“GEORGE Martin simply broke the mould” said Mark Cunningham, a musician and writer from south Essex who met and interviewed the legendary music producer on numerous occasions.

Mark, 53, of Princes Street, Southend, spoke with the Echo yesterday shortly after the news broke of the death of George, widely known as the “fifth Beatle”.

He continued: “The Beatles were great musicians, but they were not technically proficient.

“If they’d have had another producer, one that wasn’t as willing to experiment or indulge their ideas, it could’ve ended up a very different world.

“There have been so many spin-offs, as we well know, whose work has been influenced by the Beatles and their production.”

Mark hadn’t yet become a professional music writer when he first met George Martin in the Eighties.

He was a musician and producer and had just finished a project for Essex Radio, where he had to record a version of Sgt Pepper making it sound as authentic as it possibly could be, a task he was thrilled to undertake being a massive Beatle fan himself.

The news back from George Martin about the project, was that he thought Mark had done a good job.

“I’dmentioned what he said to an American magazine who asked me to interview him if I got to meet him”

explained Mark.

Well, he did. Mark asked Mr Martin if he’d mind being interview, and the great man obliged!

Mark recalled: “We met in a studio in Oxford Street.

“We sat down and the first thing I asked him was what it was like to have been in the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Navy in WW2.

“He looked at me very strangely and said, (Mark puts on a very refined, wellspoken voice), ‘I thought you were going to ask me about the Beatles. Everyone else does’.

Mark went on to meet George Martin several times.

One of those interviews came when George invited Mark to his London home. It was about George’s Montserrat studio in the Caribbean and the community centre he had set up there, following much destruction to the island, including to George’s recording studio.

Mark said: “I took my daughter Rosie, who was a huge Beatle fan. He was so lovely, him and his wife Judy.

She kept coming out with tea and biscuits. I think it was 2008.”

He added: "I'm very sad about Sir George's passing. He lived to a ripe old age and leaves an unparalleled legacy as the grandfather of British music production.”