Summer Song Challenge, Day 71: Pat

Prompt: "A song with an unexpected instrument"

Selected by Pat

"Sky Pilot"

Eric Burdon and the Animals

The Twain Shall Meet, 1968

Eric Burdon is undoubtedly a very talented artist. After all, he was the mastermind behind "Sky Pilot," the seven-and-a-half minute anti-war epic that incorporates the sound of airplanes and bagpipes. Even if "Sky Pilot" isn't your twist, you can at least appreciate the effort that went into it. Eric Burdon might have snuck onto a military base to record those bagpipes. Respect.

Will I remember any of this about Eric Burdon? No. Unfortunately, as I grow old, the only thing I will certainly remember about Eric Burdon is that—allegedly—he's the Egg Man John Lennon is singing about in "I Am the Walrus." As Burdon himself explained in his memoir: 

"I was the Eggman—or, as some of my pals called me, 'Eggs.' The nickname stuck after a wild experience I'd had at the time with a Jamaican girlfriend called Sylvia. I was up early one morning cooking breakfast, naked except for my socks, and she slid up beside me and slipped an amyl nitrate capsule under my nose. As the fumes set my brain alight and I slid to the kitchen floor, she reached to the counter and grabbed an egg, which she cracked into the pit of my belly. The white and yellow of the egg ran down my naked front and Sylvia... began to show me one Jamaican trick after another. I shared the story with John at a party at a Mayfair flat one night with a handful of blondes... 'Go on, go get it, Eggman,' Lennon laughed over the little round glasses perched on the end of his hook-like nose..."

So there you have it. The Egg Man is Eric Burdon getting his dick sucked while high on poppers and covered in salmonella. John Lennon heard this story at an orgy and turned it into a song. Can you believe I actually edited out the more disgusting parts of that anecdote? What the fuck was wrong with the '60s? I'm with the silent majority on this one. The kids were not alright.