Martin Birch, record producer behind the rise of heavy metal – obituary

Martin Birch, who has died aged 71, was a record producer and engineer who perhaps did more than any single individual to spread the “gospel” of heavy metal around the world.

Birch helped to define the sound of the likes of Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, and particularly Iron Maiden, who commandeered him to work almost exclusively with them on 10 albums between 1981 and 1992, when he retired. “Martin was like a guru to me, and everyone in Maiden at the time,” the band’s then singer Bruce Dickinson recalled. “The whole thing was just a lads’ night out. We had a bloody great time.”

Martin Birch was born at Woking on December 27 1948, and made his entry into the music business in 1969 as an engineer on the third Fleetwood Mac album Then Play On, the last to feature the band’s founder, guitarist Peter Green, and on Jeff Beck’s Beck-Ola (with Rod Stewart singing and Ronnie Wood on bass).

That same year he engineered Concerto for Group and Orchestra by Deep Purple with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Malcolm Arnold.

The band convinced their label to let them self-produce their follow-up: Deep Purple in Rock. They benefited from Birch’s steady hand on the wheel and his willingness to buck prevailing trends, as the band’s singer Ian Gillan recalled:

“He didn’t ‘close down’ the studio and baffle everything up and reduce it to zero and then rebuild it on the desk, which was the received knowledge at the time. What he did was listen to how a drum kit sounded in a room and then try and reproduce the sound. This was revolutionary thinking, believe it or not..”

The song Hard Lovin’ Man was dedicated to the producer – “For Martin Birch – catalyst” – and he went on to engineer a string of hit albums for the band, capturing the raw energy of their gigs. When the guitarist Ritchie Blackmore cut loose to form Rainbow, he turned to Birch, who produced and engineered four albums for him between 1975 and 1978.

By the end of the decade Birch had amassed a welter of heavyweight credits for acts including Whitesnake, Wishbone Ash, Wayne County & the Electric Chairs, the Groundhogs and the Faces, as well as the collaboration between Canned Heat and John Lee Hooker, Hooker ’n Heat.

So when Iron Maiden were unhappy with the production of their self-titled debut album they recruited Birch for the 1980 follow-up, Killers, on which he helped them develop a more expansive sound.

Birch developed a close working relationship with Iron Maiden’s leader, bassist and principal songwriter Steve Harris, and was crucial in helping the newly recruited singer Bruce Dickinson to integrate. A succession of hit albums followed, and Birch came to be considered almost as an extension of the band in the manner of George Martin and the Beatles. After 1984 he worked exclusively with Maiden.

He threw in his lot with the band partly out of admiration for their work ethic, their sense of “us against the world” and their refreshing lack of ego.

“They are not into the star system and remain very accessible,” Birch said in 1983. “They listen to you and they are not convinced right away that they are right. This is why I think that this is my favourite band to work with.”

His studio discipline – he was a black belt in karate – earned him the nickname “The Headmaster”, and the affection with which he was regarded by all his charges could be seen in other liner-notes epithets, such as Basher, Big Ears, Court Jester, The Wasp, Mummy’s Curse, Pool Bully, The Bishop, The Juggler, The Ninja, Phantom of the Jolly Cricketers and Disappearing Armchair.

In 1992, after engineering, producing and mixing Iron Maiden’s 11th album, Fear of the Dark, Martin Birch retired into obscurity, still in his forties, his heavy metal legacy intact.

Martin Birch, born December 27 1948, died August 9 2020