May 29, 1967
From Wikipedia:
Margaret Augusta Eliot (26 February 1914 – 27 February 2011) was an English music teacher and musician. She was a professor of oboe at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and her best-known student (from 1948) was George Martin; in 2011, just before her death at age 97, she appeared in the documentary film Produced by George Martin. In the early 1960s she also taught Paul McCartney successfully play the recorder, which he later used to effect, for the recording of, “The Fool on the Hill“.
Eliot was also an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Music.
Family
Margaret Eliot was born to Hon. Edward Granville Eliot (1878–1958) – a younger brother of both 7th and 8th Earls of St Germans – and his wife Clare Louise née Phelips (1883–1927). She was a great granddaughter of Edward Granville Eliot, 3rd Earl of St Germans (1798–1877).
On 27 July 1943, she married Dr Richard Asher (1912–1969); the couple had three children:
- Peter Asher (born 1944), who was one half of the pop duo Peter & Gordon and successful music producer;
- Jane Asher (born 1946), the film and TV actress, novelist
- Clare Asher (born 1948), the radio actress. […]
There isn’t a lot of oboe on Beatles records, which is kind of odd. And I’ll tell you why. While Paul was living at our house, he heard an awful lot of oboe. And that’s because, as I have mentioned, my mother was a professional oboe player. I learned the oboe myself for a bit. I could probably tootle out an ugly and quacking C major scale right now, but that’s about it. And one of the weirdest coincidences in all of this is that somebody else who was an oboe player is a key figure in our story, the Beatles’ brilliant producer Sir George Martin. From whom did George Martin learn to play the oboe, you may well ask? The answer is, amazingly, my mother. Long before my mother met George Martin as the Beatles’ producer, she had met him as a pupil of hers. She was teaching at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where George was studying, and she taught him the oboe, which was his primary instrument along with the piano.
Peter Asher – From “The Beatles from A to Zed: An Alphabetical Mystery Tour“, 2019
Paul woke up with the melody [of “Yesterday”] in his head fully formed but without any lyrics. First, he thought it must be something he was remembering and asked everybody what tune it was. And when I say everybody, I include my mother, who was one of the first people he saw that day since he was living in our house. I was not there, but my mother (a musician herself, of course) told Paul that she did not recognize the tune and had never heard it before. After many other people said the same thing, Paul finally realized that he had written it magically in his head.
Peter Asher – From “The Beatles from A to Zed: An Alphabetical Mystery Tour“, 2019
The engagement was over. Margaret Asher turned up to regretfully collect her daughter’s belongings because she was very fond of Paul. It seemed Paul regretted falling out with Margaret more than with Jane. He adored that wonderful, motherly figure who had been so kind to him, but now the road was clear for him to go after a woman he could be true to.
Tony Bramwell – From “Magical Mystery Tours: My Life with the Beatles“, 2005
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