George Martin, the Beatles’ urbane producer who quietly guided the band’s swift, historic transformation from rowdy club act to musical and cultural revolutionaries, has died, his management said Wednesday. He was 90.
Manager Adam Sharp said in a statement that Martin “passed away peacefully at home” on Tuesday evening.
Martin was too modest to call himself the “fifth Beatle,” but Paul McCartney said Wednesday that “if anyone earned the title … it was George.”
“He was a true gentleman and like a second father to me,” McCartney said.
Martin produced some of the most beloved songs and most popular and influential albums of modern times – “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” ”Revolver,” ”Rubber Soul,” ”Abbey Road” – elevating rock LPs from ways to cash in on hit singles to art forms, “concepts.”