Happiness Is A Warm Gun
Probably John’s most John song–full of meaningless meaningful things, nonsense which has you wondering whether it makes any sense, random thoughts that appear connected, all done so powerfully that you stop and think and wonder. It does have a punch, but the nearest thing to a punchline is the title, which does not appear until towards the end of the lyrics.
It began, so John said, in the recording studio when he happened to pick up a copy of an American gun magazine that had been left lying around; the headline read ‘Happiness is a Warm Gun’. Steve Turner, author of the excellent A Hard Day’s Write, has recently tracked down the exact magazine–the May 1968 issue of American Rifleman.
The lyrics would appear to be an amalgamation of several scraps of different songs, which is why we don’t get to the warm gun reference until later. The first part, about a girl who doesn’t miss much, finishes on the National Trust. The second begins on ‘I need a fix’ probably ends on ‘going down’, while the ‘Mother Superior jump the gun’ line, repeated four times, does not appear to be connected to anything.
The May 1968 edition of American Rifleman had a story by a man recalling the happy years shooting game with his son–which gave John an ironic title for his song.
Then we get to ‘Happiness is a warm gun’, which seems to be connected to the final suggestive lines: ‘When I hold you in my arms / and I feel my finger on your trigger’, but I suspect that began as yet again another separate scrap, this time about Yoko, his love heart. All in all, jolly complicated.
Derek Taylor, the Beatles PR and friend, tried to explain a few of the obscurities. The man with mirrors on his boots was apparently a Manchester City supporter who used them to look up girls’ skirts. ‘Lying with his eyes while his hands are busy working overtime’ came from another newspaper story–about a man who had fake hands which he rested on the counter while he was stealing stuff with his real hands. The Mother Superior jumping the gun has yet to be explained, but it doesn’t really matter–it was just disconnected stuff, emptied from John’s brain at one particular moment. The next day, he would have dragged out another set of images. After all, why should lyrics tell a story or even make sense? They’re just words that have their own sounds.
Well done anyway, getting away with it, and putting all those odd words to music. It took ninety-five takes–with Paul and George working hard with John on the complicated music–so no one can say they just knocked it off.
The manuscript, neatly written out, in Mal’s hand. The numbers could refer to the timing or the tapes.
‘Happiness Is a Warm Gun’, from The White Album, in Mal’s hand, with timing.
She’s not a girl who
misses much
Do-do-do-do-do, oh yeah
She’s well acquainted
With the touch of a velvet hand
Like a lizard on a window pane
The man in the crowd
With the multicoloured mirrors
On his hobnail boots
Lying with his eyes
While his hands are busy
Working overtime
A soap impression of his wife
Which he ate and donated
to the National Trust
I need a fix ’cos I’m going down
Down to the bits that I’ve left up town
I need a fix ’cos I’m going down
Mother Superior jumped the gun
Mother Superior jumped the gun
Mother Superior jumped the gun
Happiness is a warm gun
(bang bang shoot shoot)
Happiness is a warm gun, yes it is
(bang bang shoot shoot)
When I hold you in my arms (oh yes)
And I feel my finger on your trigger (oh yes)
I know no one can do me no harm
Because
happiness is a warm gun, momma
Happiness is a warm gun
-Yes it is.
Happiness is a warm, yes it is…
Gun!
Well don’t ya know that happiness is a warm gun, momma? (yeah)
Martha My Dear
I still have fond memories of Martha. In fact her photograph is in front of me now. There she sits, proudly beside Paul and Jane, in Cavendish Avenue. The photo was taken by Ringo, who did special photographs of all four Beatles in the spring of 1968, exclusively for my biography, which came out in the September. Alas we had a flood upstairs a few years ago and all four photos–the original prints–got damaged. Martha is now a bit blurred, and her white fluffy fur even fluffier.
She was of course an Old English sheep dog, aged three in 1968, whom Paul used to take for walks on Primrose Hill. Jane was Jane Asher, to whom, after a long courtship, Paul got engaged at Christmas 1967. By July 1968 it had all collapsed after she discovered Paul had been unfaithful.
The song began as a piano exercise. Paul was teaching himself to play properly, trying something a bit beyond his competence, and having got a good bit going he looked around for some words and there was Martha my dear. He has always said it was just about his love for the dog, but others, obviously cleverer, have said ah ha, it is about a girl, possibly Jane herself, who has ditched him. She had been his inspiration and he hopes they will always remain friends and she won’t forget him. (Jane married the cartoonist Gerald Scarfe in 1981 and has never given interviews about her long and at the time loving relationship with Paul.)
It remains one of my favourite songs–I love the bouncy, cheerful, tinkly, Scott Joplin piano playing, the gentle harmonies, the change of rhythms, and Paul’s singing. This was another record on which the other Beatles did not take part. Paul did it all: vocals, bass guitar, drums, and even the hand claps, though a mini orchestra helped out.
The lyrics are not exceptional; we are told very little, possibly because he was holding back. They are nicely wistful though. I like the way he enunciates ‘I spend my days in conversation’ and ‘you have always been my inspiration’. These lines are not there to rhyme, dragged in as George might have done, as they are so far apart, but seem natural and sincere.
It was recorded in October 1968–by which time Linda Eastman had come into Paul’s life.
The manuscript, in careful capitals (possibly by Mal), has a few crossings out. You can see that ‘hold your head up’ was going to be repeated, but second time round it became ‘hold your hand out’. Now if he had really been thinking of a dog, he would surely have had a paw in there somewhere. So, must always have been a girl. And probably directed at Jane–not to forget him.
Paul, Jane Asher and the famous Martha, photographed by Ringo, 1968.
Martha my dear
Though I spend my days in conversation
Please remember me
Martha my love don’t forget me
Martha my dear
Hold your head up you silly girl
Look what you’ve done
When you find yourself in the thick of it
Help yourself to a bit of what is all around you
Silly girl take a good look around you
Take a good look you’re bound to see
That you and me were meant to be
For each other silly girl
‘Martha My Dear’, from The White Album, Paul’s song, but written out by Mal.
Hold your hand out you silly girl
See what you’ve done
When you find yourself in the thick of it
Help yourself to a bit of what is all around you
You silly girl
Martha my dear
You have always been my inspiration
Please be good to me
Martha my love don’t forget me
Martha my dear
I’m So Tired
John wrote this after three weeks in India–the period of time he mentions in the lyrics. He loved sleeping, as we know, but this time he is unable to. After too much meditating, his brain could not settle. He was also at this stage missing Yoko, whom he had met by now but had left behind. The Maharishi had banned drink and drugs, but John managed to get some alcohol and cigarettes smuggled in.
The song starts off all sleepy and drowsy, then suddenly jumps into life with explosive crescendos–and then it fades. It was following the pattern of his mood, his sudden anger and fury at being cut off from Yoko, before subsiding into resignation.
‘Fix myself a drink’ sounds to me an Americanism. I can’t remember Brits using that phrase at the time, but John had visited the USA several times by now. The last word in the lyrics is pure Merseyside, though I have always spelled it git not get. It must have totally confused American Beatle fans.
Blaming Walter Raleigh–known for making tobacco popular in England–is funny, a silly joke dropped into the middle of his angst.
The manuscript, nicely written by John, is missing the last verse. In the final lines the words were slightly changed from the original–‘I’d give you all I’ve got if you gimme little peace of mind.’
I’m so tired, I haven’t slept a wink
I’m so tired, my mind is on the blink
I wonder should I get up and fix myself a drink
No, no, no.
I’m so tired I don’t know what to do
I’m so tired my mind is set on you
I wonder should I call you but I know what you would do
You’d say I’m putting you on
But it’s no joke, it’s doing me harm
You know I can’t sleep, I can’t stop my brain
You know it’s three weeks, I’m going insane
You know I’d give you everything I’ve got
for a little peace of mind
I’m so tired, I’m feeling so upset
Although I’m so tired I’ll have another cigarette
And curse Sir Walter Raleigh
He was such a stupid get.
‘I’m So Tired’, from The White Album, in John’s hand, but missing the stupid git.
Blackbird
I have heard Paul, on stage at the O2, explain that in this song he was thinking of the position of the blacks in the USA, encouraging their civil rights campaign and struggle for equality. But I never heard him give this explanation at the time of the song’s release in 1968.
On 30 November 1968 the New Musical Express quoted an interview with Paul that had been aired on Radio Luxembourg, stating that ‘Blackbird’ was ‘just one of those pick and sing songs. It doesn’t need anything else in the backing because as a song there is nothing else to it. We added a blackbird sound at the end, but that was all.’ He made no comment about the words.
I suspect it was only with hindsight he decided that he was thinking about black civil rights, after an American writer had suggested it–although perhaps unconsciously he always had been. Creative people don’t always know from whence inspiration comes.
Whatever the inspiration, it is one of Paul’s most beautiful songs. I forced my dear wife to choose it when she went on Desert Island Discs–having been made to listen to me playing Beatles songs for decades, I insisted she had at least one.
Paul has said he first started the song when he was in his remote Scottish country cottage, and in his mind he was trying to compose something along the lines of Bach.
The lyrics are excellent. He is clearly not just thinking of a literal blackbird but people generally struggling to be free, to fly away from persecution or just from a bad relationship. But I do worry about ‘take these broken wings and learn to fly’–how would giving broken wings help anyone to fly? Surely it should have been ‘use your broken wings’, i.e. because you are broken and downtrodden, and then learn to fly.
No manuscript version has turned up–which is unusual for this period. Since 1965, as we have seen, some sort of manuscript has survived for the vast majority of their songs.
Piggies
This is George in a rant, worked up about fat horrible business piggies in their starched white shirts, with their piggie wives, stuffing their faces. In the sixties, ‘pigs’ usually meant policemen, but it could also refer to capitalist pigs. George sings it nicely, sounding almost like Paul, with some sweet harpsichord music, but the lyrics are fairly vitriolic. He explained that it was just meant to be social comment, not a call to arms, despite the line ‘they need a damn good whacking’. He said that line was contributed by his mother when he was looking for a rhyme for ‘backing’ and ‘lacking’.
However, in 1969 in California, the Charles Manson gang took it literally, when they began slaughtering their victims, using knives to finish them off and writing the word ‘pigs’, using their blood. Manson himself was a fanatical Beatles fan. When he was arrested, it was found that he had been reading my biography. His followers, calling themselves the Family, believed that there was going to be an uprising and the white establishment would be overthrown in a racial war. In all, they were linked to eight murders, including the film actress Sharon Tate.
George’s manuscript shows that he had an extra verse, marked no. 3, not used, which is pretty good, keeping up the invective and the images.
‘It’s a pity that the piggies always deal in dirt–having played their games for years–they’ve become experts–pressures they exert from every angle.’