#chris salewicz
“With Rubber Soul the clash between John [Lennon] and Paul [McCartney] was becoming obvious. Also, George [Harrison] was having to put up with an awful lot from Paul. We now had the luxury of four-track recording, so George would put his solo on afterwards. But as far as Paul was concerned, George could do no right – Paul was absolutely finicky. So what would happen was that on certain songs Paul himself played the solos. I would wonder what the hell was going on, because George would have done two or three takes, and to me they were really quite okay. But Paul would be saying, ‘No, no, no!’ And he’d start quoting American records, telling him to play exactly as he’d heard on such-and-such song. So we’d go back from the top, and George would really get into it. Then would come Paul’s comment, ‘Okay, the first sixteen bars weren’t bad, but that middle…’ Then Paul would take over and do it himself – he always had a left-handed guitar with him. Subsequently I discovered that George Harrison had been hating Paul’s bloody guts for this, but it didn’t show itself. In fact, I take my hat off to George Harrison that he swallowed what he had to swallow in terms of criticism from Paul.”—
Norman Smith, engineer for The Beatles until the end of 1965
NOTE: I don’t have the source for this quote, so if you know it please let me know. Thank you.
(viaharrisonstories)
Looks like this quote comes from the book Beatlesongs by William J Dowlding.
Thank you! It looks like the author cites Chris Salewicz as well so it might be in his McCartney biography.
