Out of all the brilliant experiments and affectionate homages on The Beatles, the LP generally known as The White Album, John Lennon’s seven-part doo-wop metal opera ‘Happiness Is a Warm Gun’ is the most ambitious. And one of the best executed, with Lennon effortlessly carrying off four distinct voices across the song’s various sections, George Harrison’s buzz-saw lead guitar lines snarling through the breakdown midway, and the finale featuring some of the band’s most sublime three-part harmonies.
No wonder the track is revered by fans and musical peers alike, with contemporary rock outfit Arctic Monkeys among the many artists to name it as their favourite Beatles song. Its musical accomplishments are beyond question, but the composition’s lyrics also give us plenty to write home about.
Not least the bizarre title, which derives from a slogan Lennon saw in an advert for guns in an issue of the magazine American Rifleman. The Beatle found the sheer insanity of this statement as an advertising slogan hilarious. His song is primarily a scathing satirical send-up of the senseless violence that lies behind the statement, and the irony of submerging such a bloodthirsty sentiment in lush doo-wop harmonies won’t be lost on many listeners.
Yet there’s plenty more nuggets lurking beneath the surface of Lennon’s lyrics to the song. “Mother Superior jumped the gun”, a refrain repeated six times in the song’s fourth section to a jarring 5/4 beat, is a particularly interesting case. The expression “jumped the gun” introduces the titular theme into the song for the first time, while doubling up as an idiomatic metaphor for someone acting too soon. The identity of “Mother Superior” is harder to discern without further context, though.
Was she a real person?
A mother superior is the name given to a senior nun who runs a convent belonging to certain Roman Catholic orders. Lennon wasn’t referring to any sisters of the faith, though. Quite the opposite, in fact. He was referring to his new romantic partner, Yoko Ono. In his demo version of the track from May 1968, he mentions her name directly.
“That was the beginning of my relationship with Yoko,” Lennon explained in an interview with journalist David Sheff. “I was very sexually oriented then.” Indeed, the “gun” of the title doubles up as a euphemism for male genitalia for much of the song’s final two sections, and it could be that “jumped the gun” is meant to symbolise sexual arousal. On the other hand, it could simply refer to Ono’s consummation of her relationship with Lennon before he separated from his wife Cynthia, jumping the gun on divorce proceedings, so to speak.
“Mother Superior” was the nickname Lennon gave Ono from the early days of their relationship. This somewhat bizarre choice of romantic epithet reflected the maternal role that the Beatle’s new lover fulfilled in his life, something he himself was quite open about. Ono was almost eight years older than Lennon, and this age gap, coupled with her strong personality, meant that she served as the mother figure he’d lacked in his life since his actual mother’s death a decade earlier, as well as his romantic partner.
‘Happiness Is a Warm Gun’ is one of three songs on The White Album that addresses the theme of motherhood, along with ‘Mother Nature’s Son’, a more abstract folk effort from McCartney, and ‘Julia’, a tribute to Lennon’s mother. Lennon would return to this theme with two further songs on his debut solo record in 1970.
It would take several more years for him to see his relationship with Ono as a partnership on equal terms, something which he finally felt able to express in his 1980 love song ‘Woman’. In 1968, his feelings were still raw and unrestrained, and he hadn’t yet come to terms with his mother’s death. This is the Lennon we hear on ‘Happiness Is a Warm Gun’. Not just the razor-sharp satirist or the sexually-charged lover but the lost teenager desperate for maternal affection.
