Produced by George Martin Arena

# There could never be

# A portrait of my love

# For nobody

# Could paint a dream

# You will never see

# A portrait of my love

# For miracles are never seen... #

The first impression in the office, the bicycle clips and a beret.

-And my naval greatcoat.

-Yes.

-With the epaulettes removed.

-Yeah, well, that was all right,

but the bicycle clips and the beret were definitely...

I'm sorry they didn't conform to your standards!

What was it like, meeting Mum for the first time at Abbey Road?

Because she was working there when you started.

Yeah. She'd gone there from secretarial college.

She greeted my arrival in a very cold manner.

She told me later that she thought I was very square, definitely uncool.

It's lovely now.

Put my suntan cream on.

But eventually, I fell for her, and seemingly she seemed to care for me.

# ..To try and paint

# A portrait of my love. #

-Don't knock them back.

-Couldn't get the black in?

-GEORGE LAUGHS

-He missed it!

You are very competitive as a person,

and ambitious, and it's not a criticism at all.

-And it's interesting to hear that you had a band and you even went to record your own piece of music.

-Yeah.

And titled it, in case it was played.

PIANO MUSIC

I actually wanted to be a classical composer,

and I wanted to be Rachmaninoff II.

MUSIC: Warsaw Concerto by Richard Addinsell

I mean, watching films like Richard Addinsell's Warsaw Concerto

became a pet piece of mine, and I used to play it a lot.

And, I thought, well, that's the way to go.

You know what it is, that music?

It's Warsaw Concerto. I've got the records.

-Perhaps that music will bring back a lot of things.

-I hope so.

I'd like to know what he's thinking about now.

-Would you like some tea?

-I'd love some.

-I'll be mother.

-Yes, milk.

I like afternoon tea. It's a very civilised thing.

Where is your oboe?

I had to sell it, I needed the money to buy a house, in fact -

my first house was the money from the oboe.

-You've still got yours?

-Oh, yes, of course!

-You treasure it, do you?

-Yes.

-But you don't play, do you?

-Yes, I do.

-Do you really?

-Well, you never forget.

-No, you never forget...

-but I don't think I could play one now.

-Uh!

-I'll give you one lesson...

-Would you really?

-..for nothing.

-Do you know, I might take you up on that.

-Yes. Why not?

You spent three years at the Guildhall.

Were you surrounded by people from a totally different background?

There can't have been that many ex-servicemen joining the Guildhall at that stage, or were there?

I felt a little bit out of place,

because I was older than most of them.

-You'd had no real music education until then.

-No.

Did you find that the late arrival into the classical music scene meant

you weren't completely institutionalised by the rules?

Well, it's possible that I hadn't been kind of...

over-educated in music, and so that I had a kind of naivety as well.

# Suddenly

# I'm not half the man I used to be... #

If you look at that Yesterday score, it's pretty naive, but it does work.

# ..Oh, yesterday came suddenly... #

It's very, very simple writing,

but it couldn't be anything else.

If it were, it would destroy what the point of the song is,

which is utter simplicity.

I did this in an afternoon.

I had it in my mind what I had to do

and it was just straightforward.

The Guildhall wasn't just a school of music,

it was a school for music and drama,

and I think that that in itself was tremendous help to me in later years

because I was comfortable with actors,

as well as being comfortable with musicians.

And, you know, when it came to working with Sellers

or the Beyond The Fringe crowd, or whoever,

it was OK, we were partners.

I got this letter out of the blue, saying would I be interested

in coming to an interview at EMI Studios, Abbey Road, St John's Wood.

Never heard of the place, never heard of EMI

and I got the job, at 7 pounds 4 shillings and thruppence a week.

THE GOONS: # Oh, my love, my darling

# I hunger for your touch... #

Going back to the fact that you are competitive and ambitious, did you think when you...?

-I wish you wouldn't keep saying that.

-I know.

I'm sure that's the case.

-Did you think at that stage, "Right, I'm finally getting somewhere?"

-No.

-Then what did you want at that stage?

-Still wanted to be Rachmaninoff II!

-Right, OK!

So, it hadn't moved on, then?

Gradually, I got hooked. Gradually, I didn't want to leave it.

It enabled me to be creative, I could manipulate things

and I could do things, and that I found very enjoyable.

MUSIC: Romanza (Choro) by Roberto Inglez

Roberto Inglez.

He played at the Savoy.

Roberto Inglez, everybody thought was French, or South American.

In fact, his name was Bob Ingles from Scotland,

but he specialised in South American music.

OPENING BARS OF SONG

# Nellie the elephant packed her trunk

# And said goodbye to the circus

# Off she went with a trumpety trump

# Trump! Trump! Trump!

# Nellie the elephant packed her trunk

# And trundled back to the jungle

# Off she went with a trumpety trump

# Trump! Trump! Trump! #

-Bob Harvey.

-Yeah, Bob Harvey used to play in a nightclub.

Fairey Aviation Brass Band,

Sidney Torch and his Orchestra, the Five Smith Brothers...

Oh, they were Geordies.

And Jimmy Shand.

This wonderful man, Karl Haas with the London Baroque Ensemble.

-He was always completely broke.

-He had no money at all.

He was a sweet man, really.

The Archers, is it?

That's a recording I made with Sidney Torch and his Orchestra.

I can't remember who wrote it.

It was part and parcel of what we used to do with Sidney.

I remember recording Coronation Scot,

which became the theme tune of the Paul Temple series.

Those were the days where orchestral records sold well.

When the session started,

I walked through the orchestra to Sidney Torch

and I said, "Good morning, Mr Torch, my name is George Martin

"and I'm Oscar's assistant.

"He's asked me to take the session this morning.

"So, it's nice to see you."

He said, "Oh, all right. Don't get in the way, will you?"

Did any part of you think, I'm going to be in line for this job?

No, because I was young, I was still in my 20s,

and all the people who ran the labels were older.

The youngest was about 50.

-Did you think George would get the job?

-No, I didn't really.

I didn't know what was going to happen.

I suppose I did think he might get the job, but it wasn't sure.

Oh, dear.

They said, "We've been wondering what to do with Parlophone

"now that Oscar's gone, and eventually we've decided that

"we should give the stewardship of Parlophone to George Martin."

APPLAUSE

You could've knocked me down with a feather, you know? Oh, blimey!

Suddenly, I was head of Parlophone and I had to make it work.

-And this meant choosing the artists and...?

-Yeah, oh, yeah, everything.

-..the repertoire?

-I wasn't paid much, but I was given a free run.

'Do you have any preference for whom you hit?

'No, sir, I'm not a snob. Rich or poor alike,

'I hit any of them.

But don't you ever get hit back?

'Well, no, sir. It's against the rules, that.'

# When you are lost in London And you don't know where you are

# You'll hear my voice a-calling "Pass further down the car!"

# And very soon you'll find yourself

# Inside the terminus

# In a London Transport, diesel engine, 97 horsepower omnibus! #

'Good evening. Have a picture of Queen Victoria.

'No, thanks, I'm trying to give them up!

'I don't think you'll ever do it. I've tried and failed.

-'May I come in?

-But I'm outside.

-Well, you come in, then.'

# Boom boody-boom boody-boom boody-boom

-# Goodness gracious

-How audacious

-# Goodness gracious

-How flirtatious

-# Goodness gracious

-It is me

-# It is you?

-I'm sorry, it is us.

-Ah. #

That was the comedy soundtrack of my youth

and I was going to ask you, you know, how it was that you,

best known for your music, became a comedy producer in the first place?

-Desperation, really.

-Oh. Well...

How desperate were you, then? Tell us! Confess.

At EMI at that time, there were four labels -

actually only three active ones -

HMV, Columbia and Parlophone, and Parlophone was the poor relation.

HMV and Columbia were the big boys,

they had people like Elvis Presley. Columbia had Doris Day

-and all sorts of great American artists.

-Yeah.

-Little Parlophone

had Humphrey Lyttleton when he was a young man,

John Dankworth when he was a young man,

and the Scottish Country Dance Association.

There's a quote here by Degas where he says,

"Drawing is not what one sees,

"but what one must make others see."

And in a way, that's what we do in sound.

The recording is not what one hears,

but what one must make others hear.

They were designed to...

Not be a photograph,

but to be an impression of what life was really about.

So, they actually will give more depth in their painting

than a photograph could ever do.

And when I came to working as a producer, up to that time,

people had been making records as faithfully as they could,

reproducing the original sound,

and what they were doing was making photographs.

And I said, "Well, you don't need to do that.

"Let's paint, instead of having photographs."

-BIRDSONG

-'Hello. I've been watching you feeding the birds

'I think you're marvellous!

'Aren't they sweet?

'I don't know how anyone can be cruel to dumb animals, do you?'

Irene Handl was absolutely wonderful, I mean, perfect with Sellers.

It was her idea. Oh, really? She said, "I've got something I might suggest to Peter."

I said, "Have you written it?" She said, "No, it's all here."

-Mmm.

-I'd quite forgotten, it's virtually a monologue on her part.

Yes, I was going to say, Sellers... Very unselfish performance, really.

-It still holds up.

-Yes, it holds up very well, I think.

-'You come here often, do you?

-Well, I come here often, as I said,

'to feed these birds, because I love the open air.

'It's private without being insulated, if you know what I mean.

'I can see you're like me. I will not go into a public park and mingle with the hoi polloi.

'I quite agree. I like to keep myself to myself.'

It was such a different time. It was a time before television,

you only had radio and records, so you dealt purely with the ears.

So, you had to build up little sound pictures and make people imagine that they were there.

-'Do you know Dalston at all?

-No, I don't.

-Oh, well.

'They call it the Frinton of East 8, so that'll give you some idea.

-'I was just going to ask you back to din-dins with me.

-I would love to come, please ask me.

'They keep a smashing table at the Roylston, you know. We nearly always have a second vegetable

'and always croutons with the soup.

'If you ever feel like having half a bottle of Borjolais,

'they practically fall over themselves bringing it in for you.'

I loved doing that kind of work, because you can lose yourself in it

and you don't follow any rules except your own hunch, what you think is right.

An album that I remember very well was Milligan Preserved.

I remember playing that at Oxford

and it was about a year later I started doing cabaret -

it was the first time I'd ever done any comic performing of any kind -

and that was a sort of inspirational album,

because it was so free and different.

I don't know what it felt like to make it,

or whether it was complicated with Spike's good or bad days,

but it had some wonderful things in, very different from Sellers.

Well, it was really your kind of style.

# From Jan to December

# Remember that fun, fun, fun... #

'Oh, song divine, sung by a beautiful, tall, willowy creature

'called Miss Patricia Ridgway.

'Despite her fair face, fair figure and fair voice,

'she only had one small piece of toast for breakfast.

'But when you consider what this young girl has eaten in her lifetime -

'43 whole bullocks,

'81 prime Hereford cows,

'1,000 acres of potatoes, 207 sacks of Spanish onions

'8 warehouses of brown bread... #

I don't know if you've ever looked at the back of that LP,

all the sleeve notes were in Arabic.

I don't remember that! That's very Python.

You couldn't get away with it now.

-'Let me put the microphone to her tum-tum so you can hear.'

-CRASHING

SWISHING

BUBBLING

REVVING

BELCH

BEEPING

# Tried to shift it Couldn't even lift it

# We was getting nowhere

# And so we had a cuppa tea and

# "Right", said Fred "Give a shout to Charlie"

# Up comes Charlie from the floor below... #

He was very tall.

Yes, I thought he was a very tall person.

He had a great air of serenity and authority about him.

Excuse me, it's not emotion, it's hay fever.

# ..We was getting nowhere

# And so we had a cup of tea

# And Charlie had a think Take off all the handles

# And the things what held the candles... #

It was almost a music hall record. It's a sketch with music, isn't it?

You just imagine all this going on.

You were sort of born a Cockney.

-Yeah.

-"All right, Governor."

And you're now... True, true. LAUGHTER

I don't think I spoke quite like that.

All right, cor blimey, apple and pears.

You went from that to being the gentleman of the music industry.

-That's a bit of an exaggeration.

-But your voice changed.

I was very conscious of the voice change, because when I was about 16,

I composed a piece on piano and I wanted to record it.

So, I found there was a little studio in Cavendish Square

and I went there and recorded my Fantasie.

And at the end of it I said,

"You have been listening to Fantasie in C Sharp Minor by George Martin."

Pompous little prick, really.

But when I heard it back, all I heard was...

-COCKNEY ACCENT:

-"You 'ave been listening to Fantasie in C...

-You were telling me

-I

-was getting it wrong!

-"..by George Mar'in."

No, that's an exaggeration too.

But I decided that I spoke appallingly.

You don't know, until you hear yourself.

And because I was in a dramatic society,

I consciously tried to speak like the BBC people did,

-and I think I pulled it off.

-I think you have done.

# Oh, any old iron Any, any, any old iron

# You look neat Talk about a treat... #

This is Drayton Park

and my house was actually over there

but it's long since been demolished,

and these are new buildings.

But my house looked very similar to these.

They were... they look pretty good now,

but I can assure you that, when we lived in them,

they were very run down. You can see they're on four floors,

and there was a family on each floor.

I remember looking down and a little ice cream van came past,

and I said, "Mummy, I'd love an ice cream,"

and I turned round and she was crying.

And I said, "What's the matter?"

She said, "Darling I haven't got tuppence for ice cream."

And then I gathered that we weren't very well off.

# You look nice dressed in ice Your father's old green tie on

# But I wouldn't give you tuppence for your old watch chain

# Old iron

# Old iron... #

I also have a vivid memory of a very, very cold winter

and my feet were freezing,

and he knew this, and we didn't have a hot water bottle.

So he got an old can, which used to hold petrol or oil,

and cleaned it out and filled it with hot water,

wrapped it in towels and put it by my feet at the bottom of my bed

to give me warm feet. That's one of the memories I have of my dad.

# You look neat Talk about a treat

# You look dapper from your napper to your feet

# You got an old green tie that hits you in the eye... #

-Were you driven to get away from that background?

-I don't think so.

I didn't say to myself, "I've got to get out of this hell hole,"

because it was a very loving family.

My mother and father were super people,

and it was just that my father couldn't earn very much money

and there was a big depression on when I was a small child -

the 1930s.

-'I say, you down there.

-Hello?

-'Do you want some old iron?

-Yeah.'

METAL CLANGING FROM A HEIGHT

'Ooh, mate!'

We moved to Muswell Hill,

a great improvement on what we had before.

We were obviously not too badly off, by this time.

I liked the idea of moving here,

cos the house looked much better than we lived in before,

but when you're 11 or 12, you don't think too much about status.

I never thought we were moving up in the world.

I had a grandstand view of the dogfights

that went on overhead. It was quite exciting for a 14-year-old boy.

We heard that a Dornier had been downed quite near us

so, being bloodthirsty boys, we were in there raiding the place,

I got a bit of a German officer's uniform - bloodstained, you know.

-Really, very charming stuff(!)

-LAUGHTER

As a kid, we would leave our house after the bombing

and, you know, a big portion of the street had gone.

-Just flat.

-That's right.

-But we were kids - another playground for us.

We didn't think, "Oh, somebody's dead," you know - we were kids.

Well, we lived in Bromley in Kent, which was on the path in,

and I remember one day,

-a house about five doors down wasn't there any more.

-Yeah.

And the house next door to it,

on the first floor, the bathroom was exposed and the bath was dangling,

-holding on...from its pipes.

-Yeah.

-And I thought, "Well, gosh, that could've been us."

-Yeah.

-But you accepted it, didn't you?

-You did, it was part of life.

It must've been a very posh area - it had a bath.

-Well, I was posh.

-Well, we never had a bath, you see.

-Oh, come on.

-No, we never did!

Never did.

-Yeah.

-You must've been filthy then.

No, we used to go to Steble Street, just to take a bath.

-'I want you to lay down your life, Perkins.

-Yes, sir.

'We need a futile gesture at this stage.

-'It will raise the whole tone of the war.

-Sah!

'Get up in a crate, Perkins, pop over to Bremen,

-'take a shufti, don't come back.

-Ah.

'Goodbye, Perkins. God, I wish I was going too.

'Goodbye, sir. Or is it "au revoir"?

'No, Perkins.'

'Britain has dealt the Italian fleet a blow which its remains will remember for a long, long time.

'At one fell swoop, three battleships, two cruisers and auxiliaries were put out of action.

'Thus, Mussolini is forced to realise that his much-vaunted navy isn't safe, even in port.

'This splendid job was executed - "executed" is the right word -

'by the Fleet Air Arm. Such men as these went right in, or over,

'the heel of Italy to Taranto and kicked the pants of the Wop good and hard!'

When you heard the news on the radio about the success of the Fleet Air Arm

at the Battle of Taranto, was that instrumental in your decision

-to want to join the Fleet Air Arm?

-Absolutely.

I said, "I don't want to go into the Army,

"I want to go into the Fleet Air Arm."

So one day, I walked into a recruiting office and said,

"I want to be a pilot, I want to have flying duties in the Fleet Air Arm. " So I signed on.

And my mother broke down in tears and said, "You stupid boy, you'll get yourself killed."

And the stupid boy replied equally stupidly,

"Mother, I promise you, I won't get killed, I promise you that."

Those who will come with me...

take one step forward.

Stupid children. I might have guessed.

Well, you look about 30, but, mind you,

-wartime might do that to you.

-It was a tough business, you know?

Where were you during the war, Daddy?

BOTH CHUCKLE

-You are rotten.

-Come on, I want to... I know, come on.

-Come on, I'm not going to talk about it.

-OK, well, all right, OK,

I'll tell you what interests me about this.

You would tell us stories, cos we'd ask, you know,

"What did you do?" And it came out that you were in the Fleet Air Arm and you were an observer.

Well, this is where the observer would be,

which is where I would have been.

That's the observer's position.

And you can see there's a wire at the bottom there

which you could attach to yourself, in case you went inverted,

and you wouldn't get thrown out of the aircraft.

And we have instruments here which he could see,

and he would communicate with the pilot, who's in a separate cockpit,

purely and simply through a Gosport tube,

which was a kind of tube that you, you know, you'd say,

"Hello there," and you'd listen. There was no electronics involved.

We'd say, "Well, what do you do?" He'd say, "Well, sort of observe,"

-but you were in charge.

-Yeah.

-So it was a very important role, in fact,

even above the pilot, which kind of amazed us.

-But years later, "I thought, that's the producer."

-Yes, it is.

-It's the same job.

-What uniform is that?

-Flyer.

-Flyer.

Then what are you doing down here? Why aren't you up there,

stopping them from murdering all these people,

instead of just playing the piano?

-I like playing the piano.

-You could choose a better time for it.

I went up in this - I don't know if it was this plane, I think it might have been another one -

when I was 70 years old as a kind of anniversary,

50 years after I'd flown before, and I'm now much older than that.

I still would like to go up in one.

We can't do it, cos the engine is not working.

But one day, I will come back again.

It's very disappointing, because I don't hear music as I used to,

and I don't enjoy music now much. I mean,

-if you take a piece like Vaughan Williams' Lark Ascending...

-Mmm.

-..I might as well go home, because the violin...

-Very high tones.

It's in the upper reaches. I see this fellow doing this and I'm not hearing it.

VIOLIN PLAYS

MUFFLED VIOLIN

Thank you very much.

I'm not used to microphones, you know.

CHUCKLING

I first became aware of something wrong in the '70s.

I was approaching my 50s,

and I was in my control room in my studio in London

and one of the engineers came in, said,

"Do you mind if I just check these tape machines?"

And I said, "Do that." They would put in

different tones of different frequencies

and adjust them, so that the machines were really accurate.

I heard all the tones going through and I took no notice.

And then I looked up and I saw that all the needles were going...

I said, "Bill, what's that frequency you're putting through?"

He said, "12 kilohertz."

And I said, "Oh, shit."

Every time you speak to someone,

particularly in a cocktail environment,

you are doing mental calculation, rather like filling in a crossword.

You're getting only the vowels

and you're putting in all the consonants as quickly as you can,

-so as not to be stupid.

-Hoping you get them right.

Get them right, exactly.

Yeah, well that's one of the issues with hearing loss,

the respect of social isolation.

People feel socially isolated when they start losing their hearing,

-because the cocktail party hearing that you had...

-Yeah.

-..starts to degrade.

-Is that something that's impacted on you?

-Yeah, that's quite true,

because if you can't join in the conversation

with everybody going round,

you get isolated, you become invisible,

they talk past you.

You get to the point, as I have now, where age has taken over as well,

and when that happens...

My hearing's taken a nosedive in the past few years.

Now, I think what she's doing,

what this lady is doing here, is fantastic.

-And I think she's so accurate and so good.

-LAUGHTER

-Will you come home with me?

-LAUGHTER

There's been so many stories about Major Ralph,

the colourful horse dealer who'd gone into the business

of managing rock and roll stars.

I mean, he personally discovered such disc names as Lennie Bronze,

Clint Thigh, Matt Lust.

Have you ever seen a rock and roll singer, Miss Lisbon?

-Have you ever seen one up close?

-Well, no.

I'm mostly on book reviewing.

Well, a good specimen, he's about 17 or 18 years old,

about 5"10 fully extended,

sagging to about 5"4 in the sitting position.

Would you like to see one? We'll get one for you.

Ah, Major, some rotten 'un

has pinched the strings off my guitar, look!

You've got the guitar on back-to-front.

How many times must I tell you, the hole points away from you?!

Ha! So much to learn, so little time.

# Now me and my wife went to town

# Sail away, lady, sail away

# We went to buy a 10 gown

# Sail away, lady, sail away

# Oh, don't you rock me, Daddy-O

# Oh, don't you rock me, Daddy-O

# Don't you rock me, Daddy-O

# Don't you rock me, Daddy-O

# Oh, don't you rock me, Daddy-O

# Oh, don't you rock me, Daddy-O... #

'But I did envy Norrie Paramor enormously,

'because he had a young man

'who was originally called Harry Webb, I think.

'Cliff Richard, this is.

'It didn't matter what he recorded, it could've been God Save The Queen,

'it became number one.

'It was just automatic. And I envied that

'and I wanted to have something that would be easy to make,'

instead of the difficulty of making comedy records.

-Comedy records are hard work.

-Mmm.

You had to get the right material,

right script, right artist, and so on.

Did you want to beat Norrie Paramor?

-Yes.

-You've said it now!

-Well, he drove a E-Type Jag.

-I see. There we are!

I think a Paul McCartney record made you the most successful producer of all time, with 36 number ones.

It was in the papers and you said, "I've had more number ones than anyone else,"

I said, "That's amazing, Dad. Who did you beat?"

"Norrie Paramor," is what you said.

-Nice.

-No, that's true,

because he did have the largest amount of number ones

in Britain at that time, and I managed to get in front of him.

And I remember you saying to me,

"I don't think he's going to beat me now,"

because I think he'd been dead a couple of years by that stage.

-Exactly!

-Anyway... BOTH CHUCKLE

-Yes, it was the 21st that I met Brian Epstein.

-Yes.

And I'd put down "Bernard".

I know, you silly girl.

Yes, I didn't know him at all.

What I said to Brian was, "If you want me to judge them on what you're playing me,

"I'm sorry, I have to turn you down."

And he was so disappointed, I felt really sorry for him actually,

-cos he was an earnest young man.

-And you must've liked him, then?

I did like him. And I said, "But I'll tell you what..."

I gave him a lifeline. I said, "If you want to bring them down from Liverpool,

"I'll give them an hour in the studio, OK?"

Begin as soon as you like, please, would you?

-I beg your pardon?

-Would you start as soon as you can?

We're in a hurry, we have a lot of people to see.

Right. I've prepared...

-Can you hear me?

-Yes.

-I've prepared a short extract...

# Each time I bring you a kiss

# I hear music divine

# So besame

# Besame mucho

# I love you forever, say that you'll always be mine. #

They had this wonderful charisma.

-They made you feel good to be with them.

-Mmm.

And I thought their music was rubbish.

# Besame

# Besame mucho

# And I love you forever

# Make all my dreams come true

# Oooh, love you forever

# Make all my dreams come true

# Oooh, love you forever

# Make all my dreams come true... #

That first occasion with him

was all really Brian's fault,

cos nobody told me that, you know, when they walked in...

This fellow came in, this little chap,

and they said, "This is our drummer."

And I said, "No, he's not, that's your drummer, we're paying good money for that fellow. "

And, you know, we had the best drummer that you could get.

-Andy White.

-Yeah.

-Who will never live it down.

I didn't realise until quite late on

how much I hurt him by that, and I didn't mean to.

I know. Well, he's a sensitive soul, Ringo, he is a sensitive kind of guy,

you know, and I don't think we realised how much that hurt him.

-Yeah.

-But he got over it.

No, no, you know, he was not precise and so you...

I think you were used to working with session drummers who were...

-Yeah.

-..on the ball.

And what happened in The Beatles, you know, when we played live,

even Ringo sped up a tiny bit, we all just went with him -

nobody really noticed it.

One thing about your drumming

-is that it cannot be mistaken for anybody else.

-Yeah.

You have a signature.

-Yeah.

-And as soon as you hear it, "That's Ringo."

-Oh, yeah.

-No doubt about it at all.

-I think it's an emotional thing

where I actually put...

We only have that much room to hit and I hit on the back of that.

-Yeah.

-A lot of other drummers hit on the front, but we still only have that - it's where you put it.

# I told that girl that my prospects were good

# She said, baby, it's understood

# Working for peanuts is all very fine

# But I can show you a better time

# Baby, you can drive my car

# Yes, I'm going to be a star

# Baby, you can drive my car

# And maybe I'll love you

# Beep-beep, beep-beep, yeah. #

# Last night I said these words to my girl... #

We took the harmonica that was used on Love Me Do, put that on as well,

and I was thrilled to bits with it.

I thought it was wonderful, and I told them,

I said, "I think you might have a number one."

In fact, I think I actually said,

"Gentlemen, you have your first number one,"

which was bravado, really.

-# Come on

-Come on

-# Come on

-Come on

-# Come on

-Come on

-come on

-# Come on

-Please, please me

# Oh, yeah, like I please you. #

It's amazing, really, how creative we could be in those circumstances.

I say to people now, "10:30 till 1:30, two songs, " you know?

And you would just sort of remind us

about halfway through the three-hour period,

"Well, that's just about enough on that one, chaps, let's wrap it up."

We'd go, "Five minutes, yeah, OK."

And so, you learned to be brilliant -

he said modestly - in one and a half hours.

But I was under pressure,

because I got such little time with you.

-Mmm.

-And you were running all over the world.

-Yeah.

And I would say to Brian, you know, "I need more time in the studio."

And he said, "Well, I can give you Friday afternoon,

-"or Saturday evening," whatever it is.

-Mmm.

And he would dole out time to me, like giving scraps to a mouse.

# I'll buy you a diamond ring, my friend

# If it makes you feel all right

# I'll get you anything my friend

# If it makes you feel all right... #

When we did Can't Buy Me Love,

Paul started off the whole record by...

HUMS THE START OF "Can't Buy Me Love"

That was the beginning of the record.

And I said, "Paul, we need to have a...

"a hit tag to start this, kick it off."

He said, "Well, what do you think? I said, "Take a bit of the chorus."

# Can't buy me love... #

So, that was the contributions I made in those days, as I say,

kind of streamlining their work,

but it was their genius that made the songs work.

# I'll get you anything, my friend

# If it makes you feel all right

# Cos I don't care too much for money

# Money can't buy me love. #

# That was the week that was

# It's over, let it go

# That was the week that was

# It started way above par

# Finished way below... #

You had to wait for a studio,

It was like one of the top restaurants -

"We can see you in a month," type of thing,

and I lived right next door in Abbey Road, right next door to the studio,

and it was like the red carpet people going in and out, which was fun.

Every now and then, you would hear his voice very calmly saying,

"That was nice, I'd like to maybe change the tempo,

"I thought it was rushed. Could you do this?"

He got the best out of people - he didn't frighten them.

# That was the week that was

# It's over, let it go

# Oooh, what a week that was

# That was the week

# That was. #

# The birds in the sky would be sad and lonely

# If they knew that I lost my one and only

# They'd be sad... #

Of course, Brian, flush with all their success,

kept bringing me more artists.

This was the year in which I had 37 weeks at number one,

which has never been done,

-not even by Norrie Paramor.

-So, would you say you were the Simon Cowell of the '60s?

-HE LAUGHS

-I do hope not.

# How do you do what you do to me?

# I wish I knew

# If I knew how you do it to me

# I'd do it to you... #

Gerry And The Pacemakers,

-Billy J Kramer.

-And Cilla.

And Cilla. It was a busy day, wasn't it?

# Anyone who ever loved

# Could look at me

# And know that I love you... #

I just remember him being so suave and sophisticated.

Little did I know,

he turned out to be a Cockney that talked dead posh.

# Knowing I love you so... #

The way he dressed, you know, he wore a tie and a shirt.

The only concession to relaxation

was that he took his suit jacket off,

but the tie stayed on.

The tie was always there.

# Don't let the sun

# Catch you crying... #

My workload was enormous -

so that I was spending more time in the studio

than I was anywhere else -

and I found myself completely and utterly wrapped up in my work.

# Your heart may be broken tonight... #

Patience and being really very honest as well,

but in a nice way. He could be really honest in a nice way.

# What's it all about, Alfie?

# Is it just for the moment

# We live?

# What's it all about

# When you sort it out, Alfie?

# Are we meant to take

# More than we give?

# Or are we meant to be kind?

# And if

# Only fools are kind

# Alfie... #

I used to say to him,

"You know, I'm a little bit flat there at the end, George,"

and he would say,

"It's soul."

-Oh, I remember that, yeah, in Paris.

-There's Brian.

-I was just talking about that.

-Chamber pot on his head.

-Yeah.

-Judy's there.

-Uh-huh.

-And if you remember, and it was very naughty...

It was all... All the food was in phallic or...

Yeah, the rolls were a particular shape, weren't they?

It was a hoot. It was great, you know.

We'd never seen anything like that. I suspect Brian might have.

-Yes, well, he chose it all right.

-Yeah, that's what I mean, yeah.

But they also got Judy standing on the table

-putting a garter round her leg. Do you remember that?

-Yeah.

She didn't need much persuading.

The Beatles loved her.

Even though she was dead posh, she had an incredible sense of humour.

And so we... I think a few of The Beatles fancied her, as well, on the quiet.

We don't really want to hang out with him,

it's Mrs Martin we all love.

BOTH LAUGH

The great Judy. Who we thought, when we started, was the Queen,

-she was so posh.

-POSH ACCENT:

-"Oh, hello!"

He was a bit posh, but she was over the top.

Do you remember Judy reciting John's poem?

Yeah, Deaf Ted, Danoota (and me).

-POSH ACCENT:

-"Oh, Deaf Ted, Danoota (and Me)," yeah.

"With faithful frog beside us, Big mighty club are we

"The battle scab and frisky dyke

"Deaf Ted, Danoota, and me.

"We fight the baddy baddies,

"For colour, race and cree

"For Negro, Jew and Bernie

"Deaf Ted, Danoota, and me.

"Thorg Billy grows and Burnley ten, And Aston Villa three

"We clobber ever gallup

"Deaf Ted, Danoota, and me.

"So if you hear a wondrous sight, Am blutter or at sea,

"Remember whom the mighty say

"Deaf Ted, Danoota, and me."

'You see, she didn't have to work on her accent, like I did.

-SHE LAUGHS

-I didn't think I had a different accent to anybody else.

-The boys accepted you as part of the team.

-Yes.

You were their first major groupie.

-Yes, quite!

-BOTH CHUCKLE

'Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to now have a few words

-'from our recording manager, Mr George Martin.

-Martin.

'George Martin. Here he is. Come here, George.

'Say a few swinging new fab words for the Christmas market.

'It's been a switched-on year for George, too, fab Beatle-people and we all hope you appreciate it.

'Here he is.

'He won't talk, Beatle-people.

He won't!

ALL: 'One, two, three...

# Should auld acquaintance be forgot

# And never brought to mind? #

-Where on earth did that come from?

-A load of lunatics, if you ask me.

-That's a Beatles fan club record, it's got to be.

-Oh.

-Remember the fan club records?

-Right, well done, you.

-Every year, we'd take ten minutes of the session time...

-And we used to...

..and do nonsense like this.

Well, I'm blessed, I'd quite forgotten about that.

But we couldn't get you to speak.

So professional.

-But EMI was such a sort of funny place in those days.

-Yeah.

We thought of it in the same terms as the BBC,

a huge monolithic corporation, but groovy with it, kind of thing.

And I always remember,

when we went to the toilets, there was this old-fashioned bog roll,

and on every sheet, it had, "Property of EMI."

-"Ltd."

-We thought,

"What, do they think someone's going to nick it?"

It was worth nicking, actually. I wish I had one of those rolls.

You've got to remember, when you are in there and using the thing, who it belongs to.

It was a treadmill, but it was a very nice one -

a golden treadmill, they might say.

Ten number ones in a row.

Which is extraordinary.

-And you weren't getting any extra money for this from EMI?

-No, no.

-Did that make you feel bitter?

-Yes.

-It's the right answer.

-It didn't make me feel better, it made me feel bitter.

-Bitter or better?

The appalling thing was that in 1963,

after working my butt off all year,

and I was on a very... quite a low salary -

2,000 a year at the most, I should think -

and, um... I didn't get my Christmas bonus, if you remember.

You got yours.

Well, I was on £10 a week, yes.

Well, and I rang through and asked why, and they said,

"But you're now an executive getting over 2,000 a year...

"and we don't give bonuses to people like that."

So, I got nothing for the work I'd done in that year

and yet, all the sale staff got huge bonuses

for the amount of records they sold to the dealers.

So, I naturally had a chip on my shoulder,

which hasn't fallen off, even now.

-What's all this, John?

-It's Peter Sellers.

APPLAUSE

It has been a hard day's night.

And I have been working like a dog.

It's been a hard day's night.

I should be sleeping like a log.

But when I get home to you,

I find the things that you do

Will make me feel all right.

The thing about this record for me is,

we had this in Liverpool before we knew you,

and I wore this record out.

-Did you really?

-Yeah, I mean,

-we would play this forever.

-But didn't you...?

When Brian told you you'd got a deal with George Martin,

who made all the comedy records,

Didn't you feel he was scraping the bottom of the barrel?

No. Not really. I think we probably wondered

why we'd got the comedy guy and not the music guy,

but I think we loved this so much,

-and the other thing about this is, it wasn't just comedy.

-Yeah.

-There was good music in it.

-Yeah.

And things like Right Said Fred, Goodness Gracious Me, it was...

-Oh, yeah.

-It was a groovy...

-Yeah.

-You know, you did good music at those times.

Those recordings with Peter and Spike

and Irene Handl helped me in two ways with The Beatles.

First of all, I didn't know them from Adam,

but they knew me,

because they were Goon fans and they knew all the stuff I'd made,

Peter Sellers stuff and so on. That was the first help.

Once the boys decided they would not perform any more,

they wanted just to work in the studio, building up Sgt Pepper

-became a bit like working on a Peter Sellers record.

-Mmm.

Because you were building a picture in sound.

# Let me take you down

# Cos I'm going to

# Strawberry Fields

# Nothing is real

# And nothing to get hung about

# Strawberry Fields forever... #

# Living is easy with eyes closed

# Misunderstanding all you see

# It's getting hard to be someone but it all works out

# It doesn't matter much to me... #

Were you to some extent tickled by the fact

that they were playing with music

in a way that perhaps other rock 'n roll bands didn't dare do?

Oh, yeah, they were becoming quite original,

and the thing is, they were eternally curious.

-Mmm.

-They wanted to find new ways of doing what they were doing,

and new harmonies, new endings for songs, and that kind of thing.

-They always wanted to look beyond the horizon, not just at it.

-Yes.

# If the rain comes

# They run and hide their heads... #

There was one time on Rain,

-when I decided to play around with tapes...

-Yeah.

..and I took John's voice off as a separate item

and put it on a quarter-inch tape,

and turned it back-to-front

and so, I slid it around a bit,

and then put it in on the end of the song.

# Sdaeh rieht edih dna nur yeht semoc niar eht if...

# Nair... #

And I played it to John when he came back, and he said, "That's gear.

"What is it?" And I said, "It's you."

And I explained to him what I'd done.

-And from that moment, he wanted everything backwards.

-Yes.

-You know, they all did.

-Yeah.

# Turn off your mind

# Relax and float downstream. #

This place, Abbey Road Studios, was a wonderful musical toyshop,

and I'd never got much money,

-but I did get the ability to play in that toyshop.

-Yeah.

So, I was able to experiment and I treated pianos,

putting newspapers through the strings and all that kind of thing.

-Yeah.

-And backwards music, I was doing,

and different speed music, and I found that interesting.

# You may see the meaning of within... #

Shoulder!

# It is being

# It is being... #

-We got...

-Great.

-..All these tape loops.

-Yeah.

-We got the sitar.

-I know.

-And the tambura.

-And the cymbal!

-Yeah.

-It's all the way through.

-Yeah.

-No, it was far out, THEN.

-Yeah.

-You know, cos everything was so pulled back and a bit neat.

This is when we started to change,

this is the good reason we stopped touring and came into the studio.

It was funny, actually, you know that time, if you remember,

we all came in rose-coloured or funny-coloured specs.

And, where I was living, there was a little optician's round the corner,

and I sort of popped in, said, "Do you do different coloured lenses and everything?"

He said, "Yeah, I do anything." So I ordered up

like half a dozen different colours -

you know, rose, green, blue, and took them to the sessions.

That was to give you a bit of atmosphere in the studio

and I remember all of you saying,

"This is a sterile place, it's just white walls and...bloody awful.

"Can't you do something to liven it up?".

-Mmm.

-And so they put in three fluorescent stands.

-I know.

-With red, blue and white.

No, it's red, and green.

-Was it green?

-I know, cos I've got them!

-Oh, right!

-They're in my studio. Yeah, fluorescent poles.

-That was to give you inspiration.

-And boy, did it ever!

We grooved after that!

# ..Of the beginning. #

Well, one of the reasons I'm deaf...

-Yeah.

-Is that I used to sit in front of a desk...

-Yeah.

-Because I would then get right inside the triangle...

-Yeah.

-And I could hear in stereo.

I used to shut my eyes and hear this arc of sound,

-and I could hear everything...

-Yeah.

-..from right to left,

and it seemed to go up as well.

-Yeah.

-Not just straight in front of me.

-That's cos you were on drugs!

-Well, it was in a way, wasn't it?

-Yeah.

-It was a kind of drug.

You'd do an experiment in the studio and take an oscillator,

so you'd go..."Can you hear it?"

and us, with young ears at the time, we would go,

"Yeah, yeah, can still hear it," and you'd take it up and up and then we'd go, "No, we just lost it,"

and you'd say, "Pretty good hearing, you know, you just went up to mmm decibels."

And you'd say, "Now, let's do it the other way,"

You'd take it down and we'd go,

"Yeah, I can hear it. Ooh, got a funny feeling though,"

as you take it down low.

And you told a story that Hitler...

Hitler's people, his media people,

knew this effect and, before a rally,

they would play a low frequency that nobody could hear,

they'd put that out and everybody would be sitting there going,

"I'm not feeling too great."

And the minute before Hitler got there they'd switch it off

and everyone would go, "Yeah!"

and, you know, loving it all. I loved those little stories

that would be mixed in with our sort of recording career.

You must've known,

given your background and the context that you knew of music,

you must've known what an extraordinarily different song it was for a pop song.

Yeah, oh, yeah, terrific, wonderful.

-The syncopation of it...

-Yes.

-..was marvellous, you know,

the, "Ta-ta-ta, ta, ta, ta, ta-ta-ta, ta-ta-ta."

That was Paul's work. All I had to do was just do the strings.

But you're being very modest,

because guitar and vocals, that song is a pretty remarkable song,

it's unusual modally, it has an English folk song feel to it...

-Yeah, yeah.

-Its lyrics are unusual,

everything about it is unusual.

But the decision to use strings in that particular way

and with the rhythmic energy of those strings,

is what turned it, I think, from a singer/songwriter song

into something quite extraordinary.

Paul did want to use strings by this time,

and when I heard the song, I thought of Bernard Herrmann

-and all the stuff they did from the Hitchcock films.

-Yes.

MUSIC: Shower Scene by Bernard Hermann

And I thought of the strings being very short-playing and very spiky and very...

HE STRIKES PERCUSSIVE NOTES

-..hitting, hitting like a piano.

-Yes.

And, um... Which would emphasise the syncopated nature of the song.

So, it's half Paul McCartney, half Bernard Herrmann.

Nil score to George Martin!

Paul was always much more interested in music per se,

whereas John was always more interested in words per se.

And I think this relationship

benefited from the ping-pong of those things.

I mean, I think Paul always wanted

to be able to write lyrics like John could do,

and John really envied Paul's gift for melody.

John once said to me,

"Let's face it, George, I don't expect to walk into a bar in Spain

"and hear people whistling I Am The Walrus."

# I am he as you are he As you are me

# And we are all together... #

-And I knew what he meant.

-Yes.

-But it was that difference between them

which also spurred each other on.

-Did they both trust you equally?

-I think they trusted me, yes.

I think Paul probably wanted me more because of the ideas he would have

-to use orchestras or orchestral instruments.

-Mmm.

John would not need me as much,

but he did need me sometimes.

# Something in the way she moves... #

It must've been very daunting for George in the beginning,

because he wanted to be a songwriter

and the other two, because they worked so closely together,

they wrote better songs. Well, I was encouraging,

cos I always insisted that we had one of his songs on the album.

So, he came through by writing some fantastic stuff.

# Somewhere in her smile, she knows... #

Something In the Way She Moves,

Something is one of the best love songs ever.

# Something in her style that shows me

# Don't want to leave her now

# You know I believe and how... #

There's you doing your mixing.

There's me producing all the Beatle records, as I did.

Not really, just kidding!

And a wry smile on his face.

Wry smile, as he sees me do it completely wrong.

-No, no!

-He said, "I'll leave him, he's screwing it up, I'll leave him."

But this is interesting, because, in the very first sessions,

I always say we came in the tradesman's entrance,

if you remember.

-We didn't come in through the control room.

-That's right.

-But, by this time, we'd got in that control room, mate!

-Oh, yeah, I know.

We're getting up there!

Never mind taking over the asylum, look at us!

Working it!

Oh, you fool! Easy shot!

-You had it all!

-I hate you.

Do you mean that?

During the Let It Be stuff,

John came to me and said, "We don't want your crap on this record."

I said, "What do you mean?" He said,

"We don't want all this production crap where you overdub voices

"and you edit, and you manipulate."

I said, "OK, what do you want to do?"

"We're going to make an honest record of this, we're going to perform and you record us,

"that's what it's going to be."

So Let It Be became torture, because John's premise

was to take a song, rehearse it,

get it right, and record it,

but they never got it right!

And when I heard that John AND George

had taken the tapes out of Abbey Road

and given them to Phil Spector to make them work,

I felt a betrayal, really.

When the record came to be issued, EMI rang me up and said,

"They don't want your name on the record. It will be 'Produced by Phil Spector'."

I said, "But I've produced all the original stuff that they worked on."

"Yes." I said, "I'm not having that.

"Why don't you put on it,

'produced by George Martin, overproduced by Phil Spector'?"

But they didn't seem to go for that.

I didn't think we'd work again after Let It Be,

and I didn't really want to.

And when Paul rang me up and said,

"We want you to come in and produce another record,"

I said, "I've been there, Paul, I don't like it,

"I don't think I want to do this."

And he said, "Yes, you do, we all want to get together."

I said, "What about John?" "John wants to, too."

And we all got back into the studio again and John was honey pie.

# Mean Mr Mustard sleeps in the park

# Shaves in the dark Trying to save paper

I knew it was the end and they knew it was the end,

and they were coming back for one final stab

at doing something really worthwhile together,

before they went off into the sunset

in their own particular ways.

# Such a mean old man

# Such a mean old man... #

As people, we weren't that close,

-but musically, we were still very close.

-Yeah.

We were just having our argy-bargy, you know?

MUSIC: Drum solo from The End by The Beatles

It was like an eight-year gig for me and I still feel that, any band, eight years - it's got to end.

Yeah.

# Love you! Love you!... #

It was tough, I think, for everyone when you parted.

You'd been together so long,

-everybody had to find their own thing to do.

-Yeah.

I, on the other hand, was kind of liberated, I...

RINGO LAUGHS

"Thank God that's over!"

# And in the end

# The love you take

# Is equal to the love

# You make. #

MUSIC CRESCENDOS

For the first time in my life -

well, in eight years anyway - I was a free man,

and I wasn't bound by worrying

whether the next record would be in the charts or not.

And I was in demand.

And for the first time,

I got paid well on it, cos I never got paid well on Beatle songs!

So I was quite happy.

-We weren't looking for number ones.

-Right.

-I didn't NEED number ones.

-Yeah.

-I'd had them.

-Right.

I just wanted to do stuff that I enjoyed doing.

# I follow your smile

# And try as I might

# I can't get it... #

I wanted to try to get George in on this,

because it was clear to me that the experience and work

that he'd done with The Beatles

with symphonic musicians, classical musicians,

he was really the clear leader in this world,

and I wanted the leader.

Oh, gosh. One of my favourite tracks of all,

Smile Of The Beyond

from Apocalypse, with the Mahavishnu Orchestra.

And, every time I hear it, it still sends...

My hairs stand up on the back of my neck. I think it's fantastic.

# Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man

# That he didn't, didn't already have

# And cause never was the reason for the evening... #

I always was comfortable with George. He didn't just sit behind the glass,

you know, he was down there in the studio with us playing piano,

he plays piano on Tin Man, that's actually George playing,

"De-de-de de-de-de, dee, de-de-de."

# ..Like bubbles

# Ooh, ooh-ooh.

# Ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh. #

He's letting me make stuff up on the hoof,

and that's where I saw him get excited, and he'd go,

"OK, we've burnt that one out, let's start and do something else."

And we'd go, "No, we really love where you're going with this."

He said, "No, I know you're going to overdo it,

"you're going to get sick of it, we're going to move on now."

I gave it the title of Blow By Blow,

because when you do an extemporary bit,

you are giving it a blow, you know,

combine that with the effect of punching, you know, blow by blow.

And everybody sees in this a great title,

and I'm sure it had something to do with the success,

because, of course, it also meant something else.

He could've been a very suave actor, I think, and a fantastic, um...

..almost a James Bond.

# When you were young And your heart was an open book

# You used to say, "Live and let live"

# You know you did, you know you did You know you did

# But if this ever-changing world in which we live in

# Makes you give in and cry... #

I suppose most people think of a martini when they see a Bond film.

# Say, "Live and let die"... #

In fact, the martini was the most elegant cocktail ever devised, I reckon,

and it was the favourite drink of the Algonquin set,

in New York, in the '30s.

So, all we need is a decent bottle of gin -

I happen to like this particular one, which is Tanqueray gin -

plenty of ice, and a bit of dry martini vermouth,

and that's it, really.

The purists will say you shouldn't shake it because it bruises the gin.

Nonsense, it makes it colder.

And, voila! Your martini is made.

And there we are. Couldn't be simpler.

Of course, it's a pretty strong drink.

Like Dorothy Parker said,

"I like to have a martini, two at the very most,

"after three, I'm under the table,

"after four, I'll be under my host."

Cheers.

# Live and let die

# Live and let die

# Live and let die. #

Do you remember where that was taken and who took it?

-It could be Linda...

-It is Linda.

-..Taking it. Is it? Cos it looks like her work.

-Now, it could be Montserrat.

-It is Montserrat. Well done.

-Yeah.

Montserrat is so alive and kicking.

-Gorgeous. Well, that's a beautiful picture.

-My favourite shot, that is.

I saw an in-flight magazine

which talked about the emerald isle of the Caribbean,

an island called Montserrat.

The thing that struck me about Montserrat

was that everybody was so friendly, and it's still like that.

I think that was the chief reason why I decided to buy that property

and start a hi-tech studio on a remote island.

Went back to England and everyone said how crazy I was,

and, of course, I WAS crazy.

It's painful, because it used to be such a fantastic place,

so full of activity, with great people.

We used to work in the studio,

in the evening we would sit down to dinner

and as many as 24 people would be sitting down and having a nice meal.

And we worked hard and we played hard.

We made some great records here.

# Every little thing she does is magic

# Everything she do just turns me on

# Even though my life before was tragic

# Now I know my love for her

# Goes on. #

# Do I have to tell the story

# Of a thousand rainy days Since we first met

# It's a big enough umbrella

# But it's always me that ends up

# Getting wet

# Every little thing she does is magic

# Everything she do just turns me on

# Even though my life before was tragic

# Now I know my love for her

# Goes on. #

THUNDERCLAP

I wasn't able to get to Montserrat after the hurricane

until after about six weeks,

so I got a flash lamp and I went into the studio

to see how that had faired,

whether there'd been any leaks in there.

Went over to the piano and opened the keyboard,

and all the ivory keys were covered in green mould,

looked like a baize of a snooker table,

and I realised then we were done, you know,

because I knew, "If the piano's like that,

"what's the inside of all our electronics like?"

It's like seeing something you've created falling into disrepair.

But it's like everything in life, isn't it? Everything has a period.

You know, you bring something out of nothing,

but it always goes back to nothing again, whatever.

# Though I've tried before to tell her

# Of the feelings I have for her

# In my heart... #

The old place hasn't changed a bit.

Looks very good.

I like that they've got the names on the seats now.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

It all looks in pretty good nick, really.

And how long has it been running now?

Two years? Maybe more?

-Yeah, three years.

-Three years?

-Must be, yeah.

It's been a godsend, really and truly. Where would we have gone?

All those weddings, the plays, the performances...

It has been used for church services, it's been used for funerals,