Beatles | 'Taxman' Intro from 'Here, There & Everywhere'?

Where did he say that?

 

Source?

 

Beatles Monthly

 

It's George's song, but I always wondered why Paul did the lead solo. Was George not up to it? Did Paul have this great idea he wanted to try out? Maybe George should've argued that he let Paul do a lead solo on "Taxman" to get more of his ideas across Paul's songs in 1968/1969.

 

Perhaps because Paul had the best idea for the solo. Whatever reason it was the right choice as it's a ripping solo.

 

What's the issue number and date? What was the exact comment made?

I'm skeptical because I've never seen this referenced anywhere. Is it something you have at hand or are you relying on memory?

 

ok my thoughts:
real count-in: George (never had any doubt)
fake (slow) count-in: John or Paul (we hear somebody coughing in the background, and to me it's George)

 

The cough: is it a croup one or a dry one?

The world needs to know

 

clearly different

 

heavy smoker cough

 

Dhani Harrison said "That's dad, I'd recognise his cough anywhere".

Paul does the 'real' count in and John dubbed on the low growly one. George did talk about this back in 1966 but it's John anyway; listen to the 'three'. John and Paul may have given George the opening track spot but they made sure their voices were the first voices heard on the album. John crops up throughout Revolver with other out of nowhere vocal interjections- Yellow Submarine, Good Day Sunshine, I'm Only Sleeping. It's a John/Revolver thing.

 

Beatles Monthly has been vindicated

 

The real count in is 100% George. It surprises me that there's any doubt about it.
I created a short snipet. John, Paul, George doing a count in. All three off mic.
One is from Day Tripper session, one from And Your Bird Can Sing, one from Taxman.
I'm sure everybody can assign each Beatle to the count in.

 

No.41 of "Beatles Book Monthly" (December 1966)

 

I absolutely agree. I think it's the best Beatle solo out there.

 

Well, I was skeptical but here it is:


This would seem to resolve the question, though it still sounds like George to me. I guess the one thing I wonder though is whether we know for a fact that the letter replies in Beatles Monthly Book actually came from the Beatles. Is there any chance they were ghostwritten by someone else?

 

Hey, Macca’s solo is a thing of genius, i’n’it?

 

only 100%

 

Even if they were ghost written they were obviously quoting from The Beatles themselves; however, when the answers were bylined, as in the above, it was from tapes made by Tony Barrow for the express purpose of being published in Beatles Book Monthly. It didn't happen very often, generally Johnny Dean (Sean O'Mahoney) would answer, so when we have a named response, it's from the person named.
I continue to find it absolutely fascinating that whenever Paul's contributions are specifically mentioned by one of the others, everyone on this forum immediately agrees - witness George giving Paul credit for lead guitar on Paperback Writer, disputed until very recently unlike Taxman- but whenever John is credited by Paul or George or Ringo we're told it was "a joke" or "that's uncorroborated" or "I don't see how", witness Paul giving John credit for playing the main riff on the recording of Day Tripper, or Paul remembering John having a separate song that became the verses of Yellow Submarine. We've recently seen John's depiction of Because being inspired by Moonlight Sonata as "one of his best jokes" when it's very obviously true, John's run down of who plays what on All You Need is Love as "another of John's insane comments", but they really did play unusual instruments; It's a real head scratcher.

 

Wow, I guess George does the "real" count-in. Always sounded like Paul, but this clip isolates it nicely.

 

I simply cannot picture Paul when I hear this intro! Pretty amazing, and demonstrates how he was able to sound so much like Lennon on many songs with his voice talent.

 

Perhaps there are people who react that way, but I'm certainly not one of them. I'm not interested in depriving John of proper credit ever, and my skepticism here derives entirely from my opinion that the fake count-in sounds very much like George. If someone produced a quotation in which George credited Paul with that count-in, my reaction would be just as skeptical. If this truly is a quotation from George then apparently my ears are wrong in this case.

I have to say though that I've been reading over the letter columns in a bunch of Beatles Book Monthlies that I've downloaded, and the comments attributed to the Beatles in those columns often do not sound like their voices or say things that seem factually questionable. Case in point: in issue 32, John is asked about the noise that appears 39 seconds into the mono mix of Norwegian Wood (it sounds like a cough to me, but the reader asks if it is a sneeze). John is quoted as replying that "We've had lots of letters about this. There is something odd just before the line you mentioned but no one sneezed or anything like that. I think it must be one of the weird noises from George's sitar." It clearly is not a noise from the sitar, and if John had been asked that a lot it seems likely he would be aware of this. And would John refer to the sitar as making "weird noises"?

In that same issue, Paul is quoted as saying the following about the song Help:
"We recorded it okay but later when we had to fit it to the film we couldn't. So there are really two versions of the song, one on record and one on the film track." So he's suggesting there are two versions of the song recorded on separate occasions with some time between them, which is factually inaccurate. There is a different lead vocal on the mono and stereo mixes, but both were recorded the same day and obviously the mono mix appeared in both the film and on record. There's also a column in which John states that Paul plays the piano on Rock and Roll Music, which contradicts Derek Taylor's liner notes which say John, Paul and George Martin all comp on piano.

Several times also the Beatles are "quoted" as saying things that make reference to the contents of that month's issue ("Look at this month's Beatles song and you'll find the answer to your query"). I can't imagine the Beatles sitting there with the proofs on the months' issue, poring over it and making replies based on its contents.

The following doesn't sound much like the voice of Lennon that I've read in so many interviews either ("hee hee"?):


Perhaps I just really want my voice identification of the Taxman count to be correct, but it seems like there's some reason to suspect not all the words credited to the Beatles in this magazine did come directly from their lips.

 

+1

 

No, Paul was indeed completely factually accurate and correct.
Help! was recorded at EMI on 13 April 1965 but they were not happy with the result when they lip-synced the performance scene for the movie on 22 April 1965 at Twickenham film studios and the vocals were re-done on 24 May 1965 at CTS Studios, which has film projection facilities, so clearly the song was re-done for the movie. The full mono version (where the vocals are prominent in the intro) appears in the movie but the version on the single and the mono LP is a combination of a mixdown of the 13 April stereo intro edited onto the rest of the 24 May mono track.
Recording Sessions and Chronicle does not mention any of this but it will be noted in Tune In 2.

As to the other 'quotes' from The Beatles, these are largely the Tony Barrow tapes which he transcribed- no one has suggested they went into the office and read through all the letters and sat at the typewriter to compose answers- they seem reasonably close to how The Beatles spoke to me, and Tony's version of John stage-giggling as an aside may well be 'hee hee', there's nothing uncharacteristic about that. Calling a sound from the sitar a "weird noise" sounds precisely how John would describe it in 1965. Tony was a journalist after all and tidied up The Beatles' words for print. He played some of these at a Beatles event many years ago and while they were very hard to hear, being just a dictation cassette, they were clearly answering questions directly from Tony.