While many have debated who the real ‘fifth Beatle’ truly was, in our mind there’s simply no contest. It’s quite obviously the late, great George Martin who deserves that honorary mop-top.
He’s the man who unlocked the Beatles’ creative ambitions and enabled them to evolve from pop sensation to music’s most pioneering figures, Martin was part-producer and part close confidante to four men who changed the way we think about music itself.
Although George Martin sadly passed away in 2016, George’s son, Giles Martin has inherited his father’s flair for manning a console, becoming a key figure in how the Beatles' recording canon is handled today, producing, remixing and supervising all major releases by the brand.
From Get Back to the recent Anthology re-release, to the upcoming Rubber Soul remix, Giles has overseen it all. He's, quite simply, the man entrusted with the keys to music’s most celebrated legacy
But Giles’ studio career extends beyond just taking on his father’s mantle, he has been involved in a wide array of projects including the remixing of The Rolling Stones’ Goats Head Soup and, notably, the incredibly fascinating Dolby Atmos mix of The Beach Boys' timeless Pet Sounds, released in 2023.
It was at that point that this writer was able to spend some one-on-one time with Giles, talking in-depth about why expanding Pet Sounds into Atmos was tantamount to genuine musical archaeology - but required some delicate, respectful hands…
“The fact of the matter is that mono can be immersive too – Sgt Pepper and Pet Sounds came out in mono, and people fell into them,” Giles said. “You have to mix to the source. It’s the equivalent of restoring paintings, brightening up an old Dutch master’s work and making it bright. So it’s always a challenge. I was deeply honoured that they asked me to do it.
“There had to be a lot of audio restoration. There were elements missing. So we used a combination of the original master tracks and newly-sourced mix elements,” Giles explained. “There were a couple of vocal things that had to be taken off the mono. Generally speaking, we had about eight tracks to play with. A lot of the instrumentation was on three different tracks, locked-in together.”
With the project on his desk, Giles settled on quite a daunting starting point; “You have to start somewhere, and I thought I’d start with God Only Knows, because it’s such an amazing song. It’s one of the greatest songs ever written. That can be challenging in itself. Then we went through the rest of the album in track order from then on. Then you go back and revise and revise and revise.”
Beyond the discussion of the complex process of converting this hallowed record into an immersive Atmos sphere, Giles talked about the vast creativity and singular vision of Brian Wilson - who sadly passed away last year - and also shared his father’s perspective on Wilson's exceptional talent.
“I was with my dad on a plane once, and I just suddenly realised how awesome he was. I said to him ‘Dad, what you did with The Beatles was kind of amazing, wasn’t it?’ and he looked at me and said: ‘not as amazing as Brian Wilson’. He explained to me that The Beatles always had him, and he had The Beatles. But Brian Wilson didn’t have anyone, and he went and made this record. Without this record, The Beatles wouldn’t have made Sgt Pepper.”
Giles also explained to us why Pet Sounds continues to be revered all these years on; “Forget sampling, this was real innovation.” Giles gushed, “Pet Sounds is an organic record, and you kind of want it to be real, you want to be closer to them in a way, you want to fall into the record. It’s almost like a classical record, it’s so intricate and so beautiful.”
Read our full interview with Giles Martin on how he brought Pet Sounds into the Atmos domain here
