Thousands of miles from London or Los Angeles, on a dot of land in the Caribbean Sea, Sir George Martin, the so-called fifth Beatle who died Tuesday, ran a secret music studio beneath the palms, cranking out hits with the biggest stars in the music industry for more than a decade.

Martin did this on the tiny island-nation of Montserrat, the same one devastated by the explosion of a volcano last century that buried half the island in ash.

Montserrat is a puddle-jump flight away from Antigua, the island so close that when the volcano blew, residents of the other island described the “snow” (really ash) that blanketed them.