Piggies

George Harrison began writing ‘Piggies’ in 1966, the same year he composed the similarly ascerbic ‘Taxman’. Although musically quite different, both songs contain social commentary about financial greed and class differences.

‘Piggies’ wasn’t recorded by The Beatles until late 1968. The song underwent some revisions beforehand, with lyrical contributions from John Lennon and Harrison’s mother Louise.

‘Piggies’ is a social comment. I was stuck for one line in the middle until my mother came up with the lyric, ‘What they need is a damn good whacking’ which is a nice simple way of saying they need a good hiding. It needed to rhyme with ‘backing,’ ‘lacking,’ and had absolutely nothing to do with American policemen or Californian shagnasties!

Lennon, meanwhile, gave him the line, “Clutching forks and knives to eat their bacon”. When the group demoed it at Harrison’s Esher bungalow in May 1968, however, the line was “…to eat their pork chops”. This early version can be heard on the Anthology 3 collection and on the super deluxe 50th anniversary edition of the White Album.

An additional verse was also cut from the song, although reinstated by Harrison during live performances after The Beatles split up. The lines can be heard on his 1992 album Live In Japan.

Everywhere there’s lots of piggies
Playing piggy pranks
You can see them on their trotters
Down at the piggy banks
Paying piggy thanks
To thee, Pig Brother

‘Piggies’ and Charles Manson

Although clearly about the pinstripe-suited businessmen who seemed a world away from the hippy ideals of the mid 1960s, ‘Piggies’ was one of the songs fatally misinterpreted by the deranged Charles Manson and his Family in 1969.

Manson believed that black people would rise up and kill whites, though he and his followers would be saved, using a set of clues he believed were to be found in the book of Revelation and in The Beatles’ White Album. In Manson’s mind, ‘Piggies’ represented the doomed whites.

Following the murder of Sharon Tate, Family member Susan Atkins daubed “Pig” on the front door of the murder scene in Tate’s blood. The following day, after the murders of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca using knives and forks, Manson’s follower Patricia Krenwinkel wrote “Death to pigs” on the walls in the victims’ blood.

In the studio

The Beatles began recording ‘Piggies’ on 19 September 1968. The harpsichord on the song was played by producer Chris Thomas.

All four Beatles were there for the session and we were working in [studio] number two. I wandered into number one and found a harpsichord, not knowing that it had been set up overnight for a classical recording. So we discussed wheeling the thing into number two but Ken Scott said, ‘No, we can’t, it’s there for another session!’ So we moved our session into number one instead.

George Harrison agreed that my harpsichord idea was a good one and suggested that I play it. This I did, but while George and I were tinkling away on this harpsichord he started playing another new song to me, which later turned out to be ‘Something’. I said, ‘That’s great! Why don’t we do that one instead?’ and he replied, ‘Do you like it, do you really think it’s good?’

The group recorded 11 takes of the basic rhythm track of ‘Piggies’. It featured Thomas on harpsichord, Harrison playing acoustic guitar, Paul McCartney on bass guitar, and Ringo Starr hitting a tambourine. According to Thomas, McCartney also performed ‘Let It Be’, not attempted by The Beatles until January 1969, in between takes.

The following day Harrison taped his lead vocals, which were artificially double tracked during the lines “play around in” and “damn good whacking”. At the same time, John Lennon assembled a tape loop of pigs snorting, using effects tapes from the Abbey Road collection.

There’s a tape called Animals And Bees (volume 35) which includes pigs. It’s from an old EMI 78 rpm record and The Beatles may have used a combination of that and their own voices. That always works well – the new voices hide the 78 rpm scratchiness, the original record hides the fact that some of the sounds are man made.

‘Piggies’ was finished on 10 October, with the addition of an eight-piece string section arranged by George Martin.