Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Hi, everyone, it's Paul muldoon. Before we get to this episode,
Speaker 2: I wanted to let you know that you can binge
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Speaker 3: Hi.
Speaker 4: I'm going to be driving up to Liverpool in my
Speaker 4: brand new Aston Martin, going too fast.
Speaker 3: But with the radio. There was this play that caught
Speaker 3: my ears.
Speaker 5: The shit a bump out of order and you all
Speaker 5: have you deep brain.
Speaker 3: Ubu cuckoo I was. I really liked it.
Speaker 5: It's not functioning at all, it's broken.
Speaker 3: Down because it was so rebellious.
Speaker 5: What a dirty business like your deep braining machine.
Speaker 3: I just love this character, Ubu.
Speaker 6: I'm not afraid of that.
Speaker 5: There's nothing like a sewage barrel.
Speaker 3: I liked hund me my shitter pump, may Ubu.
Speaker 4: I thought that is good shit, a pump and just
Speaker 4: the image that conjured up. It is always little dirty
Speaker 4: things appeal to me. When when people are rude and.
Speaker 3: I say, I went up the whole of the journey
Speaker 3: listening to this.
Speaker 5: Barrel pumpkin refuse of humanity.
Speaker 2: I'm Paul Mulder for a while now, I've been fortunate
Speaker 2: to spend time with one of the greatest songwriters of
Speaker 2: our era, and.
Speaker 3: Will you look at me, I'm going on to I'm
Speaker 3: actually a performer.
Speaker 2: That is Sir Paul McCartney. We worked together on a
Speaker 2: book looking at the lyrics of more than one hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty of his songs, and we recorded many hours
Speaker 2: of our conversations.
Speaker 4: It was like going back to an old snapshot album
Speaker 4: looking back on work I hadn't ever analyzed.
Speaker 2: This is McCartney, a life in lyrics, a masterclass, a memoir,
Speaker 2: and an improvised journey with one of the most iconic
Speaker 2: figures in popular music. In this episode, Maxwell's Silver Hammer.
Speaker 3: To B B be E minor A seven D B
Speaker 3: J A.
Speaker 4: Well, it's a story song, you know, It's one of
Speaker 4: my story songs. And I think I'm kind of unique
Speaker 4: in the Beatles for doing them, because if you look
Speaker 4: at Georgie, songs are always very auto biographical. It's very
Speaker 4: something he thinks, My sweet lord, you know, here comes
Speaker 4: the sun and Mine's influenced I think by that period
Speaker 4: of intense literature. This is why I do story songs
Speaker 4: where someone is making a writer is putting himself in
Speaker 4: the position of a person. It's the imagination that I like.
Speaker 4: So with things like lax and Slamma, I like the
Speaker 4: idea of making up people, dramatic persona.
Speaker 6: Jos quisical, sturdy batter, physical sign late night song along
Speaker 6: with a TestU.
Speaker 2: The lyric studied Pataphysical Science in the Home is a
Speaker 2: rather obscure reference to the work of the French playwright
Speaker 2: Alfred Jarry, whose play Ubu Kokou McCartney heard on his
Speaker 2: car radio. Jarry is often considered a forefather of Dadaism
Speaker 2: and surrealism, and he once described his made up discipline
Speaker 2: of pataphysics as the science of imaginary solutions.
Speaker 4: I got round to Jari and pataphysics and I had
Speaker 4: friends with guy Barry Miles, and he was very bookish.
Speaker 4: He look bookish. He started the Indico bookstore with a
Speaker 4: couple of others. I used to just go around to
Speaker 4: his house and we would just have dinner and we
Speaker 4: would just talk. So with Jarry, we were talking about
Speaker 4: what part of physics was and he was more knowledgeable
Speaker 4: than I have said when it wasn't. It was a
Speaker 4: made up science, and he had the chair of Pataphysics
Speaker 4: and the other partaphysical Society.
Speaker 5: Remember that you are addressing a celebrated pataposition. Excuse me, sir,
Speaker 5: you said pataposition. Pataphysics is a branch of science which
Speaker 5: we have invented and for which a crying.
Speaker 3: Need is generally experienced.
Speaker 5: Oh but you see, if you're a famous inventor, we'll
Speaker 5: understand each other.
Speaker 3: For between great men, I let.
Speaker 5: Our more modesty, sir. Besides, I see no great man
Speaker 5: here except myself. But since you insist, I have condescended
Speaker 5: to do you a most significant honor. Let it be
Speaker 5: known to you, sir, that your establishment suits us, and
Speaker 5: that we have decided to make ourselves at home here.
Speaker 4: I was just fascinated by the surrealism of it and
Speaker 4: the madness of it all, you know, so so that
Speaker 4: I was very happy to get the rhyme quizzical and pataphysical.
Speaker 3: And then Joan. So we just started with a Joan. Okay,
Speaker 3: we've got a character.
Speaker 6: Joan was quizical, sturdy batter physical science like.
Speaker 4: The way be study part of physical science in the home. Yes,
Speaker 4: in science in the Home is almost like a title,
Speaker 4: So I like this. And then when it's like all
Speaker 4: alone with a test you there's something a bit sort
Speaker 4: of surreal but suggestive.
Speaker 6: Late nights, all alone with a test tube.
Speaker 1: Well, the test tube, of course at that point the
Speaker 1: notion of the test tube, babe, was probably you know
Speaker 1: very much at that point, wasn't it.
Speaker 3: It was?
Speaker 4: And also, if I'm going to talk about science, for me,
Speaker 4: my experience of science was pippetts and test tubes and on.
Speaker 3: On some burders, all those wonderful things.
Speaker 6: Maxwell Edison majorine in medicine, Can I take you out
Speaker 6: of the pictures?
Speaker 2: And Joe, the name of the song's anti hero, might
Speaker 2: have come from James Clark Maxwell, the Scottish scientist who
Speaker 2: developed the classical theory of electromagnetism, and Maxwell's surname Edison
Speaker 2: must have come from the inventor Thomas Edison.
Speaker 3: I just loved the rhyme.
Speaker 4: As I loved quizical by the physical Maxwell.
Speaker 6: Edison Major Edison puls Can I take you out of
Speaker 6: the picture's jum.
Speaker 2: When the Beatles were recording Maxwell's Silver Hammer and the
Speaker 2: Rest of Abbey Road, they were experimenting with their own science,
Speaker 2: that of music production.
Speaker 4: This coincided with the visit to Abbey Road of Robert Moog. Oh,
Speaker 4: yes there's adventure sizer and no one had seen synth science.
Speaker 4: This is the very first was on the first time,
Speaker 4: and they took up a whole room.
Speaker 3: It was a huge thing and it filled the whole
Speaker 3: wall of the room.
Speaker 2: Here's the journalist Derry Cooper introducing the new instrument on television.
Speaker 2: It's called the milk synthesizer.
Speaker 3: It produces sounds in a matter of minutes, which would
Speaker 3: normally take radiophonic experts with their complicated equipment.
Speaker 2: Days of work and multiple re recording would give.
Speaker 4: George Martin was always very keen on these technological innovations.
Speaker 4: You probably find he knew Robert anyway, come over abro
Speaker 4: show us this smoke thing, and I was fascinated, and
Speaker 4: he show us how to get these sounds from the walk.
Speaker 4: But it took a little longer than our normal songs
Speaker 4: took not crazy compared by today's standards, sure, but by
Speaker 4: those relatively long time by the standards of the day.
Speaker 6: She's scary.
Speaker 2: Ready on the As we get to the chorus of
Speaker 2: the song, it shifts from a wholesome romance between the
Speaker 2: pataphysicist Joan and her medical suitor to a much more
Speaker 2: violent story that's well sealed.
Speaker 6: Game down.
Speaker 4: And so now you know this is like noir cinema noir.
Speaker 4: I like the idea that we were all cozy and
Speaker 4: she's just a scientist and it's a little bit fun.
Speaker 4: And he's a doctor studying medicine student, medical student.
Speaker 3: But now he's going to kill a swell that she
Speaker 3: was dead.
Speaker 1: It's serial murderer in some ways.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he is a serial murderer. And now we've whoa.
Speaker 4: We now got into a much darker world.
Speaker 6: School again, Max replays the pool again. The teacher against annoyed,
Speaker 6: wishing to avoid an unpleasant scene, she tells Max to
Speaker 6: say when the glass has gone away, So he waits behind,
Speaker 6: writing fifty times, I must not be so.
Speaker 4: Writing fifty times, I must not be so fifty lines
Speaker 4: was a standard punishment in detention, right, I must not
Speaker 4: talking class, And I was always doing that.
Speaker 3: I was often in detention.
Speaker 7: I must not be so or whatever. It was so naughty,
Speaker 7: so Parrathon, I.
Speaker 3: Must not be so. I don't need to say the naughty.
Speaker 6: When she turns it back on, the boy dreams up
Speaker 6: from behind Maxwell sail.
Speaker 7: Now.
Speaker 2: To accentuate the shock of the deadly silver hammer, the
Speaker 2: chorus incorporated clangs of a hammer heading an anvil, though
Speaker 2: it's contested Ringo Starr likely did all the percussion for
Speaker 2: the recording, including that anvil. However, it was Mel Evans,
Speaker 2: the band's tour manager, who banged the hammer in rehearsals.
Speaker 6: Bang Bang Maxwell Silver saw that she was dead taking
Speaker 6: away Johnny.
Speaker 7: I mean is in Bang Bang Maxwell's silver hammer. It's
Speaker 7: not without its humor, and it conjures up. It conjures
Speaker 7: up for me a fair ground.
Speaker 3: Remember that thing? Is that part of what strength? Yes,
Speaker 3: I don't know. To me, the silver hammer is like
Speaker 3: a medical thing. Okay, it's ominous.
Speaker 1: I see, like the kind of thing used to knock
Speaker 1: your knee. Whether to see what you're reflexing silver.
Speaker 4: I'm thinking like sort of chrome in my head, you know,
Speaker 4: silver hammer is a medical student.
Speaker 1: Medical students got just sort of crow hammer.
Speaker 7: Yeah, but I mean it is a violent image of
Speaker 7: something coming.
Speaker 3: To it is extremely violent. But that's that's the thing,
Speaker 3: isn't it Like surrealism? That's what happens.
Speaker 4: You get a very ordinary scene and then bang, it's
Speaker 4: a dramatic device as well. You know so, and I
Speaker 4: just I don't know why I wanted to do sort
Speaker 4: of dark comedy. It's like at a dark comedy because
Speaker 4: it is a comedy.
Speaker 6: See thirty one said we go to dirty one. Maxwell
Speaker 6: stands painting testimonial pictures.
Speaker 4: You know PC thirty one. There was a PREC forty
Speaker 4: nine when I was a kid.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it was a character.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what was that in?
Speaker 3: I think it was possibly on the radio. I remember
Speaker 3: that PC and.
Speaker 4: Leave instructions at the death that I want to see
Speaker 4: PC forty nine as soon as he comes on tomorrow,
Speaker 4: I will say.
Speaker 5: Excuse me, sage this sage and sent me out with
Speaker 5: this message for the DDI What did it come from?
Speaker 2: The Adventures of PC forty nine was a popular post
Speaker 2: war radio series produced by the BBC. The show followed
Speaker 2: the everyday sleuthing of Police Constable Archibald Berkley Willoughby as
Speaker 2: he investigated cheating gamblers and other crimes on the cold
Speaker 2: streets of London.
Speaker 1: Say what have the police raid this place?
Speaker 5: I want so still we've got even that organized a
Speaker 5: system of warning bells and two tough boys on the
Speaker 5: door to the lie up.
Speaker 2: This old time noir radio show might have inspired the character,
Speaker 2: gallery and setting of McCartney's song.
Speaker 6: And those Valerie screaming from the gallery, say him muscufa.
Speaker 6: The judge does not agree, and he tells them.
Speaker 4: Souls rose and Valerie screaming from the gallery, you mus
Speaker 4: go free. So, I mean, he's got his supporters and
Speaker 4: it's like, oh, don't support him too much, girls, because he'll.
Speaker 3: Kill you, you know. So it's a little bit on us,
Speaker 3: you know, a little bits of the dark.
Speaker 6: Leaving his lips. The noise comes from behind him.
Speaker 3: I like the idea of playing with them. I like
Speaker 3: the idea of giving him.
Speaker 1: A story, are saying what they come up with, I suppose.
Speaker 4: You know, and then you know, putting Valerie in the gallery.
Speaker 8: It's such a joyous song. I mean it has this
Speaker 8: dark undertoe, but it has you have tongue.
Speaker 4: You know, it's tongue in cheek. You know that it's
Speaker 4: not a real story. This is not dateline. You know,
Speaker 4: this is made up. And I think that's the sort
Speaker 4: of joy of it. It's like a children's nursery rhyme
Speaker 4: you know, chop, chop off your head.
Speaker 3: It's a big tradition of that stuff.
Speaker 4: You know, nursery rhymes are always chopping off people's heads,
Speaker 4: or Humpty Dumpty is always chopping and cracking.
Speaker 3: So there is this thing, boy, we can like because
Speaker 3: we can place it.
Speaker 4: In a safe place, and we can enjoy the macabre
Speaker 4: aspect because we know it's not really it's not a
Speaker 4: news story.
Speaker 2: There's certainly a mix of playfulness and darkness at the
Speaker 2: core of Maxwell's Silver Hammer. Despite the lightheartedness of the melody,
Speaker 2: the band's recording sessions for the song weren't quite so light.
Speaker 2: The other three Beatles publicly said they didn't like the track.
Speaker 2: Ringo Starr even said it was the worst song they
Speaker 2: ever recorded. Really, their frustration was less about the song
Speaker 2: itself and more about McCartney's admitted perfectionism in this video.
Speaker 3: And I was very keen on it. It took a
Speaker 3: little bit long to record.
Speaker 4: I remember the guys getting pissed with me occasionally, I
Speaker 4: in particular, would take too long because I was trying
Speaker 4: to get what was in my head.
Speaker 1: I was just going to ask you about how at
Speaker 1: this stage, how did at work.
Speaker 9: Recording sessions were always good because no matter what our
Speaker 9: personal troubles were, no matter what was sort of going
Speaker 9: down a minute, we sat down to make a song,
Speaker 9: we were good, well done boys. Our sort of skills
Speaker 9: came out, and so I think we all enjoyed being
Speaker 9: in this little skillful company where Ringo would do that,
Speaker 9: and George would play that, and John would do that
Speaker 9: which was slightly more eccentric, and I would do.
Speaker 3: That on base or piano or whatever. So there was
Speaker 3: a great joy that.
Speaker 2: See Maxwell's silver Hammer from the beatles nineteen sixty nine
Speaker 2: album Abbey Road.
Speaker 1: In the next episode.
Speaker 3: Day Keenooconai were.
Speaker 6: Now It ex is though that he.
Speaker 2: Yesterday one of the most covered songs in music history.
Speaker 3: Yesday.
Speaker 2: Suddenly that's next time on McCartney A Life in Lyrics.
Speaker 2: McCartney A Life in Lyrics is a co production between iHeartMedia,
Speaker 2: NPL and Pushkin Industries