George Harrison : Taxman

This has been on my mind for some time. First off, I absolutely love the song "Taxman." I'm crazy about it. I find myself listening to it over and over again. However, I just have one question regarding it. Why does Paul do the guitar solo in it? George was the lead guitarist, am I right? By rights, HE should have done that, not Paul.

Was Paul a glory-hound or something? Maybe he realized that this was a great song and wanted a piece of the action and deliberately stole that part from George?

Anyone can clarify this for me, please? Thanks!

In the days that "Revolver" was recorded, the Beatles still had a pretty tight schedule. They were obligated to many other activities besides recording and also Abbey Road was a working studio which was typically booked pretty solidly. The Beatles only had a limited amount of time in the studio on any given session. Later they pretty much had unlimited time but not at the time "revolver" was recorded. George Martin had to get The Beatles in and out of the studio in a pretty timely fashion and be as productive as possible during studio time. George Harrison often struggled on guitar. During the recording of "Taxman", The group was in the studio and George was having trouble coming up with a suitable solo for the song. In fact, he spent several hours trying over and over again to come up with a great solo and just wasn't pulling it off. George Martin and the other Beatles were getting tired of waiting for George to get his act together and so Martin finally convinced Harrison to let Paul give the solo a try. Paul went down into the studio and within about ten minutes had laid down the track that we hear twice on the recording today. Harrison wasn't happy at all about it. He was so upset he got up and left the building for several hours. He finally came back but frankly the reason he didn't play the solo on his own song is because he wasn't able to come up with a suitable solo despite having been given several hours to do it.

Spyders

According to Peter Frampton, George told him that Paul played the famous lick on "Paperback Writer". Frampton got the impression that George seemed hurt that Paul did things like that.

Harrison often struggled with the pressure of being a Beatle. He was also the youngest.

Paul was considered the consummate "musician's musician." Often it was Paul who would come in and take charge of the songs when the others were struggling or didn't like how they sounded.

~ I'm a 21st century man and I don't wanna be here.