George Harrison struggled to get his point of view heard while with the Beatles. His self-penned songs were often passed up in favor of ones written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Moreover, his opinion on which songs they should or should not record was often not voiced or not taken into account by the other members.
Most of the time, Harrison seemed amicable enough, but there was one particular song that was too much for him to handle: “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.”
The track falls under what Lennon called “granny music,” i.e. campy tunes that often featured a nonsensical, or at least zany, narrative. Truth be told, only McCartney was truly in favor of recording the track. The rest of his bandmates apparently groaned at the thought of recording the silly song. Although its most vehement hater was Harrison.
“Sometimes Paul would make us do these really fruity songs,” Harrison once said. “I mean, my God, ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ was so fruity. After a while we did a good job on it, but when Paul got an idea or an arrangement in his head…”
McCartney reportedly made his bandmates record (and re-record) “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” for days on end – long and taxing days. Of course, Macca remembers it differently.
“They got annoyed because ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ took three days to record,” McCartney once said. “Big deal.”
Harrison wasn’t alone in his hatred for the track.
“I hated it,” Lennon told Playboy in 1980. “All I remember is the track – he made us do it a hundred million times. He did everything to make it into a single and it never was and it never could’ve been. But [Paul] put guitar licks on it and he had somebody hitting iron pieces and we spent more money on that song than any of them in the whole album.”
To throw salt in Harrison’s wound, not only did he just dislike “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” but the lengthy recording process for the track kept the group from recording songs like “All Things Must Pass” and “My Sweet Lord” – both of which would go on to become staples in Harrison’s solo catalog.
It was just one of many disagreements in the late ’60s that caused the iconic rockers to fracture. Revisit “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” below.
