‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’

Paul McCartney was in a precarious position at the end of The Beatles’ career. He was almost single-handedly keeping the group together, but his insistence on perfection began to grate on the others. The breaking point for almost everyone was ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’, the music hall track from Abbey Road that was the subject of scorn from everyone not named Paul McCartney.

“I hated it,” John Lennon told David Sheff for Playboy in 1980. “All I remember is the track – he made us do it a hundred million times.”

Starr and Harrison agreed: “The worst session ever was ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’,” Ringo Starr later told Rolling Stone. “It was the worst track we ever had to record. It went on for fucking weeks.” “Sometimes Paul would make us do these really fruity songs,” George Harrison told Crawdaddy in the 1970s. “I mean, my God, ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ was so fruity,” he added.

‘Little Child’

Although the members rarely said it explicitly, songs written for Ringo Starr were often ones that Lennon or McCartney didn’t want to keep for themselves. With his limited vocal range, Starr’s songs needed to be simple. Some songs that were originally written for the drummer actually wound up with other singers, but the sentiment remained the same, like on With The Beatles’ ‘Little Child’.

“‘Little Child was a work job,” McCartney explained. “Certain songs were inspirational and you just followed that. Certain other songs were, ‘Right come on, two hours, song for Ringo for the album.'”

‘Hold Me Tight’

Of the four former Beatles, Paul McCartney appeared to be the most proud of the band’s work. While the other three were casual about expressing their dislikes and distastes, McCartney was far more conservative in his criticism. A song had to be truly bad or truly unmemorable for McCartney to slag it off. That’s exactly the case for With The Beatles’ ‘Hold Me Tight’.

“I can’t remember much about that one,” McCartney later claimed. “Certain songs were just ‘work’ songs… you haven’t got much of a memory of them. That’s one of them.”

Lennon concurred, calling the track “a pretty poor song and I was never really interested in it either way.”

‘It’s Only Love’

It was rare to find a song where Lennon and McCartney agreed on their distaste. ‘It’s Only Love’ from Help! is a rare case where both writers shared the same opinion. “‘It’s Only Love’ is mine. I always thought it was a lousy song. The lyrics were abysmal. I always hated that song,” Lennon told David Scheff in 1980. “That’s the one song I really hate of mine. Terrible lyric.”

“Sometimes we didn’t fight it if the lyric came out rather bland on some of those filler songs like ‘It’s Only Love’,” McCartney told Barry Miles in the book Many Years From Now, “If a lyric was really bad we’d edit it, but we weren’t that fussy about it, because it’s only a rock ‘n’ roll song. I mean, this is not literature.”

‘Good Morning Good Morning’

John Lennon was famously dismissive of his Beatles catalogue. Especially during his wide-ranging interview with David Scheff in 1980, where Lennon discussed a full slate of songs from his Beatles days, Lennon was quick to put down a number of songs that he disliked or didn’t feel any connection with. One of those tracks was ‘Good Morning Good Morning’, the Sgt. Pepper’s song that Lennon never warmed to.

“It’s a throwaway, a piece of garbage, I always thought,” Lennon claimed. The track was inspired by the theme song for Kellogg’s Corn Flakes commercials that were airing at the time. “I always had the TV on very low in the background when I was writing, and it came over, and then I wrote the song.”

‘Birthday’

While catching the 1956 rock and roll film The Girl Can’t Help It during the sessions for The White Album, Paul McCartney was inspired to craft an old-school rock track of his own. The result was ‘Birthday’, the leadoff song to side three of The White Album. McCartney would later reminisce about the song fondly, but Lennon was more critical.

“‘Birthday’ was written in the studio. Just made up on the spot,” Lennon told Sheff. “I think Paul wanted to write a song like ‘Happy Birthday Baby,’ the old ’50s hit. But it was sort of made up in the studio. It was a piece of garbage.”

‘Mean Mr Mustard’

While The Beatles were studying Transcendental Meditation with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in 1968, the band’s three main songwriters found that writing songs was the best way to spend their downtime. The majority of The White Album was written in India, but there was enough material to carry over to other albums as well. The short track ‘Mean Mr. Mustard’ was written by Lennon on the retreat and wasn’t revived until The Beatles were putting together the ending medley for Abbey Road.

Lennon was famously dismissive of the medley, and he held particular contempt for his own ‘Mean Mr. Mustard’. “That’s me, writing a piece of garbage,” Lennon told Scheff. “I’d read somewhere in the newspaper about this mean guy who hid five-pound notes, not up his nose but somewhere else”.

‘Dig A Pony’

The recording of Let It Be was a particularly difficult time for Lennon. On top of his high-profile relationship with Yoko Ono, Lennon was in the throes of a debilitating heroin addiction and had expressed little interest in contributing to The Beatles. One of Lennon’s songs that made the album was ‘Dig a Pony’, a largely nonsensical track that Lennon wasn’t afraid to take to task.

In Lennon’s interview with Scheff, it was one of many songs that Lennon labelled “a piece of garbage”. “You just take words and you stick them together, and you see if they have any meaning,” Lennon said in 1972. “Some of them do and some of them don’t.”