Taxman
"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 Edward 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
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 per cent 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|Paul , 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 ", 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. 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 time. The recording begins before the actual song with coughing and counting. 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 7 scale degree and frequently involve a major/minor I chord in the harmony, which consequently evokes either Mixolydian or Dorian modes. There is one III near the end, but unusually no V 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, and a 6th-string form to create a complementary "jarring dissonance" with the lyrics in the subdominant G chord at 1:29 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. In the third verse McCartney doubles his own pentatonic bass line while outlining the jarring Iflat7 chord in octaves.
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."