Beatles Countdown #86: Maxwell’s Silver Hammer

{Mar 08}

Doug1960s , No Comments

Coming up at #86 is Paul McCartney’s attempt at dark comedy as he tells the plight of a homicidal maniac in “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer!”

Penned shortly after The White Album sessions in October 1968, the song tells the plight of Maxwell Edision who uses his titular silver hammer to murder his medical school teacher, girlfriend, and finally the judge presiding over his case. Sounds pretty dark for a Beatles song, huh? The vaudevillian song was written by McCartney as an analogy for whenever something goes wrong in life. As he would later say, “It epitomizes the downfalls in life. Just when everything is going smoothly: Bang! Bang! Down comes Maxwell’s Silver Hammer and ruins everything.” On the music itself, George Harrison would comment that it was “one of those instant whistle-along tunes which some people hate and other people really like.” That perhaps would be the nicest thing said about the song by the other three. The dark comedy song first made its appearance in the Let It Be sessions and was captured in the subsequent film as they show Paul McCartney working on it. It wasn’t until their final recording session together for Abbey Road that they dedicated time to it at the behest of Paul McCartney who wanted it to be a single. This is where the “controversy” around the song comes around as I alluded to in “Fixing A Hole.”

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Frusciante Friday: Going Inside For His Birthday

{Mar 05}

Doug2000s , , No Comments

I love The Beatles as much as you guys, but I need some variety in what I’m covering here. Hopefully next week I’ll introduce some new bands to you guys like The Avett Brothers & Codeine Velvet Club. Today though, it seems to be the birthday of perhaps the greatest musician around today so let’s get to John Frusciante in one of my favorite parts of Balarama Music: Frusciante Friday Seeing how it is his birthday & how he’s left the Chili Peppers, I’ll honor that he wants to be on his own & cover a solo song of his. I still think some of his best material lies in that band, but it’s his birthday & he gets what he wants so let’s cover one of his finest songs: “Going Inside!”

Appearing on To Record Water For Only Ten Days, the genesis of “Going Inside” is a long-ride that I’ll try to briefly sum up here. Key word there: try. After the Peppers hit it big with Blood Sugar Sex Magik in the early 90s, the sudden success proved to be too much for Frusciante. He would later recall a conversation he had with the original guitarist for the Chili Peppers Hillel Slovak that would weigh on his mind in this time. Slovak asked: “Would you still like the Chilis if they got so popular they played the Forum?” Frusciante responded with: “No. It would ruin the whole thing. That’s great about the band, the audience feels no different from the band at all.” Hard to think about when playing to sold-out arenas in Japan. While recording the album, the band holed themselves up in the famed LA Mansion for the duration of the recording process, isolating Frusciante from the real world. What was waiting for him when he came out wasn’t the same world he left either. No, he came out to find the Peppers played on virtually every radio and selling out arenas worldwide. Interviews, television appearances, constant traveling; it’s a lot to expect of a guy who as a teenager spent his days just playing guitar in his house by himself virtually all day. So he quit and retreated to a life of quiet isolation that was haunted by drugs while bordering on becoming a recluse.

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Beatles Countdown #87 – I Need You

{Mar 05}

Doug1960s , No Comments

George Harrison returns at #87 with his second-ever song for a Beatles album: “I Need You!”

I hope all of you know the plight of George Harrison. Recruited by the best songwriting partnership perhaps ever for his technical prowess on the guitar, John & Paul weren’t much concerned with getting his “songs” on their albums. Much like with Ringo, they would give him a song or two to sing each album and on their second album, they even showcased his first song “Don’t Bother Me.” Definitely one of the lower-tier Beatle songs despite not being a bad song by any definition, his first song wasn’t exactly something Paul & John wanted to hear more of so it’s no surprise that the next two albums after that had no Harrison compositions. But Harrison persisted and eventually got another chance at writing a song for their newest album & film Help! and he jumped at the chance.

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Beatles Countdown #88 – Fixing A Hole

{Mar 05}

Doug1960s , No Comments

About to pick her up in his 88 (Little Richard reference for you guys), Paul McCartney brings us the next pick in the countdown with a “controversial” track from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band: “Fixing A Hole!”

Bunch of random stories here for the recording of the song. The song was actually the first Beatles song to appear on an EMI album that wasn’t recorded at Abbey Roads as the studio was booked for the night. The crew had to pack up and head to Regent Sound Studio on a February 9th. They didn’t stay long though as the next day, they were back at Abbey Road recording “A Day In The Life.” The different location got them a funny story though as Paul has said he encountered a man outside the gates claiming to be Jesus Christ. Not wanting to be the one to leave his savior in the cold, Paul invited him for a cup of tea and let him sit in the corner of the session if he remained quiet. The man eventually left never to be heard or seen again according to lore…or maybe they were all high? You decide. Back to the recording though, George Harrison was supposedly upset over the amount of time Paul spent re-recording vocals for the song and that all Paul did during the recording of the album was listen to him sing “Fixing A Hole.” It wouldn’t be out of character for Paul, but we’ll get into that more with “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.”

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Beatles Countdown #89 – Yer Blues

{Mar 02}

Doug1960s , No Comments

As we start with the 80s in the countdown, John Lennon makes his first appearance at #89 with a depressing track from the self-tilted album known as The White Album: “Yer Blues!”

An obvious cry for help now, Lennon at the time painstakingly tried to cover it up as a parody, refusing to own up to the blunt lyrics and his blues singing out of fear, shame, or both. According to Anthology, Lennon was extremely depressed in India (despite meditating eight hours a day) and when he wrote the line “I’m so lonely I want to die,” he was actually serious. At the end of his marriage with Cynthia, wanting desperately to be with Yoko Ono, having lost one of his best friends in Brian Epstein, drifting away from his close friends, finding out the Maharishi was not exactly who The Beatles thought he was; man, it’s no surprise to see why John was depressed here. Really, I don’t know how Lennon expected this song to fly over anyone’s head. I guess in their catalogue of deep metaphors shrouding obvious feelings like “Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey”, he expected this kind of blunt, emotional plea to be written off as the parody he hoped it to be by naming it “Yer Blues” instead of “Your Blues.” It really wouldn’t be until his solo career with songs like “Cold Turkey” and “Mother” that he would bare his soul so openly to the world so this was still fairly new. Trying to patronize the song to avoid critical backlash, it’s really unsure what exactly Lennon was afraid of. He had opened up before in songs like “I’m A Loser” and he had sung the blues in the past, but also not to this degree for either. He would later tell interviewers about his love for blues singer when he was younger, but he was quoted by Rolling Stone as saying: “…To sing it was something else. I’m self conscious about doing it.” He also wouldn’t start putting his heart out for the world until after The Beatles. All of these things probably heightened his fear of releasing the song as the truth. Paul tried to console John over the song telling him to “say it straight,” but ultimately Lennon’s fear won and he got his easy defense for the song.

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Beatles Countdown #90 – I’m Looking Through You

{Mar 02}

Doug1960s , No Comments

Oh, another Paul McCartney song? Who would have thought? Well, coming in at #90 is from 1965’s Rubber Soul: “I’m Looking Through You!”

Sarcasm on the McCartney front aside, this is a great song. As I look back, I didn’t have it on my ballot for this and I’m seriously scratching my head and wondering why. Like “You Won’t See Me” and others, the song was written about Paul’s then-girlfriend of five years Jane Asher. Actually, the song was written following an argument between the two in Asher’s family house, supposedly about her commitment. Paul went to his own room which he had to compose music & sleep in and wrote this song. Paul himself says it wasn’t the first or last time it happened. He was extremely disappointed & dissatisfied with the relationship by this point, questioning Jane’s “facade” of commitment which led to the famous line: “I’m looking through you and you’re not there!” After being together for five years and getting fed up with it, it’s easy to see where the lyrically challenging song comes about. I’m sure most reading this have been in or know of a relationship where someone doesn’t “look different,” but they “have changed.” Well, Paul’s just like you and me in that regard then.

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Beatles Countdown #91 – I’ll Follow The Sun

{Mar 02}

Doug1960s , No Comments

I didn’t realize until I started counting this down, but there are a lot of Paul McCartney songs on here. I’m not trying to badmouth him, but jeez! This is the tenth song we’ve covered so far: two have been by Harrison, two by McCartney & Lennon, and the rest by him! So yeah, here’s another McCartney song at #91 from the rushed album Beatles For Sale: “I’ll Follow The Sun.”

This song is interesting. It’s one of the first Paul ever wrote having originally penned it down when he was 16 after he had just recovered from the flu. The song itself never had serious attention paid to it, but it was actually one of the first songs the band ever recorded together. In 1960 (then with the original quintet of Paul, John, George, Stu Sutcliffe, & Pete Best), the then Quarrymen recorded a version slightly briefer while on break from school. It featured different lyrics, structure, and a different guitar section, but it still kept the same feeling of the song. Pete Best would later recall how even though it wasn’t a staple of their performances, he remembers Paul playing them between sets in Hamburg by himself on piano a handful of times. The band originally had thought of themselves with a harder image (when they dressed in all leather in Hamburg) which Best says is the reason they never played it as a group. Even as the band’s image softened in the following years, Paul still maintained that ballads didn’t fit their image as a rocking band so they kept ballads as sparse as possible. Think about that – The Beatles without ballads? Where would we be without Yesterday?

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