Maxwell’s Silver Hammer

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Hi.

I'm going to be driving up to Liverpool in my brand new Aston Martin, going too fast.

But with the radio. There was this play that caught my ears.

The shit a bump out of order and you all have you deep brain.

Ubu cuckoo I was. I really liked it.

It's not functioning at all, it's broken.

Down because it was so rebellious.

What a dirty business like your deep braining machine.

I just love this character, Ubu.

I'm not afraid of that.

There's nothing like a sewage barrel.

I liked hund me my shitter pump, may Ubu.

I thought that is good shit, a pump and just the image that conjured up. It is always little dirty things appeal to me. When when people are rude and.

I say, I went up the whole of the journey listening to this.

Barrel pumpkin refuse of humanity.

I'm Paul Mulder for a while now, I've been fortunate to spend time with one of the greatest songwriters of our era, and.

Will you look at me, I'm going on to I'm actually a performer.

That is Sir Paul McCartney. We worked together on a book looking at the lyrics of more than one hundred and fifty of his songs, and we recorded many hours of our conversations.

It was like going back to an old snapshot album looking back on work I hadn't ever analyzed.

This is McCartney, a life in lyrics, a masterclass, a memoir, and an improvised journey with one of the most iconic figures in popular music. In this episode, Maxwell's Silver Hammer.

To B B be E minor A seven D B J A.

Well, it's a story song, you know, It's one of my story songs. And I think I'm kind of unique in the Beatles for doing them, because if you look at Georgie, songs are always very auto biographical. It's very something he thinks, My sweet lord, you know, here comes the sun and Mine's influenced I think by that period of intense literature. This is why I do story songs where someone is making a writer is putting himself in the position of a person. It's the imagination that I like.

Jos quisical, sturdy batter, physical sign late night song along with a TestU.

The lyric studied Pataphysical Science in the Home is a rather obscure reference to the work of the French playwright Alfred Jarry, whose play Ubu Kokou McCartney heard on his car radio. Jarry is often considered a forefather of Dadaism and surrealism, and he once described his made up discipline of pataphysics as the science of imaginary solutions.

I got round to Jari and pataphysics and I had friends with guy Barry Miles, and he was very bookish. He look bookish. He started the Indico bookstore with a couple of others. I used to just go around to his house and we would just have dinner and we would just talk. So with Jarry, we were talking about what part of physics was and he was more knowledgeable than I have said when it wasn't. It was a made up science, and he had the chair of Pataphysics and the other partaphysical Society.

Remember that you are addressing a celebrated pataposition. Excuse me, sir, you said pataposition. Pataphysics is a branch of science which we have invented and for which a crying.

Need is generally experienced.

Oh but you see, if you're a famous inventor, we'll understand each other.

For between great men, I let.

Our more modesty, sir. Besides, I see no great man here except myself. But since you insist, I have condescended to do you a most significant honor. Let it be known to you, sir, that your establishment suits us, and that we have decided to make ourselves at home here.

I was just fascinated by the surrealism of it and the madness of it all, you know, so so that I was very happy to get the rhyme quizzical and pataphysical.

And then Joan. So we just started with a Joan. Okay, we've got a character.

Joan was quizical, sturdy batter physical science like.

The way be study part of physical science in the home. Yes, in science in the Home is almost like a title, So I like this. And then when it's like all alone with a test you there's something a bit sort of surreal but suggestive.

Late nights, all alone with a test tube.

Well, the test tube, of course at that point the notion of the test tube, babe, was probably you know very much at that point, wasn't it.

It was?

And also, if I'm going to talk about science, for me, my experience of science was pippetts and test tubes and on.

On some burders, all those wonderful things.

Maxwell Edison majorine in medicine, Can I take you out of the pictures?

And Joe, the name of the song's anti hero, might have come from James Clark Maxwell, the Scottish scientist who developed the classical theory of electromagnetism, and Maxwell's surname Edison must have come from the inventor Thomas Edison.

I just loved the rhyme.

As I loved quizical by the physical Maxwell.

Edison Major Edison puls Can I take you out of the picture's jum.

When the Beatles were recording Maxwell's Silver Hammer and the Rest of Abbey Road, they were experimenting with their own science, that of music production.

This coincided with the visit to Abbey Road of Robert Moog. Oh, yes there's adventure sizer and no one had seen synth science. This is the very first was on the first time, and they took up a whole room.

It was a huge thing and it filled the whole wall of the room.

Here's the journalist Derry Cooper introducing the new instrument on television. It's called the milk synthesizer.

It produces sounds in a matter of minutes, which would normally take radiophonic experts with their complicated equipment.

Days of work and multiple re recording would give.

George Martin was always very keen on these technological innovations. You probably find he knew Robert anyway, come over abro show us this smoke thing, and I was fascinated, and he show us how to get these sounds from the walk. But it took a little longer than our normal songs took not crazy compared by today's standards, sure, but by those relatively long time by the standards of the day.

She's scary.

Ready on the As we get to the chorus of the song, it shifts from a wholesome romance between the pataphysicist Joan and her medical suitor to a much more violent story that's well sealed.

Game down.

And so now you know this is like noir cinema noir. I like the idea that we were all cozy and she's just a scientist and it's a little bit fun. And he's a doctor studying medicine student, medical student.

But now he's going to kill a swell that she was dead.

It's serial murderer in some ways.

Yeah, he is a serial murderer. And now we've whoa.

We now got into a much darker world.

School again, Max replays the pool again. The teacher against annoyed, wishing to avoid an unpleasant scene, she tells Max to say when the glass has gone away, So he waits behind, writing fifty times, I must not be so.

Writing fifty times, I must not be so fifty lines was a standard punishment in detention, right, I must not talking class, And I was always doing that.

I was often in detention.

I must not be so or whatever. It was so naughty, so Parrathon, I.

Must not be so. I don't need to say the naughty.

When she turns it back on, the boy dreams up from behind Maxwell sail.

Now.

To accentuate the shock of the deadly silver hammer, the chorus incorporated clangs of a hammer heading an anvil, though it's contested Ringo Starr likely did all the percussion for the recording, including that anvil. However, it was Mel Evans, the band's tour manager, who banged the hammer in rehearsals.

Bang Bang Maxwell Silver saw that she was dead taking away Johnny.

I mean is in Bang Bang Maxwell's silver hammer. It's not without its humor, and it conjures up. It conjures up for me a fair ground.

Remember that thing? Is that part of what strength? Yes, I don't know. To me, the silver hammer is like a medical thing. Okay, it's ominous.

I see, like the kind of thing used to knock your knee. Whether to see what you're reflexing silver.

I'm thinking like sort of chrome in my head, you know, silver hammer is a medical student.

Medical students got just sort of crow hammer.

Yeah, but I mean it is a violent image of something coming.

To it is extremely violent. But that's that's the thing, isn't it Like surrealism? That's what happens.

You get a very ordinary scene and then bang, it's a dramatic device as well. You know so, and I just I don't know why I wanted to do sort of dark comedy. It's like at a dark comedy because it is a comedy.

See thirty one said we go to dirty one. Maxwell stands painting testimonial pictures.

You know PC thirty one. There was a PREC forty nine when I was a kid.

Oh yeah, it was a character.

Yeah, what was that in?

I think it was possibly on the radio. I remember that PC and.

Leave instructions at the death that I want to see PC forty nine as soon as he comes on tomorrow, I will say.

Excuse me, sage this sage and sent me out with this message for the DDI What did it come from?

The Adventures of PC forty nine was a popular post war radio series produced by the BBC. The show followed the everyday sleuthing of Police Constable Archibald Berkley Willoughby as he investigated cheating gamblers and other crimes on the cold streets of London.

Say what have the police raid this place?

I want so still we've got even that organized a system of warning bells and two tough boys on the door to the lie up.

This old time noir radio show might have inspired the character, gallery and setting of McCartney's song.

And those Valerie screaming from the gallery, say him muscufa. The judge does not agree, and he tells them.

Souls rose and Valerie screaming from the gallery, you mus go free. So, I mean, he's got his supporters and it's like, oh, don't support him too much, girls, because he'll.

Kill you, you know. So it's a little bit on us, you know, a little bits of the dark.

Leaving his lips. The noise comes from behind him.

I like the idea of playing with them. I like the idea of giving him.

A story, are saying what they come up with, I suppose.

You know, and then you know, putting Valerie in the gallery.

It's such a joyous song. I mean it has this dark undertoe, but it has you have tongue.

You know, it's tongue in cheek. You know that it's not a real story. This is not dateline. You know, this is made up. And I think that's the sort of joy of it. It's like a children's nursery rhyme you know, chop, chop off your head.

It's a big tradition of that stuff.

You know, nursery rhymes are always chopping off people's heads, or Humpty Dumpty is always chopping and cracking.

So there is this thing, boy, we can like because we can place it.

In a safe place, and we can enjoy the macabre aspect because we know it's not really it's not a news story.

There's certainly a mix of playfulness and darkness at the core of Maxwell's Silver Hammer. Despite the lightheartedness of the melody, the band's recording sessions for the song weren't quite so light. The other three Beatles publicly said they didn't like the track. Ringo Starr even said it was the worst song they ever recorded. Really, their frustration was less about the song itself and more about McCartney's admitted perfectionism in this video.

And I was very keen on it. It took a little bit long to record.

I remember the guys getting pissed with me occasionally, I in particular, would take too long because I was trying to get what was in my head.

I was just going to ask you about how at this stage, how did at work.

Recording sessions were always good because no matter what our personal troubles were, no matter what was sort of going down a minute, we sat down to make a song, we were good, well done boys. Our sort of skills came out, and so I think we all enjoyed being in this little skillful company where Ringo would do that, and George would play that, and John would do that which was slightly more eccentric, and I would do.

That on base or piano or whatever. So there was a great joy that.

See Maxwell's silver Hammer from the beatles nineteen sixty nine album Abbey Road.

In the next episode.

Day Keenooconai were.

Now It ex is though that he.

Yesterday one of the most covered songs in music history.

Yesday.

Suddenly that's next time on McCartney A Life in Lyrics. McCartney A Life in Lyrics is a co production between iHeartMedia, NPL and Pushkin Industries