The Beatles Bible

John Lennon’s only significant new contribution to the Let It Be album (his ‘Across The Universe’ had been recorded nearly a year previously), ‘Dig A Pony’ was the first song to be recorded during the Apple Studios sessions in late January 1969.

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Wikipedia

"Dig a Pony" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1970 album Let It Be. It was written by John Lennon and credited to Lennon–McCartney. The band recorded the song on 30 January 1969, during their rooftop concert at the Apple Corp…

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Dig A Pony, though not one of my favourites, is interesting musically. It’s an example of the unique raw sound the Beatles developed on the Let It Be album – where all four Beatles, plus Billy Preston, are playing simultaneously with little or no studio “trickery”. For all the weaknesses of the project they did achieve something distinctive by taking this approach, and I think it’s a significant development from the White Album. A return to a “live” sound, but very different to their early phase. Instead of rock’n’roll or pop it’s evolved into something new.

Dig A Pony has an unusual rhythm – it’s transcribed as 3/4 and that makes sense for simplicity, but it does use lots of uneven, broken or unpredictable phrases. As an example, there’s the striking instrumental “riff” underpinning the introduction.

I think this shuffle is a bit like what they call a iamb in poetry? da-di da-di da-di da etc. Lennon seems quite influenced by speech rhythms and often uses odd time signatures and changes in the service of the language – but this is instrumental.

… and then there also is the way the lyrics are packed in to the verse. This is interesting in that the repeated phrases are placed differently within the bar (and they use triplets).

So there’s quite a bit of complexity around both the timing of the words and the instrumental riff. And as the band are playing it live in a single take they all had to learn it together, in the short time available for the project. The words are not especially meaningful, so all this complexity might seem a bit arbitrary, but it is also a way of showing how capable and together the band can be. Since at this stage they had little to prove to anyone else, perhaps it was more important as a way of proving it to themselves and to each other. George Harrison’s contribution on lead guitar seems particularly well-judged and thoughtful.

Because of the Anthology, Let It Be Naked, Let It Be Super Deluxe, and Get Back projects, there are lots of different recordings and mixes available. It’s noticeable that several less official takes are as convincing as the rooftop version that appears on the original album.

TBH, I can’t make head or tail of the lyrics and I am inclined to believe Lennon when he said “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. Some of them do and some of them don’t.”

Although I really like the evolution of sound and genre that this track captures I think there are better examples from Let It Be.