hell hole,"

because it was a very loving family, my mother and father were super people.

It was just that my father couldn't earn very much money,

and there was a big depression on when I was a small child, the 1930s.

I say, you down there.

Hello?

Do you want some old iron?

Yeah.

Oh, my...

We moved to Muswell Hill,

a great improvement over what we had before.

We were, obviously, not too badly off by this time.

I liked the idea of moving here,

'cause the house looked much better than we'd lived in before,

but when you're 11 or 12,

you don't think too much about status and things.

I never thought we were moving up in the world.

I had a grandstand view of the dogfights that went on overhead

and it was quite exciting for a 14-year-old boy.

We heard that a Dornier had been downed quite near us,

so being blood-thirsty boys, we went and raided the place,

and I got a bit of a German officer's uniform, blood stained.

Really charming stuff.

As a kid, we would leave our house after the bombings,

and a big portion of the street had gone.

- Just flat. - That's right.

We were kids then, another playground for us.

We didn't really think, "Oh, somebody's dead," or whatever. We were kids.

We lived in Bromley in Kent, which was on the path in.

And, I remember, one day a house about five doors down

- wasn't there any more. - Yeah.

And the house next door to it, on the first floor, the bathroom was exposed,

and the bath was dangling, holding on from its pipes,

and I thought, "Oh, gosh, that could've been us."

But you accepted it.

You did, it was part of life.

And also, it must've been a very posh area, it had a bath.

Well, I was posh.

We never had a bath, you see.

No, we never did.

Never did.

You must've been filthy then.

No, we used to go to Steble Street just to take a bath.

- I want you to lay down your life, Perkins. - Yes, sir.

We need a futile gesture at this stage.

It will raise the whole tone of the war.

Get up in a crate, Perkins, pop over to Bremen,

take a shufti and come back.

Goodbye, Perkins.

God, I wish I was going, too.

Goodbye, sir.

Or, is it au revoir?

No, Perkins.

Britain has dealt the Italian fleet a blow

which its remains will remember for a long, long time.

At one fell swoop, three battleships,

two cruises and auxiliaries, were put out of action.

Thus, Mussolini was forced to realise

that his much-vaunted navy isn't safe even in port.

The splendid job was executed, executed is the right word,

by the Fleet Air Arm.

Such men as these went right in, or rather over, the heel of Italy to Taranto,

and kicked the pants of the wop good and hard.

When you heard the news on the radio about the success of the Fleet Air Arm

at the Battle of Taranto,

was that instrumental in your decision to want to join the Fleet Air Arm?

Absolutely.

I said, I don't want to go into the army, I want to go into the Fleet Air Arm.

So, one day I walked into a recruiting office and said I want to be a pilot,

I want to have flying duties in the Fleet Air Arm.

So, I signed on.

And my mother broke down in tears and said, "You stupid boy.

"You'll get yourself killed."

And the stupid boy replied, equally stupidly,

"Mother, I promise you, I won't get killed. I promise you that."

Well, you look about 30,

but, mind you, war time might do that to you.

It was tough business.

Where we you during the war, Daddy?

- You're rotten. - Come on, I won it. I know. Come on.

- You better come on. - Go on.

- I'm not going to talk about it at my expense. - Okay.

Well, all right. Okay. I'll tell you what then interests me about this.

You would tell us stories, 'cause we'd ask, "What did you do?"

It came out that you were in the Fleet Air Arm and you were an observer.

Well, this is where the observer would be, which is where I would have been.

That's the observer's position.

And you can see there's a wire at the bottom, there,

which you could attach to yourself in case you went inverted

and you wouldn't get thrown out of the aircraft.

And we have instruments, here, which he could see,

and he would communicate with the pilot, who is in a separate cockpit,

purely and simply through a Gosport tube

which was the kind of tube that you,

you know, you'd say, "Hello there," and you'd listen.

There was no electronics involved.

We'd say, "Well, what do you do?" You said, "Well, sort of observe."

But you were in charge.

So it was a very important role, in fact, even above the pilot

which kind of amazed us.

But years later I thought, "That's the producer."

- Yes, it is. - It's the same job.

I went up in this. I don't know if it was this plane.

I think it might have been another one.

When I was 70 years old, as a kind of anniversary,

50 years after I'd flown before,

and I'm now much older than that.

I still would like to go up in one,

but can't do it because the engine's not working.

But one day I will come back again.

It's very disappointing, because I don't hear music as I used to.

And I don't enjoy music, now, much.

I mean, if you take a piece like Vaughan William's Lark Ascending

I might as well go home,

because the violin...

- Very high tones. - ...going in the upper reaches.

And I see this fellow doing all this and I'm not hearing it.

Thank you very much.

I'm not used to microphones, you know?

I first became aware of something wrong in the '70s.

And I was approaching my 50s

and I was in my control room at my studio in London

and one of the engineers came in and said,

"Do you mind if I just check these tape machines?"

I said, "Do that." They would put in different tones

of different frequencies

and adjust them so the machines were really accurate.

I heard all the tones going through and I took no notice

and then I looked up and I saw that all the needles are going...

I said, "Bill, what's that frequency you're putting through?"

He said, "Twelve kilohertz."

And I said, "Oh, shit."

Every time you speak to someone, particularly in a cocktail environment,

you are doing mental calculations, rather like filling in a crossword,

you're getting only the vowels

and you're putting in all the consonants as quickly as you can

so as not to be stupid.

- And hoping you get them right. - And get them right.

- Exactly. - Yeah.

Well that's one of the issues with hearing loss

is the respect of social isolation.

People feel socially isolated when they start losing hearing

because the cocktail party hearing that you had

starts to degrade.

Is that something that's impacted on you?

Yeah, that's quite true because

if you can't join in the conversation of everybody going round,

you get isolated.

You become invisible. They talk past you.

You get to the point, as I have now, where age has taken over, as well.

And when that happens,

my hearing has taken a nosedive in the past few years.

Now, I think what she's doing, what this lady is doing here, is fantastic!

And I think she's so accurate and so good...

Will you come home with me?

There's been so many stories about Major Ralph,

the colourful horse-dealer who'd gone into the business

of managing rock-and-roll stars.

I mean, he personally discovered such disc names as Lennie Bronze,

Clint Thigh, Matt Lust.

Have you ever seen a rock-and-roll singer, Miss Lisbon?

I mean, have you ever seen one up close?

Well, no. I'm mostly on book reviewing.

Well, a good specimen. He's about 17 or 18 years old,

about 5'10", fully extended, sagging to about 5'4" in the singing position.

Would you like to see one? I'll get one for you.

Major?

Some rotten hound's pinched the strings off my guitar! Look.

You've got the guitar on back to front.

How many times must I tell you, the hole points away from you!

So much to learn, so little time.

I did envy Norrie Paramor enormously

because he had a young man who was originally called Harry Webb, I think,

Cliff Richard this is.

It didn't matter what he recorded it could have been God Save the Queen,

became number one. It was just automatic. And I envied that.

And I wanted to have something that would be easy to make

instead of the difficulty of making comedy records.

Because comedy records are hard work.

You had to get the right material, right script,

right artist, and so on.

- Did you want to beat Norrie Paramor? - Yes.

You've said it now.

- Well, he drove a E-Type Jag. - See, there we are.

I think a Paul McCartney record

made you the most successful producer of all time,

with 36 number ones.

It was in the papers and you said to me,

"I've had more number ones than anyone else."

I said, "That's amazing, Dad. Who did you beat?"

"Norrie Paramor," is what you said.

That's true because he did have the largest amount of number ones

in Britain at that time,

and I managed to get in front of him.

I remember you saying to me, "I don't think he's going to beat me now."

Because I think he'd been dead a couple of years.

- Exactly. - By that stage. Anyway.

Yes, it was the 21st that I met Brian Epstein.

Yes. And I put down "Bernard."

- I know, you silly girl. - Yes.

I didn't know him at all.

What I said to Brian was, "If you want me to judge them on what you're playing me,

"I'm sorry. I have to turn you down."

And he was so disappointed. I felt really sorry for him, actually.

'Cause he was an earnest young man.

- And you must've liked him then? - I did like him.

And I said, "But I'll tell you what."

I gave him a life line, I said,

"If you want to bring them down from Liverpool

"I'll give them an hour in the studio. Okay?"

Begin as soon as you like, please, would you?

I beg your pardon?

Would you start as soon as you can, please?

We're in a hurry. We have a lot of people to see.

Right. I've prepared... Can you hear me?

- Yes. - I've prepared a short...

A short...

They had this wonderful charisma. They made you feel good to be with them.

And I thought their music was rubbish.

That first occasion with him was all really Brian's fault.

'Cause nobody told me that when he walked in,

this fellow came in, this little chap, and said, "Here, our drummer?"

I said, "No, he's not. That's your drummer. We're paying good money for that fellow."

And we had the best drummer you get in...

- Andy White. - Yeah.

Who will never live it down.

I didn't realise until quite later on how much I hurt him by that.

- I know. - I didn't mean to.

Well, he's a sensitive soul, Ringo.

He is a sensitive kind of guy, you know?

And I don't think we realised how much that hurt him.

But he got over it.

No, no. He was not precise.

And so you, I think, you were used to working with session drummers

who were on the ball.

And what happened in The Beatles, when we played live

if Ringo sped up a tiny bit, we all just went with him.

So nobody really noticed it.

One thing about your drumming is that it cannot be mistaken for anybody else.

Yeah.

You have a signature and as soon as you hear it, that's Ringo.

No doubt about it at all.

I think it's an emotional thing where I actually put, you know...

We only have that much room to hit. And I hit on the back of that.

Where a lot of other drummers hit on the front,

but we still only have that. It's where you put it.

We took the harmonica that we'd used on Love Me Do,

put that down as well, and I was thrilled to bits with it.

I thought it was wonderful.

And I told them, I said, "I think you might have a number one."

In fact, I think I actually said, "Gentlemen, you have your first number one."

Which was bravado, really.

It's amazing, really, how creative we could be in those circumstances.

I say to people now, "10:30 till 1:30, two songs."

And you would just remind us about half way through

the three-hour period,

"Well, it's just about enough on that one, chaps. Let's wrap it up."

We go, "Five minutes. Yeah. Okay."

And so you learned to be brilliant,

he said modestly, in one and a half hours.

But I was under pressure because I got such little time with you.

And you were so, running all over the world,

and I would say to Brian, "I need more time in the studio."

And he said, "Well, I can give you Friday afternoon.

"Or Saturday evening." Whatever it is.

And he would dole out time to me like giving scraps to a mouse.

When we did Can't Buy Me Love, Paul started off the whole record by...

And that was the beginning of the record.

And I said, "Paul, we need to have a hit tag to start this, kick it off."

He said, "What do you think, then?" I said, "Take a bit of the chorus."

So that was the contributions I made in those days.

As I say, kind of streamlining their work.

But it was their genius that made the songs work.

You had to wait for a studio.

I mean, it was like one of the top restaurants, "We can see you in a month," type of thing.

And I lived right next door in Abbey Road, right next door to the studio

and it was like the red-carpet people going in and out

which was fun.

Every now and then, you would hear his voice very calmly say,

"That was nice. I'd like to, maybe, change the tempo a little.

"I thought it was a little rushed," or, "Could you do this?"

I think he got the best out of people because he didn't frighten them.

Of course, Brian, flush with all their success,

kept bringing me more artists.

This was the year in which I had 37 weeks at number one

which has never been done. Not even by Norrie Paramor.

So would you say you were the Simon Cowell of the '60s?

I do hope not.

Gerry & the Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer.

- And Cilla. - And Cilla.

It's a busy day, wasn't it?

Just remember him being so suave and sophisticated.

Little did I know he turned out to be a Cockney

that talked dead posh.

The way he dressed, you know, he wore a tie and a shirt.

The only concession to relaxation was that he took his suit jacket off,

but the tie stayed on.

The tie was always there.

My work load was enormous,

so I was spending more time in the studio than I was anywhere else,

and I found myself completely and utterly wrapped up in my work.

Patience and being really very honest, as well,

but in a nice way.

He could be really honest in a nice way.

I used to say to him, "I'm a little bit flat there at the end, George."

And he would say, "It's soul."

- I remember that. Yeah. - It says Brian.

- We were just talking about that. - Chamberpot on his head.

- Yeah. - Judy's there.

And if you remember, and it was very naughty...

All the food was in phallic, or...

Yeah, the rolls were a particular shape.

It was a hoot. It was great, you know.

We'd never seen anything like that.

I suspect Brian might have.

- Yes. Well, he chose it, all right. - Yeah, that's what I mean.

But they also got Judy standing on the table putting a garter round her leg.

- You remember that? - Yeah.

She didn't need much persuading.

The Beatles loved her.

Even though she was dead posh, she had an incredible sense of humour.

And so, I think a few of The Beatles fancied her, as well, on the quiet.

We don't really want to hang out with him.

It's Mrs Martin we all love.

The great Judy,

who we thought, when we started, was the Queen.

She was so posh.

Hello.

He was a bit posh, but she was over the top.

Do you remember Judy reciting John's poem?

Deaf Ted, Danoota, (and Me).

Deaf Ted, Danoota, (and Me).

"With faithful frog beside us, Big mighty club are we"

"The battle scab and frisky dyke Deaf Ted, Danoota, and me.

"We fight the baddy baddies, for colour, race and Cree

"For Negro, Jew and Bernie Deaf Ted, Danoota, and me.

"Thorg Billy grows and Burnley ten, And Aston Villa three

"We clobber ever gallop Deaf Ted, Danoota, and me.

"So if you hear a wondrous sight, Am blutter or at sea,

"Remember whom the mighty say Deaf Ted, Danoota, and me."

You see, she didn't have to work on her accent like I did.

I didn't think I had a different accent to anybody else.

But the boys accepted you as part of the team.

You were their first major groupie.

Yes, quite.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to now have a few words from our recording manager,

Mr George Martin.

- Martin. - George Motherson Martin.

Here he is. George... Come here, George.

Say a few swinging new fab words for the Christmas market.

It's been a switched on year for George, too, fab Beatle people,

and we all hope you appreciate it. Here he is.

He won't talk, Beatle people.

- He won't. - Gone independent.

- Where on earth did that come from? - Load of lunatics, if you ask me.

That's The Beatles fan club record. That's got to be.

- You remember the fan club record? - Right. Well done you.

Every year, we'd take 10 minutes of the session time and do nonsense like this.

Well, I'm glad. I'd quite forgotten about that.

But we couldn't get you to speak.

So professional.

EMI was such a funny place in those days.

We thought of it in the same terms as the BBC.

Sort of huge monolithic corporation but groovy with it, kind of thing.

And I always remember when we went to the toilets

there was this old-fashioned bog roll

and on every sheet it had, "Property of EMI."

Limited, Hayes...

What, they think someone is going to nick it?

I mean, it was worth nicking, actually. I wish I had one of those rolls now.

You got to remember when you're in there using the thing

who it belongs to.

It was a treadmill, but it was a very nice one.

A golden treadmill, they might say.

- Ten number ones in a row. - Which is extraordinary.

And you weren't getting any extra money for this from EMI?

- No. - Did that make you feel bitter?

Yes.

- It's the right answer. - It didn't make me feel better.

- It made me feel bitter. - Bitter or better?

The appalling thing was that in 1963,

after working my butt off all year,

and I was on a very, quite a low salary, 2,000 a year at the most, I should think,

and I didn't get my Christmas bonus, if you remember.

You got yours.

Well, I was on £10 a week, yes.

And I rang through and I asked why

and they said, "But, you're now an executive getting over 2,000 a year..."

That's extreme.

"...and we don't give bonuses to people like that."

So I got nothing for the work I had done in that year.

And yet all the sales staff got huge bonuses for the amounts of records

they sold to the dealers.

So I naturally had a chip on my shoulder

which hasn't fallen off even now.

- What's all this, John? - It's Peter Sellers.

It has been a hard day's night.

And I have been working like a dog.

It's been a hard day's night. I should be sleeping like a log.

But when I get home to you, I find the things that you do

will make feel all right.

The thing about this record for me is we had this in Liverpool before we knew you.

And I wore this record out.

- Did you really? - Yeah.

We played this forever.

When Brian told you you'd got a deal with George Martin

who made all the comedy records,

didn't you feel you were scraping the bottom of the barrel?

No. Not really.

I think we probably wondered why we'd got the comedy guy and not the music guy.

But I think we loved this so much.

And the other thing about this is it wasn't just comedy.

There was quite... There was good music in it.

And things like Right Said Fred, Goodness Gracious Me,

it was a groovy... You know, you did good music at those times.

Those recordings with Peter, and Spike and Irene Handl

helped me in two ways with The Beatles.

First of all, I didn't know them from Adam

but they knew me.

Because they were Goon fans.

They knew all the stuff I had made, Peter Sellers' stuff and so on.

That was the first help.

Once the boys decided they would not perform any more,

they wanted just to work in the studio,

building up Sgt Pepper became a bit like working on a Peter Sellers record,

because you were building a picture in sound.

Were you to some extent tickled by the fact that they were playing with music

in a way that perhaps other rock-and-roll bands didn't dare do?

Yeah. They were becoming quite original.

The thing is that they were eternally curious.

They wanted to find new ways of doing what they were doing,

and new harmonies, new endings to songs and that kind of thing.

They would always want to look beyond the horizon and not just at it.

There was one time on Rain where I decided to play around with tapes

and I took John's voice off as a separate item

and put it on a quarter-inch tape and turned it back to front

and slid it around a bit

and then put it in on the end of the song.

And I played it to John when he came back.

And he said, "That's gear.

"What is it?"

And I said, "It's you." And I explained to him what I'd done.

And from that moment, he wanted everything backwards.

- Yes. - They all did.

This place, Abbey Road Studios, was a wonderful musical toy shop.

I'd never got much money,

but I did get the ability to play in that toy shop.

And so I was able to experiment, I treated pianos,

putting newspapers through the strings, that kind of thing.

And backwards music I was doing, and different speed music.

And I found it interesting.

Shoulder.

- We've got these tape loops. - Great. Yeah.

We've got the sitar and tamboura.

- And the cymbal. - Yeah.

It's just... All the way through.

- That was far out then. - Yeah.

'Cause everything was so pulled back and a bit neat.

This is when we started to... This is good reason we stopped touring

and came into the studio.

It was funny, actually. You know that time...

If you remember, we all came in rose-coloured or funny-coloured specs.

And where I was living, there was a little optician round the corner.

And I sort of popped in and said, "Do you do different-coloured lenses and everything?"

He said, "Yeah, I do anything."

So I ordered up half a dozen different colours, rose, green, blue

and took them to the sessions.

That was to give you a bit of an atmosphere in the studio.

I remember all of you saying,

"This is a sterile place, just white walls and... Bloody awful.

"Can't you do something to liven it up?"

And so then put in three fluorescent stands

with red, blue, and white.

No, it's red and green.

- Was it green? - I know 'cause I've got them.

- All right. - They're in my studio.

- Fluorescent pods. - That was to give you inspiration.

And boy, did it ever.

We grooved after that.

One of the reasons that I'm deaf is that I used to sit in front of the desk,

because I would then get right inside the triangle

and I could hear in stereo.

I used to shut my eyes

and hear this arc of sound,

I could hear everything from right to left.

And it seemed to go up, as well, not just straight in front of me.

That's 'cause you were on drugs.

- Well, it was, in a way, wasn't it? - Yeah.

It was a kind of drug.

You do an experiment in the studio and take an oscillator,

so you go... "Can you hear it?"

And us, with young ears at the time, we'd go, "Yeah.

"Yeah, I can still hear it."

And you'd take it up and up and up and we go, "We just lost it."

And you said, "Pretty good hearing. You just went up to... Decibels."

And you said "Now let's do it the other way." And you go...

You take it down and we go "Yeah, can hear it.

"Whoa, got the funniest feeling, though."

'Cause you'd really taken it down low.

And you told the story that Hitler...

Hitler's people, his media people, knew this effect,

and before a rally they would play a low frequency that nobody could hear.

They'd put that out and everybody'd be sitting there

going, "I'm not feeling too great."

And the minute before Hitler got there they'd switch it off and everybody's go,

"Yeah. Hitler."

I loved those little stories

that would be mixed in with our recording career.

You must have known, given your background

and the context that you knew of music,

you must have known what an extraordinarily different song it was from a pop song.

Oh, yeah. Terrific.

Wonderful.

The syncopation in it was marvellous. The...

That was Paul's work. All I had to do was just do the strings.

You're being very modest

because, guitar and vocals, that song is a pretty remarkable song.

It's unusual modally. It has an English folk song feel to it.

Its lyrics are unusual, everything about it is unusual.

But the decision to use strings in that particular way

and with the rhythmic energy of those strings is what turned it, I think,

from a singer-songwriter song into something quite extraordinary.

Paul did want to use strings by this time.

And when I heard the song I thought of Bernard Herrmann

and all the stuff that he did from the Hitchcock films.

And I thought of the strings being very short, plain, and very spiky and very...

Hitting. Hitting like a piano.

Which would emphasise the syncopated nature of the song.

So it's half Paul McCartney, half Bernard Herrmann.

Nil score to George Martin.

Paul was always much more interested in music, per se,

whereas John was always more interested in words, per se.

And, I think this relationship benefited from the ping pong of those things.

I think Paul always wanted to be able to write lyrics like John could do.

And John really envied Paul's gift for melody.

John once said to me, "Let's face it, George, I don't expect to walk into a bar in Spain

"and hear people whistling I Am the Walrus."

And I knew what he meant.

But it was that difference between them which also spurred each other on.

Did they both trust you equally?

I think they trusted me, yes.

I think Paul probably wanted me more because of the ideas that he would have

to use orchestras or orchestra instruments.

John would not need me as much.

But he did need me sometimes.

It must have been very daunting for George in the beginning,

because he wanted to be a songwriter.

And the other two, because they worked so closely together,

they wrote better songs.

But I was encouraging,

'cause I always insisted that we had one of his songs on the album.

So he came through by writing some fantastic stuff.

"Something in the way she moves."

Something is one of the best love songs ever.

There's you doing your mixing.

Here's me producing all the Beatle records, as I did.

- Not really, just kidding. - Wry smile on your face.

Wry smile as he sees me do it completely wrong.

You're saying, "I'll leave him. He's screwing it up. I'll leave him."

But this is interesting, because in the very first sessions,

I always say, "We came in the tradesmen's entrance," if you'd remember.

- We didn't come in through the control room. - That's right.

But by this time, we'd got in that control room

- and we're getting up there. - I know I didn't like it.

Never mind taking over the asylum, look at us

working it.

Oh, you fool.

- Easy shot. - You had it all.

I hate you.

Do you mean that?

During the Let It Be stuff,

John came to me and said, "We don't want your crap on this record."

I said, "What do you mean?" He said,

"We don't want all this production crap where you overdub voices and you edit

"and you manipulate."

I said, "Okay, what do you want to do?"

"We're gonna make an honest record of this.

"We're gonna perform and you record us. That's what it's gonna be."

So Let It Be became torture,

because John's premise was to take a song,

rehearse it, get it right and record it.

But they never got it right.

And when I heard that John and George had taken the tapes out of Abbey Road

and given them to Phil Spector to make them work

I felt a betrayal, really.

When the record came to be issued,

EMI rang me up and said, "They don't want your name on the record.

"It will be produced by Phil Spector."

I said, "But I produced all the original stuff that they worked on."

"Yes, well that..."

I said, "I'm not having that.

"Why don't you put on it 'Produced by George Martin'

"over 'Produced by Phil Spector'?"

But they didn't seem to go for that.

I didn't think we'd work again after Let It Be. And I didn't really want to.

And when Paul rang me up and said,

"We want you to come in and produce another record."

I said, "I've been there, Paul. I don't like it. I don't think I want to do this."

And he said, "Yes, you do. We all want to get together."

And I said, "What about John?"

"John wants to, too."

And we all got back into the studio again and John was Honey Pie.

I knew it was the end and they knew it was the end.

They were coming back for one final stab

at doing something really worthwhile together

before they went off into the sunset

and their own particular ways.

As people, we weren't that close.

But musically we were still very close.

We just have our argy-bargy, you know.

It was like an eight-year gig for me, and I still feel that

any band, eight years it's got to end.

It was tough, I think, for everyone when you parted.

You'd been together for so long.

- Everybody had to find their own thing to do. - Yeah.

I, on the other hand, was kind of liberated.

"Thank God that's over."

For the first time in my life, well, in eight years anyway,

I was a free man.

I wasn't bound by worrying whether the next record will be in the charts or not.

And I was in demand.

And for the first time, I got paid well on it, too.

'Cause I never got paid well on a Beatle song.

So I was quite happy.

- We weren't looking for number ones. - Right.

- I didn't need number ones. - Yeah.

- 'Cause I'd had them. - Right.

I just wanted to do stuff that I enjoyed doing.

I wanted to try to get George in on this because it was clear to me

that the experience and work that he'd done with The Beatles

with symphonic musicians, classical musicians.

He was really the clear leader in this world.

And I wanted the leader.

Oh, gosh. One of my favourite tracks of all.

Smile of the Beyond from Apocalypse

with the Mahavishnu Orchestra.

And every time I hear it, it still sends...

My hairs stand up at the back of my neck. I think it's fantastic.

It always was comfortable with George. He didn't just sit behind the glass,

he was down there in the studio with us, playing piano...

He plays piano on Tin Man. That's actually George playing...

You had this infallible

choosing of the right instruments for the right song.

And I knew that my songs were very musical.

And I thought that there would be good chemistry there.

Great songwriter.

And this is the reason I worked with him, because I'd always admired what he'd done

ever since he became well-known for Up, Up and Away.

It's almost pervasive. It's hard to get away from the idea

that George's arranging and producing

affected almost everything that came afterwards.

He's letting me make stuff up on the hoof. And that's where I saw him get excited.

And he goes, "Okay, we've burnt that one out,

"let's start and do something else."

And we go, "No, George, we really love where you're going with this."

He said, "No. I know you're gonna overdo it. You're gonna get sick of it.

"We're gonna move on now."

I gave it the title Blow By Blow because when you're doing an extempore bit,

you are giving it a blow.

Combine that with the effect of punching, you know...

Everybody sees this thing, "Great title."

And I'm sure it had something to do with the success,

because, of course, it also meant something else.

He could have been a very suave actor, I think. A fantastic...

Almost a James Bond.

I suppose most people think of a Martini when they see a Bond film.

But, in fact, the Martini was the most elegant cocktail ever devised, I reckon.

And it was the favourite drink of the Algonquin set in New York in the '30s.

So what we need is a decent bottle of gin.

I happen to like this particular one,

which is a Tanqueray drink, gin.

Plenty of ice. And a little bit dry Martini vermouth.

And that's it, really.

The purist will say you shouldn't shake it because it bruises the gin.

Nonsense. It makes it colder.

And voilà, your Martini is made.

And there we are.

Couldn't be simpler.

Of course, it's a pretty strong drink.

Like Dorothy Parker said. "I like to have a Martini.

"Two at the very most.

"After three, I'm under the table.

"After four, I'll be under my host."

Cheers.

Do you remember where that was taken and who took it?

- I could be Linda taking it. - It is Linda.

- Is it? 'Cause it looks like her work. - Yeah.

- It could be Montserrat. - It is Montserrat.

- It is Montserrat. Yeah. - Well done.

- Montserrat is still alive... - Gorgeous, that's a beautiful picture.

My favourite shot that is.

I saw an in-flight magazine

which talked about the emerald isle of the Caribbean,

an island called Montserrat.

The thing that struck me about Montserrat was that everybody was so friendly

and it's still like that.

I think that was the chief reason why I decided to buy that property

and start a high-tech studio on a remote island.

I went back to England and everyone said how crazy I was.

And, of course, I was crazy.

It's painful because

it used to be such a fantastic place, so full of activity.

With great people.

We used to work in the studio.

In the evening, we would sit down to dinner,

and as many as 24 people would be sitting down and having a nice meal.

And we worked hard and we played hard,

made some great records here.

I wasn't able to get to Montserrat after the hurricane until after about six weeks.

So I got a flashlamp and I went into the studio to see how that had fared,

whether there'd been any leaks or not.

I went over to the piano and opened the keyboard.

All the ivory keys were covered in green mould.

It looked like the baize of a snooker table.

I realised then we were done.

Because I knew if the piano's like that,

what's the inside of all our electronics like?

It's like seeing something you've created falling into disrepair.

But it's like everything in life, isn't it? Everything has a period.

You bring something out of nothing

but it always goes back to nothing again. Whatever.

The old place hasn't changed a bit.

Looks very good.

They've got the names on the seats now.

- Here? - Yeah.

It all looks in pretty good nick, really.

And how long has it been running now?

- Two years? Maybe more? - Yeah. Three years.

- Three years. - Must be. Yeah.

It's been a godsend, really and truly.

Where would we have gone?

All those weddings, the plays, the performances...

It has been used for church services. It's been used for funerals.

It's used for dinners.

In fact, I heard one person refer to it as the national dining room.

Cultural Centre is very important to the Montserrat community.

It's used practically for everything.

All in all, it becomes a central focus for cultural life in Montserrat.

Are you very proud of it?

- I am proud of it. Aren't you? - Yeah, very proud of it.

We did it.

- Yeah. It's been successful. - And they've kept it very well.

- Yeah. - It looks really nice.

Very nice.

I've worked with so many great people.

I've been given all sorts of awards and accolades.

And I say, "Well, is this really me that's getting it?

"Who are you to get all this stuff?"

I was worried about working with Giles.

He'd been working as my assistant, on and off on various projects I'd done.

But when it came to the Cirque du Soleil show, I knew that I needed him.

Mainly because of my hearing, but also because of the magnitude of the task.

And so I said, "Look, do you want to work with me on this?"

He said, "Yes, I'd love to, Dad."

I said, "If you do, we'll do it as partners.

"You won't be my assistant. We'll be equal 50-50."

How did you settle any differences you had?

Oh, I generally hit him over the head with a hammer.

As we speak, it's just a few months away from the fifth anniversary

of the Cirque du Soleil show.

And I promised I'd go along and join in the celebrations.

And with a great air of bravado, I said, "I'll come to the 10th one, as well."

Whether the show will last for 10 years,

whether I will last for 10 years, let's see.

- Thank you. - Okay.

I'm just counting my money.

I've led a wonderful life. Can't complain. I've got a fantastic family.

And I've had a great deal of love in my life.

...that many mulberries?

That's not a mulberry, that's a catalpa.

- Catalpa? - Catalpa, yes.

Getting old is not fun. It's not for sissies.

Dylan Thomas raged against the dying light.

The truth of the matter is, you can do damn all about it.

If you're lucky, you get to be old.

I do live each day as though I won't see tomorrow.

Because that's the way to look at it.

So what the hell am I doing wasting time talking to you now.

I'll give you anything, my friend, if it makes you feel all right.

But I don't care too much for money, money can't buy me love.

I'll give you all I've got to give,

if you say you love me, too.

I may not have a lot to give,

but what I've got I'll give to you.

But I don't care too much for money, money cannot buy me love.

- "Can't buy me love"? - No.

- Everybody tells me so. - Naughty.

- "Can't buy me love"? - No.

No, no, no.

- Oh, stop it. - Well, then.

Say you don't need no diamond ring and I'll be satisfied.

Tell me that you want the kind of things that money just can't buy.

But, you see, I just don't care too much for money,

money cannot buy me love.

I see.

- Well, good night. - Balls.