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. mysticlotus

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   Feb 25th 2010 !⃝

   She's well acquainted with the touch of a velvet hand like a lizard on a window pane.(THIS IS THE QUEEN). The man in the crowd with the multi coloured mirrors on his hob nail boots, lying with his eyes while his hands are busy workin overtime (The duke of Edinburgh shaking hands with people while smilin @ them. The mirrors are the polished toecaps of his military hobnail boots). The soap impression of his wife which he ate and donated to the national trust(O.B.E. The mbe's the Beatles were awarded. Prince Phillip also has O.B.E.(he ate) and donated to the national trust). The Beatles bragged about havin a spliff in the palace loos b4 getting mbe.(I need a fix because I'm goin down). Mother Superior(Marijuana(not the queen, lol)) jump the gun(can't wait 4 a spliff). Happiness is a warm gun MAAM. I been wackin up 3 amps of methadone a day for 15 years by the way. What you gotta do is look@ the context of the song to know what its talkin about, its not hard. John gave his mbe back just after white album by the way. Like most youth they wanted to break free of the old guard beliefs and patterns of the past(world war leading to cold war generation), it/they got him down. John so wanted world peace and happiness/human or personal revolution. Peace and happiness and keep searching for meaning people(The reluctant Scouser)
2. anonymous

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   Jan 20th 2010 !⃝

   A lot of the ideas here have left out the way that the music moves in the song. I'll skip the first section- I agree with a lot of the interpretations here. When it gets to "mother superior jumped the gun" the tempo picks up and the song becomes more frantic, repeating the same words until it builds to a climax and then falls into a much slower, relaxed and yet triumphant "happiness is a warm gun!" That sounds like a top-rate orgasm to me.
3. anonymous

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   Nov 24th 2009 !⃝

   So it's realy simple! This song is all about sex !!! Read the title...
   
   Happiness is a warm gun...
   A penis is a warm gun...
   
   Isn't the clear ?
4. anonymous

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   Sep 19th 2009 !⃝

   People, it's not about heroin. You assume that because he says "I need a fix" that it's about heroin or drugs. There are many other kinds of addictions, like, for instance, sex. "When I hold you in my arms and feel my finger on your trigger" is about mutual masturbation. "I need a fix cause I'm going down" could be either Mutual masturbation or oral sex. "She's well acquainted with the touch of the velvet hand" is another reference to mutual masturbation. Those lyrics are talking about sex, not heroin. The man with his mirrors on his boots is to look up girls' skirts, as someone else said. His "hands are working overtime" because of masturbation of either himself or a woman. As for the national trust part, they're about historical preservation, so we may assume that his soap interpretation means she is dead and he is being dirty and running around with other girls now after using all his soap for his wife. "Jumping the gun" is an idiom for doing something too soon. The masturbation is working a little too well there. It's all about sex and masturbation. It's likely that Lennon got the inspiration from a magazine cover or whatever you guys are saying, but it's not about guns. Ironically, there are almost no gun references in this song except for the title being in the chorus.
5. Winnipegger

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   Sep 14th 2009 !⃝

   "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
   Like a lizard on a window pane..."
   
   Sexual overtones, sure, but the main idea is that the girl in question is not innocent, she's "well acquainted" with sexual activity/games/seduction, whatever.
   
   "The man in the crowd with the multicoloured mirrors
   On his hobnail boots
   Lying with his eyes while his hands are busy
   Working overtime..."
   
   Another sexual image. It used to be a belief that patent leather shoes could reflect up, and that one could get an upskirt view of a woman in a skirt/dress by seeing the reflection in the top of a strategically placed shoe, worn either by a male, or by the subject themselves. The idea of "multicoloured mirrors / On his hobnail boots" merely takes the idea to an extreme (although it makes the whole idea less obvious), but one that is extremely successful, in that he's "flying with his eyes" or excited by what he sees to the point that is in a masturbatory frenzy -- "his hands are busy working overtime". This last point echoes similar voyeuristic behaviour by Leopold Bloom in the "Nausicca" episode of James Joyce's "Ulysses".
   
   "A soap impression of his wife which he ate
   And donated to the National Trust..." seems to be no more than Lennon gobbledygook. "A soap impression" is something impressed in a bar or cake of soap; it's "of his wife", but considering that a bar of soap is small, it's unlikely that it's an impression of her whole body; it could be a part of her body, but as to which part, we can't say. This could well be an allusion to cunnilingus, though, with the substitution of one word, from "his wife which he ate" to "his wife (who) he ate", or did he actually eat the bar of soap? Doubtful, because he "donated it to the National Trust", so the soap itself must have survived. The National Trust, in the UK, is a body that conserves things that belong in a museum, all the way from individual items (such as a bar of soap) to whole buildings or structures, so the bar of soap must have been something worthwhile to have donated it to them. The question returns, what of his wife's was impressed in the soap, to make it so worthwhile, to be something that he treasured much? Lennon doesn't tell, so we have to guess. My guess (which may be off the mark) is that the soap impression is of his wife's vulva, because it is something conceivably, "which he ate".
   
   "I need a fix 'cause I'm going down
   Down to the bits that I left uptown
   I need a fix cause I'm going down..."
   
   Lines one and three suggest that the singer's drug of choice is wearing off and that he needs more. Line two seems to be just Lennon playing with words; note how he starts the line with "Down" and ends it with "uptown", two extremes. It could be just a filler line that sounded cool to him.
   
   "Mother Superior jump the gun
   Mother Superior jump the gun
   Mother Superior jump the gun
   Mother Superior jump the gun
   Mother Superior jump the gun
   Mother Superior jump the gun..."
   
   Lennon said himself that this referred to Yoko Ono, who he sometimes referred to as "Mother". A lot of Lennon's own life was spent looking for a substitute for his own mother, who was killed by a drunk driver when he was 16. Yoko is more than "Mother" to him, though, she's "Mother Superior", his ultimate. The phrase "jump the gun" was by this time long known in American slang and meant to proceed in something too quickly, as a runner might falsely start ahead of the starter's pistol, and the inclusion of the word "gun" leads nicely into the following line.
   
   The next section of the song is done in a mock 50's doo wop manner, which was the type of music Lennon himself listened to when he was a teenager.
   
   "Happiness (is a warm gun)
   Bang Bang Shoot Shoot
   Happiness (is a warm gun, momma)
   Bang Bang Shoot Shoot
   
   (When I hold you in my arms)
   Oooooooooh, oh yeah!
   
   And when I feel my finger on your trigger
   Oooooooooh, oh yeah!
   
   I know nobody can do me no harm
   Oooooooooh, oh yeah!
   
   Happiness (is a warm gun, momma)
   Bang Bang Shoot Shoot
   
   Happiness (is a warm gun)
   Bang Bang Shoot Shoot
   
   Yes it is, gun!
   Happiness (is a warm gun)
   Bang Bang Shoot Shoot
   
   Happiness (is a warm gun)
   is a warm gun, yeeeaahhh!"
   
   Paul McCartney, who also had some input to the lyrics stated in an interview that around the time of Robert Kennedy's assassination, he saw a copy of an NRA pamphlet or magazine which bore the title "Happiness Is A Warm Gun". This phrase was a corruption of a Charles Schulz Peanuts book entitled "Happiness is a Warm Puppy", which McCartney may or may not have known about, but what haunted McCartney was the idea that a warm gun meant that you probably had just shot something, and the concept that someone could be happy about such a thing was odd.
   
   Current events-wise, two months earlier, Martin Luther King had also been assassinated, as had JFK four and a half years earlier, and in 1965, Charles Whitman had climbed the University of Texas tower in Austin and proceeded to pick off bystanders for reasons unknown. It was strange to think that such violent acts using a gun could make someone feel happiness, but it was easy to think that someone could feel secure while holding a gun, perhaps even feel serenity comparable to that felt during sex.
   
   The "girl" in the first verse, therefore, is not a girl, "she's" a gun, and the singer is so into his gun to the point that, emotionally at least, the feeling is comparable to the sensation of a drug trip or of an extremely satisfying sexual encounter. He feels at peace, he feels unthreatened.
6. DJUrbanGriot

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   Aug 29th 2009 !⃝

   I feel we all need to read a lot more, and listen a little harder when it comes to our music. It deserves more than your respect, it's a universal language! These guys grew up around the royal family, and if you pay attention to other groups from that time period IN England (i.e. pink floyd) the meaning of this song should become clearer to you.
   
   "She's not a girl who misses much"
   
   -referring to the queen of england and the destruction 'she' leaves in her wake.
   
   'She's well acquainted with the touch of the velvet hand, like a lizard on a window pane."
   
   -she wears white velvet gloves, as do her staff.
   velvet is smooth like lizard skin, or a lying tongue
   
   'the man in the crowd with the boots and mirrors...' was already explained well.. but don't forget that they are relating the lying man in the crowd, with the queen/the crown (corp.)
   
   
   'i need a fix because I'm goin down, down to the bits that I left uptown.'
   
   he's saying he needs some kind of drug to numb him because he can't stand all the bullshit uptown. (royalty and it's false image) the lying man in the crowd, the queen lizard.
   
   and how do most drugs make it to your neighborhood? how does uptown BECOME UPTOWN?
   WAR=$
   GANG WAR=$
   KILLING PEOPLE=$
   KILLING INNOCENT PEOPLE=$
   
   WAR=$=............... COMFORT, HAPPINESS.
   
   
   this song is a pretty way of describing Western Expansion
   
   The rest of the song explains itself.
   
   mother superior jump the gun!
   
   when I feel my finger on your trigger I know you can do me no wrong.
   
   happiness is a warm gun.
   
   these guys were not ignorant to the ways of the world. They were on top of it for quite a while. and as all celebs know, they can't just up and leave. Its the paradox we all live in, especially for people like john.
   
   
   
   http://www.myspace.com/60516116
   
   
   peace and love.
   and happy apocalypse!
7. anonymous

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   Aug 11th 2009 !⃝

   I think it's pretty obvious what this song is about. It was written at a time when alot of the beatles lyrics too a turn for a darker, deeper, more drug filled meaning. This particular song is clearly about heroine "I need a fix 'cause I'm going down" when a person finds themselves coming down off of heroine the only thing that they can think about is finding another fix. "when I hold you, in my arms, and I feel my finger on ur trigger. I know nobody can do me no harm" Here he is talking about having the needle in his arm with his hand ready to plunge it. it describes that heroine mind set that as long as they have their smack nothing else can hurt them. Also the title of the song is "HAPPINESS is a WARM gun" Heroine is often described as a euphoric feeling. a warm sensation that spreads through out ones body.
8. shoveitin

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   Jul 23rd 2009 !⃝

   Well I think the first verse is probably about his first wife Cynthia, and from his point of view he's obviously saying how tired he is "working overtime". Beatles stuff. maybe he's feeling guilt about not loving her enough at that time in his life. "ate and donated to the national trust." I need a fix cause I'm going down." obviously depression and he needs the love of a girl to do it. maybe Mother corresponds to girlfriends/wife? happiness is a warm gun is a very cynical helpless view of happiness, if you realise the the gun will cool, and why was it shot. or even the psychopathic edge which is obvious. pretty sure he didn't do heroin just yet and when he did he smoked it
   
   
   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 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 'cause I'm going down
   Down to the bits that I left uptown
   I need a fix cause I'm going down
   Mother Superior jumped the gun
   Mother Superior jumped the gun
   Mother Superior jumped the gun
   Mother Superior jumped the gun
   
   Happiness is a warm gun
   Happiness is a warm gun, momma
   When I hold you in my arms
   And I feel my finger on your trigger
   I know nobody 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?
9. anonymous

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   Jul 13th 2009 !⃝

   The Beatle's "White Album," in my opinion is their most poetic, melodic and interesting effort. "Happiness is a warm gun" is probably my favorite song on this masterpiece. To me, this song mocks war, masculinity, and power. Who hasn't at times wished we could shoot someone, or at least carry a firearm for protection? For me, being a woman, there are plenty of times I wish I had a nice shiny gun in my two-thousand dollar Gucci handbag for protection when I am walking in a dark parking garage in downtown Los Angeles at night. (leagally, of course). That is the power part. The power of protecting yourself wholeheartedly makes you feel warm. I know it is a blatant reference to heroin use, but that is what I get from it.
10. Cster

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    Jun 25th 2009 !⃝

    This song is about doing things that make you happy, or at least that's my interpretation. The gun is symbolic, just because you have the gun doesn't mean you have to shoot it. Does it say anywhere in the song about killing someone or something? Come on suicide and The Beatles inthe same sentence? no. The one line that always puzzled me was Mother Superior jumped the gun. Now the meaning of that I think may be occassionally a person must think before doing things for pleasure or maybe they just liked the way it sounded.
11. MONGOOSE

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    Jun 15th 2009 !⃝

    I will say more when I have more time about this one.
    
    John wrote this before the "Beatles" were even together and it was on a talk show my lady was watching and the talked about about John Lennon, then they said well,
    Mark David Chapman was born with a warm gun.
    And John talked about, he had this feeling inside that he knew he was going to be taken out before his time was up.
    And wrote this song, their is more to it and I will tell you what I know later, like I did with "Maxwell's Silver Hammer", I was in a hurry when I wrote that and made two mistakes they were "Maxwell" was "Chapman" and "Silver Hammer" was the gun.
    THE MONGOOSE/ JOHN
12. anonymous

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    Jun 9th 2009 !⃝

    I don't know what is about, but I can't listen to it after Lennon's murder. It is too creepy and sad.
13. anonymous

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    May 15th 2009 !⃝

    This is a heroin song, Period. Lennon was a junkie until his death. Also a coke addict - check out his shrivelled nose in 1980.
14. anonymous

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    Apr 21st 2009 !⃝

    well, most people here think that this song is about heroin. and i'm not going to disagree. but i'm sort of surprised that no one mentioned the high pitched "bang bang, shoot shoot" in the background of the music. i think that that voice represents the younger ones, who are shooting up the heroin, just for the thrills, and maybe peer pressure. while Lennon obviously has a reason to try and 'numb the pain'. that's just my opinion, mind you...
15. anonymous

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    Mar 11th 2009 !⃝

    I DO NOT agree with the statement that "Happiness is a Warm Gun" is about heroin. I love the movie "Across the Universe", but the director had no clue what John was writing about ( she even says so, watch the extras!!!). The Song is mocking, in tone, people who rely on guns to solve their problems. Once again, like so many of John's songs, we hear that war is wrong. I'm not about to lie and say that The Beatles didn't do drugs, but they were talented enough to come up with songs that weren't about drugs.

    This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway

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