Beatles producer George Martin’s son Giles was put in charge of remixing Sgt. Peppers

GILES Martin — son of revered Beatles producer George Martin — says that remixing Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band for a 50th anniversary edition was like drawing a beard on the Mona Lisa.

WHAT a joy to be taken back into the studios from 1967 with this anniversary release of Sgt. Pepper’s — how as the reaction been so far?

It’s been amazing actually — and slightly humbling. It’s a fantastic time in musical history. I was in the US recently and I did some playbacks, Elvis Costello was at one, and it got a standing ovation.

I went down to do a TV thing called Later With Jools Holland and there were a bunch of artists there like Paul Weller and they were all saying ‘hey can I have a copy of that box set?’. So it’s been amazing — and it should be because in the global jukebox of streaming it’s nice to remember what an album is.

For some people though, remixing Sgt Pepper’s is like repainting the Mona Lisa — did you have a sense of that and did you approach it with trepidation?

You’re absolutely right — although maybe more like drawing a beard on the Mona Lisa.

I knew we were going to do it last year and I spent a good while thinking about how we were going to do it and what we were going to do.

We had the mono as a template to guide us so we listened to that … but you can’t be nervous. It’s like driving a car — you can’t drive down the High St thinking you are going to crash all the time because you probably will.

You have to just throw yourself into it with the same spirit in which they made the record.

You take risks.

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Remixing the Fab Four’s Sgt Peppers was like drawing a beard on the Mona Lisa.

What was the involvement of Paul, Ringo, Yoko and Olivia — and how were they to work with?

They run the company — they are Apple Corps together — and they meet all the time.

I have been working for them for 12 years now ever since (Beatles mashup album) Love.

It’s a bit like Sgt Pepper — the good thing is that we are all pulling in the same direction, everyone wants a good job done and all of their standards are incredibly high and I get the pleasure of sitting down and playing them the mixes.

If they are not happy then I go back and redo them.

Everyone listens to it differently. I played it to Paul and he was really amazed at remembering George’s sitar playing on Within You, Without You.

They remember the days they recorded it.

It was a close-knit thing and The Beatles were such a proper band. That’s the pleasure for me — re-invoking those memories for them.

There is very much a feeling of passing from father to son — did you grow up with The Beatles being a big part of your life?

Not really. It’s very disappointing for people.

I was born in October ’69 and there was more of a feeling that my Dad had done The Beatles and it was a bit of a dirty word in the house.

That was what he did — and now he’s doing something else.

I didn’t really listen to the White Album until I was about 17. Paul is the same — they are just very progressive, they just moved forward on to something else.

I had no plans to work on The Beatles. It just happened — through Love actually. I thought it would be a really fun idea to chop The Beatles up to turn into a soundtrack from a show and Neil Aspinall said ‘you have three months, and I’m not paying you’.

That was the beginning of it.

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Producer Sir George Martin in the studio in the Beatles’ early days.

You have said before that you were your father’s ears — what do you mean by that?

My father lost his hearing in his fifties. It started degrading and he kept it from people.

So I would go to the studio with him and he’d say ‘are these strings too loud? Are these violins in tune?’ And I wasn’t bad at music, so I just started thinking for him and listening for him. When we got to doing Love he was actually nearly 80 and I would chop things up and do stuff and play it to him.

I spoke to Dhani and Olivia (Harrison) about While My Guitar Gently Weeps and I said to dad ‘why don’t you do the string arrangement?’. And he said ‘I can’t do it any more’.

I said ‘you can, Dad’. He did it, and it’s still one of his best arrangements — at the age of 80. James Bay performed it as his memorial service, which was amazing.

The Sgt Pepper’s narrative says this was very much Paul’s album — but listening to the input from the other Beatles on some of the takes on this collection, it comes across as a very collaborative effort. Would you agree?

I think because they were all pulling in the same direction — and all rejecting their fans if you like, the screaming girls they left behind — this album was the four of them at their peak, and my dad too.

Paul drove it because he found the escape route, he found the hatch, which was Sgt Pepper’s and they all went through it.

The White Album sessions by contrast weren’t anywhere near as pleasant, partly because your father had lost an element of control over the band — do you think that’s the case and did it show in the music?

I think it did. There is a story about my Dad walking in to George when he was doing Savoy Truffle and saying ‘George it sounds a bit bright’ and he said ‘yeah, I know — and I like it’. But I think they needed to do that.

They reacted not only against my dad, but against each other. They all went off into their buckets but when they did lean on my dad, he delivered.

The music sounds so fresh — it’s great to be reminded that these songs didn’t arrive fully formed, like stone tablets handed down from on high …

I think in this era of global streaming, music has become more timeless.

It’s only history to us because we have heard it.

The assistant engineer when we were mixing Strawberry Fields had never heard it before.

He was 23 years old — so why should he? My drive is that when people hear this music that it doesn’t sound old and I don’t think it does.

They were the same age when they made Sgt Pepper’s as One Direction were when they broke up.

Giles Martin was surprised by how live the tapes sounded for Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band.

And also a timely reminder that first and foremost they were a band — and a really good one.

The thing that surprised me is how live it is as a record. You see it as a studio album, sort of carved out of rock and elegantly, diligently made — but it’s not. It is produced and there are overdubs — not as many as you think. Being For the Benefit Of Mr Kite for instance, it’s Paul playing live bass and Ringo playing drums and my Dad playing live harmonium and John singing all at the same time. That’s the magic for me. People think these songs have been delivered buy a unicorn from a cloud — and actually it’s just four guys in a studio banging things. That’s way more beautiful — the human spirit is what makes things timeless.

What else is in the archives — are the White Album and especially Abbey Road ripe for this treatment too?

It’s not for me to announce what we are going to do next because we have just finished doing this. It’s important for The Beatles that they just don’t do things for the sake of it or a commemorative edition. There has to be an artistic vision behind it and I think we will see how this is received. So far it’s been received amazingly well but I think it has to be for the life of the music and the life of the fans rather than just re-engraving an album.

HEAR Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Anniversary Edition (EMI) is out tomorrow.

Originally published as Beatles producer George Martin’s son Giles was put in charge of remixing Sgt. Peppers