"Maxwell's Silver Hammer" is a song performed by the legendary 60's rock and roll group the Beatles off the album Abbey Road. It was written by Paul McCartney, though the song-writing credit is Lennon-McCartney. Beatle George Harrison in 1969 described it as "one of those instant whistle-along tunes which some people hate, and other people really like. It's a fun song, but it's kinda sick because Maxwell keeps on killing everyone."

The vaudevillian-style song is about medical student Maxwell Edison, who uses his silver hammer to murder his girlfriend, then his teacher, and finally a judge. According to McCartney, it epitomizes the downfalls of life. He said in 1994:

"Maxwell's Silver Hammer" is my analogy for when something goes wrong out of the blue, as it so often does, as I was beginning to find out at that time in my life. I wanted something symbolic of that, so to me it was some fictitious character called Maxwell with a silver hammer. I don't know why it was silver, it just sounded better than Maxwell's hammer. It was needed for scanning. We still use that expression now when something unexpected happens.

The song took three days of overdubbing because McCartney imagined that it could be a future single. John Lennon later recalled, "he did everything to make it into a single, and it never was and it never could have been." According to Lennon, the band spent more money on that song than any other on Abbey Road.

References

• The Beatles Ultimate Experience Database
• Turner, Steve. A Hard Day's Write: The Stories Behind Every Beatles' Song, Harper, New York: 1994, ISBN 006095065X

External Links

• Lyrics