SONG TITLE: PIGGIES
PERFORMER: THE BEATLES
SONGWRITER: GEORGE HARRISON
YEAR OF RELEASE: 1968
COMMENTS: Something is very creepy and cold about this song. At the risk of appearing to glorify a sh!t head, Chuck Manson was quite perceptive in picking up on some seriously negative energy here. Maybe I'm just reading stuff into it, since this whole period was before my time -the song has always been associated in my mind with Manson's murders. I don't think so, though. A distinctly frigid chill blows in the emotional air of this recording.
If the tone of both the melody and the words were not so overwhelmingly harsh, this would probably be regarded as a novelty record. Harrison built the whole thing on a fake (ie experimental) Elizabethan sound. A harpsichord is the principal instrument, backed by a bassoon providing the setting for a purposely pompous sounding English melody. It sounds like a timepiece from a time that never was.
The lyrics have a clear literal meaning, but they are ambiguous. They describe nasty farm animals living the good life. The higher up piggies live quite the life at the expense of their cloven hoofed brethren as swine about town, eating literally high on the hog "clutching forks and knives to eat their bacon." Cannibalism rates as about the worst possible crime in the book, at least according to the advanced standards of Western civilization. The stiff, unsympathetic tone of the melody reconfirms the judgmental ring of the words.
Who Harrison was intending to describe as piggies is not clear. It has been interpreted as an attack on the Communists. (Did I mention that George Harrison really hated paying taxes?) This makes more sense than anything else I can think of, and also jibes with George Orwell's pig characters in the classic fable of communism "Animal Farm."
Whoever it was, they deserve whatever they get. Even before Manson's family wrote this song's title on the wall in Sharon Tate's blood, there was a fascinating air of judgment hanging over this song.
BEATLES PICTURE COLLECTION - 100 pages PAGE 1 PAGE 2 PAGE 3 PAGE 4 PAGE 5 PAGE 6 PAGE 7 PAGE 8 PAGE 9 PAGE 10 PAGE 11 PAGE 12 PAGE 13 PAGE 14 PAGE 15 PAGE 16 PAGE 17 PAGE 18 PAGE 19 PAGE 20 PAGE 21 PAGE 22 PAGE 23 PAGE 24 PAGE 25 PAGE 26 PAGE 27 PAGE 28 PAGE 29 PAGE 30 PAGE 31 PAGE 32 PAGE 33 PAGE 34 PAGE 35 PAGE 36 PAGE 37 PAGE 38 PAGE 39 PAGE 40 PAGE 41 PAGE 42 PAGE 43 PAGE 44 PAGE 45 PAGE 46 PAGE 47 PAGE 48 PAGE 49 PAGE 50 PAGE 51 PAGE 52 PAGE 53 PAGE 54 PAGE 55 PAGE 56 PAGE 57 PAGE 58 PAGE 59 PAGE 60 PAGE 61 PAGE 62 PAGE 63 PAGE 64 PAGE 65 PAGE 66 PAGE 67 PAGE 68 PAGE 69 PAGE 70 PAGE 71 PAGE 72 PAGE 73 PAGE 74 PAGE 75 PAGE 76 PAGE 77 PAGE 78 PAGE 79 PAGE 80 PAGE 81 PAGE 82 PAGE 83 PAGE 84 PAGE 85 PAGE 86 PAGE 87 PAGE 88 PAGE 89 PAGE 90 PAGE 91 PAGE 92 PAGE 93 PAGE 94 PAGE 95 PAGE 96 PAGE 97 PAGE 98 PAGE 99 PAGE 100
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