Interview for Daily Mirror • Thursday, December 22, 1966

Interview

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IT’S a rare picture, indeed. On the right, you can see one half of the £500,000-a-year Beatle Lennon-McCartney tune-smithing team – with a new partner. You could call it Martin-McCartney. The un-Beatle-ish gent on the left with simply one buttonhole (the moustachioed McCartney has room for four carnations in those Roarin’ Twenties lapels) is composer, conductor and independent record producer George Martin, 38, who has supervised every Beatles disc in Britain since they started. He is their musical guiding light. And the reason for the intent concentration on four hands on one grand piano in the picture is a film that is now showing in London — “The Family Way,” in which Miss Hayley Mills grows up.

Beatle Paul was asked by the film-producing Boulting Brothers to write the music. He did. Supervised by George Martin. It is the first time McCartney has been billed as a composer without Lennon. Even though they have written separately in the past, the two names always went on to the label. But how does Paul McCartney, who doesn’t score music, set about writing for a full-length film?

“He hums to me,” said George Martin. “I take it down. Sort of musical dictation. Sometimes he will accompany himself on his guitar. Sometimes on piano.”

For Paul McCartney, this film project was probably the greatest test he has had to face since becoming a Beatle.
He came through riots round the world without, losing a hair. He has continually been the hero of million-selling discs that play for under three minutes. But the Boultings asked him for twenty-six minutes of music in one go.

Undaunted, Mr. McCartney took himself off to Africa first for a safari holiday.

When he returned, the musical seeds began to sprout.

“Paul came up first with 15 seconds of a theme,” said George.

There were still twenty-five minutes and forty-five seconds to fill… There followed nine days of concentration, which included five recording sessions spread over three days and nights. The music was ready, in fact, only two weeks before the film opened in London’s Warner Theatre last weekend.

As Mr. Martin said to the Boulting Brothers:

“If it sounds as if it was done in a hurry it’s because it was done in a hurry.”

But it doesn’t, of course.

There will be an LP of the soundtrack music and there are two singles coming our way on Friday. The A-side of both is called “Love in the Open Air.” The Tudor Minstrels perform it on Decca. George Martin and his Orchestra perform it on the United Artists label.

THE Tudor Minstrels’ disc is from the soundtrack… and they were led by Mr. Martin. But he did go into a studio last weekend to record his own version with an. orchestra. The treatment in both cases has that delicate Tudor air of “Greensleeves” about it.

It will grow on us.

P S : That IS a real moustache.

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