"snorts and grunts" on "Piggies", which the reviewer described as "a society beef (or pork if you like)" in the style of folk singer Roy Harper. Writing in Rolling Stone, Jann Wenner considered the song to be "an amazing choice to follow 'Blackbird'", given the contrast between the two pieces – "'Blackbird' so encouraging, 'Piggies' so smug (though accurate: 'what they need's a damn good whacking'). Ha!" Wenner paired it with Starr's "Don't Pass Me By", as lesser tracks beside the "superb numbers" found elsewhere on the album, but added that "on their own, they're totally groovy." Alan Smith of the NME praised the melody and the use of classical instrumentation, and described the song as "a telling piece about modern life" and "a fascinating piece of humorous cynicism". Charles Manson interpretation Musician and cult leader Charles Manson interpreted several songs on The Beatles as an inducement for his followers, known as the Manson Family, to carry out a series of murders in Los Angeles in August 1969. Inspired by the line "What they need's a damn good whacking", Manson adopted "Piggies" as one of the tracks to justify such attacks on the White bourgeoisie. Believing that the Beatles were instructing him through their music, Manson envisioned these attacks as the prelude to an apocalyptic racial war between the establishment and the Black community that would leave him and his followers to rule America on counterculture principles. At the scenes of the murders of Sharon Tate, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, Gary Hinman and others, the words "Political Piggy", "Pig" and "Death to Pigs" were written on the walls with the victims' blood. In the case of Leno LaBianca, items of cutlery were inserted into his body in reference to the lyric "Clutching forks and knives to eat their bacon". Speaking to Rolling Stone co-founder David Dalton before his trial, Manson also drew parallels between the pig noises that close the track and a similar sound, followed by machine-gun fire, that appears in Lennon's White Album sound collage "Revolution 9". Like its rival counterculture publications Los Angeles Free Press and Tuesday's Child, Rolling Stone initially supported Manson, Dalton contending that it was a case of the conservative-minded authorities framing "some poor hippie guru". According to author Steve Turner, "Piggies" "became notorious" as a result of the Manson Family's 1971 murder trial, which was successfully prosecuted by Californian attorney Vincent Bugliosi. Harrison