Digging into the Beatles' 50th anniversary 'White Album' box set where it all began: Abbey Road
ST. JOHN'S WOOD, London - A telephone rings in a corner of Giles Martin's private mixing room at Abbey Road Studios, catching the latter-day producer of Beatles recordings by surprise.
"That never rings," he says, reaching over to pick up the receiver. It's his wife, Melanie, calling from their 23-acre farm about 80 miles away with happily urgent news: Eggs laid by one of the ducks they keep - alongside sheep, horses and other farm creatures - were starting to hatch. By the next morning, all seven eggs will yield ducklings.
Martin, 49, is visibly relieved at the farm report, which may well be a good omen for another septuplet delivery he's shepherding into the world: a seven-disc 50th-anniversary box set revisiting the Beatles' 1968 double album "The Beatles," colloquially known as the White Album.
It was, in many ways, the Beatles' most ambitious, most sprawling studio creation and demonstrably the biggest commercial success of the group's fabled career: It has sold more than 19 million copies in the U.S. alone, according to the Recording Industry Assn. of America.
The new edition is due Nov. 9 - 13 days short of the actual 50th anniversary of its release Nov. 22, 1968 - and it follows last year's 50th-anniversary reissue of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." That was the first Beatles album to be fully remixed, not just remastered, for a new generation as well as fans who grew up with the original made at Abbey Road, which the Beatles helped turn into arguably the most famous recording studio in the world.
Following the acclaim generated by the "Sgt. Pepper" update, Martin's attention has turned to the wildly diverse album of 30 tracks, including the classic Beatles songs "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," "Back in the U.S.S.R.," "Dear Prudence," "Birthday," "Helter Skelter," "Cry Baby Cry," "I Will" and "Happiness Is a Warm Gun."
"I thought the White Album would be the easy one," Martin says ruefully.
It's an unexpected statement, perhaps, given how musically, thematically and sonically varied that collection is compared to "Sgt. Pepper." But Martin is in a unique position to make the
