‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’: The song that divided The Beatles
Nothing lasts forever; even a phenomenon as intense and wide-reaching as The Beatles was bound to come crashing down eventually. After all, the band were, at heart, four normal lads from Liverpool. Their rapid rise to global stardom, coupled with years spent cooped up together in a recording studio, meant tensions were bound to rise eventually. So, by the end of the 1960s, the group was finally at the end of its tether, and the Fab Four went their separate ways.
A key moment in the demise of the group came in 1969, during the recording of Abbey Road. The final Beatles album ever to be recorded – although it ended up being released before Let It Be – the Abbey Road sessions were plagued with technical difficulties, musical differences, and ever-rising tensions within the band. During the early sessions, Paul McCartney took on a leadership role when his songwriting partner, John Lennon, spent time recovering from a car crash.
While driving his Austin Maxi in the Scottish Highlands, Lennon – a famously terrible motorist – careered off the road, injuring himself along with Yoko Ono, Julian Lennon, and Ono’s daughter Kyoko. Requiring time in the hospital to recover from the accident, Lennon missed the early Abbey Road sessions, which gave McCartney the opportunity to steer the album’s musical direction more in his favour.
McCartney’s songwriting was crucial in making Abbey Road one of the greatest albums of all time, but his interest in styles like music hall did not go down well with the rest of The Beatles. ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’, in particular, came as a divisive moment within the history of the ‘Mop Tops’, detested by everybody apart from McCartney himself.
“I was ill after the accident when they did most of that track, and it really ground George and Ringo into the ground recording it,” Lennon said of the track in 1969. McCartney seemed determined to get the recording absolutely perfect, spending multiple days working exclusively on that one song, much to the chagrin of the other band members.
“I hate it, ‘cos all I remember is the track. He made us do it a hundred million times!”
John Lennon
Telling the dark tale of a medical student named Maxwell Edison, who has a penchant for murdering people with a silver hammer, the lyrical content of the track is odd to say the least, but its instrumentation is unsuspecting avant-garde. Still, that pioneering experimental quality did little to endear the track to Lennon, George Harrison, or Ringo Starr.
Starr once recalled to Rolling Stone, “The worst session ever was ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’. It was the worst track we ever had to record. It went on for fucking weeks.” While Harrison told Crawdaddy, “Sometimes Paul would make us do these really fruity songs. I mean, my God, ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ was so fruity.”
So, what was McCartney’s defence of this divisive anthem? “I remember George saying, ‘You’ve taken three days, it’s only a song,’” the songwriter once recalled. “Yeah, but I want to get it right. I’ve got some thoughts on this one.” The band might have resented the endless hours spent working on the murderous music hall track, but that speaks to his endless devotion to artistry and striving for perfection on every track.
‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ was not the only divisive aspect of the Abbey Road sessions; Yoko Ono being wheeled into the studio on a bed likely didn’t help the rising tensions within the group, for instance. However, the song certainly drove a wedge between McCartney and the rest of the group, kicking off the wildly argumentative recording process of Abbey Road and ultimately culminating in the end of The Beatles.
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