{"id":568881,"date":"2026-05-06T07:54:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T07:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/568881\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T07:54:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T07:54:11","slug":"the-1966-beatles-solo-george-harrison-couldnt-stand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/568881\/","title":{"rendered":"The 1966 Beatles solo George Harrison couldn’t stand"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"George<\/p>\n

Credit: Far Out \/ Alamy<\/p>\n

George Harrison had always felt somewhat disrespected during his time in The Beatles<\/a>, it seemed. <\/p>\n

He would become an excellent songwriter in his own right some time down the line, but throughout much of the Beatles<\/a>\u2018 early years, Harrison had to play second (or even third) fiddle to the prolific songwriting partnership of John Lennon and Paul McCartney.<\/p>\n

By the time the Beatles recorded their final album,\u00a0Get Back, there were evident tensions in the band. Ringo looked bored behind the kit, Lennon was sitting next to Yoko and completely un-arsed about the whole thing, while McCartney had clearly taken the leadership reins. Harrison, meanwhile, was trying to worm his way back into some sort of creative freedom, though this was much to the chagrin of McCartney.<\/p>\n

Yet, at some point prior to that, Harrison himself had been given the opportunity to craft his own songs for consideration amongst the Beatles\u2019 oeuvre. One particular instance of a tussle between Harrison and McCartney came during the writing sessions for the Fab Fours\u2019 seventh studio album, Revolver.<\/p>\n

Harrison had written the excellent \u2018Taxman\u2019 <\/a>as the album\u2019s opening track. It pointed the finger at the HMRC, who Harrison claimed were taking too much money from him through income tax. However, perhaps the pressure was on for Harrison, and it got to him, as he couldn\u2019t quite finish the song.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Credit: Alamy<\/p>\n

At that stage in The Beatles\u2019 career, Harrison was still fighting for creative space within a band dominated by Lennon and McCartney\u2019s partnership. Although his songwriting confidence was growing rapidly, he often lacked the same level of support and authority afforded to the group\u2019s principal writers, making moments like the completion of \u2018Taxman\u2019 particularly sensitive.<\/p>\n

The eventual decision for McCartney to perform the song\u2019s celebrated guitar solo only added to that tension. While the contribution undeniably strengthened the final recording, it also highlighted the imbalance Harrison increasingly felt within the band\u2019s creative hierarchy, foreshadowing frustrations that would continue to grow in the years leading up to The Beatles\u2019 split.<\/p>\n

John Lennon noted: \u201cI remember the day he called to ask for help on \u2018Taxman,\u2019 one of his first songs. I threw in a few one-liners to help the song along because that\u2019s what he asked for. He came to me because he couldn\u2019t go to Paul. Paul wouldn\u2019t have helped him at that period. It had been John and Paul for so long, he\u2019d been left out because he hadn\u2019t been a songwriter up until then.\u201d<\/p>\n

So while Lennon helped out with the odd lyric here and there, it was, despite Lennon\u2019s comments, Paul McCartney who played the biggest hand in finishing \u2018Taxman\u2019. McCartney ended up recording the guitar solo at the suggestion of Brian Epstein, which must have been a great slight to Harrison\u2019s talents. Geoff Emerick, the author of a Beatles\u2019 history book, wrote, \u201cThis was, after all, a Harrison song and therefore not something anyone was prepared to spend a whole lot of time on.\u201d <\/p>\n

Emerick continued: \u201cI could see from the look on Harrison\u2019s face that he didn\u2019t like the idea one bit. [Harrison] proceeded to disappear for a couple of hours.\u201d During this time, McCartney recorded the piece that would appear on the final version of \u2018Taxman\u2019, although it likely resulted in a widening of the rift that would one day put an end to the most influential band of the 20th Century.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE \"\"\/ <\/a> The Far Out Beatles Newsletter<\/p>\n

All the latest stories about The Beatles from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: Far Out \/ Alamy George Harrison had always felt somewhat disrespected during his time in The Beatles,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":568882,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,26940,128,6470,136141,10447,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-568881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-george-harrison","tag-music","tag-paul-mccartney","tag-revolver","tag-the-beatles","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=568881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568881\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/568882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}