Summary
The song's three verses each presents a different "pig", the identity of whom remains a matter of speculation as only the third verse clearly identifies its subject as morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse, whom he describes as a "house proud town mouse" who has to "keep it all on the inside."
Halfway through the song, David Gilmour uses a Heil talk box on the guitar solo to mimic the sound of pigs. This is the first use of a talk box by Pink Floyd. Gilmour also plays a fretless bass guitar, with a pick, doing two short, syncopated bass solos—one before the first verse, another before the third. When the final verse ends and a guitar solo emerges, the bass line moves into a driving sixteenth note rhythm, sliding up and down the E minor scale in octaves, beneath the chords of E minor and C major seventh. Roger Waters, usually the band's bassist, played a rhythm guitar track on the song instead.
In some cassette tape versions of the album, this song was divided into two parts after the first verse, fading out on Side One and fading back in on Side Two, in order to minimise the total length of tape.
Read more about this topic: Pigs (Three Different Ones)
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