Beatles Countdown #86: Maxwell’s Silver Hammer
{Mar 08}
1960s paul mccartney, the beatles 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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