The legendary Beatles song inspired by George Harrison’s mother
When George Harrison eventually emerged from the shadows of John Lennon and Paul McCartney as yet another bombastic songwriter from The Beatles, he still leaned on his bandmates for help and advice. Notably, one of his more famous earlier compositions, ‘Taxman’, saw Harrison use the acerbic wit of his fellow guitarist Lennon to complete the song. However, one track, which is also linked to a similar motif as that track, saw Harrison pinch a line directly from his mother.
‘Piggies’ won’t necessarily go down as the greatest song from George Harrison’s impressive songwriting career. Even when considered within the confines of the one or two tracks he offered up to the altar of The Beatles, it ranks rather low in the charts. However, the song does have a certain punch to it, most of which comes from a caustic line direct from the lexicon of Louise french, the ‘I Me Mine’ singer’s mother.
It is true that Harrison was far more concerned with inner peace than conquering the globe, and he made his feelings clear in songs like ‘Taxman’ and ‘Piggies’. Both written in 1966, the former would find a necessary home on the band’s expansive record Revolver. However, it would take two more years for ‘Piggies’ to find a home on The White Album.
Like the former track, the song features some of Lennon’s notoriously acidic wit, as he tempted Harrison into directly goading the political establishment. As the band’s de facto leader, Lennon convinced Harrison to add in the names of Harold Wilson and Edward Heath – the leaders of Labour and the Conservative party, respectively – and the duo became the first real people to be named in a Fab Four song. However, the most poignant and punchy line came directly from French.
“‘Piggies’ is a social comment,” recalled Harrison. “I was stuck for one line in the middle until my mother came up with the lyric, ‘What they need is a damn good whacking’ which is a nice simple way of saying they need a good hiding. It needed to rhyme with ‘backing,’ ‘lacking,’ and had absolutely nothing to do with American policemen or Californian shagnasties!”
Of course, it’s not the first time the band’s mothers felt their feelings through their son’s songs. ‘Julia’, also featured on The White Album, was Lennon’s lamentations about not living with his mother and losing her at an incredibly young age. Elsewhere on the same record, McCartney also doffed his cap to the parent he lost during his formative years with ‘Mother Nature’s Son’, later compounding his sentiment of loss with the legendary creation of ‘Let It Be’.
But, aside from this caustic line in ‘Piggies’, Harrison rarely mentioned his family in song, making this one of the few times the guitarist truly opened up about his personal life. However, the song would become even more famous for another couple of reasons.
It’s true that during the recording sessions, Harrison would first play the tune for ‘Something’ alongside Chris thomas, with the engineer remembering, “while George and I were tinkling away on this harpsichord, he started playing another new song to me, which later turned out to be ‘Something’. I said, ‘That’s great! Why don’t we do that one instead?’ and he replied, ‘Do you like it, do you really think it’s good?’” But things were yet to get darker.
‘Piggies’ would become infamous in the world of pop culture after Charles Manson, leader of the Manson Family and head of the plot to start a race war with the murder of high profile celebrities would interpret the song as a war cry. Manson misinterpreted the song as a call to arms, assuming that the ‘Piggies’ mentioned were white people being led to slaughter. It would lead to the word “Pig” being written in blood following the murders of Sharon Tate and forever entwine The Beatles with a dark moment in Hollywood history.
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