Everybody knows Paul plays bass, John plays guitar, George plays lead guitar, Ringo is the drummer and they all sing. Except not always. In fact, as someone who likes to think he knows almost everything about The Beatles, I was surprised to discover this morning that it’s John Lennon, not Paul McCartney playing bass on Helter Skelter. And that bass track is bloody awesome, as well — unlike his half-learned, half-arsed one in The Long And Winding Road.
So, I thought I’d try to find out if there are any other who-played-what surprises I didn’t know about.
We’ll start with the bass. George Harrison played it on the hated Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, courtesy a Fender Bass VI. I’ve played one, but they’re crazy rare these days. Squier actually makes a nice vintage copy. At first glance they kind of look like a Jazzmaster. They were designed to be bass guitars for guitar players, in that they have short scale and low action. Almost like a baritone guitar, but they use bass strings and are tuned the same as a guitar — except an octave lower. This is in contrast to the tuning of BEADF#B like most baritone guitars. In my experience, you have to play the Bass VI with a pick. There are just too many strings to get my fat fingers in there.
Harrison can be seen playing the same Bass VI in the video for Hey Jude, but he’s miming to the real track, which features Paul on bass. The only thing real in the video is the vocals.
Harrison plays bass on the exquisite Lennon track She Said She Said, from Revolver. It’s a Burns Nu-Sonic, because Paul’s basses were strung left-handed. Really, who cares — as long as Ringo played the drums. It’s one of his best performances. Same with Rain, from the same era. In fact, there are many photos of Harrison playing the Nu-Sonic on run-throughs of Rain even though it is definitely Paul on the track — playing his gorgeous custom Rickenbacker 4001, which he got in 1964 to augment or replace his iconic 1963 Hofner 500/1.
George is playing “bass” on Two Of Us from Let It Be, which can be plainly seen in the lengthy documentary Get Back. Except it’s not really a bass, it’s a Fender Telecaster. He’s just playing the bass parts on it. During the rooftop performance, however, it’s obviously Paul playing his Hofner — perhaps the last time he was spotted with it before Elvis Costello made him dig it out while they worked on Flowers In The Dirt in 1989.
It’s a similar story with the track Let It Be. In the movie, you can clearly see Lennon playing the Bass VI, but his parts were redone by McCartney for the final version. During the same Let It Be sessions, Lennon also played bass on Dig It — both the entire 15-minute jam and the 50-second snippet which appeared on the final album. It’s the Fender Bass VI again, as on two of the songs from the Abbey Road medley: Golden Slumbers and Carry That Weight, this time played by Harrison.
George is also playing the Bass VI on Honey Pie on The White Album. The fighty sessions were at their most disruptive while the lads tackled Back In The USSR. Ringo quit and left because Paul didn’t like his drumming on it, and went ahead and recorded the part himself while Starr was gone. Stranger still, all three remaining Beatles played bass on the song. Initially and primarily, the bass is the trusty Fender Bass VI played by Lennon, with additional overdubs by Macca (regular bass) and Harrison (Bass VI). Oh, and Lennon did some snare drum overdubs as well — so let’s talk about drums now.
The Ballad Of John And Yoko is a Beatles song which only features John and Paul, but the superior flipside — Harrison’s Old Brown Shoe — also features an unusual lineup. There’s debate as to who played bass, Paul or George, but it’s definitely Paul on drums because Ringo was away filming The Magic Christian.
McCartney’s greatest drum performance on a Beatles song has got to be Dear Prudence from The White Album. It’s probably my favourite Beatles song, full stop, but the incredible snare fills in the build at the end still gives me chills. Paul contributes a much simpler performance on Martha My Dear, also on the White Album.
He’s not a Beatle, but the band’s first song — Love Me Do — features drummer Andy White on the album version found on Please Please Me, while Ringo was relegated to tambourine. Ringo does, however, play drums on the single version. So, that’s how you can tell the two apart — if you hear tambourine, it’s White drumming. If there’s no tambourine, it’s Ringo. There’s a quiz question for you — how many different drummers appear as part of the band on Beatles records? A: Three (Ringo, Paul and White). Pete Best was fired before the band recorded their first album. His work only appears on the Decca audition, the Tony Sheridan My Bonnie album and Anthology I. There were orchestral drummers, of course, but they weren’t part of the band.
In addition to drums and tambourine, Ringo also provided vocals, maracas, handclaps and bongos to some Beatles tracks — but no guitar or bass. He did, however, have a rare go at some piano. There are only two instances I can find where Ringo plays keys. One is tack piano on his composition Don’t Pass Me By from The White Album, and the other is on that big E-major chord at the end of A Day In The Life. It’s actually John, Paul, Ringo and roadie Mal Evans sharing three pianos, plus producer George Martin on harmonium.
Speaking of keys, all four of the Fabs could play, but the in-studio and on-stage job was predominantly left to John and Paul. Among the songs John handles piano on are Penny Lane, Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, Hey Bulldog, Come Together, Something and Come Together. He plays organ or electric piano on songs including Dizzy Miss Lizzy, She Said She Said, Tomorrow Never Knows, We Can Work It Out, I’m So Tired and harpsichord on All You Need Is Love.
Harrison played harmonium on Here Comes The Sun and Moog on both it and Because while Lennon played Moog on I Want You (She’s So Heavy). It’s also George playing some sick Hammond organ on both his It’s All Too Much and It’s Only A Northern Song. John adds glockenspiel to the latter. Paul played the distinctive Mellotron flutes on Strawberry Fields Forever (he also played timpani on it while Harrison added Indian harp) and John played piano.
Finally, we’ll look at guitar duties. Mostly, Paul on guitar instead of bass. If you ask me, his shining moment is the solo on Taxman from 1966’s Revolver. Some suspect his guitar parts from Taxman may have been lifted, with snippets used as overdubs on Tomorrow Never Knows. But that’s unlikely given Tomorrow Never Knows was the first song recorded in the sessions. Paul does, however, contribute guitar to Lennon’s downstream-floating, one-chord masterpiece.
The other brash guitar you might love — and be surprised to discover was Paul — is on Good Morning, Good Morning from Sgt. Pepper. He also takes lead on Helter Skelter (!), Ticket To Ride and Birthday. And obviously, he is the only guitarist on Blackbird, though I wouldn’t consider that “lead” per se. McCartney plays all the instruments — except drums — on Why Don’t We Do It In The Road, from The White Album (piano, guitars, bass). Obviously that’s the most switcheroo album of all. Ringo is on drums and both contribute handclaps.
All three of them trade off guitar solos on The End from Abbey Road. If you’ve ever wondered about the order, it’s this: Paul starts it off with two bars, George comes in at 0:58, followed by John at 1:02. Then they repeat the order. In addition to his rips on The End, John also played a decent amount of lead guitar. That’s him on Get Back, You Can’t Do That, Nowhere Man, Revolution and Revolution I, For You Blue and The Ballad of John And Yoko.
There are no Ringo guitar moments, but he did play the “bubbles” on Octopus’s Garden. Oh, what joy!
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Area Resident is an Ottawa-based journalist, recording artist, music collector and re-seller. Hear (and buy) his music on Bandcamp, email him HERE, follow him on Instagram and check him out on Discogs.
