Remixing Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band sounds like the sort of job that should come with a helmet, a priest, and a very good therapist. For Giles Martin—son of the Beatles’ legendary producer George Martin—it came with something heavier: expectation. “You could argue it’s the greatest album of all time,” he says. “There’s a lot of weight in that. But people wanted me to do it. That gave me confidence.”
Before diving into Pepper, Martin tested the waters with 1, the Beatles’ greatest-hits remix collection. “I didn’t want to do that one either,” he admits. “But when people really liked it, it opened the door.” That response led to Pepper, and to a larger mission—reimagining how the record makes you feel, not just how it sounds. “It’s not about technical excellence or digital clarity,” he says. “It’s about preserving the emotion. The Beatles weren’t old men making nostalgic music—they were in their twenties. I want people to hear that youth again.”
Martin’s approach isn’t to modernize the music but to unfreeze it—to bring listeners back into the Abbey Road room where it all happened. “A recording is time frozen,” he says. “My goal was to make you feel like you’re in the studio with them.”
Working from the original tapes (many played only once before being shelved), Martin found himself marveling at the simplicity behind the myth. “It’s just four guys and my dad, and Geoff Emerick the engineer, sitting there making noises,” he says. “The production’s intricate, but it’s not complicated. It’s humans singing and playing instruments. That never gets old.”
Listening back through the archived sessions revealed new layers of humanity inside the legend. “You hear John telling Paul how to sing a line,” Martin says, “and then the next take is Paul telling John how to sing it. It’s amazing how much fun they were having, how casual it all was. They didn’t think anyone would still be listening fifty years later—they were just trying to make a good record.”
Among the rediscovered treasures: a take of George Harrison teaching an Indian dilruba player “Within You Without You.” “It’s wild,” Martin says. “George came from one of the poorest backgrounds of the group, and by 24 he’s writing Indian spiritual music. Where does that come from?”
The new mix also includes snippets of the Beatles’ studio chatter—something Martin says “humanizes” the myth. “People assume it was magic, but it wasn’t a button my dad pressed. It was work. Brilliant, joyful work.”
Giles’s relationship to that legacy runs deeper than blood. In his father’s later years, after George lost much of his hearing, Giles literally became his ears. “That was my training,” he says quietly. “We were very close. I can honestly say I know how he would’ve wanted it to sound.”
He pauses, then smiles. “My dad taught me that music is about emotion. You protect the feeling at all costs. That’s what I try to do.”
Listen to the full interview above. Then check out the promo video below!
