The Beatles wrote and recorded countless songs across their 12 albums, but one song stood out to George Harrison as the worst thing they ever recorded. The song was written for their penultimate album, Abbey Road, and fronted by Paul McCartney, who had a lot of ideas on how to bring it to life in a unique way. But the rest of the band didn’t agree.
McCartney brought Maxwell’s Silver Hammer to the recording studio for the album. He was convinced it would become one of the band’s biggest hits.
However, the rest of the band did not like the track. And what’s more, once McCartney began spending many hours trying to perfect his masterpiece, the rest of the Fab Four turned on him.
Harrison in particular was extremely frustrated with the song’s recording process. “Sometimes Paul would make us do these really cool songs,” he recalled. “I mean, my God, Maxwell’s Silver Hammer was so fruity.”
McCartney even brought an anvil into the recording studio to beat a large mallet on it to add to the final recording of the song. John Lennon later said that he “hated” the process of recording the song.
Harrison went on to admit that the final recording of the song was not hopeless. “After a while, we did a pretty good job at it,” he said.
Then the quiet Beatles backtracked: “But when Paul had an idea or arrangement in his head…”
Lennon later added in 1980: “All I remember is the track – he had us do it a hundred million times. He did everything to make it a hit single and it never was and it never could have been. But [Paul] He put a guitar lick on him and he had someone hit bits of iron.”
“We spent more money on that song than any of them on the whole album,” he added bitterly.
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McCartney was adamant that recording the song was no big deal. Instead, he said the rest of the band got annoyed because it took so long.
He said, “They got upset because it took three days for Maxwell’s silver hammer to register. Big deal.”
Years later, Maxwell’s silver hammer was used as an example of why the Beatles eventually broke up.
Beatle biographer Ian MacDonald wrote: [McCartney’s] a garrulous sequence of solo albums—by far the worst demise of his taste under the auspices of the Beatles”.
MacDonald added, “And so Abby Road embraces both ends of McCartney’s: the clear-minded and sensitive patron of the Beatles in You Never Give Me Your Money and the long-running middleman—and the immature egoist who blighted the group’s patience and solidarity over laughable nonsense like himself.”
After the band released Abbey Road, they dropped their twelfth and final studio album, Let It Be. Before long, they split up for good.
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