“Fifth Beatle” George Martin Dead At 90

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

"We can confirm that Sir George Martin passed away peacefully at home yesterday evening," Adam Sharp, a founder of CA Management, said Wednesday in an email.

Too modest to call himself the "Fifth Beatle," a title many felt he deserved, 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 from ways to cash in on hit singles 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.

Paul McCartney says Beatles producer George Martin was the true fifth Beatle and "like a second father to me."