"Happiness Is a Warm Gun" is a song by The Beatles featured on the eponymous double-disc album The Beatles (also known as The White Album). It is primarily a John Lennon composition, credited to Lennon/McCartney. The original, working title of the song was "Happiness Is a Warm Gun in Your Hand," which was inspired by a magazine containing the phrase, which in turn parodied "Happiness is a Warm Puppy," a Peanuts book written by Charles Schulz in 1962.
Overview
Lennon once claimed the song was "sort of a history of rock and roll," as it features five different sections but is less than three minutes long. The song begins with a brief lilting section ("She's not a girl who misses much..."). Drums, bass and distorted guitar are introduced as this portion of the song proceeds. The surreal imagery from this section is allegedly taken from an acid trip that Lennon and Derek Taylor experienced, with Taylor contributing the opening lines.[1] After this, the song transitions into a Lennon song fragment called "I Need a Fix," built around an ominous-sounding guitar riff. This section drifts into the next section, a chorus of "Mother Superior jumped the gun."
The final section is a doo-wop send up, with the back-up of vocals of "bang, bang, shoot shoot." The song's multiple sections would inspire Radiohead's three part "Paranoid Android" on OK Computer.[2]
One of the most radical musical accomplishments of the song is its frequent shifts in meter. Beginning in 4/4 time, the song shifts to a 3/4 time for the guitar solo in the "I need a fix..." section. This gives way to 6/8, 3/4, and 4/4 measures in the "Mother Superior..." section before returning to 4/4 for the majority of the doo-wop style ending. During Lennon's spoken-word interlude, the song briefly switches into 6/4. The spoken word section has its roots in the song later on the album "I'm So Tired" because, exhibited in the song's home demo, is a spoken word section in 6/4 time that is almost exactly like the one in "Happiness is a Warm Gun."
According to Lennon, the title came from the cover of a gun magazine that producer George Martin showed him: "I think he showed me a cover of a magazine that said 'Happiness Is a Warm Gun.' It was a gun magazine. I just thought it was a fantastic, insane thing to say. A warm gun means you just shot something."[3]
Many different interpretations of the song have been offered down the years. It has been said that, in addition to the obvious reference mentioned above, the "Warm Gun" could also allude to Lennon's sexual desire for Yoko Ono (meaning an erect penis) and also to his well documented problems with heroin at the time of the recording of The White Album (in this case, the gun being a loaded syringe).
"Happiness Is a Warm Gun" is Paul McCartney's favorite song on the White Album. Although tensions were high among the band during the album's recording sessions, they reportedly collaborated as a close unit to work out the song's challenging rhythmic and meter issues, and consequently considered it one of the few true "Beatles" songs on the album.
It was featured in the Michael Moore documentary Bowling for Columbine in a montage sequence and in the film Across the Universe in which Maxwell is being injected with morphine.
Credits
Cover versions
Notes
- ^ Hertsgaard, Mark (1995). "A Day in the Life: The Music and Artistry of the Beatles". New York, New York: Delacorte Press. pg. 257
- ^ "Paranoid Android". Retrieved on 2007-09-21.
- ^ Wenner, Jann S (2000). Lennon Remembers (Full interview from Lennon's 1970 interview in Rolling Stone magazine). London: Verso, 114-115. ISBN 1-85984-600-9.
External links
|
