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Lot Essay
George Harrison acquired this 1964 Gibson SG Standard in early 1966 and played it both on stage and in the studio from 1966-1968. He would put the guitar into immediate use on recording sessions for the Beatles 1966 studio album Revolver, including on the tracks ‘Paperback Writer’ and ‘Rain’. The SG would become one of his longest serving studio instruments, used during the sessions for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967 and the White Album in 1968. Harrison is seen playing the SG in the promotional videos for ‘Paperback Writer’, ‘Rain’, and ‘Lady Madonna’ and would carry the guitar on tour to Europe, the US and Japan in 1966. The SG would also be used by John Lennon during the recording of ‘Hey Bulldog in 1968. It’s impossibly rare for such a well-documented and extensively used Beatles guitar to come to auction.
Gibson introduced a new lighter double-cutaway body in 1961 to replace the original heavier single cutaway Les Paul design. This new Standard model would still be known as the Les Paul Standard until 1963, when it was renamed the SG Standard. The SG Standard featured the same powerful Gibson humbucking pickups as the original Les Paul models that were becoming popular among British blues players such as Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck at this time. Harrison knew Clapton and was no doubt impressed by the Les Paul mastery he exhibited with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, perhaps providing the impetus for Harrison to acquire a solidbody SG as the more accessible alternative to the Les Paul. The SG would immediately become a go-to studio guitar for Harrison and would remain a key tool in his studio arsenal through to 1968.
Re-energized after an unprecedented three-month break, the Beatles reconvened at Abbey Road on 6 April 1966 to begin work on what would become their seventh studio album Revolver. After devoting their first week of sessions to the near-completion of the album tracks ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, ‘Got To Get You Into My Life’ and the Indian inspired ‘Love You To’, the band bowed to pressure from EMI to deliver their next single and interrupted their album sessions to lay down the non-album single ‘Paperback Writer’ and its B-side ‘Rain’ on 13 and 14 April 1966.
The Beatles recorded the rhythm track to ‘Paperback Writer’ during an evening session at EMI’s Studio Three on 13 April. Over the years, there has been a lack of consensus among Beatles historians and musicologists as to whether Lennon or Harrison recorded the rhythm guitar part on ‘Paperback Writer’, however Brian Kehew and Kevin Ryan, who had unfettered access to both EMI’s archives and the studio’s ex-employees while researching their comprehensive 2006 reference book Recording the Beatles, report that it was Lennon. When the Beatles regrouped on 14 April to pick up where they had left off the night before on ‘Paperback Writer’, they were joined in Studio Three by Beatles Book photographer Leslie Bryce and his editor Sean O’Mahony, who would print a detailed account of the session in the June 1966 issue of the magazine. As the Beatles were still recording on to four-track machines at this time, the afternoon’s session was devoted to filling the remaining Track 2 with Paul’s bass part and other various overdubbed contributions. O’Mahony described seeing George enter the studio: in strolled George looking very elegant in his Mongolian lamb fur coat with black cap and oblong metal specs. He was obviously top of the world and bubbling over with enthusiasm, ready to record a dozen numbers.
Tape operator Phil McDonald’s scribbled notes from the session show there were several experimental attempts to fill Track 2 of the tape over the course of the afternoon’s session, with each progressive attempt wiped by the one that followed. The final Track 2 recording that completed ‘Paperback Writer’ featured McCartney’s bass, Harrison’s guitar fills, and Lennon and Harrison’s ‘Frère Jacques’ backing vocals. Photographer Leslie Bryce photographed Harrison recording these very lead guitar fills on his Gibson SG, while he and Lennon shared a mic for their backing vocals. Note George’s use of headphones, which seem standard now, but in fact it was during the Revolver sessions that the group pioneered the use of headphones while tracking or overdubbing. Experimentation, whether that be with new instruments, equipment or recording techniques, was an overriding feature of the Revolver sessions as the band continued to push boundaries with their music. Enabled by Emerick and the other innovative engineers at EMI, the Beatles made use of a whole host of pioneering technologies for the first time including artificial double tracking (ADT), varispeed, reverse audio, tape loops, and repeat echo.
The Beatles took an hour’s break after completing overdubs on ‘Paperback Writer’, returning to Studio Three at 8.30pm to begin work on the single’s B-side ‘Rain’, which many have interpreted as the Beatles’ first psychedelic inspired composition. ‘Rain’ was the first song on which the Beatles utilized varispeed to record at non-standard speeds, as engineer Geoff Emerick would later explain to Mark Lewisohn: The Beatles played the rhythm track really fast so that when the tape was played back at normal speed everything would be so much slower, changing the texture. While still recognizable, the drums and guitars would sound deeper and thicker. We got a big, ponderous, thunderous backing, McCartney told Miles, and then we worked on top of that as normal, so that it didn’t sound like a slowed-down thing, it just had a big ominous noise to it. It’s generally acknowledged that the group recorded ‘Rain’ using the same instruments and equipment they had used on ‘Paperback Writer’, with Harrison recording lead guitar on the SG.
The Beatles completed work on ‘Rain’ two days later on 16 April, overdubbing bass, tambourine and additional vocals, which notably included Lennon’s backwards vocals at the coda – one of the first times reverse audio would be used in a Beatles recording. ‘Paperback Writer’ / ‘Rain’ was released in the US on 30 May and in the UK on 10 June 1966, offering fans a glimpse of the band’s new musical direction almost two months before the unveiling of Revolver. Although it was the first Beatles single that failed to debut at number one in the UK charts, ‘Paperback Writer’ took the top spot from Frank Sinatra’s ‘Strangers in the Night’ the following week and topped the Billboard Hot 100 in the US for two non-consecutive weeks. Asked by Disc and Music Echo magazine, whether the Beatles were worried about not hitting the top spot, George Harrison responded: We just know we are making better records. The fact that they sell a lot isn’t enough any more. We’re interested in getting better sounds … There’s nothing more we can do.
On 1 May 1966, the Beatles made what would turn out to be their final scheduled live public appearance in Britain at Wembley’s Empire Pool for the New Musical Express Annual Poll-Winner’s Alll-Star Concert, where the group played a 15-minute set of five songs: ‘I Feel Fine’, ‘Nowhere Man’, ‘Day Tripper’, ‘If I Needed Someone’, and ‘I’m Down’. In one of the guitar’s very few on stage appearances, Harrison played his new Gibson SG through his new Vox 7120 amplifier. For the forthcoming release of their ‘Paperback Writer’/‘Rain’ single, the Beatles engaged director Michael Lindsay-Hogg to film several promotional videos for the songs over a two-day shoot on 19-20 May. Harrison would play his Gibson SG throughout. The first day’s filming took place at EMI Studio One, where they shot color performances of ‘Paperback Writer’ and ‘Rain’ for the US market, to premiere on The Ed Sullivan Show on 5 June 1966, and the same performances in black and white for UK viewers on Thank Your Lucky Stars and Ready, Steady, Go! The following day, the Beatles went on location to Chiswick House in London and shot two more promotional videos on 35mm film. For ‘Paperback Writer’, the group were filmed inside the conservatory and miming to the song in the statue garden. For ‘Rain’ there was more conservatory footage along with shots of the Beatles walking in the grounds. These color videos were first shown in black and white on BBC’s Top of the Pops on 2 and 9 June respectively.
Harrison explained the promotional video concept in The Beatles Anthology in 2000: The idea was that we’d use them in America as well as the UK, because we thought, ‘We can’t go everywhere. We’re stopping touring and we’ll send these films out to promote the record.’ It was too much trouble to go and fight our way through all the screaming hordes of people to mime the latest single on Ready, Steady, Go!. Also, in America, they never saw the footage anyway. Once we actually went on an Ed Sullivan show with just a clip. I think Ed Sullivan came on and said, ‘The Beatles were here, as you know, and they were wonderful boys, but they can’t be here now so they’ve sent us this clip.’ It was great, because really we conned the Sullivan show into promoting our new single by sending in the film clip. These days obviously everybody does that – it’s part of the promotion for a single – so I suppose in a way we invented MTV.
When the Beatles set out on what would become their last ever tour that summer, Harrison would carry the Gibson SG as the spare for his Epiphone Casino. The band first toured West Germany, Japan and the Philippines between 24 June and 4 July 1966. The only documented occasion when the SG was called into use was during the evening show at the Circus Krone-Bau in Munich on 24 June, when Harrison made the switch for what’s believed to have been a performance of ‘Day Tripper’. Beatles photographer Robert Whitaker documented the SG alongside the band’s six other touring guitars at the Nippon Budokan in Tokyo on 1 July 1996. The band then staged their third and final tour of the US from 12 to 29 August, after which they would retire from live performances. Photographer Bob Bonis captured several shots of Harrison backstage with the SG before the Detroit concert on 13 August 1966.
On 11 February 1968, just days before the Beatles were due to fly to India to study transcendental meditation, the band gathered at Abbey Road Studio Three to film a promotional video for ‘Lady Madonna’ with NEMS employee Tony Bramwell. With “Lady Madonna” already completed, recalled engineer Geoff Emerick, the plan was to film the group miming to it, but when they got to the studio, an unusually assertive Lennon had second thoughts. “Oh, the hell with ‘Lady Madonna’” he said. “I’ve got a new song for us to do – let’s film that instead.” Paul was a bit annoyed, but John was like a bulldozer that day, and the decision stuck. The sounds of “Lady Madonna” would therefore accompany footage of the Beatles’ recording the new Lennon song “Hey Bulldog,” and nobody seemed too bothered about that. They knew that most viewers wouldn’t even notice that they were in fact playing a completely different song, and they were right. As seen in the film footage, Harrison used his Gibson SG to record the main riff on ‘Hey Bulldog’. In the film footage, John Lennon is seen playing Harrison’s SG for a period, before handing it back. This has led some to question who actually recorded the solo. Among Beatles writers and musicologists, Everett, MacDonald and Winn write that Lennon performed the song’s guitar solo, while engineer Geoff Emerick recalls that it was Harrison, writing in his 2006 memoir: Harrison ‘s solo was sparkling… one of the few times that he nailed it right away. His amp was turned up really loud, and he used one of his new fuzz boxes, which made his guitar absolutely scream. The promotional video for ‘Lady Madonna’ premiered on BBC’s Top of the Pops on 14 March 1968. In 1999, rediscovered footage from the ‘Lady Madonna’ clip was finally used to make a promo video for ‘Hey Bulldog’.
Surviving film footage also confirms that Harrison used the Gibson SG during the recording of ‘Hey Jude’ at EMI Studio Two on 30 July. The Beatles were joined in the studio by a film crew from the National Music Council who had been granted rare access to record footage for a short documentary on popular music. While the 30 July session has often been classified by Beatles historians as little more than a rehearsal, studio engineer Ken Scott confirmed to Brian Kehew and Kevin Ryan for their extensively researched book Recording The Beatles, that the seventeen takes recorded between 7.30pm and 3.30am that evening, numbered 7 through 23, were true attempts to capture the backing track, the idea being to record the master backing track at EMI and then move to Trident Studios the following day to complete the overdubs on their eight-track machine. The roughly six minutes of footage that was ultimately released as part of the documentary is believed to predominantly show the band working on take 9, indicating that the crew were only present to film the first few takes of the recording session. Footage shot earlier in the session shows that Harrison started out in the studio with his Gibson SG as he and McCartney continued to work out the arrangement.
Although the unreleased footage lacks sound, it appears that the film crew captured the conversation becoming visibly heated as McCartney infamously vetoed Harrison’s idea to play a guitar phrase in response to each line of the vocal. I remember on ‘Hey Jude’ telling George not to play guitar, McCartney told Vic Garbarini of Musician magazine in 1980. He wanted to echo riffs after the vocal phrases, which I didn’t think was appropriate. He didn’t see it like that, and it was a bit of a number for me to have to ‘dare’ to tell George Harrison – who’s one of the greats, I think – not to play. It was like an insult. McCartney elaborated on the incident in a 2018 conversation with Howard Stern, explaining: It didn’t seem like a good idea, and the rule in the Beatles was if it was your song, you were allowed to call it. You were the boss of the song… I mean, I tried to be nice and say, “No, George, I really don't hear it, I don't think that's gonna work.” I think he was a bit miffed. The disagreement would add to Harrison’s increasing frustration with Lennon and McCartney, who he felt weren’t taking his contributions seriously. When the group reassembled at Trident the following afternoon, ready to overdub their basic backing track from the previous evening, the decision was ultimately made to tackle the backing track anew and four fresh takes were recorded straight to Trident’s eight-track, with Harrison reinstated on the SG. Harrison can also be seen with the SG in black and white photographs taken by Tony Bramwell during the recording of vocal overdubs at Trident the following day.
It's almost certain that Harrison used this Gibson SG on many more recordings than are listed here, but without photo or video evidence one can only speculate. Harrison gifted the guitar to Pete Ham of Badfinger in 1969.
REFERENCES:
The Beatles, The Beatles Anthology, London, 2000.
K. Badman, The Beatles: Off The Record, London, 2001.
R. Coleman (ed.), Disc and Music Echo, London, 14 May 1966.
G. Emerick, Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles, New York, 2007.
W. Everett, The Beatles as Musicians: Revolver through the Anthology, New York, 1999.
V. Garbarini, ‘Paul McCartney: Lifting the Veil on The Beatles’, Musician, Player & Listener, No. 26, August 1980.
K. Howlett, ‘Track by Track’, liner notes to The Beatles, Revolver: Special Edition, Apple Records, 2022, super deluxe vinyl box set.
B. Kehew and K. Ryan, Recording the Beatles, Houston, 2006.
S. O’Mahony, ‘TheWriter Session’, The Beatles Book, No. 35, June 1966, London.
M. Lewisohn, The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, London, 1988.
I. MacDonald, Revolution in the Head: The Beatles’ Records and the Sixties, New York, 1994.
B. Miles, Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, London, 1997.
Gibson introduced a new lighter double-cutaway body in 1961 to replace the original heavier single cutaway Les Paul design. This new Standard model would still be known as the Les Paul Standard until 1963, when it was renamed the SG Standard. The SG Standard featured the same powerful Gibson humbucking pickups as the original Les Paul models that were becoming popular among British blues players such as Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck at this time. Harrison knew Clapton and was no doubt impressed by the Les Paul mastery he exhibited with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, perhaps providing the impetus for Harrison to acquire a solidbody SG as the more accessible alternative to the Les Paul. The SG would immediately become a go-to studio guitar for Harrison and would remain a key tool in his studio arsenal through to 1968.
Re-energized after an unprecedented three-month break, the Beatles reconvened at Abbey Road on 6 April 1966 to begin work on what would become their seventh studio album Revolver. After devoting their first week of sessions to the near-completion of the album tracks ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, ‘Got To Get You Into My Life’ and the Indian inspired ‘Love You To’, the band bowed to pressure from EMI to deliver their next single and interrupted their album sessions to lay down the non-album single ‘Paperback Writer’ and its B-side ‘Rain’ on 13 and 14 April 1966.
The Beatles recorded the rhythm track to ‘Paperback Writer’ during an evening session at EMI’s Studio Three on 13 April. Over the years, there has been a lack of consensus among Beatles historians and musicologists as to whether Lennon or Harrison recorded the rhythm guitar part on ‘Paperback Writer’, however Brian Kehew and Kevin Ryan, who had unfettered access to both EMI’s archives and the studio’s ex-employees while researching their comprehensive 2006 reference book Recording the Beatles, report that it was Lennon. When the Beatles regrouped on 14 April to pick up where they had left off the night before on ‘Paperback Writer’, they were joined in Studio Three by Beatles Book photographer Leslie Bryce and his editor Sean O’Mahony, who would print a detailed account of the session in the June 1966 issue of the magazine. As the Beatles were still recording on to four-track machines at this time, the afternoon’s session was devoted to filling the remaining Track 2 with Paul’s bass part and other various overdubbed contributions. O’Mahony described seeing George enter the studio: in strolled George looking very elegant in his Mongolian lamb fur coat with black cap and oblong metal specs. He was obviously top of the world and bubbling over with enthusiasm, ready to record a dozen numbers.
Tape operator Phil McDonald’s scribbled notes from the session show there were several experimental attempts to fill Track 2 of the tape over the course of the afternoon’s session, with each progressive attempt wiped by the one that followed. The final Track 2 recording that completed ‘Paperback Writer’ featured McCartney’s bass, Harrison’s guitar fills, and Lennon and Harrison’s ‘Frère Jacques’ backing vocals. Photographer Leslie Bryce photographed Harrison recording these very lead guitar fills on his Gibson SG, while he and Lennon shared a mic for their backing vocals. Note George’s use of headphones, which seem standard now, but in fact it was during the Revolver sessions that the group pioneered the use of headphones while tracking or overdubbing. Experimentation, whether that be with new instruments, equipment or recording techniques, was an overriding feature of the Revolver sessions as the band continued to push boundaries with their music. Enabled by Emerick and the other innovative engineers at EMI, the Beatles made use of a whole host of pioneering technologies for the first time including artificial double tracking (ADT), varispeed, reverse audio, tape loops, and repeat echo.
The Beatles took an hour’s break after completing overdubs on ‘Paperback Writer’, returning to Studio Three at 8.30pm to begin work on the single’s B-side ‘Rain’, which many have interpreted as the Beatles’ first psychedelic inspired composition. ‘Rain’ was the first song on which the Beatles utilized varispeed to record at non-standard speeds, as engineer Geoff Emerick would later explain to Mark Lewisohn: The Beatles played the rhythm track really fast so that when the tape was played back at normal speed everything would be so much slower, changing the texture. While still recognizable, the drums and guitars would sound deeper and thicker. We got a big, ponderous, thunderous backing, McCartney told Miles, and then we worked on top of that as normal, so that it didn’t sound like a slowed-down thing, it just had a big ominous noise to it. It’s generally acknowledged that the group recorded ‘Rain’ using the same instruments and equipment they had used on ‘Paperback Writer’, with Harrison recording lead guitar on the SG.
The Beatles completed work on ‘Rain’ two days later on 16 April, overdubbing bass, tambourine and additional vocals, which notably included Lennon’s backwards vocals at the coda – one of the first times reverse audio would be used in a Beatles recording. ‘Paperback Writer’ / ‘Rain’ was released in the US on 30 May and in the UK on 10 June 1966, offering fans a glimpse of the band’s new musical direction almost two months before the unveiling of Revolver. Although it was the first Beatles single that failed to debut at number one in the UK charts, ‘Paperback Writer’ took the top spot from Frank Sinatra’s ‘Strangers in the Night’ the following week and topped the Billboard Hot 100 in the US for two non-consecutive weeks. Asked by Disc and Music Echo magazine, whether the Beatles were worried about not hitting the top spot, George Harrison responded: We just know we are making better records. The fact that they sell a lot isn’t enough any more. We’re interested in getting better sounds … There’s nothing more we can do.
On 1 May 1966, the Beatles made what would turn out to be their final scheduled live public appearance in Britain at Wembley’s Empire Pool for the New Musical Express Annual Poll-Winner’s Alll-Star Concert, where the group played a 15-minute set of five songs: ‘I Feel Fine’, ‘Nowhere Man’, ‘Day Tripper’, ‘If I Needed Someone’, and ‘I’m Down’. In one of the guitar’s very few on stage appearances, Harrison played his new Gibson SG through his new Vox 7120 amplifier. For the forthcoming release of their ‘Paperback Writer’/‘Rain’ single, the Beatles engaged director Michael Lindsay-Hogg to film several promotional videos for the songs over a two-day shoot on 19-20 May. Harrison would play his Gibson SG throughout. The first day’s filming took place at EMI Studio One, where they shot color performances of ‘Paperback Writer’ and ‘Rain’ for the US market, to premiere on The Ed Sullivan Show on 5 June 1966, and the same performances in black and white for UK viewers on Thank Your Lucky Stars and Ready, Steady, Go! The following day, the Beatles went on location to Chiswick House in London and shot two more promotional videos on 35mm film. For ‘Paperback Writer’, the group were filmed inside the conservatory and miming to the song in the statue garden. For ‘Rain’ there was more conservatory footage along with shots of the Beatles walking in the grounds. These color videos were first shown in black and white on BBC’s Top of the Pops on 2 and 9 June respectively.
Harrison explained the promotional video concept in The Beatles Anthology in 2000: The idea was that we’d use them in America as well as the UK, because we thought, ‘We can’t go everywhere. We’re stopping touring and we’ll send these films out to promote the record.’ It was too much trouble to go and fight our way through all the screaming hordes of people to mime the latest single on Ready, Steady, Go!. Also, in America, they never saw the footage anyway. Once we actually went on an Ed Sullivan show with just a clip. I think Ed Sullivan came on and said, ‘The Beatles were here, as you know, and they were wonderful boys, but they can’t be here now so they’ve sent us this clip.’ It was great, because really we conned the Sullivan show into promoting our new single by sending in the film clip. These days obviously everybody does that – it’s part of the promotion for a single – so I suppose in a way we invented MTV.
When the Beatles set out on what would become their last ever tour that summer, Harrison would carry the Gibson SG as the spare for his Epiphone Casino. The band first toured West Germany, Japan and the Philippines between 24 June and 4 July 1966. The only documented occasion when the SG was called into use was during the evening show at the Circus Krone-Bau in Munich on 24 June, when Harrison made the switch for what’s believed to have been a performance of ‘Day Tripper’. Beatles photographer Robert Whitaker documented the SG alongside the band’s six other touring guitars at the Nippon Budokan in Tokyo on 1 July 1996. The band then staged their third and final tour of the US from 12 to 29 August, after which they would retire from live performances. Photographer Bob Bonis captured several shots of Harrison backstage with the SG before the Detroit concert on 13 August 1966.
On 11 February 1968, just days before the Beatles were due to fly to India to study transcendental meditation, the band gathered at Abbey Road Studio Three to film a promotional video for ‘Lady Madonna’ with NEMS employee Tony Bramwell. With “Lady Madonna” already completed, recalled engineer Geoff Emerick, the plan was to film the group miming to it, but when they got to the studio, an unusually assertive Lennon had second thoughts. “Oh, the hell with ‘Lady Madonna’” he said. “I’ve got a new song for us to do – let’s film that instead.” Paul was a bit annoyed, but John was like a bulldozer that day, and the decision stuck. The sounds of “Lady Madonna” would therefore accompany footage of the Beatles’ recording the new Lennon song “Hey Bulldog,” and nobody seemed too bothered about that. They knew that most viewers wouldn’t even notice that they were in fact playing a completely different song, and they were right. As seen in the film footage, Harrison used his Gibson SG to record the main riff on ‘Hey Bulldog’. In the film footage, John Lennon is seen playing Harrison’s SG for a period, before handing it back. This has led some to question who actually recorded the solo. Among Beatles writers and musicologists, Everett, MacDonald and Winn write that Lennon performed the song’s guitar solo, while engineer Geoff Emerick recalls that it was Harrison, writing in his 2006 memoir: Harrison ‘s solo was sparkling… one of the few times that he nailed it right away. His amp was turned up really loud, and he used one of his new fuzz boxes, which made his guitar absolutely scream. The promotional video for ‘Lady Madonna’ premiered on BBC’s Top of the Pops on 14 March 1968. In 1999, rediscovered footage from the ‘Lady Madonna’ clip was finally used to make a promo video for ‘Hey Bulldog’.
Surviving film footage also confirms that Harrison used the Gibson SG during the recording of ‘Hey Jude’ at EMI Studio Two on 30 July. The Beatles were joined in the studio by a film crew from the National Music Council who had been granted rare access to record footage for a short documentary on popular music. While the 30 July session has often been classified by Beatles historians as little more than a rehearsal, studio engineer Ken Scott confirmed to Brian Kehew and Kevin Ryan for their extensively researched book Recording The Beatles, that the seventeen takes recorded between 7.30pm and 3.30am that evening, numbered 7 through 23, were true attempts to capture the backing track, the idea being to record the master backing track at EMI and then move to Trident Studios the following day to complete the overdubs on their eight-track machine. The roughly six minutes of footage that was ultimately released as part of the documentary is believed to predominantly show the band working on take 9, indicating that the crew were only present to film the first few takes of the recording session. Footage shot earlier in the session shows that Harrison started out in the studio with his Gibson SG as he and McCartney continued to work out the arrangement.
Although the unreleased footage lacks sound, it appears that the film crew captured the conversation becoming visibly heated as McCartney infamously vetoed Harrison’s idea to play a guitar phrase in response to each line of the vocal. I remember on ‘Hey Jude’ telling George not to play guitar, McCartney told Vic Garbarini of Musician magazine in 1980. He wanted to echo riffs after the vocal phrases, which I didn’t think was appropriate. He didn’t see it like that, and it was a bit of a number for me to have to ‘dare’ to tell George Harrison – who’s one of the greats, I think – not to play. It was like an insult. McCartney elaborated on the incident in a 2018 conversation with Howard Stern, explaining: It didn’t seem like a good idea, and the rule in the Beatles was if it was your song, you were allowed to call it. You were the boss of the song… I mean, I tried to be nice and say, “No, George, I really don't hear it, I don't think that's gonna work.” I think he was a bit miffed. The disagreement would add to Harrison’s increasing frustration with Lennon and McCartney, who he felt weren’t taking his contributions seriously. When the group reassembled at Trident the following afternoon, ready to overdub their basic backing track from the previous evening, the decision was ultimately made to tackle the backing track anew and four fresh takes were recorded straight to Trident’s eight-track, with Harrison reinstated on the SG. Harrison can also be seen with the SG in black and white photographs taken by Tony Bramwell during the recording of vocal overdubs at Trident the following day.
It's almost certain that Harrison used this Gibson SG on many more recordings than are listed here, but without photo or video evidence one can only speculate. Harrison gifted the guitar to Pete Ham of Badfinger in 1969.
REFERENCES:
The Beatles, The Beatles Anthology, London, 2000.
K. Badman, The Beatles: Off The Record, London, 2001.
R. Coleman (ed.), Disc and Music Echo, London, 14 May 1966.
G. Emerick, Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles, New York, 2007.
W. Everett, The Beatles as Musicians: Revolver through the Anthology, New York, 1999.
V. Garbarini, ‘Paul McCartney: Lifting the Veil on The Beatles’, Musician, Player & Listener, No. 26, August 1980.
K. Howlett, ‘Track by Track’, liner notes to The Beatles, Revolver: Special Edition, Apple Records, 2022, super deluxe vinyl box set.
B. Kehew and K. Ryan, Recording the Beatles, Houston, 2006.
S. O’Mahony, ‘TheWriter Session’, The Beatles Book, No. 35, June 1966, London.
M. Lewisohn, The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, London, 1988.
I. MacDonald, Revolution in the Head: The Beatles’ Records and the Sixties, New York, 1994.
B. Miles, Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, London, 1997.