Beatles - Happiness is a Warm Gun Meaning

Song Released: 1968

Happiness is a Warm Gun Lyrics

She's not a girl who misses much
Do do do do do do- oh yea!
She's well acquainted with the touch of the velvet hand
Like a lizard on a window pane

The man in the crowd with the multicolored mirrors
On his hobnail boots
Lying with his eyes...

1. anonymous

   • 1
   • 2
   • 3
   • 4
   • 5

   click a star to vote

   Mar 7th 2009 !⃝

   Listen, I am a heroin addict, have been for years, in fact I just shot up about 10 minutes ago. This song is about heroin. It may not be the only thing it's about, but it's got obvious references that any junkie would recognize. It's also known that John was using opiates around this time.
   
   To sum it up, "Happiness is a warm gun" means "doing something "bad", can feel so "GOOD". (like heroin)
2. anonymous

   • 1
   • 2
   • 3
   • 4
   • 5

   click a star to vote

   Feb 19th 2009 !⃝

   it's about his prick. metaphorically, but quite literally at times. say happiness is a warm gun. now say it again, but drop the h. maybe it's about drugs and his wang doodle. sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll, right? maybe he shot H into his appeniss. haha. ouch! what i don't understand is the mother superior part. maybe some stab a religion for it's stand against sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. but i love this song. mostly for it's ambiguity. do you think paul would know what it's all about? i mean saint, not sir. or is that the other way around?

   This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
3. linc

   • 1
   • 2
   • 3
   • 4
   • 5

   click a star to vote

   Feb 18th 2009 !⃝

   The song uses the title of a then-popular book by "Peanuts" creator Charles Schultz, "Happiness is a Warm Puppy" to satirize the American obsession with guns. The other verses simply combine various ideas for another song.

   This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
4. anonymous

   • 1
   • 2
   • 3
   • 4
   • 5

   click a star to vote

   Jan 27th 2009 !⃝

   its about being happy until something important and special is suddenly taken from you, your never ready for a major change. when your content and happy with something you dont think about loosing it. a warm gun - meaning a gun just shot off, a sudden change that your not ready for. its like dying, you suffer but your happiness is still inside. and eventually you find something new to 'live' for.
   
   i can understand the reference to drug use, like a lot of their other songs the beatles did like to write about drugs but i think this song has much more meaning behind it. john lennon being the brilliant man that he was put codes into his lyrics. he wanted his songs to be a mystery.
5. lostinwonderland

   • 1
   • 2
   • 3
   • 4
   • 5

   click a star to vote

   Nov 26th 2008 !⃝

   This song is undoubtedly about heroin/morphine addiction. "A warm gun" refers to the filled syringe, when injected, gives a warm feeling throughout the limb as the drug travels through the bloodstream. It refers to the addicts that came back from Vietnam during the war, who used the drug to help cope with the unbearable conditions of the front. If you saw the Beatles-Inspired musical, Across the Universe, it also draws on this effect as one of the main characters sings this song while in the hospital, waiting for the nurse (played by Salma Hayek) to come give him a shot.
   
   "I need a fix, because Im going down..." also a reference to a drug fix. Mother Superior "jumping the gun" refers to addicts who OD and slip in and out of consciousness, often appearing dead, and then gasping for air as a result of the opiods on the cardiovascular system.
   
   Finger on the trigger, this refers to the relief one would feel knowing that they are about to shoot up (the trigger being the plunger of the syringe). To anyone with knowledge of the historical background and experience with the drug itself, this song rings clearly as HEROIN.
6. anonymous

   • 1
   • 2
   • 3
   • 4
   • 5

   click a star to vote

   Nov 9th 2008 !⃝

   i think that the song is talking about how happiness comes with hardship and sometimes loss. like saying the gun is still warm from shooting it at someone, but youre happy because of it. like happiness cant come with out loss or pain
7. anonymous

   • 1
   • 2
   • 3
   • 4
   • 5

   click a star to vote

   Oct 14th 2008 !⃝

   I think this song is in parts(two for sure maybe three). From reading what other think though I can make a guess on what the song could mean. I think the first part is either about a guy cheating on his wife then left. The second part is the "I need a fix" referring to gun use. The next part is sketchy. It is either once again on drug use or war. Last part is the happiness is a warm gun this time making fun of war, on the love affair thing,drug use or comparing a happiness to a warm gun like the title says. For people who don't know stuff about guns, as a gun heats up it because inaccurate because of it pushing against the forearm or the gun in different places (A timbit of info that may be useless to you but whatever) Anyway it has what I'm getting at is that you never know when you are going to be happy it is not like you wake up everyday planning you are going to be happy and it happen. Sometimes you get that bad day. No did John know that or mean for a person to think that was the meaning. Who knows? but I think there could be weirder out looks on this song
8. anonymous

   • 1
   • 2
   • 3
   • 4
   • 5

   click a star to vote

   Aug 28th 2008 !⃝

   It's about shooting heroin.
9. anonymous

   • 1
   • 2
   • 3
   • 4
   • 5

   click a star to vote

   Aug 3rd 2008 !⃝

   My mother told me that a "Warm Gun" refers to an erection!!
   NO JOKE!

   This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
10. munkieboy

    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

    click a star to vote

    Apr 26th 2008 !⃝

    I don't try to pretend what John was meaning, if anything.
    
    But to me the beginning is about seeing the girl he loves being in love with an undeserving prick...
    
    the second part seems like just some cool lines like people have said
    
    the last part is the realization that in order for someone to feel on top of the world, someone else must feel an equal amount of pain and sadness (karma, yin and yang, etc.)
11. anonymous

    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

    click a star to vote

    Apr 25th 2008 !⃝

    This song is about the men going to war in vietnom, and bassically-leaving their wives and not getting ANY sex.
    
    happiness is a warm gun-haPENIS is a warm gun
    bang bang (sleary banging a girl) shoot shoot (cuming)
    in the military soldiers would often refer to their penis as their gun.
    
    
    the first verse I'm not too sure about, but I think itz about the military wives having to loose their husbands
    
    
    The man in the crowd with the multicoloured mirrors
    On his hobnail boots = just 1 of the man soldiers in his military uniform.
    
    Lying with his eyes while his hands are busy
    Working overtime = a soldier is finally getting a chance to relax and masturbate.
    
    A soap impression of his wife which he ate
    And donated to the National Trust = kinda blah. possibly eating his wife out...and bassically giving her away when he goes to war....but not too sure on this one.
    
    
    I need a fix 'cause I'm going down
    Down to the bits that I left uptown
    I need a fix cause I'm going down = obviouse man needs to get laid, cheer him up, just feel GOOD. down to the bits that I left uptown, vietnon soldiers that he [saw] killed.
    
    Mother Superior jumped the gun
    Mother Superior jumped the gun
    Mother Superior jumped the gun
    Mother Superior jumped the gun
    this war wasn't needed, happened to soon.
    
    happiness is a warm gun(happiness is a warm penis)
    warm meaning pleasured in any way possible
    
    happiness is a warm gun momma (just an exspresion like woh momma that feels good!)
    
    
    When I hold you in my arms
    And I feel my finger on your trigger = missing wife for reasons of love....and sex such as fingering her.
    
    
    I know nobody can do me no harm = back at home where a soldier is safe from the war, with his wife, ect. (just being safe from the war)
    
    happiness is a warm yes it is...
    Gun!! cleary, cuming
    
    
    so there ya go, missing wifes and getting laid by them, some soldiers would cheat on their wifes, if they could find a woman around there anyway. and of course masturbation.
    
    this is not of heroin...though I suppose it could be, and knwoing the beatle they probably ment gun as a heroin boost for the soldiers as well.
    
    i cracked this before across the universe, but if you watch the happiness is a warm gun song, it completly focuses on the injured soldiers finally coming home, a bunch of sexy nurses, and their just happy to see a woman.
    
    
    
    there ya go
    im pretty confident with this one
    ~gabEE

    This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
12. anonymous

    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

    click a star to vote

    Mar 2nd 2008 !⃝

    It doesn't really have a meaning but the genius in it is that the lyrics have people thinking many things it is truly written by a musical genius as I have written many as well mhm
13. anonymous

    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

    click a star to vote

    Nov 29th 2007 !⃝

    Quite simple - it's about guns: Maybe a syringe, maybe a dick, whatever. And how it makes you feel alright.

    This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
14. anonymous

    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

    click a star to vote

    Nov 15th 2007 !⃝

    This song is about heroin addiction, and was cleverly mixed in with sexual innuendo involving masturbation and John Lennon's passion for Yoko. Very cleverly written indeed, perhaps the Violent Femmes' "Blister in the Sun" was inspired by this piece!

    This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
15. anonymous

    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

    click a star to vote

    Nov 5th 2007 !⃝

    This song is about a women who discovers her husband is cheating on her, so she kills him. She is the woman who doesn't miss much. The velvet gloves are to hide fingerprints. She is the lizard, observant but not observed. The man whose hands are working overtime is obviously infidelity, while his eyes are lying(to the wife).The man with glass on his hobnail boots was a real man who used mirrors to see up girls skirts in London. That man is her husband. He eats her soap impression, meaning he thinks she is unintelligent, and donates it to the national trust(slang for the toilet).
    
    Needing a fix in the next paragraph refers, after the murder of her husband, to her ever gnawing need for revenge. The uptown bits and Mother superior are one in the same, the womans husbands mistress, who got away.
    
    When the song says 'mama' after happiness is a warm gun, the speaker is speaking to her mother, and to the gun. Because throughout the relationship the woman found solace and power in her mother, whereas her husband could not hurt her, and so the gun becomes her mother because her mother dissaproves. Such is that the song was written from the betrayed woman to her mother.