Happiness is a Warm Gun

Why is such a weird song still so catchy

The White Album is full of cobwebby subterranean corners, and this song is one of the cobwebbiest. The title comes from an issue of American Rifleman that John Lennon thought was funny in a bleak way. The joke became quite a bit more bleak after his death.

You can listen to the isolated tracks here. This is probably the most formally complex Beatles song unless you count the Abbey Road medley as a single work of music. "Happiness is a Warm Gun" is a miniature medley unto itself, since John stitched it together from several unfinished fragments. It took a lot of in-studio rehearsal to pull it together, and the band needed more than seventy takes (including false starts) to get the final one. It's interesting to compare this earlier take, which doesn't have all the overdubs.

John and Yoko discussed the song in an interview with Howard Smith.

John is clearly proud of the song, and describes it as covering "the whole history of rock and roll." He says that "the girl who doesn't miss much" and "Mother Superior" are both Yoko. He also denies that any of it is about heroin, which is hard to believe when the lyrics literally say that he needs a fix cause he's going down.