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6.30pm
5 November 2020
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Hello,
If I may make a short introductory rant, I hope that someday the personnel listings on the internet will stop listing “lead guitar” in songs where there is no solo. I’ve read it a million times–I think particularly in early Beatles recordings, where any guitar played by George was called lead. I suspect the practice sprang from studio notes by EMI personnel.
Meaningful descriptions include “guitar solo,” “acoustic guitar,” “12-string guitar,” “electric 6-string,” or even “strummed guitar,” “fingerpicked acoustic”…I could make a better list if it mattered, but you get my point–I want to know who played what guitar parts! No fault at all to the magnificent Joe, btw!
Thanks for listening 🙂
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Dark Overlord7.13pm
Moderators
27 November 2016
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Welcome @bryanz
Personally, I like that description. Rhythm or lead differentiates which guitar part each player is credited with. The lead parts without a solo are still lead guitar parts, they’re the little melodic bits around the song.
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8.57pm
9 March 2017
Offline I agree to an extent since some guitar parts (like Paul’s acoustic guitar on Yesterday ) can’t be firmly labeled as rhythm or lead but at the same time, i find the terms to be fitting ~80% of the time and i think that we should only use more generic terms like acoustic guitar or electric guitar when the part doesn’t fit into one of those categories.
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10.37pm
26 January 2017
Offline at the very least, labels such as 12-string and classical guitar are helpful. Lead and Rhythm are sometimes too ambiguous, but with the Beatles just give it another listen and you can hear whether or not its George John even Paul or a session guitarist. Of course there are exceptions like Hey Bulldog
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1.24pm
23 May 2021
Offline But George’s leads were really the “solo” guitar parts in many songs – take “Help ” where all he played were a few bass notes and the downward arpeggio on “please please help me” – it was still the “solo notes” and that qualifies as lead guitar.
It was almost always George’s responsibility to play those parts. It started live when John was singing more, on recordings it was often someone else and they did fail to say it accurately in many recordings. But they also did not identify who even sang the lead vocals on most songs on most albums – they were simply the Beatles;
Paul – bass
John – Rhythm
Ringo – drums
George – lead
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