The Beatles song that George Harrison dismissed as “really fruity”
After The Beatles finally parted ways in 1970, the media sensationalised the tensions between the members. Of course, during the recording of the band’s final two albums, Abbey Road and Let It Be, there were significant power struggles within the band. Chiefly, a rift appeared to widen between George Harrison and Paul McCartney in the closing months of the band’s time together.
Following the untimely death of their beloved manager Brian Epstein in August 1967, Paul McCartney assumed the vacant managerial role by default. As seen in Peter Jackson’s recent, intensely revealing fly-on-the-wall documentary The Beatles: Get Back, McCartney was the leading creative force within the group throughout their final two albums. Meanwhile, John Lennon’s focus shifted increasingly towards his romantic attachment to Yoko Ono.
During The Beatles: Get Back, the band can be seen working on the Abbey Road track ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’. The song, written by Paul McCartney, tells the strange story of a student, Maxwell, who murders his fellow student, Joan. While recording the track, McCartney allegedly insisted that it would become one of the band’s biggest hits. However, as the rolling eyes of the other three can attest, it was not.
Harrison was particularly dissatisfied with the song, given his feud with McCartney at the time. As seen in Jackson’s 2021 documentary footage, the recording for the track was notably arduous. Apart from a later added Moog overdub, the song was completed in three consecutive sessions in July 1969. On the first day alone, 16 takes of the backing track were recorded, ending with a total of 21 by the third day.
“Sometimes Paul would make us do these really fruity songs,” Harrison told Crawdaddy in the 1970s. “I mean, my God, ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ was so fruity.”
“At that point in time, Paul couldn’t see beyond himself,” Harrison added in a conversation with Guitar World in 2001. “He was on a roll, but … in his mind, everything that was going on around him was just there to accompany him. He wasn’t sensitive to stepping on other people’s egos or feelings.”
“All I remember is the track – he made us do it a hundred million times,” Lennon added in his 1980 Playboy interview. “He did everything to make it into a single, and it never was, and it never could’ve been. But [Paul] put guitar licks on it, and he had somebody hitting iron pieces. We spent more money on that song than any of them in the whole album.”
“The worst session ever was ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’,” Ringo Starr told Rolling Stone. “It was the worst track we ever had to record. It went on for fucking weeks. I thought it was mad.”
Listen below to Abbey Road’s lethal blow to the head, ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’.
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