Giles Martin on Completing the Beatles

Beatles producer Giles Martin is back! Giles joins us to talk “Now and Then,” the new Red and Blue re-releases, and… his personalized action figure?

About Giles:

Giles Martin is the mastermind behind the recent remixes of Sgt Pepper, the White Album, Abbey Road, Let it Be/Get Back, and Revolver, and the son of legendary producer George Martin. Most recently, he co-produced the last Beatles song “Now and Then” with Paul McCartney, and remixed the "Red" (1962–66) and "Blue" (1967–70) compilation albums, released this week.

He began working on Beatles projects alongside his father, starting with the Beatles Anthology and later collaborating on the groundbreaking 2006 Love album, the mashup soundtrack for the Beatles-themed Cirque du Soleil production. 

Outside of the Beatles, Giles is the executive music director for the band INXS, music directed the 2019 Elton John biopic Rocketman, and created last summer’s immersive, Dolby Atmos mix of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds.

Giles is currently the Head of Audio & Sound at Abbey Road Studios and the Senior Vice President in charge of Sound Experience for the home audio company Sonos. Giles is a two-time GRAMMY winner for his work on The Beatles’ Love, and won an EMMY for his work on The Beatles' Get Back.

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[sharonevans]

Just came across your channel. What a wonderful interview with Giles, he is always so interesting and funny to listen to and y'all ask great questions as well. Looking forward to catching up on your earlier shows. Take care.

[girlswanted]

Excellent interview. Overall I’m happy with the mixes. A couple of cracks, but nothings perfect. For track listing if it was based off popularity where is Helter Skelter, Birthday, Rain, When I’m Sixty Four, I’ll Follow The Sun Etc. I get we can’t have it all, but tracks like Glass Onion or I Me Mine (great tracks but don’t belong on here, maybe Glass Onion because it became popular).

[strathman]

Eleanor Rigby doesn't have "only Paul on it". John and George sing too.

[gkdeppe]

I would have liked to have seen some more MMT outakes, and maybe Rubber Soul box set. Just to put the icing on the cake!

[girlswanted]

I would have paid to be with you guys in that interview. I would have asked Giles a couple of mix questions. I Saw Her Standing There Ringo’s drums are loud and in your face which is great, but bring up the guitar solo with less reverb also Giles! It’s completely faded out now. Re-listen to the song and tell me I’m not right!

[Zholobov]

I didn't know The Beatles' producer was... Giles Martin

[michaelrobinson]

Unfortunately, when they are mastered for digital they compress the heck out of the dynamic range, removing the life from many of these tracks. Such a huge lost opportunity and so unnecessary. If they want to fight the loudness wars on the steaming services, then just do it on the digital downloads but leave the physical media sounding good.

After Pepper, at least they kept the blu-rays less compressed than the cds. Unfortunately, they stopped releasing these remixes on blu-ray with Revolver.

[thomosburn]

It's just a shame that they used a vinyl rip and not the Past Masters tape for "She Loves You", the stereo-ized result on 1962-1966 [2023] sounds like utter poo.
Also, the out-of-sync harmonica o n the original stereo "Please Please Me" could have been corrected, instead they dissected the already out-of-sync,
slushy sounding stereo master and didn't use the clean harmonica-less twin-track and just fly in the isolated harmonica onto that.

[universalfresh]

Really disliked the new mixes and particularly the arrangement of Now and Then which is lacking imagination