Song - Dig A Pony
Artist - Megg Farrell
Original Version Recorded: January 22-30, 1969
Roger And Dave Version Recorded: August 20, 2009
Megg Farrell: Vocals, Backing Vocals, Toy Piano, Bass Drum.
Roger Greenawalt: Ukulele, Bass, Sound Design.
Produced by Roger Greenawalt at Shabby Road Studio, Brooklyn.
ABOUT THE SONG
Here are some John Lennon reminiscences about this composition, Dig A Pony.
1972: "I was just having fun with words. It was literally a nonsense song. You just take words and you stick them together, and you see if they have any meaning."
1980: "Another piece of garbage."
Wrong on both counts John. Dig A Pony is a really good song. The lyrics are not obscure, nor are they non-sensical upon close examination.
One is Cult Leader. The other is Primal Lover.
What makes Pony particularly perspicacious is that Cult Leader sings the verses while Primal Lover sings the choruses.
The first word of the first verse is “I”. There are six short verses in the entire song. All six begin with “I”.
Each “I” is held for seven notes. And it’s such a beautiful seven note melody that it really only needs one vowel stretched out to get the effect.
Now the lyrics get going. Verse one:
“I dig a pony,
Well you can celebrate anything you want,
Well you can celebrate anything you want,
Ooh.”
This is John talking about his 1968 present. Getting a pony is a classic kids dream gift. But I think by pony he means Yoko. She’s his favorite thing and after all his life is up to him and he can celebrate anything he damn well pleases. But he’s not oblivious, the bad reaction by all the people around him to Yoko is blatant and he’s angry about it. Rightly so.
Verse two. Now John talks about his past. How did he get into this predicament? He got there through a confluence of factors, firstly by founding The Beatles. Then he displayed a terrific will to power, and a fierce competitive drive. He also had rare artistic talent, and strategic situational savvy. And finally he also was very, very lucky, always in the right place at the right time. He had Mo and Jo. Hence these boastful lines:
“I do a road hog.
Well you can penetrate any place you go,
Well you can penetrate any place you go,
I told you so.”
Verse two’s got a lot of change of meaning compared to verse one considering that the only differences between them are the middle lines. Celebrate/penetrate, thing/place, want/go. Just putting those words in order is poetry:
Celebrate thing.
Penetrate place.
Want?
Go.
The chorus references two other Lennon songs from this period. Pony goes; “All I want is you.” That is very close to the chorus of I Want You She’s So Heavy. The song Because from Abbey Road is also referenced in the chorus of Dig A Pony. John demands “Everything has got to be just like you wanted to.” Why?
“Because”.
Which is the explanation a bully gives his victim.
Verse three; John puts Paul in his place. “I pick a moon dog”. Johnny And The Moondogs was the name of a proto-Beatles group. John picked Paul to be in that group. Now suddenly Paul is all uppity and hamming it up for the movie cameras and being way too bossy for the number two guy. “Well you can radiate everything you are.” Sure, like radioactive poison, you can expose yourself to millions of people. This verse sounds like John expressing bitterness towards Paul, while thinking to himself "Go ahead, run the band, I've had it, I'm leaving."
Verse four, the attacks are less veiled. “I roll a stoney, well you can imitate everyone you know.” Lennon is on record as saying that The Rolling Stones copied everything The Beatles ever did, and he has a point. He’s basically saying that in this verse. But by mentioning The Stones at all, he is tacitly acknowledging them as his peers.
Verse five. “I feel the wind blow. Well you can indicate everything you see.” This is a direct attack on his only other peer, Bob Dylan. Bob’s first and biggest hit was Blowing In The Wind. And a valid criticism of Dylan’s writing is that it’s filled with long lists of extraneous and extravagant detail at the expense of lyricism. And to say someone only “indicates” instead of “feels’ is a big insult to actors and other types of “authentic" artists.
The last verse is a lament about the annoying realities of partners and accountants and taxes and divorce and lawyers just litigating Lennon’s entire reality into oblivion. “Well you can syndicate any boat you row.” As if people were making money off of him singing “Row row row your boat, gently down the stream.”
Fantastic lyrics.
John performs another magnificent bloodstained vocal, not unlike Don’t Let Me Down. Even when he’s a bit pitchy, it works. Paul’s higher backing vocal is excellent. The way he climaxes on a hi falsetto note on the word “you” in the chorus is spine tingling. The song begins and ends with a funky, rather long but catchy guitar riff that is pretty tricky to play.
Pony was recorded on the rooftop of Apple Records. It was their first live performance since they terminated touring in 1966. There is a false start in this song, which we faithfully reproduce on our version in honor of the Unintended Beauty of Accidents. What caused the hiccup is unclear: if you watch the clip, just as they are getting ready to count in the song, you see Ringo blowing cigarette smoke out of his mouth, or maybe it was just his breath in the cold London winter air. There is a hesitation and you see him bending over. The performance concludes with Lennon saying "Thank you brothers. Hands getting too cold to play the chords".
This was one of John's only new contributions to the Let It Be album. Across the Universe had been written over a year before. Even though they had rehearsed and recorded Dig A Pony dozens of times, an assistant had to hold a clipboard in front of Lennon with the lyrics on it during the rooftop recording. John had a secret. He knew he was leaving the band and every minute that he didn’t pull the trigger and tell the others was another small agony for him. Yet the voluminous outtakes of the Get Back/Let It Be album also reveal a lot of funny, jokey remarks from John. He just couldn’t help it; he was a genuine natural wit, even in a depressing situation. He was the kind of guy who would have cracked a clever remark on the gallows.
The Roger And Dave version of Dig A Pony features the fractured fairy tale world of Megg Farrell. Usually the use of toy pianos and other otherwise innocent and childish instruments like the ukulele create a happy place. But there is no joy in Meggville. The Pony is rabid. The cartoon sound effects are kind of creepy. Periodically, long forgotten vaudeville theatrical props from an overstuffed backstage locker come tumbling to the floor. It looks like Hansel and Gretel are not technically invited to dinner.
They are dinner.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
20 year old Megg Farrell lost it in several countries.
In the last year she has played shows to great acclaim in Paris, Dublin, North Carolina and Buenos Aires.
As a first call ukulele player in New York City she has appeared on recordings of Adam Green and The Pierces but now it is time for her to shine on her own right.
After a brief sabbatical in Paris last spring she composed her song cycle: Ghost Party, a series of recordings detailing young love, loss and longing for those across the sea to be released on Rex Records this fall.
She has now taken Ghost Party and re-worked it with director Shirley Kaplan to perform at the Ensemble Studio Theatre on October 30th/31st.
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1 comments:
Gawd, this is great stuff. I always liked Dig A Pony, and now I like it more - your lyric analysis is absolutely razor-sharp, and actually makes sense of a song too long thought to be nonsense.
The "final" Glyn Johns mix of the Get Back album is fantastic, but the released Let It Be always deserved much more than its common (and ignorant) dismissal.
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