"Happiness Is a Warm Gun" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1968 album The Beatles (also known as "the White Album").
It was written by John Lennon and credited to the Lennon–McCartney partnership.
The song was composed into three distinct sections, referred by Lennon as "the Dirty Old Man", "the Junkie" and "the Gunman (Satire of '50s R&R)".
He derived the title from an NRA magazine and explained that the lyrics were a double entendre for guns and his sexual desire for Yoko Ono.
"I just thought it was a fantastic, insane thing to say. A warm gun means you just shot something."
Some commentators suggested that the "warm gun" could refer to Lennon's sexual desire for Yoko Ono or, due to the drug connotations in the lyric "I need a fix", to a heroin syringe.
In his 1980 Playboy interview, Lennon admitted to the double meaning of guns and sexuality but denied that the song had anything to do with drugs.
He said: "that was the beginning of my relationship with Yoko and I was very sexually oriented then
Lennon said he "put together three sections of different songs ... it seemed to run through all the different kinds of rock music ..." and described it as a miniature "history of rock and roll".
This results in a three-part through-composed structure.
The song begins with surreal imagery inspired by an acid trip that Lennon and Derek Taylor experienced, with Taylor contributing the opening lines.
The three sections were described by Lennon as "the Dirty Old Man", "the Junkie" and "the Gunman (Satire of '50s R&R)".
- Tori Amos, on her 2001 album Strange Little Girls.
- The recording includes an anti-gun message read out by her father.
- In 2006, Amos recalled that her decision to include the song was because of its relevance in the aftermath to the Columbine High School massacre and during an era of US gun control typified by the "father and son comedy team" of George Bush and George W. Bush, and the pair's "close connections" with the National Rifle Association.
- She added that in an accompanying picture of her included in the CD booklet, she was "playing the call girl character" that Mark Chapman had visited the night before he fatally shot Lennon on 8 December 1980.
