Scott Freiman is a Beatles geek.

But it's OK.

He's highly functioning, he has a day job and he does his best not to haunt old record conventions in search of a "butcher cover" copy of "Yesterday and Today."

In fact, Freiman, like many fellow Beatles geeks, has actually turned his fandom into a job of its own, one he loves and does well.

Friday, he brings "Looking Through a Glass Onion: Deconstructing The Beatles' White Album" to Proctors' GE Theatre in Schenectady.

The event, one of four Fab Four programs in Freiman's ever-expanding quiver, is a multimedia exploration of the influential band's eponymous 1968 album — a tumultuous double LP set recorded at an even more tumultuous time.

"The Beatles,'' commonly known as the "White Album," the band's ninth, showed a group in flux, with selections ranging from the reggae-tinged English music hall leanings of "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" to the sweet majesty of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and from the gentle "Blackbird" to the screeching "Yer Blues."

The band was so divided during the arduous sessions that birthed the album that, in many ways, it represents the beginnings of the members' later solo careers.

Freiman — 49, and too young to have seen the band on "The Ed Sullivan Show" — is a composer, producer and studio engineer/owner. In his talks he focuses on the actual construction of the music, using the band's own outtakes and studio logs to tell a detailed story of how the album came to be.

Q: How did you discover The Beatles?

A: They were my first favorite band. I was a classically trained pianist from age 5 and at one point my uncle gave me some Beatles albums, and that was my first exposure to rock 'n' roll. Even at that young age, though, I was dissecting the music. I was trying to figure out what those strange sounds were, looking at the album art, reading the lyrics and trying to make sense of it all. That kind of focus has stayed with me my whole life.

Q: How did you begin this series of talks about the Beatles?

A: Two and a half years ago, I was listening to some rare "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" tracks. I also got out some of my Beatles reference books and started looking at them together, and I started finding some cool things. I invited some friends over to my living room — other composers and producers and people who were interested in music — and I put together a little show. Literally, within 15 minutes they were asking me when I was going to do it again or telling me they knew someone in the theater and they were going to make a call.

It was originally just meant to be for my friends, but I've since discovered there's a huge audience hungry to know about this stuff, from 5-year-old kids to 80-year-old grandparents.

Q: 1968 was an epic year politically and socially as well as musically. Do you touch on the wider world in "Glass Onion"?

A: I certainly touch on that. I show a little about what else was going in the world in 1968, but most of the focus is really on the music. I do talk about musical influences of the day. One of the big changes with "The White Album" is that everyone in the world had jumped on to psychedelic music, largely because of "Sgt. Pepper" and The Beatles, who always wanted to stay one step ahead of everyone else, and decided that they needed to get back to their roots.

Q: How would The Beatles' legend be different if they had stayed together?

A: That's a great question, and no one really knows. What The Beatles did for each other is that they were great editors for one another. John could say to Paul, "That lyric stinks," and Paul could say to John, "We need to write a bridge for this." George Martin could come in and say, "We really need an arrangement for this." Q: Beatles or Stones?

A: Ah, don't make me pick. If you force me to, Beatles.

Michael Eck is a frequent contributor to the Times Union.