This adorable George Martin home video shows him telling his granddaughter about The Beatles
20 January 2022, 09:20
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George Martin told his granddaughters that he first thought The Beatles were only "okay".
George Martin famously wasn't all that impressed when he first auditioned The Beatles for EMI.
"I thought their music was rubbish," he told the BBC's Arena programme in 2011 – but he still went on to sign the group, and he explained why to his young granddaughter in an adorable video recently shared by his son and successor Giles.
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"There were four of them, and I said 'Who are they? What are they?'" George says on the clip, which Giles posted on Twitter yesterday (January 19).
"'And he says they're a group, we call them The Beatles'. And I said, 'Well that's a silly name for a start. Who'd ever want a group named The Beetles?'.
"And he said, it isn't the beetles you think of, it's Beatles with in an "A" in it.
I don’t normally share anything personal but this my dad from a while back explaining to my daughter he signed the Beatles. Ordinary people do extraordinary things. Great decisions are made for the simplest reasons. “I figured if I like them this much other people might too” ❤️ pic.twitter.com/j4bf96b4zS
— Giles Martin (@mashupmartin) January 19, 2022
"And I listened to what he said, and I said, 'I'll have to hear them first of all'.
"So he sent them down from Liverpool, which is quite a long way. And I met them in London, and when I listened to what they were doing it was okay, but it wasn't brilliant."
He continues: "It was okay, but why should I be interested in this?
"But the magic really came when I started to get to know them because they were terribly good people to know. They were funny, they were clever, they said all lovely things.
"They were the kind of people you like to be with. And so I thought If I feel this way about them, other people will... so therefore they should be very popular."
George Martin produced most of The Beatles music during their career and headed up the Anthology series in the 1990s.
He collaborated with his son Giles on The Beatles 2006 Love project. George died on March 8, 2016 at the age of 90.
In recent years Giles worked on the reissues and remixes of Live at the Hollywood Bowl, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band, The Beatles (aka The White Album), Abbey Road and Let It Be.
