Martin · 1962
George Martin signs the Beatles at EMI Studios
On the afternoon of 6 June 1962, the thirty-six-year-old EMI Parlophone label producer George Martin auditioned a Liverpool four-piece beat group called the Beatles in Studio Two at EMI Studios, Abbey Road, on a recommendation from Brian Epstein, the Liverpool record-shop owner who had been trying to place the group across the previous five months. The audition produced four small recorded tracks (*Besame Mucho*, *Love Me Do*, *P.S. I Love You*, *Ask Me Why*) of which Martin admitted to Epstein the same evening that none was commercially releasable as recorded. He signed them anyway, on the post-audition judgement that there was something in their personalities that the recorded material had not captured. The Parlophone contract was signed in mid-June 1962 and the Beatles' first single *Love Me Do* (recorded in September with Ringo Starr replacing Pete Best on drums) was released on 5 October 1962. The Martin-Beatles partnership ran continuously from 6 June 1962 to the *Abbey Road* sessions of summer 1969 across ten studio albums, fifteen number-one singles in the United Kingdom, and the foundational re-shaping of the post-1962 popular-music recording-studio production-tradition.
It is the late afternoon of 6 June 1962, in Studio Two at EMI Studios, 3 Abbey Road, St John's Wood, north London, in the working studio-light through the high-set windows. He is thirty-six years old. He is George Henry Martin, born at Drayton Park, Highbury on 3 January 1926, son of the Drayton-Park carpenter Henry Martin and the Drayton-Park housewife Bertha. He had been schooled at the St Joseph's School in Highgate on a Catholic-foundation scholarship, served in the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Navy 1943-46, taken the Guildhall School of Music piano-and-oboe diploma in 1950, and had been employed at the Parlophone Records label of EMI since 1950 as a classical-and-comedy-records producer, taking over the Parlophone label management on the George Lyon retirement of 1955 at twenty-nine.
On the mixing-desk in front of him are the four tracks the Beatles have just laid down across the two-hour audition session. The small material is conventional small Liverpool-Cavern-Club beat-music repertoire (the Besame Mucho Latin-American standard, the Lennon-McCartney small original Love Me Do, the Lennon-McCartney P.S. I Love You, the Lennon-McCartney Ask Me Why). The small recordings are, on his immediate working professional assessment, not commercially releasable as recorded.
He thinks: the material is not the commercial-pop hook the EMI Parlophone label needs. The small group is, on the small studio working audition, technically competent but not exceptional. The small Pete Best drumming is the weakest small instrumental position in the four-piece.
He thinks: there is something else in the four-piece working register that the audition material has not captured. The small four-piece personalities (Lennon's small sharp scepticism, McCartney's small commercial-music sensibility, Harrison's small classical-blues guitar-melodic capacity, Best's small absent-stage presence) are the unusual ensemble-and-temperament combination that the post-1960 small Mersey-beat market is producing. The small group should be signed on the two-year option contract and the drummer replaced.
He calls Brian Epstein at the Liverpool NEMS Enterprises office that evening, offers the two-year Parlophone option contract on the condition that the small group replace Pete Best. Epstein agrees on the condition that Martin discuss the drummer replacement with the small group himself. The small contract is signed in mid-June 1962. Pete Best is replaced by Ringo Starr on the Lennon-McCartney-Harrison-Epstein four-way working consensus of 16 August 1962. The small Love Me Do single is recorded at EMI Studios on 4 and 11 September 1962 (the Ringo-Starr-and-Andy-White-double-drummer-session that has been a Beatles-discography source-of-confusion since), is released on 5 October 1962, and reaches the UK number seventeen on the Record Retailer Chart by the Christmas-week 1962 chart. The small Please Please Me single of 11 January 1963 reaches the UK number one. The small Martin-and-the-Beatles seven-year working studio partnership produces the ten Beatles studio albums (Please Please Me 1963, With the Beatles 1963, A Hard Day's Night 1964, Beatles for Sale 1964, Help! 1965, Rubber Soul 1965, Revolver 1966, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band 1967, The Beatles (White Album) 1968, Abbey Road 1969) and the foundation of the post-1962 popular-music studio-production tradition that has been the senior English-language popular-music orthodoxy since.