One of the things that made The Beatles so powerful was the multi-talented nature of the group. It wasn’t just that all four could sing, taking it in turns to jump on the mic and take on the frontman role for a song, but they could all write and everyone, barring Ringo, could play several instruments.
Paul McCartney, especially, was a veritable one-man band. When he first auditioned for the group, it was on guitar where he took up his initial post as the rhythm guitarist. In 1961, when the original bassist left, he was shuffled to that position, but already by then, he was one of the singers, taking up a kind of co-lead space, as he was already vital in their songwriting team.
Mostly, he’s known as exactly that: a bassist or a singer. But given that he had the skills, he’d occasionally step into a different spot. He plays drums on a few tracks like ‘Dear Prudence’ and ‘Back in the USSR’. But on ‘Taxman’, he stepped into a brand new role, being the lead guitarist as he took on the solo.
Out of his entire body of work, that one stands out as a highlight, as his favourite shredding moment in his career. When asked to pick his favourite solo from his discography, he said exactly that, adding, “What immediately comes to mind is the ‘Taxman’ solo”.
It feels odd to hear McCartney pick out a Beatles solo as his own highlight, given that it was very much the remit of George Harrison. It was Harrison’s hands that gave the band their finest guitar moments, like the hooking riff off ‘And Your Bird Can Sing’ or the euphoric solo in ‘Let It Be’. But on ‘Taxman’, another one of their guitar highlights, the duty was passed to McCartney for some reason.
When Paul McCartney stole lead guitar on ‘Taxman’
It’s especially odd given that this was a period when the relationship between McCartney and Harrison was not good. The track was written between Harrison and Lennon, as Lennon once explained, “He came to me because he couldn’t go to Paul, because Paul wouldn’t have helped him at that period”.
This was the start of the tricky tension between the two, where Harrison felt that McCartney didn’t listen to him, a battle that would keep rolling on and eventually lead to the former’s exit in the lead-up to the end of the group.
It’s the classic issue. Part of the downfall of the group undeniably came down to the issue of there being too many cooks in the kitchen, and too many cooks who were all evolving at hyperspeed making it a struggle not only for the band to keep up with one another, but to want to keep doing that rather than going off to spread their wings solo.
But then there were moments when it would dissipate, usually when the song came out really well. It makes it pretty hard for Harrison to be annoyed at McCartney or keep up their fight about who was right or who was more musically in charge when the solo came out so undeniably strong. “I was pleased to have him play that bit on ‘Taxman’. If you notice, he did like a little Indian bit on it for me,” Harrison said of the track, putting away their problems for a moment and even seeing McCartney’s effort as a kind of olive branch, promoting peace once more.
