At the very end of The Beatles, as they were recording what would be their final album, things around them were obviously collapsing, and while the Let It Be sessions felt like the chaos all came from their personal relationships, the group came back together for one last attempt with Abbey Road, which then courted chaos from every direction.
Almost everyone involved was surprised when they even agreed to another bout following Let It Be, but before they even hit the studio, there were a lot of conditions put in place. The band were roped in on the promise that they would work “the way we used to do it”, and George Martin was only convinced to be involved with an agreement that no one would intervene or interrupt, and that he’d be allowed to make the album how he wanted to.
Despite the stress of the various walk-outs or the police shutting down their rooftop gig, their last album ended on high spirits. They’d managed to work through the fallouts, so they thought they could handle it again; however, one thing they didn’t think they’d have to work through was a car crash.
On July 1st, 1969, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, her daughter Kyoko, and his son Julian were all involved in a car accident when they were up in the highlands on a getaway, and when you add together the small, winding roads and Lennon’s infamously bad driving, it was a disaster waiting to happen.
Luckily, it wasn’t too bad, with Julien unscathed, but Lennon, Ono and her daughter were all left with facial cuts. The singer had to get 17 stitches and by all accounts seemed to rather enjoy it as he told the press, “If you’re going to have a car crash, try to arrange for it to happen in the Highlands. The hospital there was just great”.
However, with his body banged, bruised and bleeding, he was ordered to rest, which is a tough thing to do when you’re trying to hold things together to make a final album with your band, who happen to be the biggest act in the world.
For a while, the need for rest kept him away from the studio. He isn’t present on ‘Here Comes The Sun’ as he was still recovering when it was put together; however, when he did make it back to London, he still didn’t seem that eager to jump back in, as he was greeted by songs he hated. Lennon wasn’t alone in that, though, and, by all accounts, the recording of ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ was torture to everyone but McCartney, wherein Lennon stated, “I hate it. He made us do it a hundred million times”.
To him, the track was a colossal waste of time and money, as he added, “He did everything to make it a single, and it never was, and it never could’ve been. But he put guitar licks on it, and he had somebody hitting iron pieces. We spent more money on that song than any of them in the whole album, I think.”
Even the genteel Ringo Starr had some harsh words for it, stating, “It was the worst track we ever had to record. It went on for fucking weeks”, against which McCartney clapped back that the track only took “ three days to record. Big deal”.
But for someone with fresh stitches in their face and a pounding head, McCartney repeatedly hitting a hammer against a block of metal probably wasn’t the solution to the rest he was prescribed.
