Tell Me What You See

Will Paul ever get back to his electric organ?

So ran a bit of hype for the film Help!, with this line running in a trailer for the movie and printed inside the gatefold sleeve on the American version of the soundtrack album.  The silly picture above is of Paul sitting at said organ, which rises out of the floor in the boys' flat in the film.  To this day, Paul still primarily plays only chords on keyboards, as he recently admitted in the series McCartney 3,2,1.  Yet, at times, he has strung together some impressive little runs on piano, as on the openings of You Never Give Me Your Money and Martha My Dear.  And, even early on in the recording career of the Beatles, he began adding some nice little touches on keyboard on a number of different songs.

The electric piano was a new instrument for the Beatles when they began using one at Abbey Road Studios in February of 1965, during the sessions scheduled for recording a batch of songs for the soundtrack of their second feature film.  John had first played the electric piano on February 17th on the tracks The Night Before and You Like Me Too Much.  On the following day, Paul chose to play it for a very specific overdub on his composition Tell Me What You See.

The group first laid down a backing track which featured Paul on bass, Ringo on drums, John on guitar and George providing a bit of percussion with a Latin American guiro.  Only four takes were necessary before arriving at the best, at which point Paul switched to the electric piano to add the nice little syncopated phrase he wanted at the end of each refrain.  He and John also added their joint lead vocals, with Paul double-tracking his own.  Even more percussion completed the overdubs, with Ringo on tambourine and George playing claves.  

Though the song was among those submitted as contenders for the soundtrack of Help!, it was not chosen for that purpose by director Richard Lester.  As a result, it ultimately wound up on the non-soundtrack side of the British album.  American audiences actually got to hear the song a few months earlier on the Capitol compilation album Beatles VI, released in June of 1965.  Watching the film, it is hard to imagine Tell Me What You See replacing any of the songs that were featured in the musical sequences.

This pleasant song has only popped up on one post-career compilation, the 1977 album Love Songs.

Taxman

During the first half of the Beatles' career, it was producer George Martin who decided the running order of songs as they would appear on the group's albums.  For their seventh album, Revolver, the opening song he chose was not penned by the songwriting team of Lennon and McCartney, but rather by the budding composer George Harrison.  Harrison had only begun writing his own songs full-time one year earlier, and had a mere five solo compositions to his credit (six, if we count the unreleased You Know What to Do).  By contrast, John and Paul had probably each written this many songs before they even met.  But no one could deny that Taxman deserved its placement at the top of the band's most progressive album yet.

Harrison had become incensed when he learned how much of the group's income was going to taxes in the UK, and this knowledge inspired him to write a sharp, satiric rocker unlike almost anything else that he would ever produce.  At a session on April 20th, 1966, the Beatles make four attempts at recording the song, then spent a good deal of time discussing how to do it better.

At the next day's session, they began with a fresh take one, and laid down eleven takes before being satisfied with the result.  Only Ringo on drums, Paul on bass and George on rhythm guitar appear on these takes, as John sat out instead of playing on the basic track.  It is interesting to note that the arrangement on the best take came to a full stop at the end instead of fading out, as it does on the finished product.  George overdubbed his lead vocal and then double-tracked it, as Ringo added tambourine.  John and Paul provided strong backing vocals, including a somewhat clunky "anybody got a bit of money" during one verse.

George then spent quite a lot of time attempting to overdub a stinging guitar solo onto the track before it was decided that Paul could do it better.  No doubt this was embarrassing for the song's composer, but George always spoke graciously about Paul's brilliant Indian-flavored guitar burst ever after.  It is not known whether George or Paul played the other lead guitar phrases scattered throughout the verses.  Anthology 2 allows us to hear the song as it stood at this time (with the fake count-in, which had yet to be added).

They returned to the track for a third day in a row on April 22nd, something unprecedented for a Harrisong before this time, so everybody clearly realized how good the song was at this point.  Ringo added a cowbell to the mix, and John and Paul changed their "bit of money" backing vocals to the more pointed "Mister Wilson" and "Mister Heath" references. 

By May 16th, someone had come up with the idea of having a fake count-in to open the album, so it was duly recorded and tacked onto the beginning of the song, with Paul's actual count-in for take eleven heard faintly in the background.  Four mono mixes of the song were made on this date, but they were not used because of one more last-minute addition to the track.  This was the repetition of Paul's guitar solo in a fadeout at the end in place of the full stop.  After this was added on June 21st, the song was finally mixed for both mono and stereo.

In addition to its appearance on Anthology 2, Taxman's only other post-career inclusion was on the 1976 compilation album Rock and Roll Music, where it was a natural fit.  And, as pictured above, the song was one of the many featured on the group's ABC TV Saturday morning cartoon program in the USA.