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.”
“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!”
Martin’s remix of “Abbey Road” is set for release on Sept. 27, a day after the 50th anniversary of the album’s U.K. release and four days ahead of the date it arrived stateside. It’s the latest in a series of sonic upgrades and musicological explorations of the Fab Four’s work, which began in earnest with the 2017 royal treatment afforded “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”