The solo in 'I Should Have Known Better' has always made me cringe a bit.

In fairness to our George he's not the only one guilty of some cring-inducing solos from those early days. The Kinks early work, especially on (I think) You Really Got Me is Really Bad. A whole run of bum mistimed notes. Maybe listeners weren't that demanding of guitarists in those prehistoric days

I'll Follow the Sun is probley the weakest solo George ever gave on record!  

It's 6 seconds long! 4 glissandos! I don't understand what all the fuss is about this "solo". It's more a transition that had to fill a space because George Martin was standing there saying, "Move along, we're on the clock." No one had any better ideas but, really. It's 4 notes. (Sorry, Andy; it's not you. I'm really mad at Geoff about this, among other things.)

Quoted from harihead

It's 6 seconds long! 4 glissandos! I don't understand what all the fuss is about this "solo". It's more a transition that had to fill a space because George Martin was standing there saying, "Move along, we're on the clock." No one had any better ideas but, really. It's 4 notes. (Sorry, Andy; it's not you. I'm really mad at Geoff about this, among other things.)

I'm with Harihead on this one. It wasn't meant to be (I would think) the be-all and end-all of solos, if such a thing existed at the time. A filler, like HH says, never seemed offensive at all to me. Thanks for helping me see how I really felt about it, HH ... I think I was very close to piling on and saying "How could he!!"

Signed,

Hate to admit it, but easily manipulated

Quoted from BlueMeanie

The solo in 'I Should Have Known Better' has always made me cringe a bit.

Oh dear, that's the song I meant in my post just before yours, BM, not "Not a Second Time".

That last note always seemed a bit jarring, I read somewhere it was actually a 6th added, never went back to figure it out. But even if it was ... why?

Alexis, I think George was probably in his "added 6th" phase. You and poor Paul are stuck! The note never bothered me; I just took it as an artistic flourish, but it is definitely jarring.

About the "I'll Follow the Sun" solo, it's hard to think of what you might put in such a gentle, low-key song for 6 seconds. If these same notes were played on a flute, it would certainly match the mood. I think George was going for a dreamy little fill that would not take you out of the song.

Quoted from alexis

That last note always seemed a bit jarring, I read somewhere it was actually a 6th added, never went back to figure it out. But even if it was ... why?

I'm not a musician, so forgive me if I use non technical terms, but I think I'm right in saying that some notes and chords sound out of tune simply because they are not commonly used? Chords like the one in 'I Should Have Known Better' are not accepted as 'standard' chords. So someone like Sir Cliff, who's just a strummer, as far as I know, and pretty middle of the road, would consider them out of tune. Does that make sense to anyone?

Someone on the Dutch Beatlesforum explained that in the early years, the Beatles guitars were tuned at 435 Hertz instead of the usual 440. That means that if you (having your guitar tuned at 440) try to play along, it always sounds as if The Beatles are slightly out of tune. They are not however.

Do you know of a reason that they would have done that, instead of just using a standard tuning? After all, they weren't really very experienced musicians at the time.

I don't even know if it's true!

If it's true, they might have adjusted the tuning to better suit their voices without having to change the key or to use the standard position without having to capo up. I often tune my guitar "wrong" for that reason.