There were many who vied for the title, but in the recording studio, there was really only one Fifth Beatle.

Their songwriting was crap. The first songs I heard from them, I thought "Oh, God, where am I going to get a good song for them?"

On June 6, 1962, the lads from Liverpool entered Abbey Road studios for the first time and met an EMI Records staffer named George Martin. Over the next eight years, as the producer of virtually every song the Beatles recorded, Martin helped shape the most diverse and most consistent body of work in pop music history. Like the brand-name superproducers of today (though, of course, working with talent that remains unparalleled), he determined the direction, assuaged the egos, and sculpted the sound for everything from "I Want to Hold Your Hand" to "Strawberry Fields Forever," from "Yesterday" to "Revolution." "George Martin is the be-all/end-all record producer," says Rick Rubin, today's dominant studio master. "The albums he made with the Beatles some 40 years ago are the measuring stick for all that has come since, and none of us measure up."

It is simply impossible to imagine the Beatles without George Martin. The World War II veteran signed them to EMI"s Parlophone label after every other record company in England had rejected them. He listened to one of the songs with which they auditioned -- a "Roy Orbison-style dirge," as he describes it -- and told them to speed it up and rearrange it. They returned with a new version, following his instructions; when he heard it, he told them, "Gentlemen, I think you've got your first Number One."

"Please Please Me" did go to Number One -- the first of eleven consecutive Beatles songs to hit the top spot on the charts. But such unprecedented, still unmatched success wasn't sufficient for John, Paul, George, and Ringo. They began to experiment with previously inconceivable new styles, forms, and sonic possibilities -- the vision, of course, was the band's, but the execution and guidance always came from George Martin. Their impact peaked forty years ago this June with the release of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," recently named the greatest album of all time by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame -- though not Martin's own favorite.

After the Beatles broke up in 1970, Martin produced such artists as America, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Webb. But the legacy of the Fab Four refuses to recede, and seemingly every year, there's a new project that keeps them alive and maintains the world's infatuation with their music. In 2001, the "1" album collected a bunch of hit singles that presumably everyone already owned -- and went on to sell 30 million copies worldwide.

Last year, Martin and his son, Giles, oversaw the soundtrack for the Cirque du Soleil show, "Love" -- marking the first time the Beatles have licensed their music to a theatrical production. The Las Vegas show is a massive hit, and the album received critical raves and was one of only four albums to sell a million copies last holiday season. Next up, presumably, is the long-awaited release of the Beatles catalogue in digital form; the announcement seems imminent, but at press time, still had not come.

Stretched out on a sofa in his home -- a relatively simple structure first built in the 15th century, in a tiny village about 90 miles southwest of London -- 81-year-old Sir George Martin (he was knighted in 1997) smiles when he looks back at his immortal work of the '60s. "When the four of them came together they became immense," he says of Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr. "Where individually they were just good, or great, they became fantastic." And after spending years refusing to talk about the Beatles, he seems able to enjoy his accomplishments, and his relationships with "the boys" and their various families and estates. "I guess we're all sailing into the sunset now as good friends." The world's greatest record producer leans over to heat up the fire. "The older you get, the more likely you are to be asked to speak about things," he says with a sly grin, "and they give you awards just for being alive."

MSN MUSIC: How would you define the job of a record producer?

GEORGE MARTIN: It changes over time. When I started, way back in 1950, there was no such thing as a record producer. There were A&R men, or rather artist and recording managers. Their job was to pick the artists, pick the material, and then record it. If you were recording Frank Sinatra, you didn't expect him to write a song -- you had to find a good song for him and work out how to present it, and then nurse the guy through the studio.

With the Beatles, it became something different. For the first time, I was working with people who had actually created the songs and therefore had a much more important input. They also had their own ideas about what they wanted to do, which I then had to negotiate. When they first came to the studio in 1962, they were very raw. But I taught them a few tricks and they were very quick to learn -- like hothouse plants, they just sprung up.

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