Sir George Martin changed the course of pop history

From Quincy Jones to Trevor Horn and Paul Epworth, Martin established the role of producer as a vital artistic force behind the fulfilment of any singular performer’s vision

Tributes to the record producer Sir George Martin are placed at The Cavern in Liverpool, a venue made famous by The Beatles (PA)

How fortuitous for the course of contemporary music that a 1962 demo recording by The Beatles, rejected by Decca, found its way to an ambitious record producer who deemed the material “rather unpromising” yet worth further investigation.

The relationship between the patrician George Martin, who died late on 8 March, and the scampish Scousers didn’t just expand the vocabulary of pop into hitherto unimagined symphonic fields. It established the necessity for any artist, however high on creative adrenalin (or, indeed, other substances), to take heed of the cajoling from a studio maestro with one eye on the clock and a knack for transferring the musician’s vision into a coherent recording.

From urging an upbeat, harmonica-infused reinvention of “Please Please Me” to splicing together different recordings of “Strawberry Fields Forever”, Martin steered his charges through their evolution from R&B-loving “beat” group to boundary-crushing, sonic explorers.

Asked “What can you give us?” by The Beatles, Martin made good on his promise “I can give you anything you like”, turning the Abbey Road studios into a multi-tracking, tape-looping, instrument in its own right.

From Quincy Jones to Trevor Horn and Paul Epworth, Martin established the role of producer as a vital artistic force behind the fulfilment of any singular performer’s vision. Whither Amy Winehouse’s Back To Black without Mark Ronson’s guiding hand?

Today the divide between producer and artist has collapsed, with multi-talented stars such as Pharrell Williams able to construct hits for themselves and others, employing digital trickery which would astound Martin’s white-coated, reel-to-reel splicing Abbey Road engineers. And yet all the technological advances in the world cannot dissuade ego-fuelled performers from ignoring the vital tempering hand of a figure in the Martin mould.

How much more satisfying would today’s scattergun albums be if a voice behind the mixing desk had said: “Kanye, that’s great – but why don’t we try a take this way…?”