Credit: Alamy

The Beatles song with an uncredited George Martin overdub

Wed 15 March 2023 18:00, UK

The Hulu series McCartney 321 was enlightening for one major reason: it took viewers into the musical mind of Paul McCartney. With a little help from producer Rick Rubin, McCartney takes his real mixes from Beatles songs and his solo hits, deconstructs them, and discusses the thought behind everything from John Lennon’s triplet strum on ‘All My Loving’ to his own gentle textures on ‘Waterfalls’.

Throughout the series, McCartney is excitable and self-deprecating. Revisiting the music he made as a 20-year-old clearly sent McCartney back in time, and his reactions to some of his own songs are manic and hilarious. Every once in a while, McCartney claims that he isn’t actually one of the best musicians of all time. Whether it was mentioning that he couldn’t read music or pointing out that some of his guitar fills are out of tune on ‘Another Girl’, McCartney clearly doesn’t view himself as a master musician.

While going through one of The Beatles’ more controversial numbers, ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’, Rubin steers the conversation away from some of the song’s typical talking points. Instead, he compliments the oompah bass line that mimics a tuba and gets fascinated by the Moog synthesiser overdubs. At the heart of the song is McCartney’s piano line, which largely sticks to the basic chord pattern without adding too many flourishes.

There is one major exception: at the end of each chorus, a very classical series of arpeggios lead back into the song’s verses. Rubin points them out during the discussion, but McCartney seems a bit put off. Casually, McCartney throws a wrench into the track. “That’s not me,” he says about the flowery piano line. Rubin looks a bit confused, but McCartney explains.

“The way I could do it, which I don’t think this is, would be to slow the tape by half,” McCartney says. “Because the great thing about four-track machines is that you [can] take it down by an octave.” Producer George Martin had used this particular technique to record the piano solo for ‘In My Life’, but McCartney discusses the process like it was something that he had utilised. Perhaps that’s how he got the gliding piano lines on ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’. After all, McCartney is the only credited piano player on the track.

Martin himself is credited as a musician on ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’, but his credit is for playing the Hammond organ. If McCartney doesn’t remember playing the arpeggios, Martin seems like the most likely other candidate. Billy Preston was around the band at this time, contributing Hammond organ as well on songs like ‘Something’ and ‘I Want Yoy (She’s So Heavy)’. Preston certainly had the piano skills to pull them off, but he’s not listed anywhere in the credits for ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’. Based on the classical influence, it seems likely that Martin overdubbed a bit of piano and went uncredited.

Check out ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ and see if you can pinpoint a Martin overdub.