Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
2 appearances
Record producer and musician who signed The Beatles and produced every one of their records, later wrote film scores and worked with artists from Sting to José
On the island
Eight records
Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney
In my youth I used to run a dance band, when I was still at school, in fact. And it went by the awful name of The Four Tune Tellers. And my sister, who has always been very close to me, was a vocalist with this band and it became a party piece for us to do this particular song.
Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune
London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by André Previn
My reason for choosing this is that it was the first time as a child that I really got turned on to classical music, orchestral classical music. I heard a concert in my school, in fact, which the BBC Symphony Orchestra gave under Adrian Bolt. And this was one of the pieces they played. And I couldn't believe that this magical sound was made by human beings.
I'm choosing a very chauvinistic song, which they did. The chorus goes, The English, the English, the English are best. And it's called A Song of Patriotic Prejudice.
Heinz Holliger with the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra
I've chosen this because it was one of the few concertos I could play fairly well. There were much more difficult ones which I couldn't. And again, it's nostalgic for me because it reminds me very much of my early days, and in particular some very great friends I had that I went to live with in Winoosh, who encouraged me enormously in my music, Joan and Graham.
Well, now I'd like to play one of Paul's earlier songs. It's one of my favourite songs. Uh it's a softy. I'm a softy anyway, and I love Paul's ballads, and this one is Here, There and Everywhere.
Charles Collins, Fred Terry and E.A. Sheppard
And one of the very first records I made with Peter before we started making albums was an an old song which was a favourite of my father's, and it was first made famous by the great musical star Harry Champion. And I remember as a child going to I think it was Collins' Music Hall and seeing Harry Champion on the stage singing this song, and I revived it again with Peter for his fer one of his first records, and had great fun making that, as I did all his records.
And this is one of the earlier songs also in my life, in which the lyrics are particularly poignant. It reminds me very much of the early times when John and his wife went on holiday with Judy, my wife, and myself, and we used to sit in the evenings and talk about life and the friendships that he valued so much.
St Matthew PassionFavourite
Well, I don't think any sort of desert island collection will be complete without Mr. Bach, the greatest designer of music there's ever been. There's so much to choose from his music, but I think one of my favourite pieces is the Saint Matthew Passion. And this is music in a grand scale, with a fantastic sense of architecture.
I've chosen this because he could conjure up sounds with the orchestra better than anybody of his time. He was an Impressionist in music. He painted a wonderful picture. If you listen to Daphnis and Chloe, in shut your eyes, you will see a picture, and it's very beautiful.
Well, it of course is the Beatles. And this is after we've made our success. And they were appearing in Olympia, Paris, for the first time. … But during that time, the most amazing thing was that in the middle of it all, we had a call from America saying your version of I Want to Hold Your Hand has hit number one in America. And for the first time we knew we'd made it big.
Beyond the Fringe (sketch excerpt)
Well, my next record is from Beyond the Fringe, which was one of my favourite comedy albums. … And the recording that we had included this little excerpt, which I think is a send-up of the war, which really sums up the complete and utter futility of war, but it was so well done.
Oboe Quartet in F major, K. 370 (third movement)
My fourth choice is an oboe piece, and this is the oboe quartet by Mozart, and it's one of my favourite pieces, and it's the fast movement from it.
I've always had a tremendous admiration for Benjamin Britten, and in my sort of formative years I would listen to most of the stuff he did. And his settings of folk songs I think were so imaginative and so super. And the most popular one, of course, is The Foggy, Foggy Dew.
Old Boston (from Suite for Guitar and Strings)
John Williams and the Medici Quartet
I'm being cheeky here and I'm putting in something that I wrote, but not just because of that, but because I also admire enormously the people playing it. And here we have a chap who is one well, the best guitar player in the world, I think, from a classical point of view, John Williams. And he plays a piece that I wrote. I wrote a suite for him of three pieces, which was really my attempt to sort of paint a picture of America. And this is the middle movement called Old Boston.
Bess, You Is My Woman NowFavourite
I love George Gershwin, and I made a record of George Gershwin's songs last year, and Willard White, in fact, was on that record. But here we have him singing, I think, one of Gershwin's greatest works, Porgy and Bess, a marvellous opera. And here we have Bess, You Is My Woman Now, a beautiful aria.
Romeo and Juliet (overture-fantasia)
Tschaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet overture is one of the most beautiful pieces of love music, I think, that's ever been written. It's an outpouring of longing and frustration in music, and the love theme is I think extraordinary. It's quite inexplicable. You can't look at it and analyze the notes and say, how does it work? It just is an enormous emotion.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:37Were you set to music? Did you study music?
I wasn't taught music to begin with, but we did have a piano in the house. … I can never remember not being able to play the piano, because as a child I used to just play with it and make sounds out of it, and I was composing by the time I was about five or six. And by the time I got to the age of about fourteen or fifteen, I decided I'd better try and learn music properly. So I was running the dance band by this time, and with the money I earned, I was able to pay for a few piano lessons.
Presenter asks
3:28What did you want to be [when you left school]?
I wanted to be an aircraft designer. When I left school, there wasn't much scope for would-be aircraft designers. They just wanted to make airplanes during the war rather than design them. And I found it very difficult to get into that particular anyway. I was going to be called up, so I joined the Fleeter Arm when I was 17. And any idea of forming a designing career went out the window.
Presenter asks
8:20How did you get into recording [at EMI]?
I didn't know what EMI stood for. I didn't even know how records are made. But I cycled along to see this chap who was head of Parliament Records and he asked me if I wanted to be his assistant. Well, it was another way of keeping the wolf from the door during the day while I still played Diobo at night and still had dreams of being like Maniloff the Third and writing music.
The keepsakes
The book
The luxury
if I've got a record player on the island, that means I've got some kind of electricity… the solar panel might be able to charge my little synthesizer. I'll have an electric keyboard, which if I could have a little computer that goes with it even better. But certainly something I can make music on would be very nice indeed.
Presenter asks
15:53How did you first meet and sign the Beatles?
This was in 1962. And Brian was introduced to me by a music publisher friend of ours. and he played me some lacquer discs of this group that he had that he called the Beatles, which I thought was a very unlikely name for anything worth while. And it wasn't very good. … But there was something there that I thought uh was worth investigating, and in any case I was looking for something different from the run of the mill comedy stuff that I'd been doing. … So I suggested to Brian that he brought the boys down from Liverpool and I would have a look at them, and I would take them into the studio and see how they behave. So I took them into EMI, Abbey Road studios, and spent an afternoon with them. And I thought they were great. I didn't at that time think they could write great music, but their personalities and their sound and their style and their humour I thought was marvellous. So I signed them to a contract.
Presenter asks
18:05What was the impact of the Beatles like when they went to America?
Absolutely amazing. The first visit to New York, I do remember, no matter where you turned your radio dial, whatever station you listened to, at any time of the day, you would hear a Beatle record. It was complete saturation. And men would be walking down Fifth Avenue wearing Beetle wigs on their heads, and the crowds outside the Plaza Hotel were so large that the Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue were blocked, let alone Central Park. It was just madness.
Presenter asks
1:19How do you judge the worth of a piece of music, George? Surely it's a completely subjective business.
Oh, absolutely. Everyone's got their own ideas about what's good and bad.
Presenter asks
5:33Tell me about that morning in June, 1962, when the Beatles walked into studio number three, Abbey Road.
Well, I brought them down from Liverpool because I wasn't too impressed with the tape Brian Epstein had played me. I said there was something there, but I couldn't find out whether it was worthwhile or not. I said I'd have to meet them and brought them down. And of course, when I met them, I wasn't very impressed with their music still, and I couldn't really make out for myself what I was listening for, because I was so conditioned to a solo singer with a backing group. But here I had four people who were all doing all sorts of things. And it wasn't Cliff Richards and the Shadows, that was for sure. But they did have tremendous charisma. They were the kind of people that they still are. They're the kind of people that when you're with them, you are all the better for being with them and when they leave you you feel a loss.
Presenter asks
17:15Your parents couldn't afford music lessons for you, could they? How did you get into music school?
No, well, you see, it wasn't just a matter of not affording. I don't think my parents really ever thought that music could be a career. … [Sidney Harrison] said, 'You really must take up music as a career.' I said, 'But how can I? I have no training.' And he said, 'You will get training. You will get a government grant. You will come to the Guild Hall. You will play your compositions to the principal of the Guild Hall, and he will be as impressed as I am, and you will get a three-year course.' And he was absolutely right. I did all of those things.
Presenter asks
21:55How would it work with you and the Beatles? Would one of them, John say, come to you with an idea for Strawberry Fields?
Well, we worked together for almost a decade and it the role changed somewhat. I mean, to begin with, I was the master and they were the pupils. At the end, I think I was the pupil and they were the masters. During the Pepper period it was my function was really to try and extract from them the maximum of their talent and try and find out what they wanted to hear. … [John] would come to me and describe the sound that he would want, and I would then try and give him what he wanted.
Presenter asks
28:22You said you don't work for the money. You obviously don't need it. But do you kick yourself that you didn't say to [the Beatles] in the beginning, 'Give me one per cent'?
I've been awfully lucky. You can't look back and say you shouldn't have done that or you should have done that, you know. You have to take it as a whole. And as a whole, I've had a wonderful life. I've been I've met the most wonderful people, worked with the greatest of artists. I've been very fortunate. I've got no but no gripes at all.
Presenter asks
32:00What was the reason behind [the Beatles' protracted bitterness and arguments after the breakup]? Do you think it was the difficulty of coming to terms with that sudden fame?
Well, it it's a very complicated story. There have been so many differences, and of course money gets in the way of things. Um I think it was Groucho Marx who said that when money comes in the door, love goes innuendo. … I think that uh you know there's bound to be differences when you have so many so much money involved. And it was more than that. It was a question of control too. And I think that um now happily everything has been resolved.
“I couldn't believe that this magical sound was made by human beings. I thought it was the most wonderful, wonderful sound I'd ever heard in my life.”
“I saw this brash young fellow with a mop of of fair hair, and he certainly was very energetic, and he seemed to sing fairly well, except that I couldn't hear him too greatly, because he was accompanied by a very loud skiffle group called the Vipers. So I have signed the Viper Schiffle Group to my company and ignored Tommy Steele, which was probably the worst thing I've ever done in my life.”
“People talked about the break up of the Beatles. I think it's remarkable that they lasted so long together. You know, they were together in each other's pockets as prisoners virtually for eight years, and then didn't lead individual lives. They just wanted to lead their own normal lives with wives and families. And they eventually were able to do that. And I think it was quite right they should do it.”
“I think technology's made things a bit worse, too. It it's a little bit too easy to make sounds now. … I don't think [someone who spends their entire life learning how to play the oboe or the violin] should suddenly find themselves supplanted by a sampler.”
“They had tremendous charisma. They were the kind of people that they still are. They're the kind of people that when you're with them, you are all the better for being with them and when they leave you you feel a loss.”
“I fell in love with them. It's as simple as that.”
“I don't think [John Lennon] was really grateful… actually he said to me, 'I'd love to re-record everything.' And I said, 'What about Strawberry Fields?' And he said, 'Oh, especially Strawberry Fields.' And I realized he was never really satisfied with anything he'd done, because his dream world was always better real life wasn't half as much fun.”
“I've been awfully lucky. You can't look back and say you shouldn't have done that or you should have done that, you know. You have to take it as a whole. And as a whole, I've had a wonderful life. I've been I've met the most wonderful people, worked with the greatest of artists. I've been very fortunate. I've got no but no gripes at all.”
“If you hear I Want to Hold Your Hand every day of your life on a desert island, I think you might get a bit bored with it after all.”