We got to London on the 1st December. Having so much spare time ahead, we decided to go to Apple. We went decided to wait at the door. We could see Neil Aspinall was in the house and we waited for him to come out. In the meantime we were waiting in the street, watching him moving from one side of the room to the other., always talking on the phone. The walls were decorated with gold records and with a big canvas: the cover of Anthology. At about six o'clock Neil came out - we approached him and said "Hello" and shook hands. We asked him if we could take some pictures with him and get some autographs. We wanted him to sign a very old photograph of him, one in which his bald patch wasn't as big as nowadays. He laughed at the picture and showed it to him friends. He kept on asking us "Who Am I?" He didn't seem to believe that we knew him. As we were taking the snaps we talked to him very briefly. We asked him about George Harrison and the news, at the time, of his new album. His answers were rather evasive and he just said "Rumours, rumours." Of course he was very kind and always smiling. We said goodbye. We felt really glad to have been with as Neil only goes to Apple three days a week since he was diagnosed with heart problems.
Next day it was the set time to meet George Martin. We arrived on the dot.The building where AIR Studios is based is a large church, in a luxury area of London. We set foot in the reception area, and go to the counter. Sally, George Martin's personal assistant, emerges from an open door. She lets us know that George Martin will be with us soon. In the meantime, she suggests, we can go to the cafeteria. And, sitting there is George Martin, some tables ahead, talking to someone else who is showing him some John Lennon snaps. From time to time the voice of George martin fills the place.
Some minutes later, George looks at his watch, says goodbye to his table companion and heads to the reception area, going past us on his way there. He meets Sally, who points at us and they come towards our table. George is tall and broad-shouldered. He walks with a slight stoop. He is wearing a smart blue suit, with a light blue shirt and multi-coloured dotted dark blue tie. We stand up and welcome him and shake hands. Sally acts as an intermediary. George 's hands are enormous and his eyes are light blue. His voice is just like the one you have heard in countless interviews: unhurried, tender. He tells us to follow him. On our way upstairs, he opens a big door and gives us the chance to glance at the main studio: everything is ready to start recording the soundtrack of Ridley Scott's Gladiators. Once in the room, we sit around him. Sally is sitting opposite him: although he uses a hearing aid, Sally is at hand to repeat our questions and help him understand what we are saying. George has certainly lost his hearing.
First of all, we'd like to express our gratitude for your being here with us.
Thank you very much
We know that you don't accept being interviewed.
Yes, because if I did I'd be doing nothing in my life apart >from interviews. I have a tremendously busy schedule. What do you do nowadays?
I'm around this place for a start. But that's a very small part of me. I don't do much here because Sally and Alison and all the people around me run it very well without me. I conduct concerts, I give lectures, I do a lot of charity work, I'm the Governor of a school in the south of England. I'm trying to think of all the things I do! I work for a university, which is another educational thing. I occasionally do television, radio and Hmm.. every moment of the day I'm busy. Lots of different things.
But we read you were retired!
No, I never did say I was retiring. What I did say was that I'm not making any more records, which is a different thing. So I've finished producing records and the reason for that is that I've done it so much. I mean next year [2000] I would have been making records for 50 years. It's a long time. And I don't hear very well. My hearing has gone and I'm going deaf, because I'm old, and also I've destroyed my ears by listening to too much loud music. For that reason I'm not doing any more records, because you need to have good ears to produce records.
One of your latest projects was the record In My Life. In some promotional interviews you mentioned some tracks which were not eventually published. For instance, Blackbird.
Well Blackbird was done just for Japan, with Japanese artists. It was to help the record in Japan. In Japan records are very local, you know, Japanese artists outsell foreign ones by five to one, even Elton John. There's a tremendous bias toward Japanese people. So it was for the Japanese market.
And what about writing books?
No more books, I don't think so.
But everyone loves your books, like The Summer of Love
Thank you. Writing books takes a long time. It's surprising. If you w write a book, you have to spend a lot of time doing it, and, in the end, I mean, I've written three books in my life, and it would take a copule of years to write another one, and because you can't do it all the time. And I have so many other things I need to do, so that's not a high priority. If I had a big idea for a book I would write one, but at the moment I don't.
Yellow Submarine has just been reissued, both the film and its soundtrack. However, your orchestral score contributions have not been published. Will they be released?
No, well the orchestral score of Yellow Submarine on the original vinyl album has been taken off on the new issue because there are 16 tracks. But if you look at the DVD of Yellow Submarine, which is the entire film and it's brilliantly transformed on DVD it has been digitalised and enhanced and there's a separate track with all the film's score as well. My film score is there, on the DVD, which is very good. I only heard it the other day.
There's not too much information about that B side. How was it carried out?
Well, I recorded all the film music over a period of time while the film was being made. The film was made in a very short time, in just a year, which for an animated film is incredibly quick. The director of the film was George Dunning. Actually, he and I worked very closely together, and he said: "We don't have time for putting music to film the conventional way." He was able to paint some of the film, to create some of the film from The Beatles' songs. He said, "But the background score, which you have to write, will have to written as I'm making the film. You can't wait to the end. We haven't got time." So he supplied me with all the reels of the film as they were finished, or as they were half finished. So I might have reel four and then, two weeks later, reel five, or whatever. I had a Moviola in my house, which I made my own measurements from the film, and I would write music that I thought would be appropriate for the film. So gradually, over a period of months I wrote and recorded the score on the understanding that, perhaps, at the end of the film, some of the music would be lost in place of sound effects or whatever. In fact, very little was lost. So, there was about half an hour of music recorded.
Was there any problem between United Artists and EMI because fo the release of the orchestral music?
EMI wanted the score of the film, and I was working for them at the time, but the film was recorded and actually issued by United Artists, who had their own record label. They wanted to have the score but they couldn't get the score without me and EMI said: "we'd like you do do the score for us". So EMI asked me to re-record it and it was re-recorded especially for the record in Abbey Road Studios, just before the record came out. So there are two recordings, one for the film and one for the record. The one for the record was shorter, of course. It was divided into for or six sections.
There was too much pressure on you...always working against the clock...
When you write the film music you always have pressure, you never have time. I'm old fashioned. I write music with a piece of paper and a pencil. Nowadays they don't do that, they write music on a synthesiser. Then, when it's finished, they hand the floppy disc to an orchestrator, who then scores it for an orchestra. It's a different way of working. They are able to do it much more quickly. If you're writing every note yourself for an orchestra it takes time - and time is limited for a film score.
Let's talk about another film you were involved in, Live and Let Die. Was it done under the same pressure?
I had thirty days in which to write the music, which is two minutes a day. Well, it sounds OK...you can write two minutes a day, but you've got to compose it, you've got to orchestrate it and you've got to make it exactly fit the film. I found when I was working on Live and Let Die I would start at nine o'clock in the morning, at home. I would work through till about ten or eleven at night, with only a half hour break for lunch. Then I'd go to sleep and started again the following day. I did that for thirty days, including weekends, because I had to get it done. At the end of the time I had music this size [makes hand gesture], which was sent away and copied for the musicians.
The following Monday we had a big orchestra, like we have here, and the music was put in front of me. I conducted my first score and I didn't recognise it, because I'd written so much music I'd forgotten what the first one was. I looked at it and said "Did I write that?". Yes, it was in my handwriting, and this it what it sounds like.
What are your influences when you write music?
Bach..not bad, Debussy, ravel, Tchaikovsky...all of them. From the scoring point of view I always think of the impressionists, and Debussy and Ravel. tehy dealt with music liek a painter, and I see music like painting. I think of the colours that you can put on with your orchestral writing.
Let's move on to Abbey Road. As far as we know, it seems that Paul McCartney phoned you and said: 'We want to make a new record' it surprised you. It is said you thought The Beatles had broken up.
I didn't want to do it because I had been so bruised by the Let It Be experience that I didn't think there'd be any point in getting back into the studio. During Let it Be everybody was fighting like mad. I said "No, I don't want to do it any more. There's no point in going back into the studio unless I produce records liek I used to." Let It Be wasn't like that, because when we did it John Lennon was still very much in his drug phase and he was very difficult. He didn't get on with anybody. He hated George and Paul. There was a lot of actual fighting that went on during Let it Be. I didn't want to go back to that. I said I wouldn't do it. But Paul said, 'No, we really want you to produce like you did'. So I went back, we did Abbey Road and it was fine, it was OK.
Did you ever have to act as a sort of calming figure to the band?
No, it's very difficult when you have such four very different people. Ringo was probably the best peacemaker of the lot, but at the time, during Let It Be, it was very difficult to deal with the situations at all because there were conflicting interests, it was the drug aspect of John. Because he wasn't a rational person you couldn't have a normal arguement with him. It was also the money question, as they were breaking up. John wanted The Beatles to go with one manager, Paul wanted to go with another. There were the problems of Yoko, there were so many problems. My tendency was to walk away from it.
Depsite it all, you have been quoted as saying that Abbey Road is your favourite Beatle album.
Abbey Road is. But it was when it all came together again. During Abbey Road John was as sweet as pie, he was very nice, and worked very well with us. Everyone worked very well together. It was liek everyone coming back home. We all kind of knew that it was out last album, which is another reason why it's one of my favourites.
What about Brian Epstein?
He was the manager, but he had nothing to do with the music.
It has been written somewhere that you had some business differences with him...
I did? Well we had no business interests together at all. No, he was a very good friend, and we never had any differences at all.
Well sorry, that's what we've read.
Yes, there are a lot of books written. To many books which don't tell the truth. even the books that are supposed to be authentic are not completely true. Some books are full of lies, like the one by Albert Goldman. It's a terrible book. Peter Brown's books are not very good either.
Which one would you choose?
Well, as I've said, there isn't really one that is completely true becaude most people who've written books weren't there. You know, they're all like yourselves, they've heard it and they've got whatever and rewrite it. It's like Chinese Whispers, you say something to somebody, but by the time it's told to five different people it becomes different.
From the point of musical technique, who do you think was the best musician within The Beatles?
There isn't a best musician. John and Paul were better than George, and better than Ringo. But they were equal in my opinion. Different but equal.
When approaching a song, could you explain the differences between John and Paul?
I couldn't really describe the differences. They were both geniuses and they wrote beautiful music. They were very similar in many ways. But obviously the world sees it was Paul who wrote the popular tunes, and John the funny words. Paul was much more articulate than John. John would leave his ideas hanging in the air or give me similies or metaphors, or something. He would describe feelings, but he wouldn't be particular about how he got them. I mean, for example, when I first heard I Am The Walrus I was knocked out, it was fantastic. But you can't imagine hearing that song for the first time with just a voice and guitar, nothing else. I asked him, 'How do you want to score that sound?' and he said: 'I don't know, that's your job isn't it?' I asked him: 'But you must have some idea'. He said, 'Use strings and brass, your usual rubbish.'
What about John's voice? He was always worried about it, he didn't like it.
He hated his voice. There's no other way to say it, you can't say any more about it than that. he didn't like his voice. And I kept saying: 'It's a great voice,' but he said: 'distort it, make it different.'
If we ask you to choose a Beatles song right now, which one would you pick
You're not married, are you? if you were married and had four children, and somebody said: "You have to choose one child," who would you choose? Well, it's difficult, isn't it? There are over 240 songs. I can't pick one. it depends on the mood and feeling. If I feel liek going for a nice walk in the country I might want Something. I've got favourites. I like Strawberry Fields of John's, I like Here There and Everywhere of Paul's, but it doesn't mean that I don't like the other ones.
What other title would you like to be remembered by, apart from 'The Beatles Producer'.
Builder of studios? Musician? I think that I'd liek to be just 'record producer' and 'musician'. The thing I'm proudest of in my life is making lots of different kinds of music, including classical music, but I've also been involved with people who embrace art and technology. In my life I've worked not only with musicians, but with record engineers and technological people. I'm also very proud of having built three very, very good studios - this is the best of them.
Is there anything you would like to have done but you couldn't because of having to be with The Beatles?
Of course, I'd like to have done a lot of things. But I do a lot of things. I've written fifteen films...But The Beatles wer my number one priorty, and everyone understood that. When they stopped being together I had a new style of life, I had more freedom, so I was able to do more things. I can't regret anything. I think I've been very lucky in my life, very fortunate.
Is there any musical project you're working on at the moment?
I am planning to do a ballet, instrumental music, and we're going to put on a show of some sort using Yellow Submarine, but we haven't decided quite what to do with it yet. it won't happen for another year or two.