When You Finally Hear Those Old Lyrics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wW1w6ny--SI

 

Maxwell's Silver Hammer always reminds me of childhood. It sounds a little strange now that I know what it's about but it wasn't until I was about ten before I realized it wasn't about a man building a house with a hammer.

Bang, bang, Maxwell's silver hammer
Came down upon her head
Bang, bang, Maxwell's silver hammer
Made sure that she was dead

 

but how many people realize it wasn't just about some sick guy sneaking around killing people?
why a SILVER hammer?
well it could have been some sick rich guy slumming.
but there's an historical context.
silver for sanitary reasons. to not infect the freshly killed corpse.
and why that? to provide it to the medical colleges for disecting by med students and medical research.
brook and hairre, i think their names might have been.
the schools paid them for clean freshly killed corpses.
this was back sometime in victorian or pre-victorian london.

the racial things in those other lyrics. they were to rub a complacent status quo public's faces in a reality that went on because it was being politely swept under the rug.

just like classical literature from even earlier eras, you need to put things in the context of their times, to understand what they were really saying.

(and that includes religious texts as well, and why people who think they are reading them literally get so off the beam about what they think they are saying.)