LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Years after the death of John Lennon, the three surviving Beatles worked on a documentary about the band. It aired in 1995. And it concluded with what seemed to be the end of the Beatles story. But around that same time, Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, told them that she had a cassette with a few incomplete songs that John had been working on. Paul, George and Ringo took those sketches into a studio, something they never thought they'd do together again. They worked their magic and gave the world three final Beatles songs. That documentary, "The Beatles Anthology," is now streaming on Disney+ with a new bonus episode largely about those last Beatles songs.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FREE AS A BIRD")
THE BEATLES: (Singing) Free as a bird.
GILES MARTIN: The good thing about the anthology and the CDs is that it's four of us. You know, even though John's not here, he's here.
FADEL: I spoke with someone who remixed the sound for the docuseries, and he's a familiar name. Giles Martin is the son of the late Sir George Martin, who produced the Beatles albums.
MARTIN: My first ever Beatles experience was working on the anthology with my dad I think 30 years ago now. When I left college, actually, I came to the room I'm sitting talking to you in from Abbey Road.
FADEL: Oh, amazing.
MARTIN: And came in. And it's the first time I'd ever watched someone press play on a tape machine and Beatles songs came out.
FADEL: (Laughter) And now you're remixing Beatles albums, in recent years on your own. And you're essentially changing your father's work. What guides you when you're making those decisions?
MARTIN: You know, there's different technology now. And what I say to people about that is that music doesn't get old. You know, we get old around music. And a recording is that. A recording is time travel.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "YESTERDAY")
THE BEATLES: (Singing) Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away.
MARTIN: So when Paul McCartney is singing "Yesterday" in 1965, he's, what, 24 years old? He'll always be 24 years old singing "Yesterday."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "YESTERDAY")
THE BEATLES: (Singing) Suddenly, I'm not half the man I used to be.
MARTIN: So, you know, he's much younger than Ed Sheeran is. So my approach to mixing him is to keep it as fresh and as live as possible, and to really - a lot of the work I do with the Beatles is actually taking away the technology that inhibited them in the first place.
FADEL: In the process of watching this documentary, I mean, you see your father hard at work. What's that like for you?
MARTIN: It's lovely, actually. People ask me a lot and say, is it emotional? It's not really. I miss him because I'm so similar to him in lots of ways. And that's a great thing to talk about, life experiences with someone that you're close to. And we were very close as father and son. I sound like him, I kind of look like him, I never intended any of this. You know, I certainly didn't intend to work on Beatles projects. I worked on "Get Back," the Peter Jackson documentary. It was kind of a lockdown project. And my dad was younger than I am now. And my kids came in and said, oh, my God, who's that, Dad? Looks like you. And I go, that's your grandfather.
FADEL: Aw.
MARTIN: And that was interesting because, you know, he's a man I didn't know because I wasn't even born then.
FADEL: You were born in 1969, and the Beatles were almost ready to quit by then. Do you have any memories of them personally when you were growing up?
MARTIN: No. I was aware of Paul. My dad obviously, when I was 3, did, I think, "Live And Let Die." And I met them at various different times. Apparently, when I was born - you're going to have to really bleep this out. But I was born the same day as John Lennon. And he said to my dad, now you know what sort of [expletive] he's going to turn out to be like.
FADEL: (Laughter).
MARTIN: I mean, he's probably right. Yeah, they were kind of a dirty word in our household. And that's the funny thing about the Beatles and "The Beatles Anthology." I think there's been a distorted lens shown of the Beatles by the fact that it was a relationship they all broke up from.
FADEL: Yeah.
MARTIN: And no one leaves a relationship going - you know what? - that was amazing. They always go, it was terrible, it was terrible. And the fact of the matter, they had a pretty good time.
FADEL: When the original documentary was released in the mid-'90s, that's when the public got a big surprise, quote-unquote, "new Beatles songs," even though Lennon had been dead for 15 years by that point. What were your thoughts on that at the time?
MARTIN: As a fan, I was excited. I had nothing to do with the Beatles, no ambition to work on any Beatles and had no proprietorial relationship with the Beatles at all. And I remember listening to "Free As A Bird" when it came out, I think that was. I remember hearing it.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FREE AS A BIRD")
THE BEATLES: (Singing) Free as a bird.
MARTIN: I probably shouldn't say this. I was kind of like - I felt sad my dad wasn't involved in that.
FADEL: Yeah.
MARTIN: But he was involved in the anthology and invited me into that. And I think it was cathartic for all of them to go back and look at the photo album, if you like, and experience it again and realize, actually, it wasn't what they thought it was. It was an incredibly creative and happy time.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FREE AS A BIRD"),
THE BEATLES: (Singing) Free as a bird.
FADEL: The rerelease of this documentary series makes me think about just how short the Beatles recording career actually was, just eight years. After 1970, they never worked together again. Do you ever think about the music we never got from them?
MARTIN: No, I don't, actually. That's a good question. I don't at all. I don't because I don't think - as my dad used to say, what's surprising is not they broke up, it's the fact that they went for as long as they did.
FADEL: Really?
MARTIN: And that they made as many songs as they did in that short amount of time, and most of which are really good. No one would've been able to sustain what they went through. In that period of time, they lived like four careers of great musicians. I don't think about what they would've done, actually, because I think what they did was so remarkable.
FADEL: Giles Martin. He's a record producer, just like his father, the late Sir George Martin. He worked on music for "The Beatles Anthology" 2025, now streaming on Disney+. Thank you so much.
MARTIN: Thank you so much, especially having me on NPR, which is just amazing.
FADEL: (Laughter) Well, we love having you on. Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "A DAY IN THE LIFE")
THE BEATLES: (Singing) And there, the news was rather sad. Well, I just had to laugh. I saw the photograph. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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