George Martin (with Andrew Hickey)

If you are listening to this show on the day it goes out - Wednesday 5th October 2022 - then it is exactly 60 years since the Beatles' first single, Love Me Do, was released*. It's also exactly 50 years to the day since The Last Goon Show Of All was broadcast!

We've previously dedicated a show to the connections between the Beatles & The Goons and an argument could be made that were it not for the Goons the Beatles (as we know them today) may not have existed.

Had an EMI producer named George Martin not made a children's record called Jakka and the Flying Saucers in 1953 with an up-and-coming radio comedian then he may not have gone on to oversee Peter Sellers' (for it was he) subsequent hit comedy LPs at the end of the decade. He also may not have met and worked with Sellers' colleague Spike Milligan, and were it not for Martin's involvement with those two Goons on records which had entertained the teenage Beatles then he may have failed to have impressed them much when he met them in 1962. Things could have been so different...

... Ok, maybe that's a stretch but the importance of George Martin in British - in world - popular culture is undeniable. And without his experience creating those comedy & novelty records in the fifties and early sixties it is possible that much of the Beatles' later work may have lacked the levels of inventiveness and technical complexity that they achieved.

This week Tyler is joined by Andrew Hickey - from the hugely popular podcast A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs - to talk about George Martin and specifically his work with Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan, as well as some of the other records he had a hand in, pre-Beatles.

We talk about The Best of Sellers, Songs For Swinging Sellers, Unchained Melody, You Gotta Go Oww, the Sellers Beatles covers, Milligan Preserved, Bridge On The River Wye, Peter & Sophia and much more!

* We're now as far away from that day as the Beatles were from the funeral of Émile Zola.

A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs: 500songs.com/