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

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

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