A cold meat pie is a wonderful thing, but not worth a damn in a knife fight. Is cold meat pie Cockney slang for something a little more deadly? Or is a cold meat pie slang for the injuries you might receive in a knife fight?
Don’t know where I heard this but I think “Cold meat pie” is slang for the weapon that results when a person holds a bottle by the neck and then breaks the bottom off the bottle. He then uses the jagged glass of the bottle to slash or stab.
Don’t know if Bill Door is still interested in this topic after all these years, but I’d imagine he’ll be excited to see a previously ignored Thread of his finally getting some long delayed attention, SingSingSing (Welcome to the Dope, by the way!).
I wouldn’t see any reason to interpret it as a weapon of any kind. Expanding the sample lyrics just a bit, it’s: “Benny looked at Sidney, Sidney stared right back in his eye, Sidney chose a switchblade and Benny got a cold meat pie.”
I would go with Bill Door’s second interpretation- “got” meaning “sustained an injury”, the same way you’d say someone “got” a broken nose or “got” a black eye. I would think Sid immediately stabbed Benny- Benny’s stab wound (or his subsequent corpse) was the “cold meat pie”.
However, I do love SingSingSing’s definition of cold meat pie. I can’t find any other sources for it, don’t know who SingSingSing got it from, but I like it.
It feels pretty obvious to me, but just to make it official and all, this confirms that “cold meat” does indeed refer to a corpse.
^ Further: “cold pie” (a little further down the page) is “an easy victim,” so Benny was easily dispatched.
About time. Seven years and eight months. Thanks for the answers.
The “cold meat pie” is clearly the cold steel blade, delivered to the stomach.
It’s not deep. Needn’t be based on slang. It just rhymes and is fitting imagery.
I’m a big ELP fan, but in general their lyrics aren’t much better than most rock, which sets a pretty low bar.
I always thought it was Cockney rhyming for getting kicked in face. cold meat/feet pie/eye sort of thing.
I read somewhere, long, long ago, before the internet age, that a cold meat pie was slang for a sap. However, I couldn’t find anything to verify that when looking it up for this thread. For all these years I thought that this one hell of a fight was Sidney with his switchblade and Benny with his concealable club. At least until Sidney grabbed a hatchet and buried it in Bennie’s head, which introduced a third weapon.
Huh. I always thought that cold meat pie was a comment on the quality of the food at that particular establishment - the cold meat pie was so hard and dense that it was useful as a weapon. Never thought it might actually have a slang meaning :smack:.
Man, was a HUGE fan of ELP, with Brain Salad Surgery my fave album at the time - and I NEVER thought of it as anything other than the foodstuff. Reckon I never thought Benny the smartest chap.
What are we going to tackle next? 7 virgins and a mule, keeping cool, keeping cool? 
I sure wish I could remember where I heard that slang definition of “Cold Meat Pie”. In any case, I too have been unable to find that definition anywhere. At the time I was working with a gentleman from Liechester (sp?) England (pronounced like Lester). Perhaps it came from him as the chronology would fit and " Cold Meat Pie" is most likely English slang … but I really can’t say for sure. But it does raise another question, that being, “What name DO we give to a broken bottle used as a weapon”? Maybe just " Broken bottle " . Saw ELP at the International Amphitheater in Chicago back in the day. My hearing never recovered completely. GREAT SHOW!!!
I saw them at Saratoga Performing Arts Center in August of 1972. That was a great show as well.
Stop being pushy. These things take time.