George as a guitarist | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

I thought Simon Leng had a great response to this question.

Rip Post: Why did longtime Beatles engineer (and sometimes de facto producer) Geoff Emerick all-but-dismiss George as a Beatles soloist before his inspired solo on “Something ?” It’s true that, as Emerick says, you can hear young George “fumbling” in live performances, almost as if he doesn’t know how to fill up all that “blank space.” Paul played a number of solos on Beatles recordings, reportedly because George could not come up with anything fast enough.

Simon Leng: Well, he probably said it because it is true, but my view on that would be “so what?” Perhaps the true value is in the finished product, does it really make a material difference how quickly the solo was created? Or if it was improvised or not? I would want to beware of mistaking the wood for the trees here. If a musician delivers a performance that affects the listener that is the important part, and not so much how it was created or how quickly.

Certainly Paul McCartney had a quicker musical mind than George and that’s great, but, again, I can’t help but feel that we would be better celebrating the complementary differences between musicians, or anybody else for that matter, rather than insisting that only one model has value.

And, as long as we are comparing the two styles, I would just suggest that people reflect on how many instantly memorable guitar breaks George came up with that they can sing as if they were songs in their own right. And, then ask the same of Paul’s solos. For instance, which is more musically memorable – George’s solo on “Nowhere Man ”, or Paul’s on “Another Girl ”?

Rip Post: Yet students of the group can hear some terrific live solos from George even in the very early days, and his Perkins-esque twanging on “Can’t Buy Me Love” is no more or less considered classic stuff—McCartney had his band reproduce it note-for-note on recent tours. So why was his soloing in the Beatles period inconsistent?

Leng: I think it comes down to cyclical changes, confidence and the pecking order of the band. When The Beatles first hit it big George was at the forefront of lead guitarists for that time – take With The Beatles as an example. How many other guitarists at that time could have played the variety of solos George did on that album i.e. “Roll Over Beethoven ”, “Til There Was You” and “All My Loving ”? So, he was at the forefront – but, by 1965 the white blues soloists like Eric Clapton had started to emerge and a more virtuoso style came into vogue. As George did not come from a blues-based tradition he was not immediately in that groove of longer improvised solos. So, given that he was a somewhat diffident character, and that Paul was quicker at picking up that style, his confidence took a knock. But, as we have seen, by 1969 he was playing that style if he wanted to.

But then again, I come back to the main point – it’s one thing to have all the flashy technique in the world, but what’s the point of it if you have nothing to say musically? And let’s be clear about this, aside form those solos on With The Beatles , George played some wonderfully musical and inventive solos on early to mid-period Beatles records – to pick out a few: “I Call Your Name ”, “Nowhere Man ”, “Baby’s In Black”, “And Your Bird Can Sing ” (which almost has elements of Bach counterpoint in it) and, as you say, “Can’t Buy Me Love”.

It’s also worth remembering that amongst musicians and other guitarists George is widely respected, and possibly more so than he is by the media in general.

– Simon Leng interview with Rip Rense for the Rip Post (2006)

Paul has given George a lot of praise for his abilities as a guitarist. As has been mentioned Geoff Emerick was very biased, and it’s also worth mentioning that in the early days George was having to come up with these solos and perform them so quickly he didn’t have time to perfect his performance. The other Beatles mess up too.