Geoff Emerick, the audio engineer who manned the controls for classic The Beatles albums like Revolver (1966), Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) and Abbey Road (1969), passed away yesterday, Tuesday, October 2nd, at the age of 72 after suffering a heart attack.

In a video posted to Geoff Emerick’s YouTube page on Tuesday evening, his manager, William Zabaleta, explained the situation surrounding the decorated recording engineer’s death. As he explains in the video,

Today, at around 2’o’clock, I was making my way back from Arizona to Los Angeles to go pick up Geoff so we could transport some gold records and platinum plaques to our show in Tucson. While on the phone with Geoff Emerick, he had complications, dropped the phone. At that point, I called 911, but by the time they got there, it was too late. So Geoff suffered from heart problems for a long time. He had a pacemaker and when it’s your time, it’s your time. We lost a legend and a best friend to me and a mentor. That’s all I can say on the matter.

Hear Zabaleta’s account below:

Geoff Emerick’s Manager Speaks About His Death

[Video: Geoff Emerick]

As Dr. Kenneth Womack, the biographer for legendary Beatles producer and Emerick mentor George Martin told Rolling Stone in the wake of the engineer’s death,

Geoff Emerick was a groundbreaking engineer, particularly in terms of his eagerness to try anything and everything to meet his artists’ expectations. He famously captured John Lennon sounding like the Dalai Lama on a mountaintop for Revolver‘s “Tomorrow Never Knows,” later bringing the Beatles’ career to a close in fine style on Abbey Road. Like his mentor, producer George Martin, Emerick was always laser-focused on getting the best out of the track that his artists presented. Working at that granular level, he proved himself to be the greatest engineer of his generation.

As Billboard notes, Emerick began his innovative career behind the boards at the age of 15 at the now-iconic Abbey Road Studios, then known as EMI Recording Studios. He served as an assistant engineer on early Beatles records like “A Hard Day’s Night”, “She Loves You”, and “I Want To Hold Your Hand” and went on to be the band’s primary engineer for before the age of 19, lending an integral hand to later Beatles albums like Revolver, Sgt. Pepper, and Abbey Road, in addition to contributing to Magical Mystery Tour, and The White Album. Emerick also engineered Paul McCartney and Wings‘s hit album Band on the Run (1973).

Geoff Emerick earned four Grammy Awards over the course of his career—three for “Best Engineered Album” (Sgt. Pepper, Abbey Road, Band on the Run) and one technical award in 2003 for “pushing the boundaries of studio recording techniques of creativity and imagination.” Later in life, Emerick went on to work on recordings with Elvis Costello, Michael Jackson, Cheap Trick, Stevie Wonder, and many more.

As we honor Geoff Emerick today, listen to one of the most groundbreaking recordings with The Beatles, Revolver‘s “Tomorrow Never Knows”, below:

The Beatles – “Tomorrow Never Knows”

[Video: The Beatles]

[H/T Billboard]