because the pigs are actually dirty though they consider themselves quite refined.
So you can look at George Orwell's animal Farm
or Something like that as a kind of literary influence.
But the idea that rich people or aristocratic people
who hold themselves as being sophisticated and above others
have actually got a lot of dirty stuff going
on in their lives that most people don't know about
is the kind of thing that you find out about once you get fame
and money and start to move in circles where people know what the stories are.
Behind the headlines.
Right?
There had already been a big government scandal in the 60s in
the UK involving sex and spies and all kinds of crazy stuff.
So you know, it's a fairly easy shot to say, well, these
people they think they're so high and mighty, high and above everybody else.
But in fact, Their just as dirty.
So,
that's who the Piggies in the story are.
What's interesting to me is not only the connection to the anti-conformists stuff
that we've seen especially in the music of John Lennon and in George's song
Tax Man which really kind of takes on the whole tax structure in
a kind of funny funny way you know sort playing with, with the humor.
But what's interesting to me is the ironic use of classical music.
Now, we talked about John with Happiness
As A Warm Gun, using 50s music in a kind of ironic way, that is in a
distance way, I'm not saying this is 50s
music, I'm playing with the idea of 50s music.
I'm sort of doing it In a kind of
post-modern, sort of in quotation marks kind of way, right?
Well, that's what George is doing with classical music.
Classical music becomes emblematic of the high society that he's making fun of.
So to use the harpsichord and the strings and all that kind of thing
in this, while he's talking about the basic hypocritical nature
of these elites, the culture elites is a way of using
their own music as kind of, as a kind of blunt
instrument which what just sort of beat them over the head.
And so it's not like he's endorsing classical music.
He's using it as a a kind of weapon.
As a, as a kind of mode of attack and I would ask you to contrast that with
Paul McCartney's more earnest approach to the use of classical music.
Paul uses classical music in Eleanor Rigby or
when Paul uses classical music in she's Leaving Home.
There nothing ironic about it.
He's embracing classical music for no one the french
horn the trumpet, the piccolo trumpet and Penny Lane.
He's embracing classical music because it adds some classiness.
To his music, not because he's trying to make fun of, of cultural
elites, he wants to be one of those cultural elites presumably right?
George Harrison using a very ironic kind of way, I
think that's, that's significant in this particular use of classical music.
Again and even on this album, Compare this use of classical music on Piggies,
with Paul's use of classical music on something like Mother Nature's Son.
And you see a real difference in approach.
One that's more similar To John Lennon's use
of 50s music in Happiness is a Warm Gun.
Of course, there's the humor that goes with it.
This is all supposed to be kind of a, a,
a, a sarcastic send-up, a kind of a satire in a
certain kind of way, and so we can see the
humor coming from tunes like Tax Man, and especially Savoy Truffle.
Right?
Which is another kind of humorous tune that's on
this album, so it's kind of a pair with that.
One last thing I'd like
to say about Piggies before we before we move on to
talking about Yellow Submarine is that Piggies is sequenced on the album.
Between Blackbird and Rocky Raccoon and apparently, some sources say
this was very conscious by Lennon and McCartney to put these
three sort of animal songs [LAUGH] together so you get
Blackbird, Piggies, and Rocky Raccoon and you gotta wonder whether this
was a big kind of