The Beatles - Revolver POLL

George loves his dough

don't republicans/libertarians like that song?

Is it true they were liable for a 95% tax bill? "1 for you, 19 for me".

my friend said the other day that yellow submarine should have been kept off revolver. is he right? i don't think so

No he's not right.

Light and shade.

yeah I think the tax level was pretty crazy for them (and other big bands, like the stones and their bankruptcy that made them leave for the south of france).
and the fact that they were quite ignorant (and often not well managed) in tax matters certainly didn't help !

Post war tax rates were in the 90's for the rich in both the US and UK. People forget they were still in the 70's until Reagan came out and knocked them all the way down into the 20's at one point. How else do you think the US built all those damn freeways, nukes and rockets with minimal national debt?!

George loves his dough

The taxman's taken all of it and left him in his stately home.

all you need is love, but i myself am a different story

also classic moptops: "don't ask me what i want it for" on an album that later name-checks the national health

It's almost as if he is human and can hold multiple points of view at once.

it's almost as if i'm human and will mention it

tou che

But still, the "George is greedy" line is BS unless you consider it completely fine and fair to have to pay a 90% tax rate.

If he was actually paying that, which I doubt. Greedy, tight-fisted, if the cap fits...

completely fine and fair to have to pay a 90% tax rate.

given that everybody in that tax bracket was still absolutely filthy rich I kind of do

while George is my favorite Beatle, I can't dig the sentiment of "Taxman" at all. Paul makes the song imo.

In any case, George is whining about the tax rate being 95%!

as octobeard points out a 90s tax rate for people as rich as the beatles seemed perfectly natural before we got all this extra freedom

it's true that kids with guitars didn't have the best heads for paperwork, or for eluding predators, and okay i don't know what george's personal finances were like in 1966. suspect he was doing okay but even if he wasn't i'll be damned if i let that keep me from the pleasure of speaking uncharitably of the beatles

Those are marginal rates anyway, right? I mean somehow poor George managed buying that mansion, etc.

George grew up working class and he earned all those millions so I give him a pass. It's not like he's griping about inheritance taxes or offshore accounts or something, this is money he made through blood sweat and tears.

Blood, Sweat & Tears didn't form until 1967 though, and my understanding is that George cooked the books to make them appear a write-off. Market fluctuations destroyed the value of his holdings in any case, a fact the band mockingly pointed out in their own lyrics once they'd ousted George and regained majority control.

Those are marginal rates anyway, right? I mean somehow poor George managed buying that mansion, etc.

yes and yes. so he wouldn't have to pay 90 percent of everything. just 90 percent of what he made over a certain amount. and i'm guessing he made a lot over that certain amount.

but the important thing is, it's a great song. i disagree with the specific politics of it, but i do not disagree with the presentation, and i especially don't agree with that bass line.

i mean i don't DISagree with that bass line!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o60XmAvwHSY

Love how he goes against the beat for the middle-8 following that 2nd chorus. SO GOOD.

my head is filled with things to saaaaayy

often "I Want to Tell You" is my favorite Beatle George song. I love the offhand discordance.

I've never quite understood the whole "living outside of the UK for a year to avoid paying taxes" thing.

Isn't the NHS reference on the White album?

Remind me what it is?

i was thinking of doctor robert--"my friend works for the national health"--but there might be a ref on the white album, idk. (savoy truffle? nah.)

That's just word play from Lennon.

obviously you have never read the song's unrecorded, surrealistic verses about queuing

everybody otm about the taxman bass obv, paul bass in general is pretty constantly :O

And didn't he play the gtr solo too?

wiki says yes: "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."

Taxman's just a lousy song anyway.

on his tour of Japan in 1991 with Eric Clapton, "Taxman" was on the set list. "It's a song that goes regardless if it's the sixties, seventies, eighties or nineties," Harrison declared. "There's always a taxman." Harrison added more lyrics on that tour, such as "If you're overweight, I'll tax your fat."

oh, I think its national trust on Happiness.

Carry on..

often "I Want to Tell You" is my favorite Beatle George song. I love the offhand discordance.

OTM, I get this song stuck in my head all the time.

It's of a piece with "If I Needed Someone" in my head, both great tunes.

I've never quite understood the whole "living outside of the UK for a year to avoid paying taxes" thing.

― pplains, jeudi 30 avril 2015 04:25 (10 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the stones were in quite a mess !
http://thehistoryofrockmusic.com/1971/04/05/the-rolling-stones-become-tax-exiles/

also : "At the time the tax rate in the UK for higher earners was astronomical. Remember the lyric from The Beatles’ “Tax Man” of “One for you, nineteen for me”? Well the truth was not far from this, the rate was 83% for earned income and 98% for un-earned income!"

I do like Taxman on pure musical terms, for all the reasons that people mention, but it is still a bit weird to press play on Revolver, the soundtrack to a generation, the birth of psychedelia, the best album ever, or whatever the press calls it, and the first lyrics are about how much it sucks to pay taxes...

yeah, same here. It's a batman (or spiderman ?) song with a great bass (and guitar solo) but it's kinda meh for beatles standards, not even talking about Revolver in particular.
they should have put Rain instead ! (I know they didn't put the singles on the albums at the time but still...).

Cool that they start it off with a George song. Hell, Grant Hart never even had that designation.

See also Abbey Road (original cassette)

Cassette listing not canon, but I hear ya.

Love how Paul and the band would play the title below after Dave did a Top 10 OJ list.

http://i.imgur.com/UZ7vUPx.jpg

The thing is it's such a badass recording that all is forgiven... but yeah, wd have been just as killer as a B-side and wow... ''Rain'' as album opener... hard to get used to but could be awesome. Meanwhile the single starts to look a bit wacky, one side mocks hack writersand the other complains about taxes.... ''we're taking barbershop into strange, new places.''

I wonder if some of this album's rep is BECAUSE it has few familiar names for the non-fan. I remember it getting totally brushed over in the Anthology shows, and then when I bought it, my mom struggling to recognize song titles besides YS and GTGYIML. It's like this vault of cool album tracks that becomes greater than the sum of its parts. And the playing and mixing is hot as shit, IMO they never sounded better as a band. They could have done three more albums in the style of Paperback Writer/Taxman and I'd be thrilled, even if it was just, like, re-recordings of their past records or covers of contemporary hits. Instead it's just a couple of cuts on Pepper's as they otherwise ditch the four-piece band format more than ever before. I guess they'd done as much as they could with it, and were in the process of being outflanked on the things beyond their capabilities (that is, Daytripper isn't quite Satisfaction, Ringo is never hoing to be Keith Moon etc.).