Happiness Is a Warm Gun

lol you people are crazy. i dont know where you get these interpretations from.
do some reading and you'll realize most of you are wrong.
first of all, its john lennon's vocals through the whole song. paul and george only provide backup and its john screaming not paul.
second of all the title of the song came from a magazine cover john lennon saw
the first part of the song ("she's well acquainted...") is something john wrote from what he saw on an acid trip
the second part ("i need a fix...") is a reference to his heroin addiction
and the rest of the song is too debatable to interpret because it could be a continuation of his drug addiction or its a reference to his sex life with yoko ono.

just learn to read and study and research guys before you start making up shit.

dayday469 your crazy.
You do realize songs can have more than one interpretation, right?
That's what makes music music, it hold different sentimental value for everyone.

Besides, DirtyDan has much more logical and clear thinking than you.
"The first part is cuz John Lennon is an acid addict, and the second part refers back to it."
That could be true, but i still hold that its either about a wife being cheated on and getting back at her husband [makes the most sense at the moment] or suicide.
And now that I think about it, there's really no way it can be suicide.

Why do you have to be such a dick about their opinion?
That "shit" dirty dan "made up" is really good, and he provides a solid basis for each part.
You just state the obvious with no real analysis except John Lennon is a druggie.
Besides, even if you were right, I'm pretty sure John Lennon would not sit there shaking his head and saying "nope nope nope, uh-uh, your totally wrong" if you told him this.
He might be all like, "thats not what i was getting at, but i totally see where your coming from" or something, but not a fucking dick like you are.

"Mother Superior Jump the Gun" is a multi-layered reference literally about a nun having intercourse prior to her death (and not just any nun, the leader of the convent), when she will (according to Catholicism) ultimately be (re)-united with her groom, Jesus. (Nuns wear a wedding ring on their right hand indicating they are "married to Jesus"); however, this is very likely a shot at organized religion by John.In addition, it also talks of her ultimate fate, which is suicide because of her earthly seduction by someone who doesn't love here.

She's not a girl who misses much: again, when taken in this context, she doesn't miss much, but not in the observational sense; in the experiential sense; not the normal things a nun should miss such as carnal knowledge and human love, although it also, based on the line: "Lying with his eyes while his hands are busy working overtime.," is irony insofar as she could not tell that he was not truly in love with her and he seduced her and threw her away for sexual gratification only, at first with his eyes and and and with his soft caress.

"A soap impression of his wife" - soap implies cleanliness, so he lied to her about his wife or marriage or cleaned the picture up in someway (perhaps telling her she is dead., or he cleaned it up in some way as to make it more palatable,) "which he ate" --why do we eat soap or have our mouths washed out with soap? For lying of course. "And donated to the national trust." - he used this piece of information to win her over or to manipulate her, national in this sense meaning more universal or far-reaching.

"I need a fix cause I'm going down, down to the bits that I left uptown"- this is literally a heroin reference to coming down, but here it means a sexual fix: he is going back to the broken woman he left "uptown"-- this word is important and is one of the key reasons that this is not a drug reference: If he meant heroin, he would have said "downtown", a euphemism for heroin (just as 'uptown' is a cocaine euphemism) but he is talking about the bits or shell of the woman he had this relationship, uptown implying class or somewhere of importance.

"Happiness is a warm gun, bang bang, shoot shoot," the nun ultimately commits suicide because she violates her vows and betrays Jesus, after she commits murder: she kills him. [There is a slight reference to Dante here insofar as she is already damned to Judecca, the 9th Circle, 4th Round of Hell (Canto XXIV) in Dante's Inferno (Part III of "The Divine Comedy." The 9th Circle is reserved for Betrayers, but special betrayer's and the 4th Round in particular is for those who have betrayed God; it is reserved for the Biblical giants lie Judas & Satan as well as the assassins of Caesar, Claudius and Brutus (because Dante thought they betrayed Italy and the World by killing the Divinely Appointed unifier of Italy.)] Since she will already be damned for betraying Jesus, she will receive no additional punishment by killing her betrayer (whom she betrays by taking his life), and killing herself.

"When I feel my finger on your trigger, I know nobody can do me no harm" This is irony as she believes no human can do her any more harm or even God because of her damnation. The warm reference in "warm gun", in addition to denoting that she fired the weapon, also is an ironic Dante reference because in the 9th Circle, you are frozen in ice and not burned by fire, up to a level commensurate with your crimes.

MobiusDick

Also, "She's well acquainted with the touch of a velvet hand like a lizard on a window pane" - this is a masturbation reference not an LSD reference. Her desires for love and carnal pleasure have often lead to masturbation. "The man in the crowd with the multi-colored mirrors on his hob-nail boots" Hob-nail boots imply that he was working class, used for traction so the he doesn't fall off and reveal his true self to her; the mirrors have several meanings: one, the obvious one, is that he is a pervert, peaking under dresses using mirrors on his boots, but below that level is that of her vision of herself as she looks down, constantly reflecting back at her the betrayal she is about to commit. He is also covering his working class boots with the reflection or the fantasy of what he wants her to believe, but she is a willing participant, ready to believe him.


****Note that all interpretations of this song are valid except one and that is John Lennon's own. If you study the literary criticism of the 2oth Century beginning with Ezra Pound, John Crowe Ransom, James Joyce and TS Elliott, you realize we are in the century of Relativity; whatever meaning a song has to you is a valid interpretation [It is the meaning a song has (to you)]. The reason the author is excepted from interpretation is because of another artifact of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics (i.e,,modern physics) references, and that is related to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. In physics, this means that we cannot exactly know both momentum (velocity, { that is {times mass}) and location X at the same time. [ΔX × ∆P ≮ h⁄2π ]. When we know one exactly, we must sacrifice our knowledge of the other such that the product of the uncertainty of the two measurements is greater than Plank's Constant divided by 2π ; or, in terms of Energy and Time [ ΔE × ∆T ≮ h⁄2π].

When using this in terms of literary criticism, the person creating the work has too much psychological baggage to interpret his or her own work. In other words, you cannot step outside of yourself and see what you look like to other people. A good example of this occuring to me personally where I began to really understand the significance, was when I was reading over some poetry from a college poetry magazine I had been involved with in the early 1990's, The pages were typed so I could not recognize the handwriting. I read two peoms that I was blown away by and I was trying to determine which of the people involved in the magazine had written the poems. I suddenly realized they were my own work; immediately, I no longer was able to see anything special about the poems, and I began picking them apart line by line. I have always been very critical of my own writing and I cannot look at it from an unbiased veiw. No matter how many people tell me how much they like it or how impressed theey are, it is hard for me to get beyond the phase of self-doubt. MD******


MobiusDick

I like dirty dan's interpretation. Very different than I ever thought.

Brilliant.

MobiusDick, you are a badass. Thank you for setting everything straight. Though I don't necessarily take your interpretation of this song as my own, I can totally see where you're coming from. Furthermore, I respect your clearly deep knowledge of literary theory and it only lends credibility to your opinions on this board. But I have to admit, I hate the idea that an artist's interpretation of his own work is the only one that is non-valid, or at least, the least valid (though you are correct that it is one of the tenets of the age of Relativity). I'm a fiction writer and I know what my own interpretation of my work is, but I don't eliminate the possibility that anyone else's opinion is as worthwhile as my own. We all bring our own baggage to a work, including the artist.

I love this song but now I'm extremely confused. Is it about heroin, nuns, or extremely graphic sex references? (Which makes me really not want to sing along whith it anymore). But i do think agree with MobiusDick in that the mpst valid meaning of a song's lyrics is the one that you think of personally.

@DirtyDan I thought this was obvious... what a bunch of strange interpretations to a very straight forward song. Although she may have been on drugs when she sought revenge.

A few things I wonder about though, why is her nickname "Mother Superior" and why did he eat a "soap" figure of his wife? And who is this "Man in the crowd with the multicolored glasses and the hobnail boots"? Reference to LSD? This may be the drug she was on when she took her revenge.

Also I think the reference to, 'when I hold you in my arms" may be her new lover who knows about the justice she implemented on her previous husband and is happy to hear he has a woman who is protective and capable.

Either way you look at it, it is a known fact that "happiness IS a warm gun oh yeah" sorry Pierce Morgan, you are an utter moron :)

@DirtyDan It’s a favorite of mine. Umm, the idea of the ‘Happiness Is A Warm Gun’ thing is from an advert in an American paper. It said, Happiness is a warm gun, sort of thing, and it was ‘Get ready for the long hot summer with a rifle,’ you know, ‘Come and buy them now!’ It was an advert in a gun magazine. And it was so sick, you know, the idea of ‘Come and buy your killing weapons,’ and ‘Come and get it.’ But it’s just such a great line, ‘Happiness Is A Warm Gun’ that John sort of took that and used that as a chorus. And the rest of the words… I think they’re great words, you know. It’s a poem. And he finishes off, ‘Happiness Is A Warm Gun, yes it is.’\r\n\r\nPaul McCartney – from interview with Radio Luxembourg, 1968

i got the chills when i read this meaning. i always knew it was about heroin because of my frequent involvement with the "drug scene". after using opiates (sometimes intravenously) i sampled the land of milk and honey. i then realized that's all there is to it. happiness IS a warm gun. if i'm sure about anything in the world its that. no matter who you are, or what shit you're in, heroin will put a smile on your face. as a result of my experiences, i have dubbed opiates the Drug of Discipline. they are great fun and short term effects are slim to none (when properly dosed). its addiction that will come up and slap you in the face. every day it gets easier to say no, but that feeling will still be there in the deepest reaches of your mind forever.

@kopaarwes09 Love it. My best friend always believed the same thing.

@kopaarwes09 Love it. My best friend always believed the same thing.

ironic at the thought of his death...

My mother suggested to me this interpretation when I was in my teens. I figured it must be wrong :-)

But of course, all Beatle songs after 1965 are about drugs. :-)

Absolutely....... and the Mother Superior jumped the gun reference has to do with England cracking down on Herion use

@spinningmisfit You are so right.

Its actually a sole confession of his wife which he ate and donated to the national trust. The national trust is a building where a lot of homeless people live and surround, so when you donate to the national trust you totally take a dump.

@MosquitoToMoscow – Beware what the internet says about song lyrics – they are often wrong. @Ferthuko is correct. According to the actual liner notes on The White Album, the lyric is "A soap impression of his wife..." – not "sole confession."

@Ferthuko I can. The soap impression would be an artistic reference and contrast as soap is clean and white but the 2nd half is what happens to it after he eats her, Back in the day the national trust is where all the homeless people lived and thats also where they used to defecate. Thus making a deposit to the national trust is like our reference dropping the kids off at the pool.