My iPod #272: The Beatles - Dig a Pony

Time for a post methinks. I arrived back home for the Easter holidays, but as soon as I did I was out again to meet up with friends at Stratford. It was getting to eleven at night when eventually set foot in my house, and therefore there was no song to talk about yesterday.

Here is one now. It's "Dig a Pony" by The Beatles, on their last album "Let It Be", a weird love song written and sung by John Lennon.

The "Let It Be" film is a miserable one. That was the first one I watched when I began to avidly research The Beatles and listen to their songs, which is weird because it's the last one they did. It used to be available in parts on YouTube, but apparently isn't anymore. The majority of it focuses on the four guys improvising some tracks in studios at a time when relations between all of them weren't so friendly anymore. This was a real day in the life of The Beatles - not the one that was dramatised and played up for "A Hard Day's Night". It is a much harder watch in comparison.

That is until the band go up onto the rooftop for a spur-of-the-moment performance, the one which would turn out to be their last live one as a group. They deliver the songs to almost perfection, one after the other with great enthusiasm and finish with a witty remark by Lennon, providing a heartwarming close to the film. One of the songs they did on the roof was "Dig a Pony", and that live performance is the same thing you hear on the album itself.

I dug "Dig a Pony" (hehehe) as soon as I heard the chorus for the first time. I thought it was the best song in that film. The leaping guitar work of the riff is one that is hard to forget, and the licks that George Harrison throws in at various points are wonderful too. But that moment when Lennon belts out the poignant lyric "All I want is you" with all his might - you can see just how much power he gets into the phrase. And with the wind blowing in his hair..... Man.... what a guy.

Here it is if you wanna see it.