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Sir
George Martin has a characteristically dry riposte to the question of just
how retired he intends to be following the release on Tuesday of his all-star
farewell album, "In My Life". "Well, I won't be doing any more producing,"
he says, "but I'll continue to compose -- and decompose." Plagued by a
serious decline in his hearing, the 72-year-old Martin has decided to bid
an official farewell to his career as pop music's most successful producer,
a distinction earned by his work with everyone from Peter Sellers and The
Beatles to Celine Dion and Elton John (Martin produced "Candle In The Wind
(1997)", John's tribute to Princess Diana, and the biggest selling single
of all time). Martin's swan song, "In My Life", is an almost perversely
irreverent collection of a dozen tunes, each originally performed by The
Beatles, each reinterpreted by a determinedly oddball choice. Released
late last year in Britain, it inspired critical reaction that ranged from
benign puzzlement to scathing indignation. Jim Carrey inflicting serious
damage on "I Am The Walrus"? Sean Connery somberly reciting the lyrics
to "In My Life"? Goldie Hawn cooing her way through a sultry lounge remake
of "A Hard Day's Night"? "Well, doing a last album sounds a bit morbid,"
a fit and relaxed Martin is explaining recently during an interview at
a hotel 40 minutes outside of Toronto. "But I thought if I WAS going to
do a last album, I might as well enjoy it. It's not a very serious album,
to be honest, but an album which I wanted to do to really look back on
my life and say, what's it been all about, you know?" To that end, Martin
enlisted the help of several old friends, among them Jeff Beck and Phil
Collins. "I also had the opportunity to work with people I hadn't met before,
who COULD be my friends," he adds, "and those were my 'heroes'." Prominent
among the latter group are a pair of Canadians: Carrey (trampling the aforementioned
"Walrus") and Celine Dion, who turns in what is undoubtedly the finest
English-language vocal of her career, on "Here There & Everywhere".
Getting Carrey was "a wild shot", says Martin. "I contacted him through
his agent to see if he would be interested, and he asked me to lunch at
his home in Los Angeles and we got on like a house on fire. "Jim was enormously
enthusiastic about it and said he'd like to come to England to do it. And
he did. We recorded "I Am The Walrus" in (Air) studios in London. He brought
about 10 friends with him. I later realized he was on his honeymoon! (Carrey
had married Lauren Holly in September 1996). The 10 friends stayed in the
control room and watched him work, and I was filming it too, because we
made a documentary about the making of the album. And while the camera
was on him, he was playing to it, inevitably, because he's so used to that.
I evenutally had to switch off the camera to get a good performance from
him aurally, which he did." Carrey is also responsible for the album's
best ad lib. Near the end of "I Am The Walrus," he blurts out, "There I
did it. I defiled a timeless piece of art!" "Exactly," says Martin,
laughing. "Exactly. My logic in doing this album was that I didn't want
to go down well-trodden roads. "Although I love the music and I think The
Beatles are probably the most important popular writers of this century,
I don't hold it in awe. It's not the Holy Grail." As for Celine, her understated
vocal on "Here There & Everywhere" is precisely the kind of performance
Dion's detractors are continually calling for. Did Martin have to rein
her in a bit to achieve it? "Well, yes," he says. "When we talked about
doing the song, she said, 'What do you want me to sing?' I said 'I'd like
you to do a very gentle, very simple song. It can be something which is
not dramatic.' This was my first statement, mainly because she's done that
so much, and I know The Beatles stuff doesn't stand that kind of treatment.
If she'd done 'Let It Be', for example, with a tremendous build-up, it
would be the kind of thing I would wince at, and she knows this, too. I
love what she does and I love her performance -- I've been to many of her
shows -- but in the case of Beatles songs, they require more restraint.
"So I did a special score for her, and at the end I told her, 'I want you
want to just go away into the distance, taper off, hold that last note
and just let it fade away. Can you do that? She said, 'Of course.' And
she did it beautifully. She too was, I think, surprised and impressed with
what she'd done." Nonetheless, Dion's touching performance is no match
for the emotional wallop of the final song on "In My Life": a touching
recitation of the title track by the man Martin dubs "the most famous Scotsman
in the world", Sean Connery. "I wanted it to be spoken, I didn't want it
to be sung," Martin says of the wistful lyrics John Lennon penned at the
ripe old age of 25. "You can't follow Lennon on a thing like that. "But
it's pretty dangerous territory, speaking with music, and we were all aware
of this." (Connery had earlier recorded a recitation of "Across The Universe",
which he and Martin elected to shelve). "Sean said he'd like to have a
go, so he came into the studio and tried it. I said to him, 'If you've
got the slightest qualms about this, let me know, and if I have the slightest
qualm, I will tell you. Because if we don't both agree on this, we'll just
kill it and nobody will ever know we even tried. But we listened to it
when it was done, and he was so sincere with it, and I said, 'For me it
works, it does comes over with genuine meaning.' He said, 'It does for
me, too'." Given the joy evident in Martin's voice when he recalls episodes
from his long career, it seems like an irrevocably sad way to go out. "It
is sad, but it's sad that John died," sighs Martin. "It's all part of a
piece, and it finished the album for me. I didn't mean to go out on a melancholy
note. It's a kind of summing up of my life, and my life's been a very happy
one," he notes, pausing. "A life full of working with great people, wonderful
people, and I'm very grateful for it." |
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