Beatles: Happiness is a Warm Gun Meaning

Song Released: 1968

Happiness is a Warm Gun Lyrics

She's not a girl who misses much
Do do do do do do- oh yea!
She's well acquainted with the touch of the velvet hand
Like a lizard on a window pane

The man in the crowd with the multicolored mirrors
On his hobnail boots
Lying with his eyes...

1. anonymous

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   Mar 26th 2011 !⃝

   Mother superior jump the gun, happiness is a warm gun... This is clearly about sex.
2. anonymous

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   Jan 14th 2011 !⃝

   I've personally read this this song was about heroin and sex. "Mother superior" is a name for heroin. "My finger on your trigger" COULD be a reference to shooting it into his veins, or it could be a reference to sex. "My finger on your trigger" I say this line is more for sex, because the clit looks a lot like a trigger, or at least to me it does...so that's where I get the reference to sex as well as drugs.
3. anonymous

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   Dec 1st 2010 !⃝

   Did anyone ever get the impression that by saying happiness is a warm gun, the writer meant that happiness is fleeting and there is something bad waiting to happen when a person is happy?
4. mahawhisper

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   Nov 14th 2010 !⃝

   Lennon wasn't a heroin addict any longer than a 6 month period and even then he only snorted and never shot up. That's not much of a heroin addict compared to hardcore addicted jazz guys like Chet Baker who shot up for 30 years to the point where he had no place left on his body where he could find veins and was shooting up in his neck risking death. So the 'I need a fix' reference is probably not autobiographical or specifically about heroin, just a general reference to addictive behavior.
   
   The song is lyrically and musically all over the place, satirical and stream of consciousness, trying to cram in as much as it can in a short span, which is great and which influenced all the prog-rock acts that came later (especially early Genesis with Peter Gabriel) but which unfortunately sometimes took way too long to express their ideas. As far as the "Happiness is A Warm Gun" lyric it's obviously a double-entendre satirizing machismo, basically guys whose 'happiness' or manhood comes in the form of acting tough and shooting guns and killing the enemy and also in shooting off the loads from the 'guns' in their pants. It's making fun of and ridiculing both sides of the coin of the commonly accepted views of what 'manhood' is supposed to be. It's very influenced by the Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention and their satirycal style whose early albums were a big influence on the Beatles. The Mothers "Freak Out" double-album came out in 1966 and was quite avant-garde with influences from Stockhausen which Paul immediately got into. Zappa and the Mothers' doo-wop send-up "Cruising with Ruben & the Jets" was a big favorite of Lennon and the rest of the Beatles, hence the purposely exaggerated doo-wop style falsetto ending of "Happiness is a Warm Gun" with lyrics that doo-wop groups would obviously never use.
5. anonymous

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   Sep 7th 2010 !⃝

   i think john is simply talking about people who are stressed out and need a fix, need a stress reliever, someone who is over worked.
6. KarmaPoliceMan

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   Aug 9th 2010 !⃝

   After listening to this song many times and reading many interpretations, I believe I have come up with the meaning.
   
   This song is in several parts. The first part is about how a girl left the man in the song. this is explained by the line "She's not a girl that misses much". She is not going to miss him when she's gone. she left him for someone with more money "She's well acquainted with the touch of the velvet hand like a lizard on a window pane". the lizard reference could possibly mean that she is more comfortable with more money, like a lizard would be more comfortable on a window pane. the next part is talking about the man she is with after him.
   
   The next part of the song is about how he feels after she's gone. He needs a fix because he's depressed about her leaving him. The mother superior line is saying what is happening to him. "Mother superior jumped the gun", or he lost his morals because he takes drugs to feel better. Mother superior, would be a church figure, and saying she jumped the gun, is like saying she quit being holy.
   
   This is made clear by the next part of the song.
   Happiness is a warm gun. A gun would be warm after it it shot. This is a metaphor for shooting heroin. He can only achieve happiness through the warm gun, or needle.
   
   The lines, "When I hold you in my arms/and feel my finger on your trigger/i know nobody can do me no harm" goes back to the heroin. Hold you in my arms and I feel my finger on your trigger, is a reference to injecting himself with heroin. "And nobody can do me no harm" is a reference to the euphoria he would feel when he is on heroin.
7. anonymous

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   Jul 26th 2010 !⃝

   no,no,no.its a song about guns,and drugs.in one verse he says,"when i hold you in my arms and feel my finger on your trigger,i know nobody can do me no harm."means he has a gun while hes all shot up and no one can harm him beacause his finger is on the guns trigger and will shoot if someone harmed him.and hes shot up so he wont care if you he blows you away
   
8. anonymous

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   Jul 26th 2010 !⃝

   no,no,no.its a song about guns,and drugs.in one verse he says,"when i hold you in my arms and feel my finger on your trigger,i know nobody can do me no harm."means he has a gun while hes all shot up and no one can harm him beacause his finger is on the guns trigger and will shoot if someone harmed him.and hes shot up so he wont care if you he blows you away
   
9. anonymous

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   Jul 3rd 2010 !⃝

   That actully makes since. He had sex with the head nun, a virgin (window pane he is going to break, her chery) with his weiner (the lizard) and the nun has never touched a weiner before so her hand is like a velvet glove. And he goes down on her an the warm gun is, you know, man-chowder. And so he bangs her a couple of times, I guess.
   
10. anonymous

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    Jul 3rd 2010 !⃝

    Come on folks... It is about John having sex with a pun. Can not be any more clear. If it was John's snake it would have bit you, (no nun intended.)
11. anonymous

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    Jun 14th 2010 !⃝

    i believe the song is an anti-war song (Vietnam). i think Lennon is personifying the gun of a soldier and relating them as if the gun was his girlfriend, talking about the relationship between a soldier and his gun: "She's not a girl who misses much. Do do do do do do, oh yeah, She's well acquainted with the touch of the velvet hand". it also portrays the way politicians lied and pretended as if everything was Ok, when in fact they were not trustworthy and involved witht he war: "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.:
    The man with the mirrors in his hobnail boots is clearly a soldier. the mirrors were used to see girls upskirt.
    "Mother superior jump the gun" is about religion involved with he war.
    And "I need a fix 'cause i'm going down" is about the drug use there was during the war.
    
    
12. anonymous

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    May 24th 2010 !⃝

    
    
    From what I’ve read:
    - To “donate something to the National Trust” was British slang at the time for defacating in parkland. Like at a picnic, you might say: “Well, I’m off to donate me sandwich to the National Trust”.
    - “Happiness is a warm gun” is from an NRA magazine that had the phrase on the cover: “Happiness is a warm gun in your hands”.
    - However, it could also have a double meaning, since heroin might be cooked down with water in a spoon before being drawn into a syringe, so a syringe of heroin might be pleasantly warm.
    
    
13. briteatsbrainns

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    May 2nd 2010 !⃝

    I didn't do much research into this. But I am an avid Beatles fan, and this song interests me the most. I don't really understand what the beginning is about. But the whole, "Bang Bang, Shoot Shoot" and "I need a fix cause' i'm going down." and "When I hold you in my arms, and I feel your finger on my trigger, I know nobody can do me no harm" is about his obvious heroine addiction! I mean, I don't know for sure, everyone's interpretation will be different. To each his own. But if you honestly don't believe The Beatles' music was in anyway drug related then you haven't really, really listened to The Beatles. Maybe if you've only heard when they first started out, with their pop-like music, but it definitely became apparent later.
14. anonymous

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    Apr 18th 2010 !⃝

    This song is about John lamenting his legendarily small penis,and his inability to please the extremely skanky, frighteningly off key singing ,yoko and his attempts to over-masturbate to increase its size, to no avail, hence the lyrics,'bang bang,shoot shoot".
15. anonymous

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    Apr 18th 2010 !⃝

    Interesting about the beginning dealing with the Maharishi. But the rest of the song is about getting high off of IV drugs.
    When he says "When I hold you in my arm. And I feel my finger on your trigger." that would be John talking about the needle inside of his vein (it's in his arm). And his index finger (most likely) on the plunger ready to shoot it in.
    How about the chorus, "Bang Bang, Shoot Shoot".

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