As everyone knows, The Beatles' songwriting changed as their career progressed. This is especially evident in John Lennon's output from 1966 onward. The lyrical content found in songs like “And Your Bird Can Sing” and “Tomorrow Never Knows,” not to mention his contributions to the "Sgt. Pepper" album, made many faithful Beatles fans scratch their heads.
When considering John's later Beatles songs, such as “I Am The Walrus,” “Cry Baby Cry” and “Come Together,” the randomness of the lyrics suggest that the author possibly didn't have any intended interpretation in mind at all. As musicologist Ian MacDonald explains in his book “Revolution In The Head,” certain Lennon songs display “inconsequential fun with a lyric celebrating counter-cultural claims that society's old values and taboos were dead, that life was a game and art a free-for-all, and (especially) that words meant whatever the hell one wished them to.”
While this is probably true, we should also keep in mind John's process for songwriting, especially concerning lyric writing. “Just say whatever comes into your head each time...until you get the word,” he explained to George when asked for help composing lyrics for his song “Something” in early 1969. Lennon flippantly suggested “attracts me like a cauliflower” for George's song, something he could insert there for the time being so he didn't get stuck, the intention being for this to be replaced at a later time. However, once a composer gets used to hearing a spurious lyric sung repeatedly, the temptation is often to just keep it.
Whatever the case, the finished lyrics for John's composition “Dig A Pony” are left quite ambiguous and open to interpretation, if one feels impelled to interpret it at all. There's quite enough contained in its melody, arrangement and delivery to entertain the listener, despite the song's unusal words. Its author never cared to explain them, so their importance apparently shouldn't be too much of a concern for us.
“I just make it up as I go along,” John stated during the January 1969 rehearsals for “Dig A Pony.” As for discarded lyrics, Lennon explained that “'I con a Lowrey' didn't sing well...It's got to be d's and p's, y'know,” “dig a pony” apparently being a better choice. His lyric “I dig a skylight” evolved into “I did a groundhog” before he fell upon “I do a road hog.” “It had to be rougher,” John argued. "I don't care if skylight was prettier."
To illustrate the way many avid music listeners tend to attribute specific meaning to song lyrics even when there really isn't any, American Vietnam veteran Curt Claudio had been writing letters to John Lennon in 1971 and announced that he would be coming to the singer's Tittenhurst Park home in Ascot in May to ascertain whether the lyrics to "Dig A Pony," and others, were somehow written about him. After he was discovered sleeping on John's property, he was brought over to meet his idol and question him. Curt Claudio asked, "Remember that one, 'You can radiate everything you are, you can penetrate anywhere you go, syndicate...?' You weren't thinking of anyone in particular when you were singing all of that?" John replied, "How could I have been thinking of you, man? That was just having fun with words. 'Radiate' and 'syndicate' - she (Yoko) wrote that. It was literally a nonsense song. I mean Dylan does that; anybody does it. You just take words and you stick them together. It's like throwing the I Ching or something, you just see what happens. You take a bunch or words and throw 'em out and see if they have any meaning. Some of them do and some of them don't...I'm singing about me and my life, y'know, and if it's relevant for other people's lives, that's all right."
Although the lyrics in the verses of “Dig A Pony” were self-proclaimed as “fun with words” and “nonsense,” it appears that certain phrases did have meaning to John, as disjointed as they may have been. “You can penetrate any place you go” brings to mind the state of John's love life at this point. “It was at the beginning of my relationship with Yoko and I was very sexually oriented then. When we weren't in the studio, we were in bed.” “I roll a stoney / Well, you can imitate everyone you know” has been explained as his annoyance that The Rolling Stones were prone to steal ideas from The Beatles. “I would like to just list what we did and what The Stones did two months after on every f*ckin' album,” he related to Rolling Stone magazine in 1970. “Every f*ckin' thing we did, Mick does exactly the same. They are not in the same class, music-wise or power-wise. Never were!”
An obvious interpretation of the lyric “I pick a moon dog” is of this being a reference to an early group name under consideration for The Beatles, “Johnny And The Moondogs.” Otherwise, the pattern of rhyming “celebrate,” “penetrate,” “radiate,” “imitate,” “indicate” and “syndicate” can be easily chalked up to poetic license and nothing more. It should also be mentioned here, while not substantiated, that a "pony" is a small horse, this being a slang term for "heroin," both John and Yoko being addicted to this drug at the time.
One fact that can be established is that the chorus, beginning with the lyric “All I want is you,” which itself was used as the working title for the song for some time during its writing, rehearsing and recording, was taken from a separate unfinished song that John had written about Yoko. As we have witnessed with both Lennon and McCartney in their later Beatles career, combining seperate songwriting attempts into one composition had become the norm.
Melody-wise, John opted for a 6/8 waltz-like time signature with a few uncharacteristic chord changes, which made for an inventive guitar solo from George when it came time for writing one. Also of interest is what Ian MacDonald describes as a “comically lumbering unison 3/4 riff” that begins and ends the song, one that took much rehearsal time to master, the result being both impressive and unprecedented for a group such as The Beatles.
Since John debuted “Dig A Pony” 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. “Paul had no input on 'Dig A Pony,' which was entirely John's,” Barry Miles writes in Paul's book “Many Years From Now,” adding: “Musically the song was quite complex and the group enjoyed the challenges presented in recording it.” From: http://www.beatlesebooks.com/dig-a-pony
