NEWSMAKERS

NEWSMAKERS

Beatles’ producer Martin dies at 90

LONDON

George Martin, the Beatles’ urbane producer who quietly guided the band’s swift, historic transformation from rowdy club act to musical and cultural revolutionaries, has died, his management said Wednesday. He was 90.

Former Beatle Paul McCartney said Martin had been “a true gentleman and like a second father to me.”

“If anyone earned the title of the fifth Beatle, it was George,” McCartney said. “From the day that he gave the Beatles our first recording contract, to the last time I saw him, he was the most generous, intelligent and musical person I’ve ever had the pleasure to know.”

Too modest to claim the title of the fifth Beatle, the tall, elegant Londoner produced some of the most popular and influential albums of modern times – “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” “Revolver,” “Rubber Soul,” “Abbey Road” – elevating rock LPs to art forms – “concepts.”

He won six Grammys and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999. Three years earlier, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.

Martin both witnessed and enabled the extraordinary metamorphosis of the Beatles and of the 1960s. From a raw first album in 1962 that took just a day to make, to the months-long production of “Sgt. Pepper,” the Beatles advanced rapidly as songwriters and sonic explorers. They composed dozens of classics, from “She Loves You” to “Hey Jude,” and turned the studio into a wonderland of tape loops, multitracking, unpredictable tempos, unfathomable segues and kaleidoscopic montages.

Dos Equis says ‘adios’ to ‘Most Interesting Man’ pitchman

NEW YORK

Even the “Most Interesting Man in the World” is not immune to getting dumped.

Mexican beer brand Dos Equis is letting go of its gray-haired spokesman, 77-year-old Jonathan Goldsmith, and replacing him with another actor.

Goldsmith, known in the ads as the “Most Interesting Man in the World,” has been appearing in Dos Equis commercials for about nine years. He’s usually seen sitting at a table with a group of women before uttering the beer’s slogan, “Stay thirsty, my friends.”

Dos Equis is making the change to attract new drinkers, said Andrew Katz, the brand’s vice president of marketing. A new “Most Interesting Man in the World” will appear in commercials later this year.

Associated Press