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The Beatles Bible<\/span><\/div>Featuring one of John Lennon\u2018s best vocals on the White Album, \u2018Happiness Is A Warm Gun\u2019 was made up of four distinct song fragments, and took its title from a gun magazine, The American Rifleman, which Lennon saw in the studio at Abbey Road.<\/p> The song functions as a kind of scrapbook for Lennon’s favourite techniques. There are uncompromising time changes throughout and Lennon’s quirky guitar style with characteristic finger-picking (most noticeable in the first section and reminiscent of Dear Prudence, Julia) and arpeggios (underneath “Mother Superior jump the gun”, see also Gimme Some Truth). The second section has surreal “found poetry” lyrics (Strawberry Fields Forever, I Am The Walrus or Glass Onion<\/a>). The “I need a fix cause I’m going down” section has the same maudlin feeling as Yer Blues<\/a>, drug references like Cold Turkey, and the parallel vocal\/guitar lines found in Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, I Want You (She’s So Heavy) as well as later solo tracks such as Well, Well, Well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the final section the lead vocals (“I feel my finger on your trigger”) spell out the sexual metaphor in a slightly icky way, but the backing vocals offset this with a tongue-in-cheek, jokey undertone. Although not mentioned by name, as she had been in demo versions, this song is very much about Yoko Ono and about John and Yoko’s new relationship. At the time (and subsequently) they liked to make their sex life part of their art. Today it does come across as “This is my girlfriend. We have sex, you know. And we take drugs”, but this was a different time where a grown man talking about sex and drug use would have been less uncool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For me, Happiness Is A Warm Gun is the point in this ranking where the White Album begins to work. The stripped down approach that they had chosen for the project gives a raw feeling, but the track is an ensemble piece with a real sense of togetherness. It’s striking how different this is from, say, I Am The Walrus; less artifice, rougher edges, but it still works. Everything feels quite purposeful, and indeed it must have been because they recorded 70 takes over two days. One important difference between this and many of the earlier tracks in the ranking is that all four Beatles were fully involved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lennon (after Take 19): Is anybody finding it a bit easier? It seems a little easier? It just not… no fun, but it’s easier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Harrison: Easier and fun<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lennon: Oh alright. If you insist.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n I am not generally that keen on the stark production on the White Album as a whole, but it works very well for some tracks, and Happiness is one of them. Harrison’s harsh trebly lead guitar stabs really complement Lennon’s floaty picking and they stand apart in the sparse mix while the bass and drums gel in a separate layer beneath. Ringo and Paul are doing a great job of holding everything together though all the time changes. They make it sound natural. It is a strange song, but the band makes it clear that it is quite deliberate. When it flows it flows, and when some extra emphasis is needed Each. Note. Lands. With. A. Bump. <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Happiness Is A Warm Gun is a track from the White Album written by John Lennon. The song has an unusual structure with several substantial and distinct fragments welded together, each promising in its own right, none of them repeating. The Frankenstein construction is arty, intentionally strange and strangely compelling. The performance is a great […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":190,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[13],"class_list":["post-673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-song-a-day","tag-white-album"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomhartley.me.uk\/beatles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomhartley.me.uk\/beatles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomhartley.me.uk\/beatles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomhartley.me.uk\/beatles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomhartley.me.uk\/beatles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=673"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tomhartley.me.uk\/beatles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":677,"href":"https:\/\/tomhartley.me.uk\/beatles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673\/revisions\/677"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomhartley.me.uk\/beatles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomhartley.me.uk\/beatles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomhartley.me.uk\/beatles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomhartley.me.uk\/beatles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.beatlesbible.com\/wp\/media\/white_album.jpg\" "\\"The")
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