Remixing Giles Martin: 'The Beatles: Love' producer opens up on life, music and his father The National
On October 9, 1969, seven weeks and a day after The Beatles' final recording session together at Abbey Road Studios, Giles Martin was born in London. It was John Lennon’s 29th birthday.
On July 7, 2024, The Beatles: Love, the acclaimed Cirque du Soleil show that has run for 18 years, closes permanently in Las Vegas. It will be Ringo Starr’s 84th.
“It’s quite sad. They’re knocking down the casino, and even the powers that be can’t change that,” Martin, 54, laments to The National.
“I was with Paul McCartney last week and we were talking about how long it’s been. It was the first thing I did on this journey, and it changed my life, genuinely speaking – making that show,” he continues. “And I’m very proud of it.”
The show wouldn’t have existed without Martin. In the early aughts, plans for a collaboration between the French circus and the Fab Four nearly fell apart before Martin, the son of legendary Beatles producer George Martin, had an idea of how to make it work.
“The whole thing was collapsing in on itself and out of pure desperation I went to Neil Aspinall, who was the head of the Beatles at the time, and I said to him, ‘I think I can create a show just by chopping up the Beatles tapes.' He was like, ‘well, I’ll give you three months. You have until Christmas, and we’re not going to pay you.’”
Martin was undeterred. The collaboration had been George Harrison’s idea before he died in 2001, as he was friends with the circus’s founder Guy Labierte. Martin wasn’t about to let the whole thing fall apart.
Source: William Mullally/thenationalnews.com
