Maxwell's Silver Hammer

I don't think this song represents anything particular, and people read into it a bit too much. It's just a comical little song about college student Maxwell killing. If you really did want to read into it, you could say the whole song right down to it's composition is about life taking turns and surprising you.

It starts out almost like a parody of beatles love songs intruducing two characters to go out to the movies on a date, making you think that it's a love song, then BAM, it couldnt be more different. This kinda shows that not only is the story in the song about life's surprises, but everything right down to the cheerful tune and vocals conflicting with the dark undertone. Things aren't always what they seem. ;)

This song is way underappreciated. I suppose in comparison to the Beatles' other songs, it would be. :)

This song was most likely inspired by the tragic incident involving talented English playright Joe Orton and his lover companion Kenneth Halliwell(Maxwell is a wordplay on Haliwell). Halliwell bludgeoned 34 year old Joe Orton to death with a hammer to his head (9 blows) on August 1967. Halliwell then took an overdose of 22 Nembutal and committed suicide. Joe Orton and Halliwell were known to play the fools and had been arrested fined L262 and jailed for 6 months for damaging library books. They would return library books with new sleeve covers and new blurbs. Orton felt that the punishment was excessive due to them being queers. Joe Orton later started having success with his plays (dark satirical comedies).Joe Orton was in touch with the Beatles and was writing a play (Up Against It) for them. He was supposed to meet with them or their representatives the day they found him murdered. A chaufeur that had been sent to take him to the meeting discovered the bodies. Halliwell had been depressed and was seeing a psychiatrist. Joe Orton had found a new boyfriend and was planning to break up with the already stressed out depressed and troubled Halliwell. The play Up Against It was eventually produced in 1989 with music by Tod Rundgren. Paul McCartney took the incident changed the players and some circustances somewhat but kept the tragic situation the same and put it to rhyme and unreason......and now you know the rest of the story.....

Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy dealing in reality. Pataphysics, the real lyric (I'm sorry) is that that deals beyond metaphysics.) Ie, the unreal.

Please, if someone has already posted the pointless opinion that a song is meaningless, or just what it appears to be please do not restate it. It is a perfectly valid point of view, but its in almost every songmeanings review and its tiring. I would also like to point out that the intended meaning of the song is not the only meaning, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, well so is meaning. I do not wish to discourage posting what the band or professional critics have said as it can often grant great insight but it is no one has the final word, meaning is an objective thing, people who deny this are the same type of people who die in religious wars. Also bands have been known to lie about the meaning of a song to avoid admitting the truth (which may be too deeply personal or may even allude to treason). I would also like to point out that written right above the box where you type in your comments it says "what does this song mean to you?". For me the draw to this site is the chance to hear novel theories and gain new perspectives, so having to read through 4 pages of shallow summaries of the song ie "its just about a string of murders" is not fun.

Now then, the song. A friend of mine once suggested that it was about a guy who has sex with lonely virgin girls. He explained that he believed the silver hammer was a euphemism, and that "head" was short for 'maiden head' a term used in old english poetry that means hymen/virginity, and the theme of violence was to play up the bleeding that can occur when the hymen is broken. He also argued that the apparently timid nature of the girl (late nights alone) and the teacher (avoiding unpleasant scenes) support his virgin theory. And that Maxwell's supporters at the court house (rose and valerie) symbolized the willingness of the women he had sex with (even if they may have been jail bait). When I asked him about the judge who is clearly refered to as 'he' my friend admitted that it wasnt a perfect theory and suggested that it might allude to Maxwell's fate in prison after he had been found guilty for the whole jail bait thing. Also I have just noticed that MiracleDrug made some simular arguments for the hammer being a penis back around pg.2.

I would also like to point out the irony that the teacher wished to "avoid an unpleasant scene" and ended up BEING an unpleasant scene (if you take the song litterally)

any ideas on any possiable signifigance of his major? (why medicine? just to rhyme with edison? if thats the case why not change the last name? why edison?)

I also considered that the silver hammer could be the hammer on a gun but the words 'bang, bang' in the song are accompanied by clang noises which don't sound anything like a gun.

In the first stanza (with Joan), I think McCartney is saying something about serial killing as a perversion of life force, and also a twist on the moral import of urban legends. Joan indulges the neurotic impulse to dabble in occultish things ("alternate" scientific models / theosophy) and masturbation (oh, that test tube!), and winds up with her head bashed in by a dapper fellow. The effect is sort of like an urban legend-style cautionary tale. But instead of being a warning that making out with your boyfriend on the couch during a babysitting gig will be causally linked to the murder of your young charges upstairs, it's a sort of ironically welcome twist; about how sexual stifling becomes a spur to your untimely demise. This, to me, seems typically McCartneyesque, in line with the down'n'dirty, matter-of-fact, "make love not war" approach to life that's often reflected in his lyrics.

After that, it's a sort of banal defensive business; Maxwell uses murder to avoid answerability for classroom hijinks, then uses his little hammer to evade judgement.

I'm suddenly remembering the effect these lyrics had on my when I first heard them as a kid. The "silver" of the hammer seemed really interesting. Why a silver hammer?; why not just a plain old steel ball peen or something? At the time I sensed something banally sinister, and connected it to American foreign policy, which had, at the time, been nothing if not banally sinister. Americans spent US$400B to kill 2.5M Vietnamese--quite the expensive hammer, wot?--and then got their panties in a bunch when anyone dared to question the morality of this state of affairs. Who's to say that Robt Kennedy and MLK--for that matter, JFK!--weren't killed by that very same silver hammer?

Now I know that at this point people will remonstrate, "Hey! It's just a nice song! Back off!" But I think McCartney was a tremendous songwriter with that rare gift for channeling his subconscious, but doing so with awareness, artistry, and flair. There had to be a reason his subconscious was feeding him this bizarre image--a "nice" young man bashing in people's heads by expensive means and with a happy-go-lucky absence of compunction. Actually, that last bit--the lack of awareness of the wrongness of doing this--is key. So the first question is: Is McCartney trying to tell us something we need to know? If Maxwell is unaware that what he is doing is wrong, could someone else be? Who might that person be?

Whoever that person may be, one thing is for certain: As long as that person is Someone Else, then nothing will ever change. It's when that person becomes Us that the possibility of moral awakening emerges from slumber.

i like this song-its kinda like a dark comedy but in music version-its a silly song about a mass murderer,only the beatles could accomplish such a feat.

"Joan was quizzical, studied pataphysical Science in the home, Late nights all alone with a test-tube..."

Wonderful completely non-serious song....

I think this is just a song. I mean not everything has to be about something. I think its just a fun song that they wanted to play.

slapshot3030 hit it on the head (ha!) with the comment about the pope and the silver hammer. But it goes one step deeper...the tradition of tapping the pope on the head goes back all the way to the Etruscans, forerunners of the Romans in Italy. One of their death demons/deities, Charun, is a big nasty blue-skinned guy who carries a large silver hammer. He shows up when someone dies and bashes their head in with it to make sure that they are really dead. He turns up in tomb paintings (such as in the Francois tomb, if you want to Google it and find the photo). John Lennon apparently saw an exhibition of Etruscan art at either the Met or the British Museum, I don't remember which, and was inspired by it.

Paul said: " '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."