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Monday, August 25, 1969

Editing "Maxwell's Silver Hammer", "The End"

For The Beatles

Last updated on December 28, 2021


Master session

Location

  • Recording studio: EMI Studios, Studio Two, Abbey Road

Timeline

AlbumSome of the songs worked on during this session were first released on the "Abbey Road" LP

This was the final recording session for the “Abbey Road” album. From 2:30 pm to 8 pm, the final edits of “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” and “The End” were made.

Seven seconds were cut from the master tape of “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer“, to remove the song’s introduction. Some sound effects were also considered to improve the track, but the idea was discarded.

McCartney, along with tape operator Alan Parsons, experimented with the introduction to Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, running the final stereo remix tape (an edit of remix stereo RS 34 and RS 37) backwards while adding tape echo / repeat echo. To review the work, they made the edit of the stereo master with the descending chord progression that was originally the song’s introduction cut from the tape.

Lewisohn noted that sound effects were then “made” for the beginning of the song. It can only be assumed that sound effects were gathered from the EMI tape library, a common source of such material for Beatles recording. The results of this work were not used on the track.

After it was decided that neither the edit nor the sound effects should be used in the song’s opening, the original introduction was not replaced on the master remix. This explains why the release version of the song begins with McCartney’s vocal, and not an instrumental lead in.

From “The Beatles Recording Reference Manual – Volume 5” by Jerry Hammack

The End” was then edited, losing 36 seconds of the guitar solo section in the process, bringing its length down from 2’41” to 2’05”.

The day ended with the creation of a safety copy of the master tape. Both the master and the copy were taken away by engineer Geoff Emerick and brought to Apple Studios to be cut to disc by Malcolm Davis. The album was the first UK one to not be cut at EMI by Harry Moss.


Session activities

  1. Maxwell's Silver Hammer

    Written by Lennon - McCartney

    Editing • Editing of master

  2. The End

    Written by Lennon - McCartney

    Editing • Editing of master

  3. Maxwell's Silver Hammer

    Written by Lennon - McCartney

    Recording • Unnumbered sound effects take

  4. Tape copying of Abbey Road LP masters

    Tape copying


Staff

Production staff


Going further

The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions • Mark Lewisohn

The definitive guide for every Beatles recording sessions from 1962 to 1970.

We owe a lot to Mark Lewisohn for the creation of those session pages, but you really have to buy this book to get all the details - the number of takes for each song, who contributed what, a description of the context and how each session went, various photographies... And an introductory interview with Paul McCartney!

Shop on Amazon

If we modestly consider the Paul McCartney Project to be the premier online resource for all things Paul McCartney, it is undeniable that The Beatles Bible stands as the definitive online site dedicated to the Beatles. While there is some overlap in content between the two sites, they differ significantly in their approach.

Read more on The Beatles Bible

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