Ringo Starr Called This ‘Abbey Road’ Song the Worst Track the Beatles Ever Had to Record

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Ringo Starr Called This ‘Abbey Road’ Song the Worst Track the Beatles Ever Had to Record

BY MELANIE DAVIS

American Songwriter

UPDATED: AUGUST 11, 2024

When you’re as prolific of recording artists as the Beatles, some sessions are bound to be less enjoyable than others, like the Beatles songs Ringo Starr said was the “worst track we ever had to record.” The divisive song was a Paul McCartney song he originally wrote for their eponymous ‘White Album.’ However, time constraints pushed it back to Abbey Road.

As difficult as the recording sessions were for Ringo, he could at least take solace in the fact that he wasn’t the only Beatle who felt that way.

Ringo Starr Called This Song “The Worst Track”

“Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” is the third track off the Beatles’ iconic 1969 record Abbey Road. The jangly, jaunty tune about a hammer-wielding murderer named Maxwell Edison has become one of the most easily recognizable tracks in the Beatles’ discography. Still, that doesn’t mean it was anything close to a hit with a band.

Paul McCartney’s song proved to be rather vexing for the rest of the Fab Four. This included drummer Ringo Starr, who told Rolling Stone in 2008 that the time they spent cutting the song was “the worst session ever. It was the worst track we ever had to record. It went on for f***ing weeks. I thought it was mad.”

Bandmate John Lennon felt the same way. “I hated it,” Lennon said in a 1980 interview for Playboy (via Far Out Magazine). “All I remember is the track. [Paul] 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.”

The Band’s Feelings Were Strangely Appropriate to the Song

The production process of and general reaction to “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” were, in a way, appropriate given what Paul McCartney originally wrote the song about. In Barry Miles’ Many Years From Now, McCartney explained the song “was 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,” McCartney continued. “I don’t know why it was silver. It just sounded better than Maxwell’s hammer. We still use that expression even now when something unexpected happens.”

After all, “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” never became the single Paul McCartney wanted it to be. Moreover, he likely couldn’t have imagined that all three of his band members would have disliked the song as much as they did. Nevertheless, the track made the Abbey Road tracklist, cementing its place as one of the most memorable, albeit not the most popular, Beatles songs of all time.

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