Dead at the age of 90. And don’t kid yourself — he’s the only one who can rightfully claim to be the so-called “fifth Beatle”.
George Martin, the urbane English record producer who signed the Beatles to a recording contract on the small Parlophone label after every other British record company had turned them down, and who guided them in their transformation from a regional dance band into the most inventive, influential and studio-savvy rock group of the 1960s, died on Tuesday. He was 90.
***
“God bless George Martin,” Ringo Starr, the former Beatle,wrote on Twitter. In a reminiscence on his website, Paul McCartney, the other surviving former Beatle, said Mr. Martin was “like a second father to me.”