Saturday, April 4, 2015

"Taxman" - Alternate Edit

The Beatles entered EMI Studio 2 on April 21 1966 in order to record a George Harrision composition entitled "Taxman" which would eventually open their newest LP released four months later. This song had the composer complain about the British tax system - a bit of a political comment which at the time was rare for the Beatles in song form.
There is an alternate edit released on the Apple 3-LP/2 CD "Anthology 2" title which is interesting. It contains an early edit of the song but uses the same take as the released, commercial version on "Revolver". This would be take 11.
The difference between the two has John and Paul singing backing vocals in a high pitched falsetto during one of the later verses with the words "Anybody got a bit of money" rather then mentioning the political British names "Wilson...Heath" on the commercial version. Another difference is the ending of the song whereby it fades out with the guitar solo repeated - actually edited so that the first and second solo are the same - played by Paul. The alternate edit on "Anthology" lets us hear the original thought of having the song end "cold"...i.e. no fade out. There also seems stray guitar notes during the second verse that was not used on the commercial version.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDM4E7xm9Qk



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