Maxwell's Silver Hammer - Take 12

Paul McCartney wrote this song, which is about a medical student (Maxwell Edison) who kills people. The lyric is whimsical dark comedy culled from McCartney's imagination. Growing up, his family loved to make up outrageous stories and tell tall tales, and this seeped into McCartney's songwriting, as he often made up characters for his songs. John Lennon, on the other hand, would usually base his songs on real people and events.

Paul McCartney said of this song: "It epitomizes the downfalls in life. Just when everything is going smoothly, Bang! Bang! Down comes Maxwell's Silver Hammer and ruins everything."

McCartney played a Moog synthesizer, but there is a much more unusual instrument on this song as well: an anvil. It's a blacksmith's tool that showed up in a lot of those wonderfully violent Looney Tunes cartoons when a heavy object was needed for comic effect. Ringo is the one who banged on the anvil, which was rented from a company that supplied stage props.