The unjustly maligned "Revolution 9" aside, there may not be a more disliked Beatles' original than "Maxwell's Silver Hammer". The negative feelings go all the way to the top, with three quarters of the Fab Four either despising it outright (John Lennon) or having grown completely sick of it due to Paul McCartney's perfectionism in the studio (George Harrison and Ringo Starr). As if following their lead, virtually everyone — including many die hard Beatle obsessives — has a similar intolerance for it. Ian MacDonald described it as "tasteless" while Ian Leslie argues that its presence on Abbey Road allowed for John to construct a "public narrative in which McCartney was the cute populist, [while] Lennon [was] the fearless artist".
Complicating matters is that "Maxwell" is well made. McCartney's skills as a master pop craftsman are on display and the other Beatles (those who showed up to play on it at any rate; Lennon not being among them) are also in fine form. The production is clear, the arrangement is nice and who doesn't love a good Moog synthesizer solo? All that said, while it sounds nice, it's still awful. (My main gripe with "Maxwell" is lyrically: the rhyme schemes — "Maxwell Edison, majoring in medicine", "Rose and Valerie, screaming from the gallery — are too contrived to be believable while it's unclear if the murderous title character is meant to be a university undergrad or an eight year old; while McCartney could put hours of care into his music and arrangements, he could lack attention to detail when it came to the words)
There is more than a little of "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" in 1910 Fruitgum Company's debut Canadian number one "Simon Says", minus McCartney's Midas touch. Well made? Sure, I suppose so. The members of this band with the insanely stupid name sound like a capable group. Yet, they were going for the lowest common denominator and in this particular era that meant bubblegum pop. The clever strategy would have been to subversively edge the kids along with them but instead they chose to go out of their way to appeal to them. And, credit to them, it seemed to work. Though they never had a number one smash down in their native United States, the Fruitgum boys did okay for themselves for little while. (Sadly, we'll be seeing them twice more in this space) While they had their (presumably youthful) fanbase, their childish tunes probably inspired just as much of a backlash.
"Sometimes there is no gulf wider than the one between the 12 and the 13 year old boy," observes Tom Ewing in his review of the wretched novelty pop "Star Trekkin'" by The Firm. Too true. Sightly less contentious, though still noticeable, is the divide between kids who are just starting school and those who've been in it for a bit. A kindergarten student might really be into "Simon Says" as it plays in the gymnasium while standing in a circle with his classmates waving a parachute up and down. Join the big kids who sit at desks and learn about passe compose in French class and it becomes the first kind of music that they begin to look down upon. The kind of song that an eight year old would be embarrassed to even mindlessly tap their toes to. Perhaps the first example of how music doesn't age but listeners sure as shit do.
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