Taxman

George wrote that and I played guitar on it. He wrote it in anger at finding out what the taxman did. He had never known before then what could happen to your money.

Paul McCartney – Interview with Playboy Magazine, 1984

From Wikipedia:

“Taxman” is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1966 album Revolver. Written by the group’s lead guitarist, George Harrison, with some lyrical assistance from John Lennon, it protests against the higher level of progressive tax imposed in the United Kingdom by the Labour government of Harold Wilson, which saw the Beatles paying over 90 per cent of their earnings to the Treasury. The song was selected as the album’s opening track and contributed to Harrison’s emergence as a songwriter beside the dominant Lennon–McCartney partnership. It was the group’s first topical song and the first political statement they had made in their music.

The Beatles began recording “Taxman” in April 1966, a month after Wilson’s landslide win in the 1966 general election. Coinciding with the song’s creation, Harrison learned that the band members’ tax obligations were likely to lead to their bankruptcy, and he was outspoken in his opposition to the government using their income to help fund the manufacture of military weapons. Drawing on 1960s soul/R&B musical influences, the song portrays the taxman as relentless in his pursuit of revenue and name-checks Wilson and Ted Heath, the leader of the Conservative Party. The recording includes an Indian-influenced guitar solo performed by Paul McCartney.

“Taxman” was influential in the development of British psychedelia and mod-style pop, and has been recognised as a precursor to punk rock. The Jam borrowed heavily from the song for their 1980 hit single “Start!” When performing “Taxman” on tour in the early 1990s, Harrison adapted the lyrics to reference contemporaneous leaders, citing its enduring quality beyond the 1960s. The song’s impact has extended to the tax industry and into political discourse on taxation.

Background and inspiration

George Harrison wrote “Taxman” at a time when the Beatles discovered they were in a financially precarious position. In April 1966, a report from the London accountancy firm Bryce, Hammer, Isherwood & Co. advised them that despite the group’s immense success, “Two of you are close to being bankrupt, and the other two could soon be.” In his 1980 autobiography, I, Me, Mine, Harrison says: “‘Taxman’ was when I first realised that even though we had started earning money, we were actually giving most of it away in taxes; it was and still is typical.” As their earnings placed them in the top tax bracket in the United Kingdom, the Beatles were liable to a 95% supertax introduced by Harold Wilson’s Labour government; hence the lyric “There’s one for you, nineteen for me”.

John Lennon helped Harrison complete the song’s lyrics. Lennon recalled in 1980: “I threw in a few one-liners to help the song along, because that’s what he asked for. He came to me because he couldn’t go to Paul [McCartney], because Paul wouldn’t have helped him at that period.” Lennon said he was reluctant to agree to Harrison’s request, since it was “enough to do my own and Paul’s [songs]”, but he did so “because I loved him and didn’t want to hurt his feelings”.

Aside from the financial imposition, “Taxman” was informed by Harrison’s consternation that the vast sums the Beatles paid in tax were being used to fund the manufacture of military weapons. Harrison voiced this concern in his “How a Beatle Lives” interview with Maureen Cleave of the Evening Standard, in late February, in addition to railing against all forms of authority and speaking out against the Vietnam War. He likened Wilson to the Robin Hood character the Sheriff of Nottingham.

The song includes references to “Mr Wilson” and “Mr Heath”, the latter being Ted Heath, the leader of the Conservative Party. In June 1965, during his first term as prime minister, Wilson had nominated the four Beatles as Members of the Order of the British Empire (MBEs). An unprecedented award for pop musicians, the MBEs recognised the group’s sizeable contribution to the national economy, as their international breakthrough in 1964 created an export market for British pop for the first time. The band’s international success also benefited the country’s tourism and fashion industries, and entertainment generally; the surge in exports revenue extended to film and other commercial artistic pursuits, and by early 1966, recognition of London as the “Swinging City” of international culture. According to author Ian MacDonald in his discussion of “Taxman”, the substantial tax the Beatles paid to Britain’s Treasury was the “price” they paid for their MBEs.

Recording

The Beatles had hoped to record their Revolver album in a more modern facility than EMI’s London studios at Abbey Road and were especially impressed with the sound on records created at Stax Studio in Memphis. Brian Epstein, the band’s manager, investigated the possibility of recording at Stax, but the idea was abandoned after locals began descending on the Stax building, as were alternative plans to use either Atlantic Studios in New York or Motown’s Hitsville USA facility in Detroit. McCartney later said that only “Taxman” and his own soul-inspired “Got to Get You into My Life” might have sounded better recorded in an American studio, but otherwise, the Beatles “found a new British sound almost by accident” on Revolver.

The Beatles began recording “Taxman” on 20 April, but the results were left unused. Ten new takes were taped on 21 April, the four tracks being filled with Ringo Starr’s drums and McCartney’s bass and Harrison’s distorted rhythm guitar, followed by overdubs of McCartney’s lead guitar, Harrison’s lead vocal, and Lennon and McCartney’s backing vocals. Beatles biographer Robert Rodriguez writes that although EMI engineer Geoff Emerick provided a withering account of Harrison’s initial efforts to work out a solo, this was more reflective of Emerick’s personality and is not borne out in McCartney and Harrison’s recollections. McCartney said that he was discussing his idea for the solo with Harrison, and Harrison invited him to play it on the recording. Harrison said he was happy to have the song recorded for Revolver and was not fussed about who played the guitar solo. He added: “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.”

The chanted names of Wilson and Heath replaced two rapidly sung refrains of “Anybody got a bit of money?” heard in take 11 of the song. The intro – a spoken “One, two, three, four” – was added during an overdubbing and mixing session on 16 May. The song’s ending was created on 21 June. This consisted of the section containing the guitar solo being spliced onto the end of the recording, replacing a formal ending after Harrison’s final vocal line, and continuing into a fadeout.

Composition

The song is in the key of D major and in 4/4 time. The recording begins before the actual song with coughing and counting (pointedly cut short, as the real count being heard in the background). The counting is delivered by Harrison in a “grim, miserly voice”, according to Beatles biographer Jonathan Gould, and contrasts with a traditional count-in before a live performance. Gould sees “subtle self-mockery” in this gesture, since it reflects how in the space of three years, the Beatles’ focus had moved “from the dance floor to the counting house”. Author Steve Turner describes “Taxman” as a “smart little pop art song” due to the references to Wilson and Heath and its drawing musical inspiration from Neil Hefti’s “Batman Theme”, from the 1966 television series Batman.

The chords stress the flat VII scale degree (C-natural in the key of D major) and frequently involve a major/minor I chord (D/Dm) in the harmony, which consequently evokes either Mixolydian or Dorian modes. There is one flat-III (F chord) near the end, but unusually no V (A) chord. According to musicologist Dominic Pedler, the composition is also notable for its use of both a 5th-string voicing of the dominant seventh sharp ninth chord to embellish the tonic D7 chord at the end of each two-line verse (at 0:12 and 0:19 secs), and a 6th-string form to create a complementary “jarring dissonance” with the lyrics in the subdominant (IV) G chord (to a G7♯9) at 1:29 (after the solo) on “‘Cause I’m the taxman, yeah – I’m the taxman“. Gould sees the band’s exclamation of the word “Taxman!” before the solo as accentuating the comic comparison between the tax collector as a “civil servant superhero” and the DC Comics character Batman.

McCartney’s bass line has been considered to imitate Motown bassist James Jamerson in its active lines and glissandi (at 0:55–1:08). In the third verse McCartney doubles his own pentatonic bass line while outlining the jarring Iflat7 chord in octaves (at 1:32–1:44).

Rolling Stone has described the completed track as “skeleton funk – Harrison’s choppy fuzz-toned guitar chords moving against an R&B dance beat”, with McCartney contributing a “screeching-raga guitar solo”. The solo uses what musicologist Alan Pollack describes as “fast triplets, exotic modal touches, and a melodic shape which traverses several octaves and ends with a breathtaking upward flourish”. Walter Everett considers that the solo is in the same Dorian mode that Harrison had recently adapted for his sitar part in “Love You To“.

MacDonald writes that “Taxman” suggests the rhythmic influence of contemporaneous hit singles by James Brown, Lee Dorsey and the Spencer Davis Group, while music journalist Rob Chapman views Harrison’s guitar riff as similarly American R&B-derived, citing also the Stax Records band Booker T. & the M.G.’s. According to MacDonald, McCartney’s solo “goes far beyond anything in the Indian style Harrison had done on guitar, the probable inspiration being Jeff Beck’s ground-breaking solo on the Yardbirds’ ‘Shapes of Things'”. McCartney recalled that he approached the part wanting to add something “feedback-y and crazy” and likened its style and attitude to early-period Jimi Hendrix.

Release

EMI’s Parlophone label released Revolver on 5 August 1966, with “Taxman” sequenced as the opening track, before “Eleanor Rigby“. According to Beatles biographer Nicholas Schaffner, having an unprecedented three compositions on a Beatles album – “Taxman”, the fully Indian-styled “Love You To”, and “I Want to Tell You” – established Harrison as a third “prolific” songwriter within the band. Music critic Tim Riley states that in Harrison’s off-tempo delivery and sneer, the spoken count-in on “Taxman” announced the “new studio aesthetic of Revolver“. He views this as a contrast with the shouted “One, two, three, four!” that introduced the band’s “live sound” on “I Saw Her Standing There” in 1963, at the start of their debut album, Please Please Me.

“Taxman” was the Beatles’ first topical song and the first political statement they had made in their music. Music historian David Simonelli, in his book Working Class Heroes, groups it with “Eleanor Rigby” and the band’s May 1966 single tracks “Paperback Writer” and “Rain” as examples of the Beatles’ “pointed social commentary” that consolidated their “dominance of London’s social scene”. He likens this aspect to the Rolling Stones’ development at this time, whereby a group’s songs “had to comment on the values that marked affluence in Britain”. In a 1968 interview, Lennon referenced “Taxman” as part of the Beatles’ anti-authoritarian outlook; he said it was an “anti-establishment tax song” and that the band still protested against having to pay the government unless it was for a “communal or Communist or real Christian society”. He was taken aback when the Dutch interviewer, Abram de Swaan, criticised the song’s message and insisted that taxes should be high to benefit the whole of society.

The omission of “Taxman”, along with any other Harrison-written track, was one of the main complaints that fans levelled against the Beatles’ 1973 double LP 1962–1966, released three years after the group’s break-up. In 1976, following the expiration of the band’s contract with EMI/Capitol, “Taxman” was included on Capitol’s themed Beatles compilation Rock ‘n’ Roll Music. Later that year, Capitol – ignoring Harrison’s wishes that none of his Beatles-era songs appear – also included it on The Best of George Harrison.

When Harrison published his autobiography in 1980, Lennon was deeply hurt by the minimal coverage afforded him in the book. Responding to this in a 1987 interview, Harrison said: “He was annoyed ‘cos I didn’t say he’d written one line of the song ‘Taxman’. But I also didn’t say how I wrote two lines of ‘Come Together‘ or three lines of ‘Eleanor Rigby’, you know – I wasn’t getting into any of that.”

Critical reception

Writing in The Village Voice, Richard Goldstein described Revolver as “revolutionary” and the Beatles’ “great leap forward”, and highlighted “Taxman” as “the album’s example of political cheek, in which George enumerates Britain’s current economic woes”. He added that by naming both Wilson and Heath as “the villains”, the Beatles “lay it right on the non-partisan line”. In their joint album review in Record Mirror, Richard Green characterised the track as “Big beat rock ‘n’ roll”, adding, “I liked it. Good idea”, while Peter Jones found it “[a] bit repetitive” but “Loved the wild, strident guitar mid-way”. KRLA Beat‘s reviewer said it was “One of the best and most commercial George Harrison compositions for some time”, adding: “It is also one of the best, most concise satirical comments on British society and the current tax situation (not to mention our own!) to come along from anyone for some time.” Paul Williams of Crawdaddy! found it succeeded as a humorous song unlike “Yellow Submarine” but that the Indian-style instrumental break was “out of place” unlike on “Love You To”. He said that lines such as “Ha-ha, Mr Wilson” were “delightful” and dubbed the song “Batman goes protest”.

Ian MacDonald writes that, while Harrison was “rightly praised” for his composition, “Taxman” benefited from the whole group’s creativity. He highlights McCartney’s bass part as “remarkable” and his guitar solo as “outstanding”. Alex Petridis of The Guardian considers it “faintly mind-boggling” that the Beatles departed from their usual approach to album tracks by issuing “Yellow Submarine” as a single from Revolver, saying that “Taxman” was one of the songs that would have been more worthy.

“Taxman” was ranked 48th in Mojo‘s list of “The 101 Greatest Beatles Songs”, compiled in 2006 by a panel of critics and musicians. In his commentary for the magazine, singer Joe Brown cited the track as a “brilliant example” of how, just as Harrison’s guitar playing was often crucial in Lennon and McCartney’s compositions, he was never selfish in his musicianship but was instead motivated to “get the best for the song” each time. Brown added: “everyone [is] chipping in with guitar parts and harmonies … There’s no fat at all on it. And, [it’s] very funny.” On a similar list compiled by Rolling Stone in 2010, the song appeared at number 55, where the editors described it as “a crucial link between the guitar-driven clang of the Beatles’ 1963–65 sound and the emerging splendor of the group’s experiments in psychedelia”. In 2018, the music staff of Time Out London ranked “Taxman” at number seven on their list of the best Beatles songs.

In 2015, the editors of Guitar World ranked “Taxman” at number three in their list of “The Beatles’ 50 Greatest Guitar Moments”. They praised the solo as “a stunningly sophisticated creation, drawn from an Indian-derived Dorian mode and featuring descending pull-offs that recall Jeff Beck’s work on the Yardbirds’ ‘Shapes of Things'” and said that while McCartney had played lead guitar on some previous Beatles tracks, “Taxman” was when he “[came] into his own as a guitarist”. In 2001, when VH1 chose Revolver as its all-time greatest rock ‘n’ roll album, “Taxman” was among the four tracks, along with “Eleanor Rigby”, “Tomorrow Never Knows” and “Yellow Submarine”, cited by Bill Flanagan to support the contention that “If pop music were destroyed tomorrow, we could re-create it from this album alone.”

Legacy

In his book Psychedelia and Other Colours, Rob Chapman highlights “Taxman” as an example of the Beatles’ widespread influence on rock music’s developments during the 1960s. He says that Harrison’s guitar riff “runs like an unbroken thread through the development of English psychedelia” and is also present “as a trace element in many a mod-pop mutation”. Writing in Rolling Stone‘s Harrison commemorative book, in January 2002, Mikal Gilmore recognised his incorporation of dissonance in the melody to “Taxman” and “I Want to Tell You” as having been “revolutionary in popular music” in 1966. Gilmore considered this quality to be “perhaps more originally creative” than the avant-garde styling that Lennon and McCartney took from Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luciano Berio, Edgar Varese and Igor Stravinsky and brought to the Beatles’ work over the same period. Revolver has been recognised as having inspired new subgenres of music, anticipating punk rock in the case of “Taxman”.

During the 1996 US presidential election, publicity for Republican candidate Bob Dole stated that he would be using a tape of “Taxman” in his campaign rallies. This was in response to his Democratic opponent, Bill Clinton, adopting a personal anecdote from his past as a student in England, detailing how he defended Starr in a Liverpool pub brawl, as part of his campaign rhetoric. In early 2002, according to musicologist Russell Reising, “one of the largest [tax] preparation companies in the United States” used a version of “Taxman” in their television commercials. In 2006, Virginia State Senator and future Republican gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli introduced an amendment to make “Taxman” the state song of Virginia, stating that taxes were an important part of Virginia history. He gave the example of Patrick Henry’s strong opposition to British taxation during the American Revolution. The measure did not pass.

Quartz reporter Aamna Mohdin describes “Taxman” as “the mother of all tax protest songs” amid a wealth of creative works that convey “the misery of taxes”. A 2019 article in Tax Journal stated that the Beatles’ legacy endures in the “world of tax” through the song, which had become the “karaoke favourite” of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, and through “the ‘Beatles clause’ – a targeted anti-avoidance rule aimed at preventing entertainers from converting highly taxed income to lower-tax capital receipts”. While debating the merits of reintroducing supertax in the UK, the writers warned against a return to the level imposed by Wilson, which they said, in support of Harrison’s contention, “wasn’t a fair progressive system. It was outright theft.” Cultural commentator Christopher Bray finds “Taxman” highly amusing and describes Harrison as “one of the Sixties’ greatest poets of sybaritic hedonism”. However, he cites the song, along with the Kinks’ “Sunny Afternoon”, as reflective of how the generation that had benefited from the implementation of postwar welfare policies and Keynesian economics in Britain were too quick to take them for granted by 1965, an approach he sees as enabling Margaret Thatcher’s “neo-liberal revolution” of the 1980s. […]

I asked George whether he was more confident in his songwriting.

Naturally. You get more confident as you progress. In the old days, I used to say to myself, ‘I’m sure I can write’, but it was difficult because of John and Paul. Their standard of writing has bettered over the years, so it was very hard for me to come straight to the top — on par with them, instead of building up like they did.

Did you go to John and Paul for advice? I asked.

They gave me an awful lot of encouragement. Their reaction has been very good — if it hadn’t I think I would have crawled away. Now I know what it’s all about, my songs have come more into perspective. All of them are very simple, but simplicity to me may seem very complex to others. I’ve thrown away about thirty songs, they may have been alright if I’d worked on them, but I didn’t think they were strong enough. My main trouble is the lyrics. I can’t seem to write down what I want to say — it doesn’t come over literally, so I compromise, usually far too much I suppose. I find that everything makes a song, not just the melody as so many people seem to think. but the words, the technique — the lot.

George Harrison – From The Beatles Monthly Book, October 1966

Taxman was very George. In business meetings, the solicitors and accountants would be explaining to us how things worked. We were very naive, as you can see by any of our business deals, and George would say, ‘Well, I don’t want to pay tax,’ and they’d say, ‘You’ve got to, like everyone else – and the more you make, the more they take.’ And George would reply, ‘Well, that’s not very fair.’

They said, ‘Look, when you’re dead you’re going to pay taxes.’ – ‘What?’ – ‘Death duties.’ So he came up with that great line: ‘Declare the pennies on your eyes,’ which was George’s righteous indignation at the whole idea of having got here, made all this money and half of it was about to be removed by force.

Paul McCartney – From “The Beatles Anthology” book, 2000

[My old Epiphone electric guitar is] the guitar that I played the opening riff of ‘Paperback Writer’ on, so it’s a lovely guitar. It can be quite varied — sort of horny and hard, like the ‘Taxman’ solo; that was the other thing I used it on. 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. And I was showing him what I wanted, and he said, ‘Well, you do it.’

Paul McCartney – Interview with RollingStone, 2005

I remember the day he (George) called to ask for help on ‘Taxman,’ one of his first songs. I threw in a few one-liners to help the song along because that’s what he asked for. He came to me because he couldn’t go to Paul. Paul wouldn’t have helped him at that period. I didn’t want to do it. I just sort of bit my tongue and said OK. It had been John and Paul for so long, he’d been left out because he hadn’t been a songwriter up until then.

John Lennon – Interview with Playboy, 1980

I was pleased to have Paul play that bit on ‘Taxman.’ If you notice, he did like a little Indian bit on it for me.

George Harrison – Interview with Guitar Player Magazine, 1987

I helped out such a lot in all the arrangements. There were a lot of tracks though where I played bass. Paul played lead guitar on ‘Taxman,’ and he played guitar — a good part — on ‘Drive My Car.’

George Harrison- Interview with Crawdaddy Magazine, February 1977

I think I talked a lot to George about the solo on “Taxman.” He said, “Well, you play it.” I wouldn’t have thought about it or written it… It’d just be like, the track’s so cooking, that if we’re going to have a solo, it should just be ridiculous.

Paul McCartney – From “McCartney 3, 2, 1” docu-series, 2021

There was a bit of tension on that session, though, because George had a great deal of trouble playing the solo – in fact, he couldn’t even do a proper job of it when we slowed the tape down to half speed.

After a couple of hours of watching him struggle, both Paul and George Martin started becoming quite frustrated — this was, after all, a Harrison song and therefore not something anyone was prepared to spend a whole lot of time on. So George Martin went into the studio and, as diplomatically as possible, announced that he wanted Paul to have a go at the solo instead. I could see from the look on Harrison’s face that he didn’t like the idea one bit, but he reluctantly agreed and then proceeded to disappear for a couple of hours. He sometimes did that—had a bit of a sulk on his own, then eventually came back. Whatever private conversations he would have with John or Paul upon his return occurred in the corridor, where none of us could hear. Sometimes Ringo would be part of the conference, but more often he would stay in the studio with Neil and Mal until the storm had blown over. Paul’s solo was stunning in its ferocity — his guitar playing had a fire and energy that his younger bandmate’s rarely matched—and was accomplished in just a take or two. It was so good, in fact, that George Martin had me fly it in again during the song’s fadeout.

Geoff Emerick – From “Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of The Beatles“, 2006

From The Usenet Guide to Beatles Recording Variations:

[a] mono 21 Jun 1966.
UK: Parlophone PMC 7009 Revolver 1966.
US: Capitol T 2576 Revolver 1966.

[b] stereo 21 Jun 1966.
UK: Parlophone PCS 7009 Revolver 1966.
US: Capitol ST 2576 Revolver 1966.
CD: EMI CDP 7 46441 2 Revolver 1987.

[c] stereo 1995.
CD: Apple CDP 8 34448 2 Anthology 2 1996.

Two sections were added later: the slow countdown intro, and the repeat of the same guitar solo at the ending. While Lewisohn calls them edits, they seem to be overdubs from a second tape deck instead, since both overlap original sound– a faster, quieter countdown, and the last word of the lyric. This is similar to the backward vocal overdubs on Rain.

The mono mix [a] is more powerful, with all the instrumental tracks louder. The cowbell, which is not loud in either mix, starts after “5 per cent appear too small” in mono [a] and later, at “I’m the taxman” in the second refrain, in stereo [b]. The guitar is a little louder in the countdown intro in [a].

The Anthology 2 mix [c] is deliberately different. It has the intro edited on (done June 21 on the original mixes), but otherwise shows the state as of April 21, without the cowbell and with a different backing vocal at the “Mr Wilson” and “Mr Heath” lines, with some guitar in the first verse mixed out elsewhere, and with the real ending. The real countdown intro is more easily heard since it and the main instrumental tracks are mixed to the left.

Lyrics

Variations

• A Mono version • From "Revolver (UK Mono)"
• A2009 2009 mono remaster • From "The Beatles in Mono (2009)"
• A2014 2014 mono remaster • From "The Beatles In Mono (Vinyl boxset - 2014)"
• A2022 2022 mono remaster • From "Revolver (Stereo - 2022)"
• B Stereo version • From "Revolver (UK Stereo)"
• B2009 2009 stereo remaster • From "The Beatles • The Original Studio Recordings (2009)"
• C Take 11 • From "Anthology 2"
• C2016 Take 11. 2016 remaster • From "Anthology 2 (2016 remaster)"
• D 2022 stereo mix • From "Revolver (Stereo - 2022)"
• E Take 11 • From "Revolver (Stereo - 2022)"
• F 2022 Dolby Atmos mix • From "Revolver (Dolby Atmos - 2022)"

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Live performances

Paul McCartney has never played this song in concert.

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