Happiness is a warm gun

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Happiness is a warm gun
The Beatles
publication November 22, 1968
length 2 min 43 s
Genre (s) Rock , progressive rock
Author (s) Lennon / McCartney
album The Beatles

Happiness Is a Warm Gun ( English Happiness is a warm gun ) is a song by British rock band The Beatles , which on 22 November 1968 the album The Beatles was released.

Emergence

The piece was composed by John Lennon . It appeared under the copyright of Lennon / McCartney as usual . The title was inspired by the headline "Happiness Is a Warm Gun in Your Hand" in a weapons magazine that George Martin Lennon had drawn attention to. The headline was a modification of the title of a peanuts tape from 1962 ( Charles Schulz , "Happiness Is a Warm Puppy"). In an interview with the music magazine Rolling Stone in 1971, Lennon commented on his interpretation of the title:

“I thought what a fantastic insane thing to say. A warm gun means, you've just shot something. "

“I thought what a fantastically insane statement. A warm weapon means that something has just been shot. "

- John Lennon

In writing the text, Lennon was assisted by Derek Taylor , then press manager of the Beatles, Neil Aspinall and Peter Shotton, Lennon's childhood friend and former member of the Quarrymen . The three contributed different phrases that Lennon built into the text. For example, Taylor wrote the first line of the song: “She's not a girl who misses much”.

The recordings for the song took place from September 23 to 25, 1968 in Studio 2 of Abbey Road Studios . The complicated structure of the piece with its unusual time changes meant that the group needed a total of 70  takes to record the rhythm track. The instrumentation consisted of an electric bass ( Paul McCartney ), drums ( Ringo Starr ) and two electric guitars (John Lennon and George Harrison ). As a producer acted Chris Thomas, executive engineer was Ken Scott. It turned out that Take 53 contained the best version for the first part and Take 65 the best version for the rest of the piece. The tapes were cut and joined accordingly in order to create the rhythm track on which the missing passages - including the vocal tracks - were finally added by overdubbing .

On the sidelines of a European tour of the Doors , Jim Morrison is said to have visited the Beatles on September 23, 1968 in Westminster during the recording of the song.

Use in culture

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Walter Everett: The Beatles as Musicians. Revolver through the Anthology . New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. p. 182.
  2. ^ Ian MacDonald: Revolution in the Head. The Beatles' Records and the Sixties. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2007. pp. 318-319.
  3. ^ Mark Lewisohn : The Complete Beatles Chronicle . New York: Harmony Books, 1992. p. 300.
  4. ^ Greg Shaw: The Doors On The Road . Omnibus Press, London 1997. p. 134. Rumors picked up by other authors that Morrison was supposed to have been involved in the background vocals of the song Happiness Is a Warm Gun (“On this recording Jim sang along with the background vocals, but his voice was on the The finished mix was made almost inaudible because they feared legal entanglements. "Rainer Moddemann: The Doors . Heel, Königswinter 2001, p. 58.), Greg Shaw, on the other hand, portrays as" unfounded and highly improbable ".