Dig a Pony

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  "Dig a Pony" begins with a shout. On the 30th of January 1969, at the top of the Apple Corps building on Savile Row in central London, Ringo Starr yelled "Hold it!" before the Beatles could even start the song. He had both drum sticks in his right hand. He was putting out a cigarette. Moments later, someone blew their nose. Mark Lewisohn attributes that sound to John Lennon himself.

  What followed that chaotic opening was one of the most scrutinized and disputed tracks on the Beatles' final album, Let It Be. Lennon wrote the song for Yoko Ono, called it "a piece of garbage", and structured its lyrics after what he described as a Bob Dylan style. Critics would range from calling it "riffily convoluted gobbledygook" to praising its "tremendously funky unison guitar riff". The questions worth asking are: how did a song its own author dismissed end up on the album, and what does the tangled path from Twickenham to a London rooftop tell us about the Beatles in their final months?

• 2. A Song for Yoko

  ›

  Lennon introduced "Dig a Pony" to George Harrison on the 2nd of January 1969, shortly after arriving at Twickenham Film Studios. The pair were running through their latest songs, and this was among the first pieces the Beatles worked on during day one of the filmed rehearsals for a planned return to live performance.

  At the time, the song was still called "All I Want Is You". Lennon had written it for Yoko Ono, his soon-to-be wife. The lyrics he assembled were, in his own framing, a string of seemingly nonsensical phrases in a Dylan-esque mode. Author Ian MacDonald described them as celebrating the countercultural belief that society's old values and taboos were dead and that words meant whatever the speaker wished them to mean.

  MacDonald's verdict on that philosophy was sharp: suspect even in 1967, it looked "distinctly bedraggled" by 1969. Yet he also noted that enough people wanted it to be true that such thinking survived among progressive educationalists for the next twenty years.

• 3. The Rooftop Take

  ›

  Kevin Harrington, the Beatles' roadie, stood beside Lennon on the rooftop and held up the lyrics so Lennon could read them as he sang. The band was in 3/4 time and in the key of A major. The false start that opens the recorded version is preserved in full: Starr's shout, the pause, then the band finding its footing.

  Biographer Mark Hertsgaard heard in the rooftop performance a "lyrically muddled love call to Yoko", weak on melody. But he also acknowledged that Paul McCartney's high harmony singing and the inventiveness of Harrison's lead guitar part "made it seem more interesting than it actually was". Ian MacDonald went further, arguing that the discipline of performing in public imposed a structure on the Beatles that the Twickenham rehearsals had lacked, resulting in what he called a "real ensemble performance... and even a hint of swing".

  Billy Preston, credited as an additional musician, played electric piano on the track alongside the four Beatles.

• 4. Competing Versions

  ›

  A studio take recorded on the 22nd of January exists alongside the rooftop version. That session took place at the Beatles' Apple Studio, after the band had abandoned the filmed rehearsals at Twickenham. When producer Glyn Johns compiled a proposed album called Get Back for the band's consideration in 1969, he preferred the 22nd of January studio recording over the rooftop performance.

  Both the studio recording and the rooftop version originally began and ended with the line "All I want is...". When Phil Spector prepared the album, now retitled Let It Be, for release in March 1970, he chose the 30th of January live version but cut the opening and closing refrains. Reviewer John Mendelsohn of Rolling Stone welcomed the song as evidence of Spector's restraint, contrasting it with the orchestral and choral overdubs Spector added elsewhere on the record.

  The 22nd of January studio take eventually surfaced on the 1996 outtakes compilation Anthology 3. The 2003 release Let It Be... Naked used the rooftop version with Spector's edits retained, but also omitted the false start entirely.

• 5. Reception and Dissent

  ›

  Apple Records issued Let It Be on the 8th of May 1970, placing "Dig a Pony" second on the album, between "Two of Us" and "Across the Universe". That release came a month after McCartney's comments in a questionnaire promoting his solo debut had set off the public announcement of the Beatles' break-up.

  Early American pressings of the album mistitled the song as "I Dig a Pony". Richard Williams, reviewing the record for Melody Maker, identified "Dig a Pony" as the only genuinely new Lennon song on Let It Be and admired its guitar riff, while noting that "the insane words and wandering tune are typical contemporary Lennon". Mendelsohn of Rolling Stone called it "crossword-puzzlish" and heard echoes of the earlier Lennon track "Happiness Is a Warm Gun".

  Writing for Mojo in 2001, John Harris dismissed the track as "pretty execrable" and cited it as evidence of Lennon's reduced creativity during the Let It Be sessions. Harris also connected Lennon's criticism of Harrison's songwriting at Twickenham to Harrison's decision to temporarily leave the band. Neil McCormick of The Daily Telegraph called the song "embarrassing" and named Lennon "the guiltiest party" for the generally uninspiring material on Let It Be. Chris Ingham's phrase "riffily convoluted gobbledygook" has stuck as perhaps the most vivid characterization of the track.