I can't believe Paul Smith only did ten issues of X-Men.  It seemed like he was there for a long time.  Then again, I was ten to eleven and things moved much slower then.  

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My thinking is if you're lucky enough as an editor to have John Byrne, Neal Adams, or Jim Starlin willing to do a project for you (that will make you money and gain you prestige), you let them do whatever they want!

Or am I missing something?

I also read that Neal was bothered by "editorial" (wasn't that always Stan?) messing with his covers.  (It was something like--Stan: "Why aren't your Marvel covers as good as your DC covers?"  Neal: "Because DC lets me do what I want.")

Well, I remembered where I read Roy's account--in his intro for X-MEN MARVEL MASTERWORKS #6.  Roy didn't actually write the issue--it was Neal's plot and Roy was supposed to script it but got busy and got Denny O'Neil to script it instead.  Strike one: Neal thought he should have been consulted.  So, it sounds like Roy might have been acting as editor (assistant editor?) even though Stan is listed as editor (though the situation was probably looser than that back then when Marvel was a small operation).  In the intro, Roy calls Stan "editor-in-chief" and says he had a thing about humanoid monsters.  Neal had drawn a REPTILLIAN monster, and Stan thought the scene would make a good cover but wanted the monster to be half-lizard & half-human.  Marie Severin drew the cover per Stan's direction and then was called upon to change the interior scene to match--two panels!  In the first, the X-Men are looking low, while the monster towers above them!  In the second panel, the human-like lizard (or lizard-like human?) is clearly on all fours, in a thin horizontal panel!  Strike two: Neal would not return for the next issue, which turned out to be the series' final one.  Since it his was his plot too, Neal probably felt doubly injured.  But Roy points out that Stan's instincts might have been right on, as the issue (with the lizard-man cover) sold better than just about every other issue Neal worked on.