Eco-communities as a social vision

Eco-communities as a social vision
Egalitarian and ecological communities, like the pictured East Wind (www.eastwind.org), are very close to our vision of an ecological society

17 October, 2008

"Piggies" The Beatles Album: White Album (1968)


Have you seen the little piggies
Crawling in the dirt?
And for all the little piggies
Life is getting worse,
Always having dirt
To play around in.

Have you seen the bigger piggies
In their starched white shirts?
You will find the bigger piggies
Stirring up the dirt,
Always have clean shirts
To play around in.

In their sties, with all their backing,
They don't care what goes on around.
In their eyes, there's something lacking;
What they need's a damn good whacking!

Everywhere there's lots of piggies,
Living piggy lives.
You can see them out for dinner
With their piggy wives,
Clutching forks and knives
To eat their bacon.


A metaphor about human greed, consumerism and littering, no matter the social class they belong. Of course higher classes control these lower motives, but noone is innocent about the planet bad condition.

We read in wikipedia about this song:

It was written by George Harrison as social commentary on class and corporate greed.

There was an additional verse written for the song in 1968 but omitted during the actual recording. It involved the "piggies" playing "piggy pranks" in order to achieve its rhyming couplet of "piggy banks." Harrison reinstated this verse in all live performances of the song in the 1990s. A version can be heard on his double album Live in Japan.

Yeah, everywhere there's lots of piggies
Playing piggy pranks
And you can see them on their trotters
Down at the piggy banks
Paying piggy thanks
To thee pig brother


The original lyrics read "to cut their pork chops" (as heard on the Anthology 3 album). Lennon created the tape loop for the pig noises that were sampled for this song.

Though Harrison intended the song as social commentary, it was often misinterpreted as an anti-police anthem, due to the commonly used term "pig" which is used as slang for policeman.

Charles Manson interpreted many of the songs from The White Album to justify his murders, and took the phrase "what they need's a damn good whacking" to mean that he should attack the police.During the murders of Sharon Tate, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, Gary Hinman and others, knives and forks were used to stab them because these utensils were mentioned in the song.The words 'political piggy', 'pig' and 'death to pigs' were written with the victims' blood on the walls.
You can hear this song in youtube

1 comment:

Vipera Lebetina said...

Τους λατρεύω τους Beatles! Είναι το πρώτο συγκρότημα που άκουσα ever!