INSPIRATION
Inside the Fifth Beatle’s Secret Recording Studio
Elton John, Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, and more recorded songs and albums at George Martin’s recording studio on Montserrat, which today stands in disrepair.
Martyn Goddard/REX/Shutterstock
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.