Editing George Martin (section)

====''Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band''====
The Beatles' late 1966 sessions stretched into April 1967, forming what became ''[[Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band]]''—a record continuing the Beatles' and Martin's imaginative use of the studio to create new sounds on record. Martin was involved as an arranger throughout the album, starting with an overdubbed clarinet section on "[[When I'm Sixty-Four]]", recorded in December 1966.{{sfn|Womack|2018|p=157}}
{{quote box|align=right|width=25%|By the time of ''Pepper'', the Beatles had immense power at Abbey Road. So did I. They used to ask for the impossible, and sometimes they would get it. At the beginning of their recording career, I used to boss them about. ... By the time we got to ''Pepper'', though, that had all changed. I was very much the collaborator. Their ideas were coming through thick and fast, and they were brilliant. All I did was help make them real.{{sfn|Womack|2018|p=186}}}}

Martin scored the brass overdubs for the album's [[Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (song)|title track]],{{sfn|Womack|2018|p=186}} as well as on "[[Good Morning Good Morning]]".{{sfn|Womack|2018|p=195}} It was Martin's idea to segue the chicken clucking sound at the end of "Good Morning Good Morning" into the guitar lick that opens the reprise of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band".{{sfn|Womack|2018|p=236}} For "[[Within You Without You]]", Martin arranged a score that combined Indian and Western classical music.{{sfn|Womack|2018|p=234}} Martin used [[vari-speed]] editing to alter the recording speed of several of the album's vocal tracks, including "When I'm Sixty-Four", "Lovely Rita", and "[[Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds]]".{{sfn|Womack|2018|p=215, 228}} He and Geoff Emerick superimposed crowd noise sound effects onto the title track and [[fade (audio engineering)#Crossfading|crossfaded]] the song into "[[With a Little Help from My Friends]]", mimicking a live performance.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Lewisohn |first1=Mark |title=The Complete Beatles Chronicle: The Definitive Day-by-day Guide to the Beatles' Entire Career |date=2010 |publisher=Chicago Review Press |isbn=978-1-56976-534-0 |page=251 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7D1mRwAACAAJ |access-date=10 October 2022}}</ref>

Martin played instruments on several songs, including the piano on "[[Lovely Rita]]"{{sfn|MacDonald|1994|pp=189–190}} and the [[harpsichord]] on "[[Fixing a Hole]]".{{sfn|Womack|2018|p=197}} He played numerous instruments in the recording of "[[Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!]]", including a foot-pumped [[harmonium]], [[Lowrey organ]], [[glockenspiel]], and [[Mellotron]].<ref>{{cite book |title=Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (50th Anniversary Deluxe Version) (book) |last=Howlett |first=Kevin |publisher=The Beatles, Apple Records |year=2017}}</ref> For the song's psychedelic circus-themed instrumental breaks, he had engineers cut tapes of numerous carnival-instrument recordings into tape fragments, then reassemble them at random.{{sfn|Womack|2018|p=210}}

The first Beatles song that Martin did not arrange was "[[She's Leaving Home]]", as he had a prior engagement to produce a [[Cilla Black]] session, so McCartney contacted arranger [[Mike Leander]] to do it. Martin called this "one of the biggest hurts of my life",{{sfn|Womack|2018|p=224}} but still produced the recording and conducted the orchestra himself.{{sfn|Miles|1997|p=317}}

Martin applied heavy [[tape echo]] to John Lennon's voice in "[[A Day in the Life]]".{{sfn|Womack|2018|p=180}} He worked with McCartney to implement the 24-bar orchestral climaxes in the middle and end of the song, produced by instructing a 45-piece orchestra to gradually play from their instruments' lowest note to their highest.{{sfn|Miles|1997|pp=326–328}}{{sfn|Womack|2018|p=180, 198–203}} The song's extended piano fadeout (on which Martin played the harmonium) concluded with a dog's whistle and a sped-up tape of the Beatles speaking gibberish on the run-out groove.{{sfn|Womack|2018|p=211, 243–244}} Music critics have hailed the song as among the Beatles' best work and a groundbreaking pop record.<ref>{{cite web |author=Rock Critics admin |title=1967 Jazz & Pop Results |publisher=rockcritics.com |date=14 March 2014 |url=https://rockcritics.com/2014/03/14/1967-jazz-pop-results/ |access-date=23 February 2017 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210121110135/https://rockcritics.com/2014/03/14/1967-jazz-pop-results/ |archive-date=21 January 2021}}</ref><ref name=Goldstein>{{cite news |last=Goldstein |first=Richard |title=We Still Need the Beatles, but&nbsp;... |date=18 June 1967 |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |page=II 24}}</ref>{{sfn|Womack|2014|p=818}}

''Sgt. Pepper'' cost £25,000 to produce ({{Inflation|UK|25000|1967|fmt=eq|r=-3|cursign=£}}),{{sfn|Martin|Pearson|1995|p=168}} far more than any previous Beatles record. During the album's recording, Martin periodically worried whether the album's avant-garde inventiveness would alienate the general public; such concerns were alleviated by previewing tracks to guests, such as Capitol Records president [[Alan Livingston]], who was "speechless in admiration".{{sfn|Womack|2018|p=212}} When ''Sgt. Pepper'' was finally released in early June 1967, it received widespread acclaim from music critics, with a ''Times'' critic deeming it "a decisive moment in the history of Western civilisation".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Norman |first1=Philip |title=Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation |date=15 February 2005 |publisher=Simon and Schuster |isbn=978-0-7432-3565-5 |page=331 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=l2I0twz__BIC&pg=PA331 |access-date=10 October 2022}}</ref> The album reached no. 1 in both the US and UK and became the best-selling album in the UK by any artist both in 1967 and for the entire 1960s.<ref name="Mawer/1969">{{cite web |last=Mawer |first=Sharon |title=Album Chart History: 1969 |publisher=[[Official Charts Company|The Official UK Charts Company]] |date=May 2007 |url=http://www.theofficialcharts.com/album_chart_history_1969.php |access-date=23 October 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071217020421/http://www.theofficialcharts.com/album_chart_history_1969.php |archive-date=17 December 2007}}</ref> In 1968, it became the first rock album to win a [[Grammy Award for Album of the Year]].<ref name="Harrington">{{cite news |last=Harrington |first=Richard |title=Grammy's One-Track Mind |newspaper=[[The Washington Post]] |date=24 February 1993 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1993/02/24/grammys-one-track-mind/04cd977e-b44a-461c-817b-ef8b66b472a0/ |access-date=24 January 2019 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190419233357/https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1993/02/24/grammys-one-track-mind/04cd977e-b44a-461c-817b-ef8b66b472a0/ |archive-date=19 April 2019}}</ref> ''Pepper''{{'}}s accolades also raised Martin's public profile as a record producer.{{sfn|Womack|2018|p=256}}