(excerpted from the book "Masters Of Music: Conversations With Berklee Greats" by Mark Small and Andrew Taylor)

Thoughts on the past, present, and future of music from a man who helped define them.

EVERYONE HAS HEARD THE LEGEND: a frustrated but resolute band manager, a record label chief with an open mind, and a young group of four Liverpool boys that no other label would touch.

“The recording, to put it kindly, was by no means a knockout,” George Martin later reflected on the demo in his book All You Need is Ears (St. Martin’s Press). “I could well understand that people had turned it down. But there was an unusual quality of sound, a certain roughness that I hadn’t encountered before…I thought as I listened: Well, there just might be something here.” To put it mildly, he was right.

Although signing, producing, and advising the Beatles may be George Martin’s most quotable claims to fame, he’s made a lifetime of sound judgements, unusual choices, and unusually wonderful music. In 1989, he was awarded an honorary degree, doctor of music, at Berklee’s commencement ceremonies. It was one recognition in a string of honors that have included the title of Commander of the British Empire in 1988 and induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ten years later.

In October, 1998, MCA Records released what the 72-year-old Martin promised would be his last album as a producer, In My Life. The album of electric cover versions of Beatles hits is a fitting capstone to Martin’s career as a record producer, composer, arranger, performer, film composer, record label chief, and chairman of a remarkably successful production company. But even that doesn’t quite cover it.

George Martin was born in 1926 in London and was drawn to music at an early age. His family obtained their first piano when he was just six years old, and the instrument became an instant source of fascination to him.

He played and composed from his early years through his service with the Royal Air Force during World War II. After the war, Martin attended the Guildhall School of Music studying composition, piano, and oboe. That was followed by a short stint as a freelance oboe player and an even shorter stint as a clerk at the BBC music library. In September of 1950, George Martin was offered a position as assistant to Oscar Preuss, head of a small label in the EMI group, Parlophone. Martin took the job—helping Mr. Preuss with administrative chores, assisting the label’s artists, and supervising studio sessions. He was a fast learner. When Oscar Preuss retired in 1955, Martin was offered the position of head of Parlophone. He was only 29 years old.

Martin immediately began searching for an untapped market where Parlophone could make its mark. He found that market in comedy records. His recordings of Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan, Flanders & Swann, and Beyond the Fringe (a young troop including such talents as Dudley Moore, Peter Cook, and Jonathan Miller) set new precedents in the industry, and are considered classics today. From there, Martin expanded Parlophone’s classical and jazz presence and, by 1962, began looking for an opening in the pop market. Enter the Beatles.

With the immense success of the Fab Four, Martin branched out to other pop soloists and groups. Gerry and the Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, Cilla Black, and David and Jonathan all made appearances on Parlophone. But it was the Beatles that took most of his time. Each album grew more complex and creative; each demanded more of him and the band. Help!, in 1965, contained Martin's first arrangements for instrumentalists other than the band, the string ensemble on “Yesterday,” and each following recording contained more and more orchestration, studio experimentation, and sound manipulation. As George Martin and the Beatles grew and experimented, the role of the producer also grew. The collaboration reached one of its highest points in 1967 with the release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. With one release, the vinyl LP was transformed from a medium into an art form.

By 1965, Martin had become disenchanted with EMI. Although he had built Parlophone into a successful label and produced one of the most popular bands of all time, he was still being paid a relative pittance. Martin and a group of colleagues left Parlophone to form a collaborative production company, Associated Independent Recording (AIR), where he continued to explore and produce up to his recent farewell recording.

His production credits have included albums with Paul McCartney, America, Jeff Beck, Sea Train, Paul Winter Consort, John McLaughlin, Jimmy Webb, Neil Sedaka, the Bee Gees, Cheap Trick, and Ultravox. He also has written scores for many films including the Beatles’ A Hard Day's Night and Yellow Submarine, Pulp starring Michael Caine, and Live and Let Die, for which he received a Grammy.

George Martin's career has thrived on his versatility, his vision, his openness, and his tactful manner with artists. It was about all of these things that he spoke to us from his offices at AIR Studios, Ltd., in London, in 1989, just prior to his receiving his Berklee honorary degree.

Q. You've been involved with a wide range of different aspects of the music industry. Do you think today's record producers can have that same sort of flexibility?

I've been very lucky in that respect. I guess I've had such a varied background because I've been associated with recorded music in one form or another over a long period of time. When I first started earning money from music, technology was very primitive. Tape was in its infancy. When I went to EMI studios in 1950, they were still making records on wax, because tape had a very bad signal-to-noise ratio. Stereo was not unheard of but it was unused. And long-playing records hadn't been invented. “Synthesizer” was a word you'd never heard of. It was a different style of life altogether.

But nowadays, of course, it's so different. It's very difficult for young people to have that kind of varied background. A producer has to be well-versed in computers as well as music. He has to have at his fingertips a grasp of technology that wasn't demanded 40 years ago.

Q. Is it important for a producer to understand a wide range of music as well?

I think the first essentials for any producer are a curious nature and a catholic taste. If his tastes are channeled too much in one direction, then he becomes less of a successful producer because it gives him less tolerance of music. If you get a rock fanatic or a jazz fanatic or a classical fanatic, to a certain extent they'll be wearing blinders; they won't see too much on either side of them. That makes them less versatile, it makes them less tolerant, and, to be honest, I think it makes them less musicianly.

Q. Would you say that a producer who specializes in one area is necessarily less effective?

I don't know about that. I just think a budding record producer should keep an open mind always, examine every kind of music, and appraise the good in everything, rather than channel himself too much in one direction.

Having said all that, it's worked for me, being versatile, and being able to put my hand at different things. It may not work for other people. If you get someone who is a synthesizer expert, he may be able to produce records of a particular sort much better than someone like myself. And also, obviously, it depends upon the aptitude of the individual. It's no good my lecturing people saying what they should be. They're going to be what they are.

Q. You've said that tact is the sine qua non of a record producer. Does that mean the artist is always right?

No, it doesn't mean that by any means. It does mean that you've got to convince the artist that what you want is what he wants.

I've never been one for confrontation. I've always been one for infiltration. I get my way by trying to convince the artists that it's his way. It's a question of tact and diplomacy. You've got to know your artist. You've got to know where his strengths and weaknesses are. And you must always try and keep him in a state where he's going to give you his very best.

At the same time, I think a producer should never be so arrogant as to believe that he knows it all. I've learned a hell of a lot from people I've worked with.

Q. Have you ever felt that advancing technology actually got in the way of a good recording?

Yes, sometimes. I've listened to works where people have become so in love with the mechanics and the technology of what they were doing that they forgot the music. You can get a thing overloaded. In today's technology, where a lot of recordings are done on a layer-cake principle, where you start off with something and you keep adding to it, one of the problems is that a lot of people don't know when to stop adding. That is a terrible danger. Knowing when to stop is almost as important as knowing where to start.

Q. Have you ever found yourself in that trap?

Not really. I've always regarded technology as a tool. When I first started using automation and computers, I insisted that they should still be tools, and that the synthesizer should be an instrument. I've always liked the combination of synthesized sound with natural sound. That happens to be my taste. A purely synthetic sound tends to be a little bit too sterile for me.

I have used purely synthesized sounds on material I've written myself, but not for human consumption. I've only done it in order to convince people that it would sound better if I used musicians who cost a lot more money.

Q. There also seems to be a temptation to make tracks and recordings perfect. Do you see that as a problem?

It's not a problem, really. It's merely a question of taste again. I like to have a bit of humanity in my music. These days, you can sample and reproduce everything in digital format. But a clinically accurate tempo makes me uneasy, as though I'm listening to a quartz-controlled watch. I like ebb and flow and I like dynamics. I like a bit of randomness in my music, which is what a human being is, after all. A heartbeat isn't quartz controlled; it varies with our emotions. I think music should reflect that.

Q. And it may be that a human mistake on a track could turn out better than you could have imagined or planned.

Exactly. Sometimes people do things that you don't expect. And sometimes they are literally mistakes. I'm not saying always, because quite often they can be pretty awful. I have known occasions where mistakes have been absolutely super and I want them, even the question of intonation. I've heard Sinatra sing out of tune and sound good. I've heard other people sing in tune and sound bad.

Q. Can it sometimes be the constraints of technology that lead to greater creativity, as with Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, recorded on a four-track?

To be honest, I don't think Sgt. Pepper would have changed very much if we'd had present-day technology. If I'd had 32-track digital available to me in 1967, it's quite likely that the album would have sounded not very far off from what it sounds like today. I don't think it would have sounded any better. And I doubt very much whether it would have sounded much worse.

It was a hassle doing it on four track, because you had to think in advance. You had to think where you were going to go, how much extra tape you had to put it on, and what you were going to lose in the process. It was a kind of crossword puzzle you were doing mentally. But I don't think that really made it any better. I think it just was. It might have turned out slightly different, but who's to say?

Q. Another possible constraint on music is business. Do you think the two are necessarily at odds with each other?

Sometimes they're in conflict. Sometimes you wish that you didn't have to finish something within a limited time. Or that you have to reduce the size of your orchestra because of the money constraints. Sometimes that can be frustrating. And sometimes you have to do things because business requires it. That is also frustrating.

I think you have to compartmentalize yourself. I've always done that. When I'm a businessman, I put my business hat on; I even literally put on my business clothes. I put my armor on and I go out to war. As opposed to being an artist where I sort of supplely lie around and dream and try to translate those dreams onto a piece of score paper or in a studio. So I've become two different people. And it's necessary to do that, because you have to be cool-headed as a businessman. When you're making decisions that involve not only money but also people's livelihoods, you've got to be serious about it.

But I've been very lucky, those frustrations have been a very small percentage of my life. One of the things I had at EMI as a result of the Beatles was not a great deal of money, because I didn't earn much, but a tremendous freedom. I was able to do pretty well what I wanted. That freedom was something that I valued enormously.

Q. Where do you think the music business is going from here, technologically and musically?

Certainly over the past 10 years or so, music has become subjugated to vision, much more than it ever was in the early days, because “the box,” the fish tank in the corner of our room, dominates everybody's life to the exclusion of almost everything else. In the world as we know it, the average man is influenced more by television or video than by any other medium. And because of that, music itself has changed. Popular music has become less profound, become much more ephemeral and much more linked to visual images. Without that link we wouldn't have Michael Jackson. Without it we wouldn't have records which are sold as videos rather than as sound.

People tend to listen with their eyes more. They don't listen too much with their ears. Because of that, I don't think music has advanced as much as I would have liked it to, which I find a matter of some regret. Whether it's going to improve or not is up to people's tastes, I think. Whether they will realize that their aural sense has got to be developed a bit more than their visual one, I don't know. But there's no hope for that at the moment. So I'm a bit depressed about where music is going right now.

Q. Do you think these trends will continue?

There's no reason to think they won't. Certainly young people tend to think of music in connection with visual images, much more so than they used to. Very few people just listen to a new song or performance without seeing something, or without imagining they see something.

At the same time, I'm not so conceited as to think my views are those that should be perpetuated. It's quite likely that these are the ramblings of an old man. The young people may take a quite different view and say, “Okay, so music is more visual, who cares? We're getting a great kick out of it. So why don't you shut up.” That's perfectly valid.

I think the choice that is offered to young people today in music is so wide, the colors on the palette are so varied now that it's difficult to know where to go. It is a very exciting future for music. The opportunities are enormous. There is sure to be opportunity for great talent to develop in the future which will make me and the Beatles seem very old-fashioned.

George Martin Speaks to the Class of ‘89
Excerpts from his 1989 commencement address

I am honored and delighted to be with you today. I am particularly thrilled to share this moment with someone who has always been a hero of mine—Dizzy Gillespie. In touring your college yesterday, I was impressed. I think that no school anywhere in the world has such vast and impressive facilities as Berklee.

But technology hasn't always been to our advantage. In Europe, there is a sinister growing dependence on visual entertainment. TV and video have become the opiate of the masses, with prerecorded and programmed sound satisfying their eternal hunger. The staple diet of millions of people is junk music. Like junk food, it may fill their bellies, but it doesn't improve their style. They are hearing with their eyes, and listening to nothing.

I think we have to do our darndest to counter this trend, and get people to realize that mimed performances are not as good as the real thing.

For music to improve it has to be created live. This may seem a paradox coming from someone who has spent his life in a recording studio. But I believe in the spontaneity of performance, and the ability to move the soul of the listeners with music that happens at the time.

I love technical wizardry, and I am enormously excited at the potential that is available today. But we have to remember that technology is just a tool, nothing more. True art, true music comes from the heart and soul of the human being.

Pete Townshend said to me the other day, “George,” he said, “tell the young ones how to cope with success.” I knew what he meant.

Success and its hand-in-glove partner, failure, are equally difficult to handle, and everyone has to deal with both in different quantities in their lifetimes. The despair of rejection, or failure, is easy to imagine. The perils of success are less evident. For one thing, it is a mirage, you never really get to it. There is always more to do, more to learn, and always someone better than you are. Mind you, there's always someone worse, as well!

But public approval is a heady wine, and too much can be not only intoxicating, but downright harmful. Keep a sensible opinion of your own worth, without the honeyed words of your admirers. They can a eat you alive if you are not careful, and drop you like a hot brick if you dare to go out of fashion.

Lord knows that it is hard to get to the top; but it is a darned sight harder staying there. The music business is littered with shooting stars that have burned out. So pace yourselves; it is not a sprint that you are running, it is more like a marathon. And remember you have to keep running.

Obviously, talent is required. Equally obvious is the need for plain hard work. Every first-class musician that I have known works hard at his talent. Someone like my friend Mark Knopfler seems to enjoy talent that requires no effort. But I promise you, he practices every day to keep his technique up to scratch.

I said you were running a race, a marathon. Well, on second thought that marathon is a relay race, and I am close to passing on the baton. A lot of you are going to take up the baton passed to you by those ahead of you. Music of the future is in your hands. Cherish it: It is a vital part of humanity.

excerpted from the book "Masters Of Music: Conversations With Berklee Greats" by Mark Small and Andrew Taylor