Paul McCartney Wanted to Perform a Beatles Guitar Solo Like Jimi Hendrix
The Beatles were excellent musicians, but none of them had the guitar skills of Jimi Hendrix. The “Purple Haze” singer became known worldwide for his unprecedented guitar playing, and it caught the attention of The Beatles. Paul McCartney loved the sound Jimi Hendrix could create and wanted to bring it to a Beatles song written by George Harrison.
‘Taxman’ was George Harrison’s most political Beatles song
George Harrison and The Beatles mainly remained apolitical with their music. However, Harrison felt he had to speak out after seeing how much of his earnings were being taken out due to taxes. The singer was usually given one or two songs per album, and he took the opportunity to speak up on Revolver.
“I had discovered I was paying a huge amount of money to the taxman,” Harrison said in Anthology. “You are so happy that you’ve finally started earning money – and then you find out about tax. In those days we paid 19 shillings and sixpence out of every pound, and with supertax and surtax and tax-tax it was ridiculous – a heavy penalty to pay for making money. That was a big turn-off for Britain. Anybody who ever made any money moved to America or somewhere else.”
Paul McCartney wanted his guitar solo on ‘Taxman’ to sound like Jimi Hendrix
Even though Jimi Hendrix was born in America, he first achieved fame in the U.K. with three top-ten hits in the mid-1960s. Paul McCartney heard the guitar prodigy and was fascinated by his ability. McCartney rarely had the chance to play guitar since he mainly played bass, but he was given a guitar solo on “Taxman”. In a 2005 interview with Rolling Stone, McCartney said he wanted to emulate Hendrix’s style.
“George let me have a go for the solo because I had an idea – it was the early Jimi Hendrix days and I was trying to persuade George to do something like that, feedback-y and crazy,” McCartney said. “And I was showing him what I wanted, and he said, ‘Well, you do it.’”
In a 1987 Guitar Player interview, Harrison said he approved of McCartney’s guitar solo and thought he added a “little Indian bit” on it.
Paul McCartney was amazed when Jimi Hendrix performed a Beatles song
Paul McCartney saw Jimi Hendrix live when he performed at the Savile Theatre in London. During his performance, Hendrix performed a cover of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, just three days after the album debuted. In an interview with Stephen Colbert, McCartney called it the “ultimate compliment” and was impressed Hendrix learned it so quickly.
“Jimi opened, the curtains flew back and he came walking forward, playing ‘Sgt. Pepper’, and it had only been released on the Thursday so that was like the ultimate compliment,” McCartney said. “It’s still obviously a shining memory for me because I admired him so much anyway, he was so accomplished. To think that that album had meant so much to him as to actually do it by the Sunday night, three days after the release.”
