Any guitar player who’s been around the block a couple of times usually has the best ear for the instrument’s tone. While many people have the tone in their fingers before they even turn on any of their effects, there’s a big difference between having great technique and yet still managing to sound like your instrument is being played inside of a trash can. Although Keith Richards admitted that he had had some foul-ups with guitars in the past, he knew that even George Harrison could have used some work on his tone in the early era of The Beatles.

Then again, it’s no surprise why Keef would have had a problem with The Stones’ early recordings. Most of them were still blues-addled teenagers who were just looking to make some noise in the studio, and outside of the brash opening of ‘Satisfaction’ with his fuzz pedal, a lot of the early recordings they made end up sounding like recital night in the studio on their ballads.

However, while The Stones and The Beatles have the reputation of being mirror images of each other, some things get lost in translation far too often. The Fab Four were the ones that were raised in squalors when playing in Hamburg compared to Richards’ and Mick Jagger’s upbringing in London, so they had a lot more street cred when it came to their craft.

That didn’t always translate to the studio, though. The entire premise of whistling through their debut album Please Please Me in a single day was to capture the feel of their live show, and even then, hearing John Lennon shred his larynx throughout the ending song ‘Twist and Shout’ was their way of soaking up the energy of the performance instead of focusing on whether every song was in tune.

And no matter how many people say that the group’s streak was perfect, bad guitar tone is definitely up there. Harrison’s first significant solos tend to either sound like they’re recorded in the middle of a cellar, complete with a few notes that may have been lost in the shuffle due to his frail nerves. There are even tracks like ‘Do You Want to Know a Secret’ where the guitars are blatantly out of tune throughout most of the track.

While Richards was still keen to complement Harrison’s ability, he knew their streak wasn’t objectively perfect, saying, “I think George would agree with me that George Martin didn’t serve his guitar sound as well as it could have been done. But it was early days, and they were recording an album at night. Like with ‘Twist and Shout’, they could barely get there. It was purely the recording sound, nothing to do with George, who was a great friend of mine.”

Once they started flirting with different guitar effects and expanding their vocabulary in the studio, Harrison turned himself into one of the most lyrical guitarists to ever grace the fretboard. Not every solo was meant to be too flashy, but they always served the song in just the right way, whether it was the tasty solo on ‘Something’ or the Leslie effects on ‘Let It Be’.

Richards and Harrison may admit that those albums aren’t perfect, but they serve to tell the story just like the rest of their recorded output. Without those feeble beginnings, who’s to say whether Harrison would have been able to rise to the occasion when layering tracks like ‘Nowhere Man’ or ‘Taxman’.