with a traditional count-in before a live performance. Gould sees "subtle self-mockery" in this gesture, since it reflects how in the space of three years, the Beatles' focus had moved "from the dance floor to the counting house". Author Steve Turner describes "Taxman" as a "smart little pop art song" due to the references to Wilson and Heath and its drawing musical inspiration from Neil Hefti's "Batman Theme", from the 1966 television series Batman. The chords stress the flat VII scale degree (C-natural in the key of D major) and frequently involve a major/minor I chord (D/Dm) in the harmony, which consequently evokes either Mixolydian or Dorian modes. There is one flat-III (F chord) near the end, but unusually no V (A) chord. According to musicologist Dominic Pedler, the composition is also notable for its use of both a 5th-string voicing of the dominant seventh sharp ninth chord to embellish the tonic D7 chord at the end of each two-line verse (at 0:12 and 0:19 secs), and a 6th-string form to create a complementary "jarring dissonance" with the lyrics in the subdominant (IV) G chord (to a G79) at 1:29 (after the solo) on "'Cause I'm the taxman, yeah – I'm the taxman". Gould sees the band's exclamation of the word "Taxman!" before the solo as accentuating the comic comparison between the tax collector as a "civil servant superhero" and the DC Comics character Batman. McCartney's bass line has been considered to imitate Motown bassist James Jamerson in its active lines and glissandi (at 0:55–1:08). In the third verse McCartney doubles his own pentatonic bass line while outlining the jarring Iflat7 chord in octaves (at 1:32–1:44). Rolling Stone has described the completed track as "skeleton funk – Harrison's choppy fuzz-toned guitar chords moving against an R&B dance beat", with McCartney contributing a "screeching-raga guitar solo". The solo uses what musicologist Alan Pollack describes as "fast triplets, exotic modal touches, and a melodic shape which traverses several octaves and ends with a breathtaking upward flourish". Walter Everett considers that the solo is in the same Dorian mode that Harrison had recently adapted for his sitar part in "Love You To". MacDonald writes that "Taxman" suggests the rhythmic influence of contemporaneous hit singles by James Brown, Lee Dorsey and the Spencer Davis Group, while music journalist Rob Chapman views Harrison's guitar riff as similarly American R&B-derived, citing also the Stax Records band