One evening in 1969, as the Beatles were working on a scorching new John Lennon rocker called "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" for their next album, an engineer popped his head into their London recording studio to deliver a warning.
"One of the guys says, 'There 've been some complaints from outside and we need to turn down a bit,'" producer Giles Martin said, recounting a favorite moment from the original session tapes he's immersed himself in while assembling the 50th-anniversary remix of "Abbey Road."
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"The guitars were pretty loud, and there probably was some sound leakage. It's very late at night, and you hear John say, 'Is it OK if we do one more and then we'll turn down?'" Martin, 49, said between bites of a club sandwich on a recent visit to Capitol Studio B in Hollywood, unable to suppress a smile at the thought of anyone ordering the world's biggest rock band to pipe down. As Lennon tells his mates on the session tape, "Last chance to be loud!"
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As with the two previous projects, Martin has gone back to the original analog eight-track master tapes, keeping contemporary ears and audio equipment in mind for this remix of the final album recorded by Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr before they formally called it quits in 1970.
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McCartney and Starr, whose bass and drum parts are generally the biggest beneficiaries of the remixes, have been enthusiastic about the updates. (Each Beatles reissue also is subject to the approval of Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, and Harrison's widow, Olivia Harrison, before they are released.)
