Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to the Bob Left Sets podcast. My
Speaker 1: guest this week is Giles Martin, producer, mixer. Extraordinary Giles.
Speaker 1: Good to have Bubbs, so nice to see you. Okay,
Speaker 1: you know the elephant in the room, of course, is
Speaker 1: your father is George Martin produced the Beatles records. What
Speaker 1: year were you born? I was born in six nine.
Speaker 1: I was actually born on on John Lennon's birthday, October nine.
Speaker 1: I think my dad was doing Abbey Road when I
Speaker 1: was born and John came to the studios and my
Speaker 1: dad told him that I was born in the same
Speaker 1: day as him as his birthday, and John said, Nana,
Speaker 1: what sort of arsol? Hasn't sun out to be like Benny?
Speaker 1: So that's how I came into the world. You know.
Speaker 1: That was one of the great things in the Yon
Speaker 1: Winner book. He was talking about meeting John Lennon and
Speaker 1: going to dinner with her, lunch with him in San
Speaker 1: Francisco with Yoko, and fans came up for autographs. John said,
Speaker 1: fuck off, that was there. That was his thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: he was he was. My dad always said about John
Speaker 1: that he was one of those people that you wanted
Speaker 1: to be close to. What you were scared of being
Speaker 1: close to because you could be served serbic, you know,
Speaker 1: like the cool kid at school. That's what what John
Speaker 1: Lennon was like. Wow, So since you shared a birthday,
Speaker 1: did that ever come up? As you know, obviously John
Speaker 1: Lennon died eleven years after you were born, But did
Speaker 1: you ever celebrate, you know and acknowledge it that there
Speaker 1: was identical No, Um, it's it's it haunts me, you know,
Speaker 1: It's it's one of those things that I mean, there's
Speaker 1: been occasions. You know, we did the I did the
Speaker 1: Love Show in Vegas and then they did they did
Speaker 1: a documentary on it, and the screen of the documentary
Speaker 1: is it was on my birthday because it was celebrating
Speaker 1: John Evan's birthday. It's always that thing. It's like there's
Speaker 1: something can you go to this as John Elen's birthday?
Speaker 1: That's actually it's clashes my birthday as well. So there's
Speaker 1: that it's a curse more than one. Well, it's like
Speaker 1: someone who has a birthday, I'm smith we only get
Speaker 1: one's not as bad as that, but it is like that. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you're born in sixty nine, how long does it
Speaker 1: take until you recognize what your father does for a living.
Speaker 1: Oh A long time, A long time. Fun enough, it's
Speaker 1: a you have to understand. It's I tell us to
Speaker 1: people and they don't believe me. But my dad wasn't
Speaker 1: at all cool because he did the Beatles when I
Speaker 1: was growing up, not coll to you were called to
Speaker 1: people in general, too cool to people in general. I
Speaker 1: remember there was a time where he couldn't get he
Speaker 1: couldn't get work because he'd done the Beatles, you know,
Speaker 1: because the he went off. You know, my my period
Speaker 1: of growing up was I um, he worked on We
Speaker 1: actually I grew up and here in Los Angeles for
Speaker 1: two years at the age of six, my father's working
Speaker 1: with the band America. UM and he came back. We
Speaker 1: came back from Los Angeles back in London again, and
Speaker 1: you know, he found it hard to get worked. That's
Speaker 1: kind of funny. A friend of mine's, Barbs, were another
Speaker 1: legendary producer, and he did Pink Floyd the Wall, one
Speaker 1: of the biggest albums of all time, and he came
Speaker 1: back to Toronto where he and the phone didn't ring.
Speaker 1: That's it's it's what it's funny. It's it's funny that
Speaker 1: it's funny what what happens like that, and and so
Speaker 1: you know, and also you know, I was really into
Speaker 1: I played the guitars into like Humble Pie. I was
Speaker 1: massive into Steve Ray Vaughan. You know, I think really yeah,
Speaker 1: I was that that was blues blues guitarist. I was
Speaker 1: going to be, you know, having having definitely not been
Speaker 1: born in the ghetto, I thought it'd be blues guitarist
Speaker 1: and that was my passion. Um. I was then really
Speaker 1: into Free into Paul Kossof and Paul you know, there's
Speaker 1: a two double album on A and M. It's called
Speaker 1: Molten Gold or something. Not only do is have you know,
Speaker 1: I'll be creeping in the steeler those you go back
Speaker 1: and listen. That ship was unbelievable great and there's a
Speaker 1: there's there's footage of them at the other White Festival
Speaker 1: as if you've seen it with you know, it's funny
Speaker 1: when you see the two microphones. I'm trying to work
Speaker 1: out where Paul's has two microphones? Is it because one's
Speaker 1: monitors and one's the p A. I mean, who knows,
Speaker 1: but there's a but but you know there's footage of
Speaker 1: that and it's it's beautiful, simple, economic and music. There's
Speaker 1: any there's there's drums, bass, sing, guitar. It's like the
Speaker 1: led Zeppelin is that format and you kind of missed
Speaker 1: that these days to a certain extent. But but I
Speaker 1: was into that, and it wasn't really I don't think
Speaker 1: I've heard the White Album until I was about nineteen. Really, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think. But I remember being on a plane
Speaker 1: with my dad and and it was when I, you know,
Speaker 1: I wanted to do music as a kid. Um to
Speaker 1: what degree because your father worked in music? To what
Speaker 1: degree was music playing in your household? You know? We
Speaker 1: didn't have a high fire, you did not, We didn't room. No, No,
Speaker 1: I mean is my sister and I have a sister
Speaker 1: who's two years older, and we had one of those
Speaker 1: um you know, we had a we had a plastic
Speaker 1: kids turntable. And I remember the actually the first album
Speaker 1: I remember having. I had a bunch of we had
Speaker 1: a bunch of records, obviously, records that my dad had
Speaker 1: at that time. One was Abbey Road, which in that
Speaker 1: spot it would have only been at this stage about
Speaker 1: six years old. And I thought, which is kind of
Speaker 1: crazy thinking about kind of getting old six years old,
Speaker 1: and then the other one was Living Let Die the
Speaker 1: Ocean picture soundtrack and my father recorded. I remember having
Speaker 1: the remember you remember the cover. This is the great
Speaker 1: thing about albums, You remember the covers of album. Of course,
Speaker 1: we had a Carol King album as well. It wasn't Tapestry,
Speaker 1: it was it was a kids album as she made
Speaker 1: um and we played and I remember that. But my
Speaker 1: my father. The one thing is that as I had
Speaker 1: as my father played the piano a lot. He was
Speaker 1: doing a lot of arranging at that time. In fact,
Speaker 1: when I was at play school sort of at the
Speaker 1: age of four or five, they went around the class
Speaker 1: asking what the parents did, and I said, my dad
Speaker 1: just say his home played the piano. You know that
Speaker 1: was because so there was music in the house. But
Speaker 1: my parents are very careful, um, and I don't know what.
Speaker 1: I've never really understood why they sort of kept music
Speaker 1: away from me. To a certain reader, I went on
Speaker 1: my own journey and then me and my dad met
Speaker 1: up later for various reasons. But so just to go
Speaker 1: to the end before we go back to the beginning,
Speaker 1: at what point did you meet up later? Well, my
Speaker 1: father which is known now, but we kept it secret.
Speaker 1: Lost his lost his hearing um. Now was that attributable
Speaker 1: to his work or was it just genetic? He always
Speaker 1: blames it on his on his work. He used to say,
Speaker 1: if you look at the photographs or the videos of
Speaker 1: the Beatles, he would sit between the speakers. You know,
Speaker 1: you see this famous such a studio to where the
Speaker 1: band are performing there there's a couple of films you
Speaker 1: see where my father stuck with his heavyteen the speakers.
Speaker 1: And he also blamed on Jeff Beck. He worked on
Speaker 1: Wide and Blow by Blow and which are the two best?
Speaker 1: Jeff background? Which are the two best? And even Jeff
Speaker 1: says there's two Jeff records? But then but yeah, he
Speaker 1: and he and he blames Jeff for going death. I
Speaker 1: mean it's that. You know, I know a lot about
Speaker 1: it because my father. It was it was, it was,
Speaker 1: you know, his one regretular life is his deafness. And
Speaker 1: so he started going deaf and you didn't want to
Speaker 1: tell anyone. And how old was he at that point?
Speaker 1: Let me have a think he would have been It
Speaker 1: would have been I would have been um sixteen, So
Speaker 1: he's probably he's probably in his early fifties. And he
Speaker 1: noticed it when they were he noticed it where and
Speaker 1: we do we do different killer Hut cycles lining up
Speaker 1: a tape machine and he went in the studio and
Speaker 1: you could see the meters move and you couldn't hear it,
Speaker 1: and it was like it was like fifteen cycles and
Speaker 1: ten cycles or whatever it is. And he realized that
Speaker 1: he couldn't, you know, He suddenly realized that there was
Speaker 1: sound playing he wasn't hearing it. And he was a
Speaker 1: person that was known for his ears, and he realized
Speaker 1: it was the end of him. And so he brought
Speaker 1: me in like almost like a seeing eye dog, and
Speaker 1: that was my job. My job was to hear the
Speaker 1: high frequencies, and he taught me. It was it's a
Speaker 1: bizarre way of learning. He taught me hearing from a
Speaker 1: high end down because I after a place what he
Speaker 1: couldn't hear. I wouldn't talk to him about what he
Speaker 1: could hear, but like high violins and symbols, and they
Speaker 1: would move further down and we do test together on
Speaker 1: a piano where his where the notes would start disappearing.
Speaker 1: And so I learned about frequencies from that. Funny enough,
Speaker 1: because I was aware I could hear what he wasn't hearing,
Speaker 1: if that makes sense. And outside the studio and the horn,
Speaker 1: would he wear the hearing aids. Yeah, he would wear
Speaker 1: He would wear hearing aids. It came. It was a
Speaker 1: it's a it was a big push for him. It
Speaker 1: was he you know, he always said that, you know,
Speaker 1: if you were hearing aids, you're death, but if you
Speaker 1: wear glasses, you're not seen as being blind. And that
Speaker 1: bothered him, the stigma of it. Actually, um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: he wore hearing aids and he his hearing became. You know,
Speaker 1: he was pretty He died actually two years ago on
Speaker 1: March twenty eight or two years ago last week. I guess, um,
Speaker 1: and he he was he you know, he was pretty
Speaker 1: profoundly deaf when he died. He could hear me pretty
Speaker 1: well because I've got a low voice and its frequencies.
Speaker 1: But it's very funny stories. He worked with a man
Speaker 1: Ultravox and in in the eighties. I remember I was
Speaker 1: sixteen and he came out of the studio and the
Speaker 1: bass player Criss Cross was going in and said, how's
Speaker 1: it going in there? Georges are going okay? And my
Speaker 1: dad held up his plate and said, two boiled eggs.
Speaker 1: He thought he asked him what he had for lunch.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's it's it's it's blots, you know.
Speaker 1: And as as a kid, my my mom has a
Speaker 1: who has still alive as a wicked sense of humor.
Speaker 1: You know, there'd be things like, you know, she'd say
Speaker 1: there's a nice in taxi and he go wears an
Speaker 1: ice cream factory. You know, there was a constant in
Speaker 1: the home. There was a constant things and it was
Speaker 1: just the thing we grew up with. So you're growing up.
Speaker 1: Your sister is two years older. What is she? What's
Speaker 1: her life like now? She's she's she's amazing, she's sadly,
Speaker 1: she her husband, her husband died six years ago. She
Speaker 1: has three children which which I try and look after
Speaker 1: as well. And she is a she's she runs two companies.
Speaker 1: Actually now she's a she's a marketeer and does things
Speaker 1: like that. Nothing to music and that is in London.
Speaker 1: That's in London. Yeah, okay, So now you're in the house.
Speaker 1: Your father's playing the piano. When he was working, could
Speaker 1: you interrupt him? Yeah, I mean I remember being on
Speaker 1: a skiing holiday. This is how my my dad, who
Speaker 1: I loved dearly, and it was a very nice. Man
Speaker 1: was pretty hard on me. I mean, you know, I
Speaker 1: was okay at music. I was pretty I was better
Speaker 1: than music than my friends. You know. It wasn't no genius,
Speaker 1: but I was. I was. And I remember being being
Speaker 1: fourteen years older, and you remember these things. And he
Speaker 1: was he was doing an arrangement. I think he was
Speaker 1: trying to work. He was. He nearly wrote the music
Speaker 1: for the mission, the film. The mission he satadly got
Speaker 1: fired by when they classic film style, and he was
Speaker 1: trying to compose something. And we were on holiday and
Speaker 1: he was using the hotel piano and I went up
Speaker 1: to and he said, you know, hi, Giles. I said,
Speaker 1: you know, because how are you doing? I said yeah.
Speaker 1: He goes, because you know, what do you want to do?
Speaker 1: I said, you know, I'd love to do what you do. Dad.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm learning, you know, learning the piano stuff.
Speaker 1: And he goes, you you won't be able to do that,
Speaker 1: And I said, well why not? He goes, I don't think.
Speaker 1: I don't think you're good enough. Wow, you can imagine.
Speaker 1: Does that still hobble you today? God? It hobbles me.
Speaker 1: It hobbles me. I mean, I I said to him
Speaker 1: on his you know, on his on his deathbed. Um
Speaker 1: My dad took a long time to die. It's a
Speaker 1: terrible thing to say. But he'd find as funny as well.
Speaker 1: We joke about it were very close. I'd say I'd
Speaker 1: come in and you know, I ended up sleeping next
Speaker 1: to him at a certain stages and I'd say in
Speaker 1: the morning, and so you're still here, that are you
Speaker 1: piss off? Jarles? How long did it take him? Well,
Speaker 1: he was sick. He was sick, and he became very
Speaker 1: sick in January. He died in March. But it was,
Speaker 1: it was, it was a long process and and I know,
Speaker 1: and it was that's nothing good about it, part from
Speaker 1: the fact you get to say all things you want
Speaker 1: to say. And I said to him, Dad, you ever
Speaker 1: do you ever? Do you ever think you're not good
Speaker 1: at music? And he was a mobile and he closed
Speaker 1: his eyes. I was holding his hand. He said, that's
Speaker 1: a strange thing to ask me. And I said, well,
Speaker 1: not really, because I've just been asked to this film
Speaker 1: and and I always think, you know, I can't do it,
Speaker 1: you know, even you know I told your seeing Stephen
Speaker 1: Tyler on Saturday, I feel nervous about you know, I'm
Speaker 1: more constantly nervous about meeting people because but I think
Speaker 1: you're great at what you do. I think you're amazing.
Speaker 1: I think as I think better than I am. I said, well,
Speaker 1: thanks Dad, but I'm not but thank you. I said,
Speaker 1: do you ever feel like that? And he closed his
Speaker 1: eyes and he thought, and he opened them and he said, no, No,
Speaker 1: I always thought I was brilliant and it's and it's
Speaker 1: it's you know, and he was and it was, it
Speaker 1: was it's it's the it's the thing that, it's the
Speaker 1: thing that that it was just envy felt envy, and
Speaker 1: I think it's stemmed from that moment he said to me,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't think you're good enough that it's
Speaker 1: a constant battle. But by the same talk and when
Speaker 1: he did say on his deathbed, how great you were,
Speaker 1: did that compensate for him? No, it doesn't, because you
Speaker 1: you you wear the clothes that you think motivate you.
Speaker 1: You know, with that sounds like a therapy session, but
Speaker 1: you do kind of it suits you to go through this,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's I'm quite a happy person and
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm feel like I'm really nice to people.
Speaker 1: But but you know, you you you kind of you
Speaker 1: go through this air of desperation that people don't realize
Speaker 1: that you do in your studios, and then you come
Speaker 1: out the other side and you have to you have
Speaker 1: to question everything you do and it's it's it's good
Speaker 1: to have that in a way, and so it suits me.
Speaker 1: So every time you do a project, it's like pushing
Speaker 1: a boulder up a hill. You're not quite sure you
Speaker 1: can do it. It's it's a mixture of pushing a
Speaker 1: build up the hill and then the hill, then the
Speaker 1: boulder will sail down uninterrupted until it hits the next mountain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's it. It's like a it's like it's
Speaker 1: like a you know, I'm terrible and terrible and terrible
Speaker 1: when a second I'm a genius. No, I'm terrible again.
Speaker 1: That's what that's what like When people approach you for work,
Speaker 1: do you ever say no, I don't think I can
Speaker 1: do this. Um, that's a that's a that's a good no.
Speaker 1: I don't really I think you know, if I've done
Speaker 1: if I've done the other thing, I couldn't do, I
Speaker 1: could probably not do this. In a strange way, I
Speaker 1: just said, it's it's it's a nice way of conscious
Speaker 1: surprised myself. I'm not saying that through any false modesty.
Speaker 1: I just it's generally how I feel. So let's go back.
Speaker 1: You're in the house, your father is playing the piano.
Speaker 1: There's no stereo in the living room. You have the
Speaker 1: kids record player? What kind of music are you listening to? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I say, we're listening to I genuine the
Speaker 1: records I had when I was varying on the records
Speaker 1: I had, was with the with the records my father
Speaker 1: was making, you know he was he was working on
Speaker 1: Paul McCartney albums on America Where of America with Neil Saidarker,
Speaker 1: you know there was a there was I knew all
Speaker 1: of this stuff because it was on in the house
Speaker 1: or he would be on the car. He would actually
Speaker 1: listen to mixes in the car. You know, it would
Speaker 1: be the I'd be where's dad and he'd be sitting
Speaker 1: out to the car because we had no stereo at home. Um,
Speaker 1: and then and then it's funny, I remember the best.
Speaker 1: The first album I ever bought was a cassette because
Speaker 1: I'm I'm you know, very bad, I'm a cassette area.
Speaker 1: It was e l O Time? Yeah, which is? Which is?
Speaker 1: I said to Jeffy I met jeff Lynn that you know,
Speaker 1: I know jeff Lynn now, and I said, you was
Speaker 1: the first album I ever ever board because you know,
Speaker 1: what was that el O Time? It goes? Well, that
Speaker 1: was a ship up because I'm a huge fan of Eldorado.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I know it's not good, but you I mean,
Speaker 1: you can't change history. That. It's like, you know, you
Speaker 1: do interviews, you should you make up something really cool,
Speaker 1: like you know it's rumors, you're honest. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: I read these interviews. What are your favorite books from
Speaker 1: your favorite record? Yeah, and they're trying to look cool
Speaker 1: and Stubbs what the truth? Yeah, there's no point. And
Speaker 1: then and then it was you know there was you
Speaker 1: know obviously there was. It's it's it's strange. I mean
Speaker 1: there was. You know, there were bands around. I likes
Speaker 1: a kid, I liked you know, I liked listening like
Speaker 1: these by in Excess, which was I remember because Australian
Speaker 1: friend of mine, I love Lloyd calling the Commotions or
Speaker 1: you know, there was never made it over here, but
Speaker 1: never made it. But you know there was, there was
Speaker 1: a bunch of bands in that era. I didn't really.
Speaker 1: It's funny, I didn't really. The eighties didn't really strike me,
Speaker 1: you know, I was growing up in the eighties, I mean,
Speaker 1: but I didn't really that whole. Well, that's interesting because
Speaker 1: most of the sounds, certainly for the first half of
Speaker 1: the eighties came from England. Yeah, but it didn't. It didn't.
Speaker 1: It didn't touch me in the right way. It wasn't like,
Speaker 1: you know, it wasn't a did you were a blues guy? Yeah,
Speaker 1: as you can tell by my voice on the Blues
Speaker 1: Guy through and through, But yeah, yeah, I was. I
Speaker 1: was a blues guy. Liked I liked. I like, you know,
Speaker 1: music pushing air through your ears, you know. I like
Speaker 1: the sense I didn't want to didn't want to didn't
Speaker 1: like the sense of Um, it didn't electronic. I hadn't him.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it more now than I did then. UM
Speaker 1: and then I went to you know for these through
Speaker 1: you know, you learned without the guitar, and then and
Speaker 1: the piano, and you get into guitar players. Basically you
Speaker 1: start listening to guitar players. How did you become a
Speaker 1: guitar player? Well, my parents, I was banned from the
Speaker 1: guitar by my parents. Um literally yeah, they didn't want
Speaker 1: to be the guitar. They thought I'd we have failed
Speaker 1: rock star. I think there was an element in a
Speaker 1: funny way with my father, and this sounds terrible, but
Speaker 1: that he he there was one side he was worried
Speaker 1: about me being a failure, and there was another side
Speaker 1: he was worried about me making him look bad by
Speaker 1: being this want to be rock star. I think there
Speaker 1: was an element of that, totally definitely. But I but
Speaker 1: I actually board a ukulele because I could afford a
Speaker 1: ukulele um and learned about the ukulele, and the ukulele
Speaker 1: has the the my my my sisters son to ukule
Speaker 1: explained to him, it's you know that the four strings
Speaker 1: are the same as the guitar. You just had fill
Speaker 1: in the bass strings later when you learned prot the guitar.
Speaker 1: So I did that, it became not about a ukulele plan.
Speaker 1: And then then a borrowed at school. I was a
Speaker 1: boarding school and a guy had a guitar, so I
Speaker 1: used to use his guitar. And then for some reason,
Speaker 1: I don't know whether this performance and came from myself
Speaker 1: and actually still my best friend. We decided we'd go
Speaker 1: busting and we end up playing in pubs and we
Speaker 1: were about fifteen or sixteen. We played in pubs on
Speaker 1: a new three songs and what were those three songs?
Speaker 1: American Pie? I'd see, I should I see, I should
Speaker 1: be making up something cooler. No, that's good for a bar.
Speaker 1: You get people singing along if you really go out
Speaker 1: with by Joe Jackson love that record, but not in
Speaker 1: the middle section because we couldn't work it out. And
Speaker 1: I think no woman will crying. I think with the
Speaker 1: three songs we knew, wow, very good that you can
Speaker 1: even remember. Yeah, well you know I can still play
Speaker 1: them there And so okay, so you're playing in the pubs,
Speaker 1: and what's the step after that playing the pubs? Then
Speaker 1: we started playing and playing in bars and went to
Speaker 1: university and then Manchester. Okay, so I gotta I gotta
Speaker 1: place at Berkeley College of Music and my and it's
Speaker 1: funny and my dad said, you know, and I don't
Speaker 1: regret this at my dad say, I don't want you
Speaker 1: to go to birth College of Music. You know, if
Speaker 1: you if you really want to do this music thing,
Speaker 1: I can, I can. I can teach you, but going
Speaker 1: to a proper degree. And I was, you know, I
Speaker 1: was good English, and I was good at I was
Speaker 1: reasing me Ecanamic, and I did I did a degree
Speaker 1: in American politics and literature, would you believe? So yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, And and played music and and I was
Speaker 1: managed to manage to head a whole you know, the
Speaker 1: Stone Roses Happy Month. It was Tony Wilson era, the
Speaker 1: Tony Wilson nine and it was great, it was it
Speaker 1: was fantastic, was fantastic time. And why didn't almost none
Speaker 1: of those bands make it up in the United States.
Speaker 1: There was nothing slick about them. There was nothing slick
Speaker 1: about any of those bands. And I think that in
Speaker 1: that ear of Nights, of that ear in the in
Speaker 1: the States, there was a slickness to the two year
Speaker 1: music over here, and I think that's what it was.
Speaker 1: I think they there was there's that undercurrent goth era
Speaker 1: of you know, never Tear Us Apart and joy Division
Speaker 1: and that sort of stuff. I think that that kind
Speaker 1: of bubbled under forbidden in America. But but it wasn't really.
Speaker 1: It was such a scene. And then and then funny
Speaker 1: off things like the Chemical Brothers, which came. I was
Speaker 1: at university with the Chemical Brothers and actually the guitarist
Speaker 1: from radio Head was it was it? Ed? Was? Was
Speaker 1: it master? With me? Um? There was there was, there
Speaker 1: was this. There was a scene that broke into America
Speaker 1: after that. So just after we were doing stuff here,
Speaker 1: Now when you were in college university, as you say,
Speaker 1: vass to all that stuff with those big things, did
Speaker 1: you go yeah, I mean it's funny, I was choose
Speaker 1: your weapon of choice. I was never really um, you
Speaker 1: know the whole ext and and what we used to
Speaker 1: call fast drug boom, Well what is what is that?
Speaker 1: We know? Like you know that and fair to mean
Speaker 1: ecstasy dance. I never really got into. I mean it
Speaker 1: was crazy. I remember I remember my other the final
Speaker 1: weis to call it, but we scoring balls whatever they're
Speaker 1: called in America. You know, the the the the end
Speaker 1: of term thing. It was a club called the Roxy,
Speaker 1: which had a rubber dance floor that used to used
Speaker 1: to throb in time of the music. That was intentional.
Speaker 1: That was intentional. And I stood on the balcony and
Speaker 1: everyone was like it was the acid days of the
Speaker 1: Smiley Face and everyone's seeing free free your mind, well
Speaker 1: must be free all that's stuff, but it was looking
Speaker 1: like a German rally. Everyone's doing exactly the same thing,
Speaker 1: and I thought, this isn't this isn't freeing on mind.
Speaker 1: This is And I was more of a stoner culture
Speaker 1: guitar player, you know, it wasn't really my scene, but
Speaker 1: the has the end, it was very much a dance
Speaker 1: driven culture. I kind of really I regret that I
Speaker 1: didn't become more part of it because I think it's
Speaker 1: very influential. But I mean, when when I did my
Speaker 1: final example university, the guy next to me was sucking
Speaker 1: a dummy. You know. It was. It was a pretty
Speaker 1: crazy time. And but to what degree living in Manchester
Speaker 1: at that time did that culture dominate or other people
Speaker 1: were aware of it. It was pretty big. It reverberated
Speaker 1: around certainly around the UK and Europe that that that
Speaker 1: dance culture and those bands. Um, it was the biggest
Speaker 1: music hub in it just by coincidence. It was the
Speaker 1: biggest party town you know, there was. It was you know,
Speaker 1: managed to have thirty six thousand students when I was there.
Speaker 1: It was pretty big. You know, there's much bigger places now,
Speaker 1: but it was and so it did. Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It was pretty influential. And then add then out of
Speaker 1: that obviously stemmed bands like Oasis, um, which was you
Speaker 1: know when I left college, you know, Oasis started to
Speaker 1: become very big and funny. They people get a pill
Speaker 1: get quite upset when I say this. They did the
Speaker 1: Beatles a lot of favors and what do you mean
Speaker 1: by that? Well, I'm in the Beatles um in the
Speaker 1: UK anyway, I can't talk about americausse I wasn't living that,
Speaker 1: but in the UK you know probably, I think in
Speaker 1: a funny way. Rightfully, So we're a band that had
Speaker 1: happened an Oasis put them. They'll always be on a
Speaker 1: pedal Star'm not saying that without Oasis, but they but
Speaker 1: they certainly became a cultural cultural relevant band much quicker
Speaker 1: or had that resurgence in the UK and stayed there
Speaker 1: from the the Oasis period onward um because because that
Speaker 1: was the it was, you know that, you know, we're
Speaker 1: not as big as the Beatles, and then we're almost
Speaker 1: like when Oasis said we're biggeran the Beatles, it was
Speaker 1: the same as John lenn saying we're bigger than Jesus.
Speaker 1: It was a strange kind of reflection on on what
Speaker 1: went on before um And it was you know, it was,
Speaker 1: it was. It was an amazing time. And I was
Speaker 1: playing in a band, a deeply unsuccessful band, yes, sort
Speaker 1: of indie indie rock band. That was. That was great
Speaker 1: because I was with friends and we toured Germany and
Speaker 1: went to Hannonda and did this sort of stuff and
Speaker 1: and it was, you know, it was, it was. It
Speaker 1: was a time where if you can be in a
Speaker 1: van with a band and go on tours and sleep
Speaker 1: in busses and sleep and you know, I slept in
Speaker 1: a dog basket and Coventry and you know, and all
Speaker 1: that sort of stuff you can do that you can
Speaker 1: get on with people in a studio and you can
Speaker 1: get on with people in life, and it's a you know,
Speaker 1: if you you know that it taught me a huge amount.
Speaker 1: Let's go back. You're talking about the club with the
Speaker 1: rubber floor in your viewpoint on that your identity. Are
Speaker 1: you a member of the group or you an outsider
Speaker 1: judging the group. I've always felt like an outsider, not
Speaker 1: judging in a bad way, but I've always been an outsider,
Speaker 1: you know, I've always been always As a good rugby player,
Speaker 1: I was in his team you know, and and and
Speaker 1: played and it led to quite a high standard, but
Speaker 1: always felt like an outsider. I was the only guitar player,
Speaker 1: musician and a rugby team, you know obviously, but like
Speaker 1: I was this there was this juxtaposition that that it
Speaker 1: suited me. You know. It's funny and you're left. You know,
Speaker 1: you have to understand that if you're if you're a
Speaker 1: kid growing up where you're you know, I grew up
Speaker 1: in studios. I grew up in Monster and the Caribbean
Speaker 1: where there were these bands. I mean, you know, I'd
Speaker 1: have to have dinner with Earth Wind and Fire or
Speaker 1: with Stevie Wonder or with but it wasn't it sounds amazing,
Speaker 1: But as a kid, you're just sold, sold to the
Speaker 1: table and behave you know. That's that's how it is.
Speaker 1: And you're on show all the time. It's and so
Speaker 1: you become this observer, you've become by nature, this sort
Speaker 1: of outside. It's a certain degree and I was the
Speaker 1: same one as university. It doesn't leave you. Does it
Speaker 1: make you more comfortable with famous, rich celebrities. Well, it's
Speaker 1: it's one of those yes, it does. I never I
Speaker 1: never take Yeah, I don't see them any anything, anything different.
Speaker 1: I think that's what it is. And I see that
Speaker 1: they can they can fire you fairly easily. But I
Speaker 1: mean so can anyone else, you know. I mean it's
Speaker 1: not like you know, it doesn't, it doesn't. I think.
Speaker 1: I think I have a good relationship with famous, rich,
Speaker 1: rich celebrities, if you like, because I'm always honest. And
Speaker 1: that's the thing. Well, I just I went to college
Speaker 1: where the people were from prep school and a lot
Speaker 1: of them their parents literally ran household name come but
Speaker 1: he's where I grew up. I didn't know anybody like that,
Speaker 1: and it really taught me how to interact that they're
Speaker 1: just formal people. But a lot of people don't have
Speaker 1: that experience in their star struck even to this day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's it's you know, you meet people
Speaker 1: are impressive and unimpressive. You know, you know, like you know,
Speaker 1: as you know, you know a lot of people, you're
Speaker 1: a huge influence and you know a lot of people
Speaker 1: that are celebrities follow you. You know that people I
Speaker 1: know getting something because you know Bobby's Bobby said this.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's it's it's which is which is?
Speaker 1: It's it's a it's a responsibility, I suppose, but but
Speaker 1: I think that I, um, you know, the funny about it,
Speaker 1: like if you take Paul McCartney for instance, who I
Speaker 1: know very well, um and as as and I actually
Speaker 1: love him dearly. He's always been good to me. He's
Speaker 1: a bit like Forest Gump in a way. There's something
Speaker 1: very interesting about im parton the fact he's Paul McCarney,
Speaker 1: but his his experiences, he said, it just extraordinary. You know.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, you're talking to me. You know.
Speaker 1: He'll go from the time, you know, when recounting when
Speaker 1: he met Elvis Too being in the same hotel as
Speaker 1: the England World Cup football team when they won the
Speaker 1: World Cup to you know, Mohammad Ali to what it
Speaker 1: is that it's like Forrest Gump. It's that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: I know. It's that, you know, it's trivializing something that's important.
Speaker 1: But to me that's it's kind of like you have
Speaker 1: to break it down to what you understand, right right,
Speaker 1: the same thing like Quincy Jones or Quincy advertises a
Speaker 1: little bit more. But you sit there when I was
Speaker 1: with this king and I was out of blah blah blah. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's funny Quincy. I know Quincy because I've known him
Speaker 1: growing up, because he was he was the contemporary of
Speaker 1: my dad. And they were very close. In fact, even
Speaker 1: though they're sort of like counter opposite, they were over
Speaker 1: and there like yan Ye and Yang or the production
Speaker 1: where they both have the same kind of backgrounds but
Speaker 1: white and black. You know, I think I can say that.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, I don't think there's anything you know, Coince.
Speaker 1: Quincy is a Quincy is a pure jazz artist. And
Speaker 1: my dad was a baroque white you know, not actually
Speaker 1: low class and not not you know, my dad transformed
Speaker 1: himself to an upper class gen from from from from
Speaker 1: a very humble background. And and they both work their
Speaker 1: ways through had to navigate their way through society and
Speaker 1: the rules of society to get where they got to.
Speaker 1: And they did very well, and they and they were
Speaker 1: very very close. They were incredibly close. And I still
Speaker 1: tort Quincy. Okay, we'll return to this conversation with Jiles Martin,
Speaker 1: sound experience leader for Sonos and son of George Martin
Speaker 1: and producer and mixed her extraordinary in his own right
Speaker 1: in a moment, this is Bob Leftson's. Do you like
Speaker 1: the podcast? If so, come check out the one on
Speaker 1: one interviews I'll be having with movers and shakers in
Speaker 1: the music and media industries at the end of April
Speaker 1: at my Music Media Summit in Santa Barbara. Not only
Speaker 1: can you listen in to the conversations, but you can
Speaker 1: meet the big wigs and hang. They have insight and
Speaker 1: influence over where it's all going. Go to Music Media
Speaker 1: Summit dot com for tickets and more information. See you
Speaker 1: in Santa Barbara. Let's continue the conversation with a sound
Speaker 1: experience leader for Sonos and son of the great Beatles engineer,
Speaker 1: George Martin. Let's go back to Monster Rot because that's
Speaker 1: one thing we noticed and reading the credit, which we
Speaker 1: do inveterately in the seventies, and when we say air
Speaker 1: studios in Mansra, how did that come together to the
Speaker 1: degree you know, well, I know, I mean my my father.
Speaker 1: My thought was my father. It was funny my my
Speaker 1: my dad, um he he which I you know, we
Speaker 1: we we talked about once poor and I said, you know,
Speaker 1: we shouldn't talk about this, but my dad actually did.
Speaker 1: He managed to sell his royalties to the Beetle stream
Speaker 1: and UM and end up with a trade off which
Speaker 1: which is part of this recomly chrysalis. And he ended
Speaker 1: up building studios with the money he got and he
Speaker 1: decided wouldn't be great. He wanted to build the studios.
Speaker 1: It was unlike no other and he looked at building
Speaker 1: a studios on a on a ship. That was his
Speaker 1: first idea. And he actually was thinking about buying a
Speaker 1: Scandinavian ferry and building studios there. And then he realized
Speaker 1: the engine noise would be getting into the isolation on
Speaker 1: a ferious night. So he end up looking for a
Speaker 1: place and he chose Monsterrat which is not on the
Speaker 1: Caribbean very um rugged no white sand beaches, black sand
Speaker 1: beaches and an all volcano and it was you know,
Speaker 1: it was a crazy idea UM and he built a
Speaker 1: world class studios. He built his studios which was like
Speaker 1: Abbey Road but in the Caribbean UM and it became
Speaker 1: probably one of the most successful studios as far as
Speaker 1: professionally goes in UM. You know, at that time, you
Speaker 1: know everything from brothers and Arms to to Michael Jackson too,
Speaker 1: you know the number of you know, to the police.
Speaker 1: Obviously the police recorded everything out there Alton John recorded
Speaker 1: out there. Just about everyone went to monsterral Um. It
Speaker 1: never made any money, I mean because it was a
Speaker 1: really bad idea because to have the studios, that's just
Speaker 1: one studios with everything else, you know, with the with
Speaker 1: the cost I think you know, it cost him on
Speaker 1: top of it cost him half million dollars after he
Speaker 1: built it. But it was great. You know. He was
Speaker 1: one of those guys that didn't really he was a
Speaker 1: proper artist, and I fact, he didn't do anything for
Speaker 1: the reason why he did it because he thought it
Speaker 1: was a good idea and it was fun. Okay, you
Speaker 1: know in English or world travelers, I've never been to Manster,
Speaker 1: we're literally where is it the currents next to Antigua.
Speaker 1: It was next to Anting. You can see it because
Speaker 1: because sadly with Monster at the volcano erupted this flocal,
Speaker 1: this this place. We played to his kids and felt
Speaker 1: I went up to I climbed the mountains with Elton
Speaker 1: John's boyfriend at the time on the on the and
Speaker 1: I came back to school and he married and then
Speaker 1: he got engaged to Renata. He was two with the
Speaker 1: tape ofp and it was like wait a second, and
Speaker 1: you know, this bizarre life. You lead where I left,
Speaker 1: and we climbed them, We climbed this. We used to
Speaker 1: a climb to this waterfall. And all of that doesn't
Speaker 1: exist anymore. It's now mountains because the volcano which was
Speaker 1: just as hot springs but started to erupt after twenty
Speaker 1: years and destroyed the island. So it's next to it's
Speaker 1: next to Antigua, Okay. And when you were there, how
Speaker 1: many people would live there? There were twelve thousand. Now
Speaker 1: that's about three and a half thousand. And then how
Speaker 1: big was the island? It's getting bigger? Answer the islands.
Speaker 1: It's difficult, I bet said the ouselves of the other
Speaker 1: white that would be nothing to anyone in America. It's
Speaker 1: three miles by four miles, so sorry's seven miles by
Speaker 1: four miles. Very small, small island, yeah, smallland there was
Speaker 1: nothing really on it and that's what was, you know,
Speaker 1: and you could only get to it by chartered small plan.
Speaker 1: The runway was tiny. Um and that's why I think
Speaker 1: my father chose it, because you know, that's Sting. Sting
Speaker 1: had a house out there. Elton had a house out there.
Speaker 1: Jeff Emrick, who was an engineer that my father. He
Speaker 1: end up building a studio house over there. You know,
Speaker 1: you could go there and you wouldn't people would not
Speaker 1: get assholed because there was no there was no real
Speaker 1: um white tourists on the island and you lived there
Speaker 1: full time. No, we were we I spent because of
Speaker 1: trying to run the studios. I was at boarding school,
Speaker 1: and there was a period of time where myself my
Speaker 1: sister would go there and we were pretty much lived
Speaker 1: there because when we weren't at school, we'd be on
Speaker 1: monserrat you know. I remember, I remember having hard feet
Speaker 1: because we wouldn't wear shoes. You know, we'd run down
Speaker 1: time back Rhods and off like that and my friends
Speaker 1: with Monster Ashian's um. Now the studio was destroyed in
Speaker 1: a storm. The student got here by I think Hurricane Hugo,
Speaker 1: and it was a bit like the recent hurricane that
Speaker 1: just hit the West Indies. And yeah, it was it
Speaker 1: was pretty much you know, there was the Bosendorf for
Speaker 1: grand piano. Actually at the end of it had was
Speaker 1: a mold growing out of it, and the desk was ruined,
Speaker 1: and you know, and and it was it was at
Speaker 1: a stage, to be honest with you, where the studios.
Speaker 1: Never made any money and it was a great thing
Speaker 1: to have, but the hurricane was the final straw. He
Speaker 1: still owned it. When the hurricane, He's learned it there
Speaker 1: was it was an interesting story. So it had insurance
Speaker 1: against hurricane and it was insured of with the company
Speaker 1: called Lloyds of London, very famous insurance company. And they
Speaker 1: sent a man out called Mr Hook. I always remember
Speaker 1: this who arrived in Antigua and then disappeared. And he
Speaker 1: had five thousand dollars and he disappeared and they found
Speaker 1: him in sort of san He built an hotel and
Speaker 1: it was one of those things where that Lloyd's London,
Speaker 1: he's no longer our guy because he's with carib insurance.
Speaker 1: So the Western Lands and Antique is one of those things.
Speaker 1: And you know that the rules of the West Indians
Speaker 1: can be slightly different to the other rules and so yeah,
Speaker 1: and but it was the insurance ultimately, No, I don't
Speaker 1: think completely, but I think listen, it's funny, you know
Speaker 1: he was he didn't want for much. It didn't make
Speaker 1: a difference, you know, it made a difference. But in
Speaker 1: the end of it, the whole thing was the whole
Speaker 1: the whole monster at thing was looking back on life
Speaker 1: as as he did at the edge of ninety in Baiona.
Speaker 1: You know, would he take it away from him? Would
Speaker 1: he take that trip with the amount of records that
Speaker 1: have made, the amount of fun that people had, you know,
Speaker 1: from you know, from from the bands that recorded there,
Speaker 1: from James Taylor to Jerry Rafferty to to just about
Speaker 1: I mean it was destroying the range, I mean from
Speaker 1: you know, Sailer's quote to Stevie Wonder was kind of
Speaker 1: it was like, you know, everyone went there, I think
Speaker 1: the Climax Blues Plan with the first person record over there,
Speaker 1: and and so it was he he made something that
Speaker 1: made things, and that was the thing, like, you know,
Speaker 1: the true pleasure in life has to be coming up
Speaker 1: with an idea and seeing it happen. So there was
Speaker 1: another Air studio in London. There was another Students in
Speaker 1: London which he sold to build mons Rat and then
Speaker 1: he came back and persuaded Chrysalis, which the company that
Speaker 1: he sort of sold out to, to build another studios
Speaker 1: cilities called Air Studios Lyndhurst, which is a very good studios. Now.
Speaker 1: It was funny he kind of got his own back
Speaker 1: because having lost all his royalties. He built the studios
Speaker 1: that was meant to cost I think I think a
Speaker 1: million seven million pounds a cost twenty three million. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like he built the cebuilders, you know, and it's
Speaker 1: a beautiful you know, it's like Hans Zimmer. It's his
Speaker 1: favorite students in the world. So you know, Coldplayer recorded there.
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of people have been to air
Speaker 1: so it's a it's a great place. Okay. So you
Speaker 1: are in university, you're playing different gigs, you graduate, and
Speaker 1: then what well, while I was playing, I had a
Speaker 1: French girlfriend. And while I was playing to a French girlfriend,
Speaker 1: she was and she was a university. I got a drunk.
Speaker 1: I think she was at university and and she knew
Speaker 1: a place in France. We're looking for a band to
Speaker 1: play at New Year's Eve, and so this is this
Speaker 1: is myself and my friend and a drum machine. We
Speaker 1: were one of those bands, you know, you know, there's
Speaker 1: the quality of the capital k and we go down.
Speaker 1: We went down and and a guy saw us play
Speaker 1: and and I played some of my own songs and
Speaker 1: he said, you know, would you write some music for
Speaker 1: my And I end up writing music for for commercials
Speaker 1: end up writing music for Elf Aquitaine for the American audience.
Speaker 1: It's it's they sell petrol gas. It's like it wasn't PC.
Speaker 1: But I ended up doing seven commercials. I was university
Speaker 1: and I sort of got a gig doing commercials and
Speaker 1: it was great. It was good money, you know, and
Speaker 1: I couldn't believe it. And then I left. When I
Speaker 1: left university, I thought what am I going to do?
Speaker 1: And I wanted to do music. Ended up working a
Speaker 1: little bit of music. Yeah, I did PR for UB
Speaker 1: forty and Tears for Fears. How did you get those gigs?
Speaker 1: I was an intern I wanted to do At that stage,
Speaker 1: I wanted to write music and I couldn't. I could
Speaker 1: do commercials now, and I thought I'd learned everything. So
Speaker 1: as I was working, to end up meeting someone getting
Speaker 1: a job in a PR company. I think it's the
Speaker 1: funny that they get The guy gave him the job
Speaker 1: because he wanted the PR account for Air Studios in London,
Speaker 1: which he didn't get given and then wanted to fire
Speaker 1: me because you know it, you know. And then there
Speaker 1: was a guy called Alan Awards who actually ended up
Speaker 1: managing David Bowie. He liked me, and he goes, well
Speaker 1: lit and I believe in you. And I only did
Speaker 1: seven months and I saw a band they were called
Speaker 1: My Life Story at the Marquis and I said to
Speaker 1: you know, I think I'm really good and I'd like
Speaker 1: to make a record with you having no and we
Speaker 1: went to a studios in the evening, so I'd work
Speaker 1: on the day and then go and work nights. And
Speaker 1: they got singled the Weekend Enemy. Okay, well a little
Speaker 1: bit slower. What made you think you could produce a record?
Speaker 1: I don't know, Um, had you been into this? How
Speaker 1: much time? Like? Oh yeah, sorry? When I when I
Speaker 1: left school, I spent a year as a as a
Speaker 1: runner in the studios. Actually hoofard vacuum sorry, I vacuumed carpets.
Speaker 1: And whose studio was that? That was? That was? That
Speaker 1: was Aaron London? Aaron London. Okay. How much time did
Speaker 1: you spend in the room with your father? A lot
Speaker 1: of time because whenever he had to go in the studios.
Speaker 1: I went in from the age of sixteen. So when
Speaker 1: you had my uh, the band that you wanted to
Speaker 1: make a record with, you had experience of a sort.
Speaker 1: I had been in the studios I knew with studios.
Speaker 1: I knew, you know, this was what I wanted to do,
Speaker 1: and I was determined I was gonna do it. And
Speaker 1: I wasn't very good, but they managed to get you know,
Speaker 1: the Enemy was a big magazine and the UK has
Speaker 1: a new Music New Musical express it and they got
Speaker 1: Singular Week there and someone put up my dad's desk
Speaker 1: and said, you know your boys may not. I didn't
Speaker 1: tell my father I was even doing it, and he goes,
Speaker 1: really and he phoned me up and said, how come
Speaker 1: you've got Record of the Week and New Musically Stress
Speaker 1: And and that was It was a turning point in
Speaker 1: my life because at the same time I was offered
Speaker 1: a big job at headed Dance Press for Warners. I
Speaker 1: was working this PR company and I went to go
Speaker 1: and see this woman. I said, why are you offered
Speaker 1: me this job? And because we've been recommended to you
Speaker 1: by these journalists have said you should employ him, and
Speaker 1: I said, an, I'm terrible at PR. And I found
Speaker 1: out one of the journalists and he said, I always
Speaker 1: remember him. He was a guy, Alan Jackson, who wrote
Speaker 1: for The Times in London. He said, whenever we spoke
Speaker 1: to on the phone, you didn't seem very happy, so
Speaker 1: we decided to get you another job. So anyway, so
Speaker 1: I had I had a choice twenty seven thousand pounds
Speaker 1: a year plus car to work at Warner Brothers or
Speaker 1: go off and do music for a living. So I
Speaker 1: went off to music for a a living. By the same time,
Speaker 1: there's no safety net. No, there was no safety net,
Speaker 1: and and and I think I think, I well, like listen,
Speaker 1: I was very lucky that I spent time then a
Speaker 1: lot of time with my dad doing doing stuff. And
Speaker 1: then when things I've always been incredibly lucky that when
Speaker 1: things when I when I suddenly I remember I remember
Speaker 1: thinking to myself, oh God, now now I'm broke. And
Speaker 1: then the phone would ring and a guy called Rob Dickens,
Speaker 1: who was he ran Warner Brothers had just had a
Speaker 1: labeled Sunny because I've seen I saw you in a magazine.
Speaker 1: I did a fashion shoot there we are, that's a
Speaker 1: glamor and glitz. And he said, you know you want
Speaker 1: to come work for me me. I'll pay you a few
Speaker 1: two thousand pounds and you don't have to work full time.
Speaker 1: And I was like, yeah, great. So yeah, I always
Speaker 1: always managed to get some sort of situation where people
Speaker 1: I've always been lucky that people go, you know, hey,
Speaker 1: do you want to do this? And then and that
Speaker 1: getting the opportunity to actually learn. And I made terrible
Speaker 1: records and didn't know what I was doing. And then
Speaker 1: I remember a friend of mine said to me, who
Speaker 1: I was working the studios at Rack Studios and gone
Speaker 1: to work on a band? Who are ok? Work on this?
Speaker 1: Work on this band who were great? And I knew
Speaker 1: I wasn't doing a very good job of them. And
Speaker 1: he was working on this Bangled Shed seven, who were
Speaker 1: a band in the nineties, and and and we became friends.
Speaker 1: You guys, you know, once you learn how to make
Speaker 1: a sound, it gets kind of boring, he said to me.
Speaker 1: And I always take that because because it took me
Speaker 1: a while to make to learn, and I know that
Speaker 1: people may not like everything I can do, but I
Speaker 1: know it will sound good. Does that make sense? Yes?
Speaker 1: But if it's boring, does one continue to want to
Speaker 1: do it? Where's the thrill? No? I think that's the thing.
Speaker 1: You have to find the thrill, and that's the answer.
Speaker 1: So you have to do different things. You have to
Speaker 1: do approach things differently and do different things, which would
Speaker 1: be like, what. Well, in my case, what I ended
Speaker 1: up doing is so I I left. Um Um, I
Speaker 1: ended up being asked I do music directions. I end
Speaker 1: up music directing the jubile Leque, the first Queen's Jubilee
Speaker 1: at bucking In Palace. Well, let's let's go back a
Speaker 1: few steps here. You graduate from university. At what point
Speaker 1: do you give up the dream of being a musician? Um?
Speaker 1: I was. I did the band for about six years,
Speaker 1: so I was always doing lots of different things at
Speaker 1: the time, but I did the band six years. We
Speaker 1: got signed by a label, we made a record. I didn't.
Speaker 1: It was just it was it was sleeping on floors
Speaker 1: for too long. And I think at the bay the
Speaker 1: age of twenty six or seven, I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: I can't. I don't want to sleep on floors anymore.
Speaker 1: I've been I've been doing this. I've been playing in
Speaker 1: pubs since I was fifteen years old. I still love playing,
Speaker 1: but I realized that maybe I'm not going to be
Speaker 1: the world's greatest singer songwriter or a songwriter, or you know,
Speaker 1: maybe that's not that's not my destiny. Um. And your
Speaker 1: parents were saying, what about when you were a peripatetic
Speaker 1: singer songwriter. At that stage of my parents, you know,
Speaker 1: I rebelled against my parents when I at the university.
Speaker 1: I didn't care what they said at that stage, you know,
Speaker 1: and where they give you any money or could you
Speaker 1: make it? Uh No, they didn't give me any money. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean I was very lucky they gave me. I said,
Speaker 1: I didn't give any money. They gave me my my
Speaker 1: mom's parents left me twenty pounds and when they passed away,
Speaker 1: and so I bought a flat with a mortgage. You know,
Speaker 1: it's amazing you could do that now. And that was
Speaker 1: where that was a not ehall gate game. So that
Speaker 1: was a good that was a good thing I put it.
Speaker 1: It was cheap and then the guy then the guy
Speaker 1: made the film and everything became expensive, which was super familiar.
Speaker 1: But anyway, um yeah, I didn't. I I I realized
Speaker 1: that the band wasn't you know it was? It was
Speaker 1: I love the love the guys untill my best friends.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't working. And what are they doing now?
Speaker 1: On a one's a drummer in like he plays with.
Speaker 1: He plays a lot of different bands but of a
Speaker 1: different era, and the singer works in a bank the
Speaker 1: guitarist ISTI a guitar player, you know, and so you
Speaker 1: were really you know, you in the bank game with
Speaker 1: the only people who escaped. Yeah, yeah, we it's and
Speaker 1: it was it was I'm not sure if I escaped
Speaker 1: in a way, but yeah, and I was at the
Speaker 1: same time, I was in studios a lot of the time.
Speaker 1: How how hard was it to give up the dream?
Speaker 1: It was? It was, you know, it was it was
Speaker 1: harder not making the record I wanted to make with
Speaker 1: my friends. You know, I wanted to be like I
Speaker 1: wanted to make pet Sounds, and they wanted to make
Speaker 1: a Food Fighters album. So it was easier to give
Speaker 1: it up. Yeah, So that was that made it easier
Speaker 1: when it didn't, you know, I didn't like really what
Speaker 1: we were doing. So um, I think when they say
Speaker 1: when you quit. It was one of those things where
Speaker 1: I was writing all the songs and doing everything, and
Speaker 1: there was I remember coming to a rehearsal and they said,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, how can you write? We want
Speaker 1: to write the songs, And I went okay, and then
Speaker 1: and then I'd wait two weeks and we wouldn't have
Speaker 1: any songs, and I'd know it was it was. It
Speaker 1: was fine, It was fine. Everyone. Everyone was broke everyone,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, the keyboard player was eating broken
Speaker 1: biscuits because that all that's all he could afford you buy.
Speaker 1: I didn't even know they existed, you be able to
Speaker 1: go to stores and buy biscuit rejects from cookie rejects
Speaker 1: from factories. You know. It was not it was it
Speaker 1: was that, you know, we lived that life, and it
Speaker 1: was it was it was time, you know. And so
Speaker 1: you also talk about your father losing his hearing. At
Speaker 1: what point do you start working with him? When I
Speaker 1: was sixteen. So that's the backdrop to everything, is I'm
Speaker 1: doing that the whole time, and he's working on various records,
Speaker 1: doing weird projects, and I'm I've always done more than
Speaker 1: one job at the same time. That's what I'm used to.
Speaker 1: And so I was doing that while and then I
Speaker 1: do promo tours with him, and I'd go and do
Speaker 1: music direction for concerts with him. What would there be
Speaker 1: musical direction for a car? Well, funny if it was
Speaker 1: dealing with it. It was actually quite often. We did
Speaker 1: a thing in Japan where and it's it sounds ridiculous,
Speaker 1: and it was ridiculous where a concert range with Una
Speaker 1: Seth had a Japanese artists and the ideas they would
Speaker 1: jam with everyone. It was Bob Dylan, John bon Jovi,
Speaker 1: Joni Mitchell, Ray Kudah in excess um it was. And
Speaker 1: it was like this big rehearsalant, the game let's jam,
Speaker 1: you know, we dreadful ideas. And so I do things
Speaker 1: like that. I go of thew and I'd be in
Speaker 1: charge of the band. The band would be I mean
Speaker 1: Jim Keltoner, Pino Paladino, Wicks wickends, Phil Palmer and guitar,
Speaker 1: Ray Couper and percussion, you know, good and so and
Speaker 1: so good. And so I teach them, you know, work
Speaker 1: the songs out with him and work out arrangements and job. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was my job and organize things and and that's
Speaker 1: so I you know, I always had confidence that I
Speaker 1: always had a good you know, I think my father.
Speaker 1: I learned from my father's Paul says, a good bedside
Speaker 1: manner where you can steer musicians in the right way
Speaker 1: without being pompous. I think. And do you know how
Speaker 1: to read music and how to read music? Yeah, and
Speaker 1: how did you learn that? I played the French horn
Speaker 1: and orchestras when I was at school, And was that
Speaker 1: your own instigation or your parents said you have to
Speaker 1: learn an instrument. No, no, I learned the trombone first
Speaker 1: because I saw someone play the trombone and I wanted
Speaker 1: to go on the trombone, and I thought that'd be
Speaker 1: a good thing to do. And then and then the
Speaker 1: trombone teacher was kind of weird and wanted to play
Speaker 1: my trombone. It was like kissing an old man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So so I moved to the French horn, and the
Speaker 1: French one was a bit like the French one, you know,
Speaker 1: I was. It was a good trouble cliff in the
Speaker 1: ky off because the French ones in the kif um.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, I got injured playing rugby and had
Speaker 1: to stop the French horn, and I was a good
Speaker 1: home player. Then you have to go back to because
Speaker 1: if it was back in cushion, you can't You can't
Speaker 1: play a wind instrument, especially blowing up a balloon like
Speaker 1: a French horn. So I went back to It's like
Speaker 1: giving birth to a cow, and I decided to guitar
Speaker 1: and piano be easier. Stay right there, we'll be back
Speaker 1: with more of my conversation with JOHNS Martin, producer extraordinary
Speaker 1: here on the Bob Left That's podcast. You're listening to
Speaker 1: The Bob Left Sets podcast recording at the tune In
Speaker 1: Studios in Venice, California. Each week I interview a new
Speaker 1: guest to get their story. I want to find out
Speaker 1: what makes them tick and I hope listening to these
Speaker 1: successful people makes you smarter. If you like the show, subscribe,
Speaker 1: rate and review it. Also, please check out earlier episodes.
Speaker 1: You can hear them all on tune in, Apple podcast
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts. And now more with
Speaker 1: Giles Martin, sound experienced leader for Saunas. So you said
Speaker 1: you've got the gig being the musical director for the
Speaker 1: Queen's Jubilee. Yeah, what year was that? That was in
Speaker 1: nineteen sorry, two thousand two, Okay, But in the interim
Speaker 1: you're producing records in the interim and Virginia Records and
Speaker 1: working in in working as in house Bridger Sony unsuccessfully
Speaker 1: I worked with worked on a sort of rip off bands,
Speaker 1: like I worked on a girl band that were trying
Speaker 1: to be like the Dixie Chicks, writing and producing various
Speaker 1: artists under this guy Rob Dickens, who was a label boss, um,
Speaker 1: and it was fascinating. I mean, I've never been inside
Speaker 1: a record label before, and my my greatest fears are realized.
Speaker 1: I think you know which or what. Well. I remember
Speaker 1: being an RM meeting and there was him and there,
Speaker 1: you know, and I love it's very nice, but I
Speaker 1: love him dearly is a very nice guy. Um. And
Speaker 1: and it really you know, he taught me a lot
Speaker 1: because I remember doing that working on this band, and
Speaker 1: and I'd be downstairs in the basement and he'd listened
Speaker 1: to and he goes, doesn't sound like this, and it
Speaker 1: would be no scrubs by TLC. And I go, but
Speaker 1: I've been in the basement doing this and this is
Speaker 1: a multimillion dollar production. And he looked at me like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: do you think anyone cares? And that's that. That taught
Speaker 1: me a lot? Is that taught me? There's no excuse
Speaker 1: I was saying to someone yesterday Atually, if anyone's making
Speaker 1: if you're making a record, if you're trying to make something,
Speaker 1: compare it to what you love or compare it to
Speaker 1: what you think is really really good and see whether
Speaker 1: you can beat it opposed to saying to someone, yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's my demo, you know that. That's and so
Speaker 1: that taught me a lot that people don't listen with empathy.
Speaker 1: They don't listen to the fact you've done it. They
Speaker 1: just listen. But yeah, I I realized that, you know,
Speaker 1: from being an artist and being a musician in the
Speaker 1: way decisions are made about roster and record labels. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't for me. I'm not I'm too soft for
Speaker 1: that in a way. And how you know, usually you
Speaker 1: have a certain number of unsuccessful projects and they fire you.
Speaker 1: Now what happened in this particular case, Well it be
Speaker 1: the case. It was his, Um, it wasn't necessarily my responsibility.
Speaker 1: They were unt successful. It wasn't going down to me.
Speaker 1: And it got to the stage where you know, um,
Speaker 1: i'd sort of was going a reputation for doing bigger projects.
Speaker 1: And the BBC approached me and saw whether I would
Speaker 1: record the first Queen's Jubilee Concert, which which they had
Speaker 1: a bunch of artists. Because I've worked on okay, is
Speaker 1: this the same two thousand two projects projects? So you're
Speaker 1: still working at Sony at and I left Sony because
Speaker 1: I realized that and there was undertones of At the
Speaker 1: same time, my father was talking to me about he
Speaker 1: wanted to do a Yellow Submarine ballet with a guy
Speaker 1: called Matthew Born, and I thought it was a bit
Speaker 1: camp for me. I didn't really know anything about ballet,
Speaker 1: and I and I had an idea that we could
Speaker 1: do a beatles sing with this company called De la Guada,
Speaker 1: who are a certain slay like and so there was
Speaker 1: a bunch of things bubbling under and I was unhappy
Speaker 1: with this position and the record label, and so I
Speaker 1: went off and did the jubilee concert. Okay, how long
Speaker 1: did you work at starting? A year and a half,
Speaker 1: so not really that long. I thought it was years
Speaker 1: because I was in a band. I was in a band,
Speaker 1: you know, and then did that and got when I
Speaker 1: was broke, the guy phoned me up. Did I thought
Speaker 1: it was like six or nine years. No, no no, no,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be able to I'm not to stand on
Speaker 1: the turn out long. So they called you for the
Speaker 1: Queen's Jubilee. How did they call you? How did they
Speaker 1: find you? They called me because they wanted me, you know,
Speaker 1: because I was you know, it's nepotism. I was my
Speaker 1: father's son, and they thought I could do the job.
Speaker 1: They really they called me to see if I could
Speaker 1: record it. They wanted to release a DVD, and I
Speaker 1: kind of what I've done before, but I've done something
Speaker 1: like that before, and so you know, I decided how
Speaker 1: many trucks we should get in all this sort of stuff,
Speaker 1: and I turned up to the first meeting and Michael Cayman,
Speaker 1: I don't know Jim Michael. Well, the irony is is
Speaker 1: my girl friend runs a foundation that he started, Mr.
Speaker 1: Hollands Opus Foundation. The other thing I will say he
Speaker 1: was originally in a band called the New York Rock
Speaker 1: and Roll Ensemble and I saw them open for the
Speaker 1: Alban Brothers in nineteen three for other people that he
Speaker 1: went out to have a long career, you know, writing
Speaker 1: the Robin Hood, saw writing musical scores, working with Metallica,
Speaker 1: and I certainly don't Michael an amazing man, so amazing.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately died of them mex about ten years ago. So
Speaker 1: Michael Michael had met in Japan because he was involved
Speaker 1: in in this crazy Japanese concert I mentioned um and
Speaker 1: he was doing the Queens jupile e and what was
Speaker 1: his role he was now he was the music director,
Speaker 1: but he hadn't told anyone how ill he was, and
Speaker 1: he was, and so what how I turned up the meetings,
Speaker 1: mean being the recording person, and they said to me, um,
Speaker 1: would you be would you take on the role of
Speaker 1: doing these director for some of the artists for the
Speaker 1: Queens Jubilee And it was it was when it was
Speaker 1: a it was a fantastic They had these artists lined
Speaker 1: up and you know it was basically rehearsing the band,
Speaker 1: rehearsing the artist. That kind of stuff makes. And it
Speaker 1: was it was like, you know, they had Brian Wilson
Speaker 1: to Brian Wilson. I loved to work Brian Wilson. And
Speaker 1: they're going that be cause you have to do Ricky
Speaker 1: Martin and and I go, well, I'll do Ray Davies.
Speaker 1: He's doing lower that would be great. I'd love to
Speaker 1: do that. And they go okay, because you had to
Speaker 1: Cliff Richard and and s Club seven or you know,
Speaker 1: that was that was the way it would work. Um,
Speaker 1: So I did that and under the same So I
Speaker 1: understand for those people who were the amateurs if it's
Speaker 1: a band, like if it if a band comes and
Speaker 1: you're the musical director and they normally perform. What are
Speaker 1: you actually telling them to do? Well, it's not a
Speaker 1: band coming you have a well you you you talked
Speaker 1: them first and you say how do you want to
Speaker 1: do the song? And they go, well, you know, you
Speaker 1: know I did this gig once in you know whatever,
Speaker 1: and we did it like that because generally that they
Speaker 1: you have a houseman the house band that because was
Speaker 1: actually Philip Collins on drums, piano again on bass, so
Speaker 1: I knew the band anyway. I see. So you're not
Speaker 1: bringing your own band. They're not bring their own band,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean like I think we had you know,
Speaker 1: the Black Sabbath were was Tony Iamy and and and Ozzie.
Speaker 1: But the band with with Phil Constant drums, they still
Speaker 1: don't use the drummers. Yeah, there's so so so it
Speaker 1: was it was making sure that everyone knew their parts.
Speaker 1: And now just to go back because it's another interesting thing. Um,
Speaker 1: this is live. This is live yet? Okay question because
Speaker 1: I had some road dogs. I've gotten into this. Your
Speaker 1: act is playing the super Bowl? Would you ever do
Speaker 1: it live? Or too many risks? Yeah? You know it's funny.
Speaker 1: I I think that I would love to do it live,
Speaker 1: don't know, I just think it's funny. We did this thing.
Speaker 1: We made a huge mistake at the Olympic Games, the Olympic,
Speaker 1: the Open Olympic Games. It always haunts me. They were
Speaker 1: Paul McCartney performed and they wanted them to mind, and
Speaker 1: he can't mind because he doesn't use in their monitors.
Speaker 1: He doesn't use He refused to use it in a
Speaker 1: mond Oh I didn't know that. Yeah, he uses uses,
Speaker 1: you know, use regular market, doesn't use in their market.
Speaker 1: And I said, well maybe because still mine and I
Speaker 1: worked out this way which you could do it, and
Speaker 1: he forgot he was miming, and so there were two
Speaker 1: they were doing playback. I recorded the band playing live,
Speaker 1: and then he started too early, and there were two
Speaker 1: Paul McCartney's playing at the same time. And I pressed
Speaker 1: the button to go to live in front of a
Speaker 1: billion people, you know, I had to press his red button.
Speaker 1: And I said to my god, you know, yes, I
Speaker 1: didn't go very well, pout. I guess, yeah, but too
Speaker 1: mus if you gonna mess up doing in front of
Speaker 1: a billion people, yeah, so that's yeah. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think that I love I love you know, I'm
Speaker 1: a natural risk taken it's like one of they said, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: well let's just go for it. You know what's going
Speaker 1: to happen. I mean there would listen. There are the
Speaker 1: worst things happened in the world every day. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't believe in you know, there's this you know
Speaker 1: you did Paul McCartney in the opening of the Olympics.
Speaker 1: Did you do the closing too? Okay, so you do
Speaker 1: the Queen's Jubilee and that works out great? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: do the creas And then I was like satain thinking,
Speaker 1: what right, what do I do now? Work with the Queen?
Speaker 1: That the what do I do now? And the phone's
Speaker 1: not ringing. My manager phone me up and said, you
Speaker 1: know the you know I've got I've got you a
Speaker 1: gig and I was like great. You know my working
Speaker 1: was super Grass. I loved Supergrass, and I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: you're working with I really did Supergrass not make it
Speaker 1: because the guys were so unattractive. I don't know. It
Speaker 1: made some nice record phenomenal exactly, And I bought those albums.
Speaker 1: Zero impacted, Yeah, none, I don't know. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but but you know, because you work on the fifteen
Speaker 1: year old classical singer I was like, right, and it
Speaker 1: doesn't you And he said, you haven't got anything else,
Speaker 1: You've got nothing, you know, this is it? And so
Speaker 1: I did this record with this girl called Haley western R.
Speaker 1: It was a New Zealand singer and it was an
Speaker 1: album that that I did by. It was like it
Speaker 1: was like painting my numbers. I was like, Okay, this track,
Speaker 1: we'll get onto Radio two in the UK, this track
Speaker 1: will get on to daytime television, this track or and
Speaker 1: she ended up selling she was that, she ended up
Speaker 1: but it ended up being the fastest selling classical record
Speaker 1: of all time in the UK and sold two million copies.
Speaker 1: Well did that? Did you ride along with that? That
Speaker 1: burnish your image? Yeah? It completed Butt a friend of
Speaker 1: mine when I was trying to be cool, and I said,
Speaker 1: I guess I'll never well only your bands again. He goes, no,
Speaker 1: it because it's amazing. Even Chris Martin. I said to
Speaker 1: Chris Chris Martin, Coldplay singer. We had luncheon and goes,
Speaker 1: it's amazing the success you've had. It's like, yeah, but
Speaker 1: I'll never work. That goes, No, You weren't, I mean
Speaker 1: I was, I was, And I was like, you know,
Speaker 1: it was I suddenly became the king of crossover classical,
Speaker 1: which is you know, you know, I'm not sure how
Speaker 1: how much you're allowed to use rude words on your No,
Speaker 1: we no problem, but the email correspondent was always goat shagging,
Speaker 1: you know, for some of it was it was tantamount
Speaker 1: to go checking. I don't know why we always said
Speaker 1: that was it was, it was, it was Anna's that.
Speaker 1: Then then I got busted for being rude about crossover
Speaker 1: classical by someone, you know, because I just it wasn't
Speaker 1: a world that I liked. It was that easy path.
Speaker 1: So you had, you know, the best times in the
Speaker 1: words of times you had success, but not in the
Speaker 1: field had success and I had yeah, And I could
Speaker 1: have then gone and done everything everything you know, crossover classical,
Speaker 1: whether you know it was you know that they were
Speaker 1: queuing up because I was, I opened that door to
Speaker 1: And it was then that with this undercurrent I mentioned before,
Speaker 1: my father wanted to Yellow Submarine and we had an
Speaker 1: idea that certain Lay and the Beatles signed their deal
Speaker 1: to do the Love Show and certains. Lay had got
Speaker 1: a DJ and to remix the Beatles songs and it
Speaker 1: was a disaster and I did. None of us knew this,
Speaker 1: knew about this. And I met Neil Aspinal, who was
Speaker 1: the head of Apple and my father at that time
Speaker 1: was actually quite seriously ill. He was in the hospital.
Speaker 1: And I just had this success with the people to
Speaker 1: saw it of success, they didn't handle as the rapper
Speaker 1: I've done, and and even Paul came up and going, well,
Speaker 1: I've done with that record. I was like, you know,
Speaker 1: obviously had to listen to it with a bad version
Speaker 1: of Harvey Maria on it. And I said to Neil,
Speaker 1: and I was into that chopping up stuff at that stage,
Speaker 1: and I said to that Neil Aspinal, it's one of
Speaker 1: those you know, I reckon I can credit Biddles concert
Speaker 1: that never happened by chopping up their tapes. He went really,
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, I've got an idea. I could do
Speaker 1: this drum introduction and and I can imagine, you know,
Speaker 1: like how the band would perform and Le's face they
Speaker 1: played live and all the tapes, so I could chop
Speaker 1: up the tapes and create a create a sound better
Speaker 1: for a show. And he said, okay, you've got three
Speaker 1: months and I'm not paying you. From from then, I
Speaker 1: went into a room at Abbey Road to begin with,
Speaker 1: I didn't even have any speakers. They just gave me
Speaker 1: headphones and I did like four or five different things
Speaker 1: for the show. Did he take three months? No? No,
Speaker 1: it took three months me to transfer a lot of
Speaker 1: the tapes. Because I'm just gonna ask that said the end,
Speaker 1: They they and and and then uh, you know, my
Speaker 1: dad came out of hospital. He was to be treated
Speaker 1: for cancer, and he didn't really like it very much.
Speaker 1: It was funny at the time. He was like, I think,
Speaker 1: you know, I think you pushed this a little bit
Speaker 1: too far. I don't think I like it. And Paul
Speaker 1: came in, and Ringer came in and living in Yoko
Speaker 1: and I played them some stuff and I did this
Speaker 1: this version of within You Without You on Tomorrow Never
Speaker 1: Knows I'd mixed together, and my dad banned me from
Speaker 1: playing it to them, and then Paul because you should
Speaker 1: push it farther further, and I went, I've got this thing,
Speaker 1: you know right right, I don't know I'm pretending, but
Speaker 1: for the listeners I'm hold putting to hold up a
Speaker 1: disc of course, would never and and I played to
Speaker 1: me because this is brilliant, this is what we should do.
Speaker 1: And it's sort of that then unlocked that door. Um,
Speaker 1: And I remember being in New York with I was,
Speaker 1: I was again, I was writing music with for a
Speaker 1: singer and and and I've got a phone call saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: you were in the contract. You're doing this show. You're
Speaker 1: doing this Beatles show. And remember a friend of mine saying,
Speaker 1: you know it was a producer and said, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if I should do this because if I do this,
Speaker 1: this is what I'll be doing. It fits everyone's and
Speaker 1: and I said, I'm not sure if I want to
Speaker 1: do you know, I want to be the legacy guy.
Speaker 1: And he said to me, Um, you do know that
Speaker 1: if you don't do this, I'll do it, you know.
Speaker 1: And I thought to myself, you know, I've got a
Speaker 1: good point. And I actually remind myself when I'm working
Speaker 1: on this stuff, was like, you know, yeah, I'm pretty
Speaker 1: lucky to be to be trusted with this material. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that was and that was I did. I did the
Speaker 1: Love Show in Vegas and that open the door. Okay,
Speaker 1: it was built as a collaboration between yourself and your father. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was it was it was to have to missiety.
Speaker 1: He was he was producing me because he produced me
Speaker 1: as a child, but he was he was, he was
Speaker 1: producing me in respect. He would come in mainly on
Speaker 1: a Thursday, would always go to the same restaurant for
Speaker 1: lunchally come on Thursday because he lived out in London,
Speaker 1: and I would play him what I've done, and you go, no,
Speaker 1: this is you know, this is you know And even
Speaker 1: though his hearing wasn't that great, he would be able
Speaker 1: to judge it and give me advice. But I would create.
Speaker 1: I created the stuff and mixed it well. As I say,
Speaker 1: I didn't know till this day that it all started
Speaker 1: with you and Neon. Yeah. And then and then what happened.
Speaker 1: What happened was I got quite defensive because my my
Speaker 1: dad was a big influence. Obviously it's big. It's on
Speaker 1: me full stop. But he was a big and Ringo
Speaker 1: came once and said, you know, well, you know, I said,
Speaker 1: that's just getting well, you know I know that he
Speaker 1: hasn't not you know, said never lessn't he is he
Speaker 1: is my you know, my guidance on this. And then
Speaker 1: when I went out to Vegas and I did a
Speaker 1: lot of work out in the in the show itself,
Speaker 1: in the theater. We built the theater, designed the speaker system. Um.
Speaker 1: I remember I read it, here comes the Sun. I
Speaker 1: read it the interduction, Here comes the Sun, and and
Speaker 1: and I suddenly remeased. My dad wasn't there, and and
Speaker 1: it felt really dirty that that cerked the sligh would
Speaker 1: hear this before he heard it. And then you realize,
Speaker 1: you know it's then you know it's he's a tip.
Speaker 1: And then funny enough, you know when he felt slightly
Speaker 1: excluded because because I was just going off there and
Speaker 1: with a mouse, you know, and I computed in doing
Speaker 1: this stuff. And it was I remember saying, because it's amazing, Charles.
Speaker 1: You know, like audio, audio too is like putty, isn't
Speaker 1: it the way you can manipulate in all sorts of way.
Speaker 1: It's the way he would speak. Was he hip on
Speaker 1: all the new technologies? No, but he loved it. He
Speaker 1: you know, he was, he was hip as far as
Speaker 1: mind you. The fact the matter is is that I
Speaker 1: get assistance now that think I'm good on pro tools
Speaker 1: because I did love but I really have no idea
Speaker 1: at all. I mean, my sessions look like a Jackson
Speaker 1: Pollock painting. You know, nothing nothing tidy about the way
Speaker 1: I worked and and it's it's funny. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think if I had known my stuff, I would have
Speaker 1: done a worse job. I mean if I started off
Speaker 1: with those a drums, drums that there's a drum soto
Speaker 1: from the end which the song on Abbey Road and
Speaker 1: I and I decided to mix get Back as an
Speaker 1: introduction to it and put the piano called back to
Speaker 1: a bunch of stuff. And the way you do that,
Speaker 1: if you're a modern artist, is you put a grid
Speaker 1: and you put the drums in time, and you put
Speaker 1: everything and you lock everything together. And I started doing
Speaker 1: that and I put Ringo perfectly in time, and it
Speaker 1: completely killed the field of the band. And then I realized, Okay,
Speaker 1: it has to be the band dictating the heartbeat of
Speaker 1: this show and not me chopping the music up. That
Speaker 1: makes any sense, yes, So so I learned, you know,
Speaker 1: it's again you have to you to look know when
Speaker 1: you do things badly, is that is the is the
Speaker 1: key to key to good work. So he was. And
Speaker 1: then when it came to we a via, Harrison came
Speaker 1: to see me and said, you know, I don't want
Speaker 1: to use the demo to while my guitar Jenny he
Speaker 1: was the director of the show. Want to use the
Speaker 1: demo to wi my gutar Johnny Weeps, which is just
Speaker 1: a george An acoustic guitar. It was on Anthology and
Speaker 1: I said, well, you know, I had an idea. I said,
Speaker 1: you know, well I could get my dad to finish
Speaker 1: you could do a string arrangement. And and Danny Harrison
Speaker 1: was only because you think he could, I said, joanneal
Speaker 1: phone himut I phoned him up there, I said, and
Speaker 1: he said to me, and it's funny, you know, go
Speaker 1: back to that that conversation we had and when he
Speaker 1: was dying, he said, I said, Daddy, because I'm not
Speaker 1: sure I can do it anymore. I said, because I've
Speaker 1: done haven't done a stringent for ten years. I said,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you can, Dad. And I had actually done
Speaker 1: a there's the introduction which is on the record on
Speaker 1: the show I did. And I said, you know I
Speaker 1: I and we sat at the piano was really nice
Speaker 1: as that piano said, because that's nice, there's a g
Speaker 1: mine of progression ages even you know this is and
Speaker 1: he went off and then we went to the studios
Speaker 1: and recorded all It's on film. Actually a string section
Speaker 1: playing and everyone knew in the orchestra that this would
Speaker 1: be the last time that he would work. I knew
Speaker 1: the last time he to work. He was eighty years
Speaker 1: old or seventy nine years old. I couldn't hear anything,
Speaker 1: and we steered through and it was a beautiful it's
Speaker 1: a beautiful arrangement. If you ever hear it, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a really sympathetic arrangement. And actually his memorial service
Speaker 1: I m I had the guys, a singer songwriter who's
Speaker 1: very good called James James Bay, who's a friend of mine.
Speaker 1: He sang it. I wanted someone agnostic, and we had
Speaker 1: a string section player, and it's just it's just like
Speaker 1: my dad was really good. He was really good. It's
Speaker 1: that I couldn't do that. It was he was. He's
Speaker 1: really good. Okay, now you're doing the Beatles Love Show.
Speaker 1: You know it's going to be success, You're not sure.
Speaker 1: Had no idea, I thought, I, you know, I didn't
Speaker 1: want to do cross over classical music, and this was
Speaker 1: like a fun thing to do, and it was also
Speaker 1: a really good way game to know my dad and
Speaker 1: going through his closet and learning stuff. You know, I
Speaker 1: went through every single take and every single Beatles track, um,
Speaker 1: and made notes you know, because I thought I bet,
Speaker 1: and in fact, I thought I'd get fired. I I
Speaker 1: really thought, it's such a bad idea. The son of
Speaker 1: George Martin chops up the Beatles tapes for a show
Speaker 1: and asked, Vegas is discussing it, probably pay read about
Speaker 1: in your blog. It has to be a shocker, you know.
Speaker 1: It's It's like I, I disagree with the principle entirely,
Speaker 1: apart from the fact that for me it was better
Speaker 1: than doing the other thing I was doing and and um,
Speaker 1: and it came out and everyone liked it, and I
Speaker 1: was you know, I honestly thought, as I thought, if
Speaker 1: I could do one thing, I'll back up all the
Speaker 1: tapes because they hadn't been backed up. And then if
Speaker 1: I confins you were literally using the master tape. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have to use the master tape. They sound great
Speaker 1: and so I but it is in there a limit,
Speaker 1: you know what kind of condition you only have to
Speaker 1: play them once to back to my point. But I'm
Speaker 1: surprised that no one had done that previously. They hadn't
Speaker 1: done it previously, and so I thought, you know, what
Speaker 1: if I can, if I get fired and leave one
Speaker 1: thing by. At least I backed up the tapes properly.
Speaker 1: And that's why that was my motivation. I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: at least I've done something great, and and it came out,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's still going now. I think it's
Speaker 1: been seen by seven half million people. Now there was
Speaker 1: recently redone. Yeah, I went back and redid it. And
Speaker 1: what did you change? There were there? The show was
Speaker 1: looking old. It was mainly a visual thing. The show
Speaker 1: was looking old and looking a bit tired. And myself
Speaker 1: and Dominic who's the guy did the show with whose
Speaker 1: lovely man? And she died his name of Dominic Champagne's
Speaker 1: great name. We went, we two together and we started
Speaker 1: looking old, and we persuaded Different to invest I remixed
Speaker 1: the entire show from start different because you know, if
Speaker 1: you think about it, when we did the show, we
Speaker 1: did it on computers. We had to do on computers.
Speaker 1: I couldn't bring Abby Road to and we're using plugins
Speaker 1: and all sorts of things, and they've got a lot better.
Speaker 1: And we transferred. I retransferred all tapes as well, and
Speaker 1: so we did. And then I bought new speakers, and
Speaker 1: and and and you know, we listened differently. That's the
Speaker 1: funny thing about music, as we listened differently. How music
Speaker 1: is when you remember and how music is when you
Speaker 1: listen to again. It can be, can be different, can
Speaker 1: be worse, a little deeper there. Well, it demands of
Speaker 1: you know, when when we did the show, it was
Speaker 1: the best selling show probably, I think one of the
Speaker 1: best selling shows in the world probably. I mean, it
Speaker 1: should be seven thou speakers in the room, even though
Speaker 1: we're in the round. And by the time three years ago,
Speaker 1: you know, Celine Dion sounded better because there's more weight
Speaker 1: in the base, there's more you know, there's more visceral
Speaker 1: presence in the in the not in the sound that's
Speaker 1: hitting you and all that sort of stuff. And the
Speaker 1: Beatles show sounded a light um. You know, we we
Speaker 1: we we demand, we expect this sort of this sort
Speaker 1: of thing to hit us in the chest now, which
Speaker 1: didn't happen thirteen years ago. And so and I was
Speaker 1: working in the in the theater and I said the guys,
Speaker 1: I said, I need to around about to two or
Speaker 1: fifty hurts. Is what thumbs you in the chest? You know,
Speaker 1: it's bizarre, it's not lower, it's around about that. They
Speaker 1: were like, you know, I want when you're breaking the system,
Speaker 1: you're breaking the system. I said, well, how do I
Speaker 1: not break the system? Because you need more speakers? So
Speaker 1: I got up, I walked across the casino, knocked on
Speaker 1: the casino and doing continue to buy me some more
Speaker 1: speakers please, And he said, yeah, there are hundred eighty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. He goes, and they can make a difference
Speaker 1: to you. I said yeah, and he goes, okay, like
Speaker 1: spoiled child. And that's the way it works now. But
Speaker 1: then the casino were incredibly I've actually, it's funny you
Speaker 1: my previous if you'd asked me, and it's vague. I'm not,
Speaker 1: as you can tell. Probably I'm not Mr Vegas. But
Speaker 1: they're they're actually they're they're very supportive, and I like them.
Speaker 1: I like still like the people. They're a lot. And
Speaker 1: they were like this and if if you think it's
Speaker 1: gonna make a difference, then okay, we'll do it. So
Speaker 1: I I read it things. How did you end up
Speaker 1: remixing Sergeant Pepper? It was It wasn't something that I
Speaker 1: necessarily felt compelled to do. Um. A lot of this
Speaker 1: stuff comes from the the desire comes to it's the
Speaker 1: fiftieth anniversary, Well it's the fifth is what are we
Speaker 1: gonna do? You know, there's outtakes, there's there's this, And
Speaker 1: I've played around with privately, played around with remixing Beatles tracks.
Speaker 1: You know, I did it for love and they were
Speaker 1: The Love Album was very well received as far as
Speaker 1: an audio perspective goes. Um, I get given a lot
Speaker 1: of credit for things that I didn't do. You know,
Speaker 1: you put the tapes into a machine and you put
Speaker 1: the faders up and it sounds pretty good. And generally
Speaker 1: what happens to the processes that make a record in
Speaker 1: those days, they they continual. I mean like if you
Speaker 1: if you remaster and remaster a um, you know a
Speaker 1: quarter inch tape, that's that our half inch tables are mixed.
Speaker 1: It gets worn down so that the end the tapes
Speaker 1: get on now. Um. And with Sergeant Pepper apple Core,
Speaker 1: who are the Beatles Company, they wanted to do something
Speaker 1: by the fiftieth Anniverse you rerelease and we talked about
Speaker 1: it and they wanted to go through the outtakes and
Speaker 1: stuff like that and funny if my father had my
Speaker 1: father passed away. UM, so yeah, and and I took
Speaker 1: some time off, obviously, took two weeks off, and I
Speaker 1: went about the studios and the first voice I hope
Speaker 1: was his, which is kind of odd. And Yoko said
Speaker 1: to me, we were doing the Love Shows, sitting with
Speaker 1: the Love Show, and I use voices in the Love
Speaker 1: Show of the Beatles, and she said, it's funny. You know,
Speaker 1: John's just a voice now. And I know how she felt.
Speaker 1: And and we started remixing, um, Sergeant Pepper. You know that.
Speaker 1: You know, people want to do a surround you doing
Speaker 1: a stereo, and we got it wrong. It didn't sound right.
Speaker 1: And then after about four songs, I suddenly realized, actually,
Speaker 1: this this kind of sounds It sounds good. Um, not better,
Speaker 1: it just sounds good. And the monos had been you know,
Speaker 1: I listened. I never heard the mono version of Sergeant Pepper.
Speaker 1: I'm like, you know, I'm not that sort of persons.
Speaker 1: Terrible to say I should be, but I've never had
Speaker 1: the monos. And the mono mixes are different. I think
Speaker 1: they kind of they're more claustrophobic, they're more psychedelic in
Speaker 1: some ways, there's more effects on them because they could
Speaker 1: the Beatles couldn't put effects on the stereo. The technology
Speaker 1: wasn't there a d T voices with stereo the voice.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a bunch of things that just a
Speaker 1: very speed techniques they used weren't there, And so we
Speaker 1: started doing it. And again, you know, you do these
Speaker 1: things behind closed doors. And I actually said to Apple, well,
Speaker 1: how did you switch from surround to doing a stereo?
Speaker 1: You do a stereo first. You have to do a stereo.
Speaker 1: My pathway to surround his stereo because you have to
Speaker 1: get the stereo right before you do the surround. Otherwise
Speaker 1: that the weights not there on the surrounders becomes I
Speaker 1: don't know if you you hear some surround mixes, and
Speaker 1: I don't want to criticize us as the work, but
Speaker 1: some surround mixes sound too ambient. They sound you know
Speaker 1: that if you think about the cool thing about surrounds,
Speaker 1: you have a center, speaking of that mono thing that
Speaker 1: can hit you and it's like I see it like
Speaker 1: smashing toffee with a toffee hammer. We have that center
Speaker 1: and everything can explode around it, like when you listen
Speaker 1: to a great mono record and that happens in your head. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that's the way I see it, and so with with
Speaker 1: Sargeant Pepper, I m I said, if this isn't right,
Speaker 1: then and you have to and it's a brave thing
Speaker 1: to do. And then um they came out and and
Speaker 1: people people liked it. You know, it's funny. It's funny.
Speaker 1: It's someone wrote to me that day and said, we
Speaker 1: can't get hold of a couple of the vinyl mixes
Speaker 1: Huge and pepp you did last year because it's sold
Speaker 1: out to Universal. You know you can. You can buy
Speaker 1: the original one, which I should say, do buy that one.
Speaker 1: But you know, I don't think about the marketing aspects
Speaker 1: of it. When I do, I just think about, you
Speaker 1: know what bothers me. I suppose my motivation is that
Speaker 1: when you play a record that's important to you to
Speaker 1: a younger generation and they think it sounds old, I
Speaker 1: think it's an old because it may not be as loud,
Speaker 1: it may not be as stereo, it may not be
Speaker 1: as immersive as the tracks that are listening to. And
Speaker 1: we live in a world of a global jukebox where
Speaker 1: there's no reverence to when it's coming back, but there's
Speaker 1: no reverence to put you on a record. You can have,
Speaker 1: you know, Kendrick Lamar next to loosen sk with diamonds.
Speaker 1: It doesn't make any difference in it. And the thing
Speaker 1: about music and thinking about recording is that it doesn't.
Speaker 1: It's a recording is by that it is a capturing
Speaker 1: a five year old person at their prime, and I
Speaker 1: want them to be twenty five forever and I want
Speaker 1: them to be bursting. Any of your speakers, um not
Speaker 1: at an angry compressed you know, to the max way.
Speaker 1: But I just want to make sure that you feel
Speaker 1: like you're in the room with them, and so that
Speaker 1: was kind of the motivation. Okay, Well, return to this
Speaker 1: conversation with Jaws Martin, sound experience leader for Sonos and
Speaker 1: son of George Martin and producer and mixer extraordinary in
Speaker 1: his own right in a moment. You're listening to the
Speaker 1: Bob Left Sets podcast, recorded at the tune In Studios
Speaker 1: in Venice, California. Each week I interview a new guest
Speaker 1: to get their story. While they're here, we take photos
Speaker 1: and shoot some videos. You can see what they really
Speaker 1: look like. I want to see what Jiles looks like.
Speaker 1: Check us out on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Follow at
Speaker 1: tune In. Let's dive right back in with my guest
Speaker 1: Giles Martin, producer extraordinary. Well, it's kind of interesting. I
Speaker 1: have no problem with what you will. At first, when
Speaker 1: I first heard about it's a little bit of a
Speaker 1: hump what you did with Love. That's a totally new work,
Speaker 1: remixing something that I know so well. It's all akin
Speaker 1: to owning a vinyl record and then getting the c
Speaker 1: D when you were listening for the Skips and the
Speaker 1: Pops that weren't there anymore. You know, the originals so well,
Speaker 1: so that do you have plans to remix anymore Beatles records?
Speaker 1: And then not at the moment. I mean, there's there's
Speaker 1: talking about it, but um, it's not you know. And
Speaker 1: I think to answer that, I I can, I completely,
Speaker 1: I completely understand what you're saying. I kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: part of me agrees. At the same time, I'm not
Speaker 1: doing it for you, Bob exactly. That's what I was thinking. Now,
Speaker 1: your your explanation is very good. First, I think that
Speaker 1: I think if if anyone who wants to, if I listen,
Speaker 1: if we get to the stage where people are loving
Speaker 1: the pops and the clicks, if we people listen that much.
Speaker 1: We live in a world where you know, um, we
Speaker 1: hear things that we don't listen. You know, it's ubiquitous
Speaker 1: wall of sound constantly going on. There's noise, constant going on.
Speaker 1: And and that time which you talk about where you
Speaker 1: have that record and you love that record, you put
Speaker 1: it on. You know, if there's a reason, if you know,
Speaker 1: there's there's two ways. You know, even if people don't
Speaker 1: like what I do, they're listening to it. And I
Speaker 1: don't have a problem with that. It's like, great, don't
Speaker 1: like it. Let's see, that's why I don't mind you.
Speaker 1: And when I wrote back to you, I said, I
Speaker 1: don't mind you saying this stuff. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: the fact you have passion and opinion is what I like.
Speaker 1: That's the whole point. It's like, you know, great, you
Speaker 1: know that we're not we we live in a we
Speaker 1: live in a world where it's just a record, and
Speaker 1: and there's various moments in the lines, whether they're not
Speaker 1: just records, there are things that mean a great deal
Speaker 1: to us. Now I'm not trying to take that away
Speaker 1: from you in any way whatsoever. Absolutely not. But if
Speaker 1: I can stir things up to people, like slap you
Speaker 1: around the face, and go see I was wrong, I
Speaker 1: was right or whatever. At least it's getting attention. Un
Speaker 1: least you have an opinion. Now you also work with
Speaker 1: Sonos at this point, how did you end up coming
Speaker 1: to work with Well, that was a strange thing that
Speaker 1: happened about four years ago. I was actually working. I
Speaker 1: did Paul McCartney's album New This Is This is Back,
Speaker 1: and I was working over here in l A and
Speaker 1: Henson and a guy kind to see me and as
Speaker 1: with a great mixanage. They called Spike stant who Spike
Speaker 1: good friend of mine, lovely Spike, and they came to
Speaker 1: see us, and it was press how to speak all
Speaker 1: the play one and and they they they Thomas Mayer,
Speaker 1: who's came to see me. He said, you know, give me,
Speaker 1: give you some speakers. And there's about the fourth speaker
Speaker 1: that come up to me because since the Love record
Speaker 1: there was, you know, loves used for surround high fire.
Speaker 1: It's a now I the socks and sound of a brigade.
Speaker 1: I suit and and I kind of and I I
Speaker 1: got her. My wife goes, you know, what are these
Speaker 1: boxes doing? And they're speakers? And what do we want
Speaker 1: speakers for? Now that you might like these ones because
Speaker 1: they're small, you know, and I plugged them in night
Speaker 1: and I like, my attitude was like, I think, thank
Speaker 1: you very much. I thought the actually they sound pretty good.
Speaker 1: And then they sent me just for the record the
Speaker 1: song I was one is a small, This was Presoners one,
Speaker 1: this was up five and a three. Okay, I mean
Speaker 1: they sent me a play bar and I was like, wow,
Speaker 1: this is great. I've got free gear. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: a bloke, so I like, I like, you know, not
Speaker 1: gonna be sexist, but we tend to we tend to
Speaker 1: be slightly more obsessive over gear, you know, with sad individuals.
Speaker 1: I'm one of them. Okay, yeah, I know, I know.
Speaker 1: And then and then what happened was is they brought
Speaker 1: they showed me a one, and I had comments on it.
Speaker 1: I thought it was limiting too much, and there was
Speaker 1: various things I didn't like that was doing. And then
Speaker 1: this was before or afterwards manufacturing forwards manufacturing, and they
Speaker 1: realized I was engaged, and they asked me. They said,
Speaker 1: they have Rick Rubin on their soundboard and they have
Speaker 1: hand Zimmer. I said, will I join their sandboard? And
Speaker 1: I said yeah. And then I thought, well, if I'm
Speaker 1: It was one of the things they sort of get
Speaker 1: got me more involved to come and I think they
Speaker 1: give me some shares, and it was this thing I
Speaker 1: was like, you know, I should get I should And
Speaker 1: I liked them. You know, they were the first speak
Speaker 1: company people have come up to me before and said,
Speaker 1: you know, what do you think of our speakers? They
Speaker 1: come seem in the studios and I said, and I'd
Speaker 1: say what I thought, and then we'll go you're wrong,
Speaker 1: and I go, okay, you know what what that's But
Speaker 1: that's great. I don't mind being wrong and absolutely, but
Speaker 1: but don't get upset for me, just so I know.
Speaker 1: It used to be the standard in New Case studios
Speaker 1: were tan noise. Okay, it's all sorts now. Okay, So
Speaker 1: when you mix, what are you mixed? I'm mixing on
Speaker 1: I'm mixed using a t C S there a company
Speaker 1: for I'm living. I live in the country. There are
Speaker 1: twenty miles. I didn't know this until recently, but a
Speaker 1: lot of people now use eight is Nineer god Rich
Speaker 1: who actually also works with Sons, he uses he uses
Speaker 1: a TC. So I think, um, there and there there.
Speaker 1: It's a different world. I mean, I asked for to
Speaker 1: buy a new pair of A T C s and
Speaker 1: the guy said, you can you wait a month? We
Speaker 1: have to build them, you know. So it's a different,
Speaker 1: different world to the world. And so what they were
Speaker 1: the first coming that asked me what I didn't like
Speaker 1: and they and when I said, when I started giving
Speaker 1: them compliments, they switched off when uninterested. And then the
Speaker 1: head of the head of the company came to see
Speaker 1: me and said, you know, and said, you know, would
Speaker 1: you be our sound experience leader? And I mean that said,
Speaker 1: I said no. I said, for a start, for a start,
Speaker 1: it sounds too too American for me. I said, what
Speaker 1: does it mean he goes leading our sound experience. I
Speaker 1: was like, well, obviously that's but what does that right? Right?
Speaker 1: And it's kind of like my job is to it's
Speaker 1: almost like head of sound I supposed to company. Where
Speaker 1: the appealing that I like, I like breaking, I like
Speaker 1: pushing technology, pushing away we listen. That's what appealed to
Speaker 1: about the Love Show. It's like making people, locking people
Speaker 1: in a room in Vegas and make them listen to
Speaker 1: great music? Is was it? There's something in in my
Speaker 1: subversive mind that appeals to me about that and the fact,
Speaker 1: if you think about we can't get away from the
Speaker 1: fact we make files. Now we don't make records. We
Speaker 1: do make files. That's what happens. I know that, you know,
Speaker 1: viols cut from files all of the time exactly. That's
Speaker 1: why I don't understand it. So just to stop there
Speaker 1: for a second. If we're starting with the file, how
Speaker 1: can the vinyl records sound better than the file? That's
Speaker 1: a that's a really and and it's a very good question.
Speaker 1: And does that sound better? It does it not sound?
Speaker 1: But there's something about vinyl that takes away the top
Speaker 1: and the bottom and it does also it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's you know, I was. I'm I'm a really
Speaker 1: you know, deep technical person who comes to mixing and
Speaker 1: people you know may be mistakenly like what I do.
Speaker 1: But when I did search in Pepper, you know, I
Speaker 1: re must and remuston master with a guy in Abbey Road,
Speaker 1: and then I master myself. And and then we cut
Speaker 1: the violent a half speed vinyl cut, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: a deeper, more precise cut that doesn't the vinyl. It's like, wow,
Speaker 1: this sounds great and and it makes me feel in
Speaker 1: my sort of strange control freak way. It makes me
Speaker 1: slightly annoyed because I didn't do this. I didn't either.
Speaker 1: Vinyl was just a happenstance that went on Vinyl. I
Speaker 1: like the sound of it. That makes sense, I'm not
Speaker 1: totally sure. So we had the fires that they were
Speaker 1: losing something on the vinyl. So inherently vinyl has a sound.
Speaker 1: Are you saying that you like the vinyl sound or
Speaker 1: I like this? I like the Vinyl sound of the
Speaker 1: Serge and Pepper mix. I did it sounds nice? Basically,
Speaker 1: it sounds smooth. That sounds good. But I didn't. I'm
Speaker 1: not responsible for that. Vinyl did that, not me. And
Speaker 1: that's what that's what I it's a it's a it's
Speaker 1: a it's a thing. And that This is the other
Speaker 1: thing that appeals going back the process with with with
Speaker 1: with Sonas is the fact that they they if the
Speaker 1: dream really is to is to for whether it's myself
Speaker 1: or Spike or whoever. In a studios, you can make
Speaker 1: a decision on this is how it should sound, and
Speaker 1: you send it down a wire and it appears in
Speaker 1: your home exactly the same. That's what appealed to me
Speaker 1: with with something like sonas where you can go, okay,
Speaker 1: I can tweet the speaker. And I started doing this
Speaker 1: with people speakers they have in the marketplace, where I
Speaker 1: was like, so I can change that sound of that
Speaker 1: playbar and make it. And I did it three times
Speaker 1: to play bar without people knowing, you know, change the
Speaker 1: sound of it. But after you all bought it, I
Speaker 1: know you you did update and I'm aware of this.
Speaker 1: What did you actually change? Well, it's funny. Rick Rubin
Speaker 1: was unhappy with the playbar and and and this is
Speaker 1: before I was heavily involved in any phony about it,
Speaker 1: and and I said, yeah, it sounds a bit weird
Speaker 1: for stereo music. It doesn't sound sounds like it's doing
Speaker 1: something nasty. And it was doing pretty well. It was selling,
Speaker 1: it was getting good, good reviews. I've always been interested
Speaker 1: in bad reviews anyway, So it was getting good reviews.
Speaker 1: And we worked out a way of It's always tough
Speaker 1: when you have a speak like a lot of products
Speaker 1: now are more than two channel speakers. They do it.
Speaker 1: They have to create why w from that sort of stuff?
Speaker 1: You have to fake five point one. Yeah, it's actually
Speaker 1: fake stereo because you're if you imagine the way we
Speaker 1: do the way you and I, which just needs to
Speaker 1: listen to music, is with two speakers that to mono speakers.
Speaker 1: We're not going to techy here, but and you have
Speaker 1: a you have a you have a phantom center, so
Speaker 1: there's no center speaker, but you you were sit in
Speaker 1: the middle, and what's equal left and right is a
Speaker 1: mono and then the rest of the less left and
Speaker 1: right Monday speakers that pretty much everyone makes out a stereo.
Speaker 1: They have phantom left and right. They're trying to fire
Speaker 1: things out left and right, which means you can often
Speaker 1: have a hole in the center like a like a
Speaker 1: like like a lifesaver. Let me ask you a question.
Speaker 1: If we're talking specifically about sons product, the three, the five,
Speaker 1: the one, what happens then when I peer them and
Speaker 1: I get stereo? They work in a traditional way. Okay,
Speaker 1: so the software is such that if I'm using one
Speaker 1: or I'm using two, it makes an adjustment. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they know where they are and they know what they're doing,
Speaker 1: and you know that's the that's the that's the beauty
Speaker 1: of it. So here with a play with we we
Speaker 1: changed the playbo because Rick say, it doesn't look like
Speaker 1: a stereo I was like, well, it's not a stereo,
Speaker 1: so how do you make a sound like a stereo?
Speaker 1: So I had a very clever team and we worked
Speaker 1: on that. But it's it's fun. It's like, it's a
Speaker 1: bit like it's in a funny way. It's a bit
Speaker 1: like the Love Show, where in in that theater there
Speaker 1: is in Vegas. I'm in control of the input and
Speaker 1: the output. So I'm in control. You go and sit
Speaker 1: there and you don't like it, then it's purely my fault,
Speaker 1: opposed to if you make a mix and then you, um,
Speaker 1: you know, you listen to. I'm not one of those
Speaker 1: people that has an opinion of whether you listen to.
Speaker 1: I mean, I fell in love with music listen to
Speaker 1: on AM radio, so so I think you could be
Speaker 1: with the loved one on a sunny day and comes
Speaker 1: on it because sound like the best has ever sounded,
Speaker 1: even though it doesn't sound like that. If that makes sense,
Speaker 1: you fill in the gaps at the same time, if
Speaker 1: you can facilitate if like, if there can be somewhere
Speaker 1: where where a bunch of us creators have an influence
Speaker 1: on the output side as well, then it can only
Speaker 1: be a good thing. Because very very clever audio people
Speaker 1: have no idea what a mixed you sound like. And
Speaker 1: then these speakers are just for the listening environment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's I mean I was. I've known friends that
Speaker 1: that a high five buffs. Now I'll spend thirty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars and speak and then put them next to a wall.
Speaker 1: And you think, well, you know, you must have spend
Speaker 1: five hundred dollars in a speaker then, because you're going
Speaker 1: to get the base residence you get from next mix
Speaker 1: to wall as a you know, you know, where you play.
Speaker 1: Something is really important in audio because of because of
Speaker 1: a room. And so I when I first start working US,
Speaker 1: I came across a guy called Tim Sheen, who is
Speaker 1: like a sort of a clever Bard at l wondering
Speaker 1: around with a microphone with a speaker in the corner
Speaker 1: of the the room and he was just on his own
Speaker 1: in this room. And I said, what's he doing? And
Speaker 1: they said, well, he's he thinks he can he thinks
Speaker 1: he can speak and tune itself, you know, or you
Speaker 1: can tune to a room. And so that's great, and
Speaker 1: no one else was that happy because the ethos of
Speaker 1: a product not having a constant and changing was something
Speaker 1: that speakers don't really do at that stage. Um, and
Speaker 1: Tim Sheen was you know, then the company got behind
Speaker 1: him and we got behind him, and it was a
Speaker 1: it would end up being a really cool thing where
Speaker 1: you can, you know, you could, you can you don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about what you put a speaker. So
Speaker 1: what's the future of home audio? Well, I think I
Speaker 1: think that we you know, we he and I need
Speaker 1: to talk about the future home audio in the future
Speaker 1: of music distribution as a picker question, the future of
Speaker 1: home adio, I think that I think we listen. I
Speaker 1: think that if we can, if we can make music
Speaker 1: as real as possible, I like the idea that I
Speaker 1: like that, and I was coming back. I like the
Speaker 1: fact that people have to make an effort to listen. Um.
Speaker 1: I also love the fact that with something like so nice,
Speaker 1: you can have all you know, I can. I sit
Speaker 1: with my kids in the kitchen and I have a
Speaker 1: bunch of pieces of paper which have reggae, funk, jazz,
Speaker 1: soul on them, and they get points if I put
Speaker 1: on a piece of music and they can guess which
Speaker 1: genre you know, just and then that they love doing it.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like, you know, I don't know why,
Speaker 1: we just it's just one of those things. And I
Speaker 1: love the fact that you can think of a song
Speaker 1: and play it. But I also and I think home
Speaker 1: audio is better than ever ever has been that respect
Speaker 1: where it's you know, you can listen out loud and
Speaker 1: listen collectively and it doesn't matter. But the future, the
Speaker 1: way that voices going and that speakers are becoming a
Speaker 1: portal is interesting. UM. I think that that speed of
Speaker 1: the speed of thought behind thinking of a song and
Speaker 1: playing it is very clever. It's very good. Well. I
Speaker 1: find a lot of times in my work area, you know,
Speaker 1: I have an amazing amount of stereo gear and I
Speaker 1: will call out to the voice activated speaker or a lecture,
Speaker 1: now the new sons, I'd rather do that, even though
Speaker 1: it's kind of out of one little speaker. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: it's getting that. The thing is that's getting that better
Speaker 1: and better. That's the thing. That's the thing I think
Speaker 1: that I think that I think the question is how
Speaker 1: do we I think, how do we improve search and discovery?
Speaker 1: You know, at one stage I spent a lot of
Speaker 1: what I spent a lot of my own money thinking
Speaker 1: of thinking of this, UM, this portal where you could
Speaker 1: travel through time like you know, you could you could
Speaker 1: find influences of music. So if you if you like this,
Speaker 1: then what went on before and what went on before?
Speaker 1: And you could you could you could you could search
Speaker 1: music through influences and stuff like that. And there's gonna
Speaker 1: be ways in which we can, you know, in the
Speaker 1: same way we missed the record sleeve. I missed the
Speaker 1: fact that you know that I knew that Jim Gordon
Speaker 1: played on Layla and you know all that kind of
Speaker 1: stuff that connection would be would be I think there's
Speaker 1: a there's a there's a there's it's that thing when
Speaker 1: you go into a record store. And I remember, actually
Speaker 1: I was gonna work on a show with Quincy at
Speaker 1: one stage, and I thought, I've got to learn about
Speaker 1: the heritage of black music. Where do you start. I
Speaker 1: went to a record school, Honest John's and port A
Speaker 1: Bitter Road, and I walked in there and sort of
Speaker 1: talking to this guy. I was there for six and
Speaker 1: a half hours, and you've played everything, you know, Ellaphis
Speaker 1: Sholder records, you know, you know, you know Wilson Pickett
Speaker 1: kind of rarities, and it was just it was it
Speaker 1: was it was like, this is, this is how do
Speaker 1: we get this? But I would certainly believe that music
Speaker 1: discovery is broken. I believe there's a result. It's like
Speaker 1: the Internet at large, there's so many messages coming if
Speaker 1: the average person is overwhelmed. But in the time you
Speaker 1: have left, which is pretty lengthy in terms of your life, hopefully,
Speaker 1: what would you like to achieve or see happen? I
Speaker 1: would like I I think that it's it's it's difficult
Speaker 1: to it's it's really easy to um to say it
Speaker 1: wasn't like it wasn't my day. But I would like
Speaker 1: generations to be as touched by music as I was,
Speaker 1: and and not reliant on visual as they seem as
Speaker 1: people seem to be. Now, I didn't know ll ever
Speaker 1: go because because visual always wins. I mean, I've worked
Speaker 1: on films, I've worked on It's an interesting thing. I'm
Speaker 1: talking to something are talking about how powerful Instagram is,
Speaker 1: which makes no sense to me because all you have
Speaker 1: is the picture. But and we may not be at
Speaker 1: the end of the stream here. Now I'm streaming services.
Speaker 1: The number of plays there exceeds YouTube, So maybe we
Speaker 1: have hope. Yeah, And I think and I think that
Speaker 1: it's it's so so I think that I think what
Speaker 1: what would I like to achieve? There are so many
Speaker 1: things that led to you. I'd like to say, you know,
Speaker 1: there's there's there's sort of shows and experiences and visceral
Speaker 1: things I'm working on that that involved music. So you
Speaker 1: you know, you know, you know, even you had one
Speaker 1: idea that they're like walking through you know, walking through
Speaker 1: a groove of a record. You know, so imagine they're
Speaker 1: being sure, you know, for kids to realize what the
Speaker 1: what the what the what? I can picture it. I've
Speaker 1: seen enough you know, blow up pictures. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like it's like a giant mountain, which you know,
Speaker 1: there's there's there's fun stuff. You know, work on a
Speaker 1: couple of things with some creators where we where we where.
Speaker 1: I like the idea and he says, going against the
Speaker 1: visual world. I love the idea of their being. Um.
Speaker 1: You know the fun thing about the Love Show, it's
Speaker 1: like you're creating a you you know, it's by no
Speaker 1: means perfect, but you're you're getting kids to discover music
Speaker 1: and listen to connect music and listen to music in
Speaker 1: different ways, and they go up feeling different. If you
Speaker 1: can make people feel something different, then then that's great.
Speaker 1: So so what what appeals to me is um even
Speaker 1: the Sergeant Pepper. I did this ATMOS mix of Sergeant Pepper,
Speaker 1: which basically a room with fifty five speakers in it
Speaker 1: and a bunch of artists and creators have been in.
Speaker 1: Then they come out and floods of tears, you know,
Speaker 1: they come of floods teas. They feel like what you
Speaker 1: can do with with immersive wordies. You can put the
Speaker 1: band in the room with you. You can get reflections
Speaker 1: from studio too, which is what we do, and you
Speaker 1: can make you feel people feel like that you're in
Speaker 1: this space with with with the band, you know, and
Speaker 1: it's it's it's getting that if you can if in
Speaker 1: any work I do, if I can just stimulate that
Speaker 1: feeling in some way, if I can get people to
Speaker 1: take cause there's nothing better. I remember, even working on
Speaker 1: that Constant Japan all those years ago, Jony Mitchell sat
Speaker 1: in front of me and she played her gear on
Speaker 1: the quatar and she was sitting as far as away
Speaker 1: from you are. You know, we are about five ft
Speaker 1: five feet away from each other, and and I wasn't
Speaker 1: even a big Johnny Bitchell Fan. I didn't even know
Speaker 1: much about it, you know, I was I was a
Speaker 1: blues guy and and I couldn't work out whether the
Speaker 1: music was coming from it was coming from it was
Speaker 1: coming from I saw her mouth moving, and I could
Speaker 1: see her in the quaitar, but it was like the
Speaker 1: sort of this sort of ethereal noise that's kind of
Speaker 1: hitting me, and it was it's better than for me,
Speaker 1: It's better than anything else in life having that experience.
Speaker 1: And so I suppose that through the huge privilege I've
Speaker 1: had from me my father's son, I've experienced some things.
Speaker 1: I mean, like, you know, I remember being a tapop,
Speaker 1: which is an assistant engineering and working on a Martin
Speaker 1: of the session he played acoustic guitar, and I was like,
Speaker 1: is that him playing? Or I'm going listen to a record?
Speaker 1: You know, it's that weird thing. And you all being
Speaker 1: in the same room with Stevie Wonder when he's playing
Speaker 1: the piano or and if I can get people with
Speaker 1: its trough soon through mixing or doing shows or doing exhibits,
Speaker 1: if I can get that feeling of inspiration closer to
Speaker 1: the listener, then that would be an achievement. That's what
Speaker 1: we're trying to do. Well, you've just got out to
Speaker 1: the mountaintop there. I don't think I can add anything. Giles,
Speaker 1: You've been a fabulous guest, both telling the stories of yourself,
Speaker 1: the Beatles, and your father. Thanks so much for being pleasurable.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. That wraps up this week's episode
Speaker 1: of the Bob Left X Podcast, recording here at the
Speaker 1: tune In Studios in Venice, California. I hope you like
Speaker 1: listening to this conversation with Giles Martin, producer extraordinary. Please
Speaker 1: let me know when you think of the show. Email
Speaker 1: me at Bob at Left said Sandcom. Until next time,
Speaker 1: I'm Bob Left Sid