The Beatles song that John Lennon called “one of my best”
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From day one, John Lennon always wanted to make songs that sounded strange. The Beatles may have started out as a simple pop group writing material for the screaming teenagers of the world, but once they started experimenting in the studio, Lennon was never satisfied until he had something that changed someone’s idea of what a rock song could be. Although Lennon readily admits he didn’t always hit the mark, he considered the journey he took with “Happiness is a Warm Gun” to be one of his greatest achievements.
On the other hand, there is a good chance that The White Album is one of the group’s best records, if only because it’s so strange. At over 90 minutes, it’s already a lot, but the drastic tones you hear throughout the album give it an almost anti-conceptual feel, as if each track was just squashed together with no rhyme or reason other than just coming out.
Although each member had plenty of time to think about songs while studying transcendental meditation, much of Lennon’s material ran the gamut of his thoughts. There were occasional despairing songs like “I’m So Tired,” but also sheer beauty behind the gentle fingerpicking of “Dear Prudence.”
At the same time, it also led to the most experimental decisions of Lennon’s career. While he was still doing obscure art projects on vinyl with Yoko Ono in his spare time, many people thought he had lost his way when he transferred the same energy to a Beatles album with “Revolution 9.” If that was a disaster for fans, “Happiness is a Warm Gun” is an example of this kind of experimentation done right.
In less than three minutes, Lennon takes what sounds like four different song ideas and packs them into one epic piece. The gentle guitars at the beginning seem to prepare you for something emotional, but when you hear the song segue into the dirtiest blues riff he’s ever written, and then immediately segue into 1950s-style doo-wop in the final part, it’s enough to make people check the playback to make sure they don’t accidentally switch to other songs.
The tone may be borderline incomprehensible in places, and that’s exactly why it worked for Lennon, who told Jann Wenner: “I like it. One of my best songs, I’ve forgotten about it. I think it’s a beautiful song. I just like all the different things that happen in it. I put three different songs together. But it was meant to be – I don’t know, it seemed to run through all different kinds of rock music.”
Although some of the other members were a little skeptical of Lennon’s experimentation, both Paul McCartney and George Harrison considered the song one of their favorites on the album. One of the song’s key strengths, however, is the impression it makes today on any other rock band that dared to dream bigger.
Combining three different songs was the same approach Queen used to produce Bohemian Rhapsody, and even Radiohead’s Thom Yorke was inspired by the song when working on the various tracks of Paranoid Android. The Beatles were always pushing the boundaries of what rock music could do, but more than anything, “Happiness is a Warm Gun” was a reminder that with the right idea, anything is possible once musicians start recording.
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