Best Beatles Guitarist? - DM's Beatles forums

Quoted from fanofthefab4

Eric Clapton Agrees With You! He said many years ago that John was a very good rhythm guitar player,and he would have known since he played live in concert with John as a member of his 1969 Plastic Ono Band. Paul played the great lead guitar on George's Taxman as well as that great bass in the song,and he played the lead guiutar on his own song Another Girl,and John's Ticket To Ride.

PAUL MCCARTNEY. GUITAR PLAYER INTERVIEW
Interviewed by Tom Mulhern (1990)

"Question: Although you obviously didn't abandon guitar altogether with the Beatles, did you ever feel that you had hopelessly locked yourself in the role of bassist?

Paul McCartney: It's funny, actually. I have problems with one of the books that has been written about us, because the guy obviously didn't like me. That's fair enough. But this guy started to make up a whole story of how I was so keen to be the bass player that I really did a number on Stuart Sutcliff, the original bass player. He made it sound as if I had planned this whole thing to become the Beatles bass player. I remember ringing George up shortly after this book came out, and I asked him, "Do you remember me really going hard to chuck Stu out of the group and be a bass player?" And he said, "No, you got lumbered with bass, man. None of us would do it." I said, "Well, that's how I remembered it." Because it's true: We all wanted to be guitar players.

Question: Do you have any favorite guitar parts that you played with the Beatles?

Paul McCartney: I liked "Taxman" just because of what it was. I was very inspired by Jimi Hendrix. It was really my first voyage into feedback. I had this friend in London, John Mayall of the Bluesbreakers, who used to play me a lot of records late at night -- he was a kind if DJ-type guy. You'd go back to his place, and he's sit you down, give you a drink, and say, "Just check this out." He'd go over to his deck, and for hours he'd blast you with B.B. King, Eric Clapton -- he was sort of showing me where all of Eric's stuff was from, you know. He gave me a little evening's education in that. I was turned on after that and I went and bought an Epiphone. So then I could wind up with the Vox amp and get some nice feedback. It was just before George was into that. In fact, I don't think George did get too heavily into that kind of thing. George was generally a little more restrained in his guitar playing. He wasn't into heavy feedback.
Question: So, even hearing Jimi Hendrix and John Mayall's records didn't make you think that you should give up bass to pursue guitar?

Paul McCartney: Not really, no. I'd always felt that the bass thing was really it, because we had to have a bass player. At the very beginning, I did think, "Well that's put shot to any plans I had of being a guitar player." But I got interested in bass as a lead instrument. I think around the time of Sgt. Pepper -- "With a Little Help from my Friends" and "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" -- there were some pretty good bass lines. Like Motown. Like Brian Wilson's lines in the Beach Boys. So, it was okay by the time I came to do that. But with "Taxman," I got the guitar and was playing around in the studio with the feedback and stuff, and I said to George, "Maybe you could play it like this." I can't quite remember how it happened that I played it, but it was probably one of those times when somebody says, "Well, why don't you do it then?"

Question: Rather than spend the time teaching someone else?

Paul McCartney: Rather than spend the time to get the idea over. And I don't think George was too miffed. But when people say, "Great solo on 'Taxman'," I don't think he's too pleased to have to say, "Well, that was Paul, actually." I didn't really do much like that -- just once or twice. I also kind of liked the part I did on "Blackbird" on acoustic; that was one of my favorites."

[...]

"Question: Do you like having someone full-time who can pick up, say, bass if you want to play guitar?

Paul McCartney: Yeah. That was one of the big attractions of Hamish. He's interested in bass -- not just as a minor instrument; he's quite into it. I started on acoustic guitar, and I played Hamburg on guitar, and all. As I said, when it got busted I had to switch to piano. Which was quite good, because I'd had a piano at home. My dad was a good pianist, but not trained. Like I've picked it up, he picked it up; he learned it by ear. I used to say to him, "Teach me some of your stuff." And he said, "No, you've got to learn properly." He felt he wasn't good enough to teach me, which was okay, actually. I just did what he did; I emulated him and just picked things up that I heard off records. We all sort of started with middle C, found the chord of C, found F and found G, and then we found Am, and then the rest of it -- got into all the augmented and that sort of stuff as we went along.
So, I never really got to go back to guitar, except for the odd solo with the Beatles, where I'd do odd little things, like "Taxman." "Tomorrow Never Knows," I played stuff there. "Paperback Writer," I played the riff on that. Then there were the acoustic things, like "Yesterday" and "Blackbird.""

[...]

John Hammel on Paul's Guitars

"Other guitars we bring along include Paul's old D-28 Martin, which is a spare, and we have his 1964 Epiphone Casino, which is the guitar he used on "Taxman" with the Beatles."

from here: http://wingspan.ru/intereng/gp90.html