The Beatles - Dig A Pony (cover by Luis Gomes)

Celebrating The Beatles' new Let It Be and Get Back releases, I'd like to perform one of a few John Lennon's contributions to the group's new album.

"Dig A Pony" was the first song to be recorded during the Apple Studios sessions in late January 1969. Since John debuted the song on the first day of rehearsals for what became the “Get Back / Let It Be” project on January 2nd, 1969, and a good amount of the lyrics were already in place on this day, it can be estimated that its composition began sometime in December of 1968 and was fully complete by the time of its final performance on the roof of their Apple building on January 30th, 1969. “Musically the song was quite complex and the group enjoyed the challenges presented in recording it.” said Barry Miles in Paul McCartney's book Many Years From Now. It is unfortunate, however, that's John's opinion of this complex piece of art, as displayed publicly on the Apple rooftop, soured in his later years. Referring to “Dig A Pony” as “another piece of garbage” in September of 1980, he undoubtedly was referring to its meaningless lyrics and not the intricacies of the arrangement or the performance the group put forward. However, some tantalising references can be found, including to The Beatles’ one-time name Johnny and the Moondogs (“I pick a moondog”), Mick Jagger (I roll a stoney/Well you can imitate everyone you know”) and like so many of Lennon’s songs of the period, the dominant influence is Yoko Ono. ‘Dig A Pony’ was originally titled ‘All I Want Is You’, words which appear in the chorus and which constitute the song’s only direct, meaningful sentiment.

John Lennon played versions of ‘Dig A Pony’ several times at Twickenham Film Studios in January 1969, during a series of rehearsals. He ran through the song on 2, 7, and 13 January 1969. After George was coaxed back into The Beatles, they resumed work on the “Get Back” project in their basement studios at Apple headquarters on Savile Row in London on January 21st, 1969. “Dig A Pony” got the most attention on this day and the following day, the band spending much time working out the full arrangement of the song as we know it, right down to finishing off all of the lyrics and George perfecting his guitar solo. One of the takes recorded on this day begins with John humorously introducing, “'I Dig A Pygmy' by Charles Hawtrey And The Deaf-Aids... Phase one in which Doris gets her oats”. This statement making it onto the released “Let It Be” album as an introduction to the track “Two Of Us”. One noteworthy part of the arrangement that was worked out on this day is the vocal “All I want is...” section that appears toward the beginning and then at the conclusion of the song, both of these segments eventually being edited off of the released version of the recording. 23 January was mainly devoted to other songs, but at one point John Lennon started playing ‘Dig A Pony’, with Ringo Starr joining in on drums. 25 and 26 January also saw the song briefly returned to, although The Beatles’ attentions were largely elsewhere. On 28 January they recorded numerous takes of ‘Dig A Pony’, and on 29 January, following a run-through, Lennon and McCartney both indicated that they finally had an arrangement they were happy with. John and George on the guitars, Paul on bass, Ringo on drums and Billy Preston on keyboards.

The Let It Be album and film contained a version of the song recorded during the group’s famous rooftop performance at Apple on 30 January. The recording began with a false start; in the film Starr can be seen putting his cigarette down and crying out ‘Hold it!’. On the rooftop a production runner on the film, Kevin Harrington, knelt and held a clipboard in front of Lennon with the lyrics on it. The performance ended with Lennon saying “Thank you brothers. Hands getting too cold to play the chords”. As I said the line "All I want is..." appeared in every performance of the song was cut from the final version by Phil Spector, and subsequently cut from the Let It Be... Naked version, which also omits the false start.

Well... hope you guys enjoy my humble tribute to this beautiful song!!! Peace & love everybody!!!

Instruments used:
Epiphone Casino
Fender Rosewood Telecaster (custom)
Laney LC30 II amplifier