10:24 Happiness Is A Warm Gun (pt.3)

Coherence and other stuff

Having looked at the origins and rhythmic vagaries of one of John Lennon's weirdest songs, let's ask the fundamental songwriting question. How does a song made up of 4 unrelated bits* hang together so well?

Odd time signatures are obviously a motif, there's lots of root - fifth movement in bass, and though instruments are being added to the guitar/bass/drums backline throughout, the instrumentation is pretty static. As Shakespeare wrote “brevity is the soul of wit”**, so cramming masses of inventive music into 2:43 there's little chance of getting lost or bored. But the common ground between sections is more due to what's left out than added in.

Though sections 3 and 4 are tied together by the key word 'gun' (jumped the gun/warm gun) there are few lyrical motifs. But all the sections (apart from the first) have very few words.

Musically there is limited harmony. Apart from the first 8 bars in Em, everything is in Am or it's relative C major (which has an identical set of notes) or a modal progression rooted in A (section 2). The only chords used are Am, C, Dm, Em, F, Fm, G and their variations***.

The range of the melody is also limited. Section one is little more than a 3 note pattern (first in the key of Em then Am). Section 2 uses a minor 7 arpeggio A C E G and the last two sections use the minor pentatonic plus a second (A B C D E G).

...Other Stuff

A few songwriting tickets worth mentioning in closing

• The solo in section 2 is the vocal melody (ticket 4)
• Lennon grabs your ear with some early weirdness (ticket 61) - the surreal lyrics, 'Lennon extensions/edits' (tickets 37 and 52) and the rapid-fire succession of sections.
• The descant, i.e. the backing vocals, (ticket 58) in section 4 is nicely written (listen out for the almost inaudible bass vocal part).
• There are several uses of madrigalism (ticket 49)
• 0:26 hobnail boots - 3 stomping descending melody notes on the beat
• 0:32 hands are busy working overtime - the melody is busy
• 1:01 going down - the melody goes down
• 1:05 left uptown - the melody goes up
• 1:38 The 7th to 6th melody over the F major chord (warm gun) sounds warm and comforting.

What's not to love?

“Do do do do do do. Oh yeah” must be one of Lennon's most pointless lines ever, but doesn't stick out because it has it's own tune. And if you're wondering what that weird vocal noise is at 0:57 on the stereo version, John sang the "I need a fix" section twice, but the first was muted to make way for the fuzz guitar solo. During mixing the vocals were brought back up too early


*1 – She's not a girl. 2 – I need a fix. 3 – Mother Superior. 4 – Happiness is a warm gun
**i.e. intelligence (from Hamlet).
*** by my reckoning Am, Am7, Am6/7, A7, A5, C, C5, Dm, Dm6, Em, Emadd9, F, Fm, G and G5.

10:23 Happiness Is A Warm Gun (pt.2) - You Can Count On Ringo

Rhythmic Shenanigans in Happiness Is A Warm Gun

Last time we broke down this song into four sections and noted that throughout there are interesting things going on with the beats, bar length and time signatures

Section 1 (She's not a girl) is in 4/4 but when we get to the second half (She's well acquainted...) the length of the phrases change.

She's well acquainted – 5 bars
Man in the crowd – 4 bars
Lying with his eyes – 4 bars
A soap impression 4 1/2 bars (the 2/4 bar happens on the words "donated to the").

In section 2 (I need a fix) we switch to 3/4 for an 11 bar pattern played twice.

Section 3 (Mother Superior) alternates a 9/4 bar with a 10/4 bar or (if you prefer a pattern of 6/8, 3/4, 3/4 alternating with 6/8, 3/4, 4/4). And again, lest that's too normal for you we get the entire pattern 3 times instead of the more usual 2 or 4 times.

Section 4 (Happiness is a warm gun) comprises of a four bar sequence (C, Am, F, G) played twice in 4/4. Then the same sequence is played three times in 3/4 before switching back to 4/4 for two more times. Following a pause for a false ending (ticket 47) we get the 4/4 two more times.

John Lennon Likes To Be In America

Dropping or adding beats (tickets 37 and 52) and alternating time signatures (ticket 15) are something that Lennon did in his sleep from She Said She Said to All You Need Is Love. In fact I think it took more effort for him to confine himself to 4 beats in the bar (see the outtake of I'll Be Back and last weeks post). But the rhythmic monkey business takes a step up in section 3.

You could look at each riff in the Mother Superior section as one long bar with 9 beats followed by an even longer one with 10 (a Lennon extension- ticket 52). But the first 3 beats have a double time feel – a 3 over 2 hemiola (see ticket 29). That's very hard to count, not to mention play! How did Lennon (and Ringo and the boys who undoubtedly forced him to play it the same way every time) 'feel' such a complex rhythm?

It is probably easier to look at it as a bar of 6/8, followed by two bars of 3/4. For this you could count

(fast) 123456 (half speed) 1-2-3-1-2-3

then for the '10/4' bar

(fast) 123456 (half speed) 1-2-3-1-2-3-4

The question remains: where did Lennon get such a bizarre rhythmic idea from?

He got it from America. The time/tempo change is EXACTLY the same rhythmic figure that appears in Leonard Bernstein/Stephen Sondheim's West Side Story. If you have any doubts try singing “I like to be in America, merica” over the Mother Superior bit and you'll see what I mean. Did Lennon know this song?

The West Side Story film soundtrack occupied the UK top 20 album charts from Mar 62 to Nov 65. It was up there when the band performed in suits for the first time in a small Jazz Club near Liverpool and was still in the charts when they filmed the video for We Can Work It Out. It rubbed shoulders with every album from Please Please Me to Help! Lennon must have been aware of it.

But it's Ringo, not John, who pulls off the most impressive rhythmic feat, in section 4. Beatles guru Alan Pollack says “poor Ringo particularly sounds like he's struggling” - but he's wrong. Misunderstood genius Ringo is introducing true polyrhythms to the Beatles and he's doing it like a Boss. When the band switch to 3/4 ("when I hold you...") Ringo ignores the time change and carries on playing in 4/4, meaning the beat is constantly turning around. The clever part is Ringo's 9 bars of 4/4 and the band's 12 bars of 3/4 both add up to 36 beats, so at the end they all come back together perfectly in sync.

Ringo was more than used to handling time changes, having switched between 3/4 and 4/4 in Lucy In The Sky, Mr Kite, Bungalow Bill and Mr Mustard (what is it with songs named after people & time changes?) so it's a little patronising to assume he plodded along because he couldn't switch gears. No one ever accused John Bonham of that when he barged his way though Black Dog and others.

There's a nod to this polyrhythmic approach earlier on. In section 1, Ringo is playing the bass drum on 1st beat and the snare on the 3rd beat. When he hits the 2/4 bar mentioned above we should get a bass drum on the one followed by another bass drum. But Ringo plays right through as if the 2/4 bar never happened. So the drum part on the last few bars are the wrong way round. The bass guitar also helps the mask the weirdness because, playing the root and fifth of the chords on the 1st and third beats Paul should play the 5th of Dm (which is an a) but actually plays the root note of Am (which is still a!).

So I think Ringo deserves his own ticket to write. Ticket 63: Use polyrhythms.

Next time we'll look at what ties this mad piece together and pick out a few more cool songwriting tips.

10:22 Happiness Is A Warm Gun (pt.1)

The Genesis and Structure of Lennon's Precursor to the Abbey Road Medley

This is probably John Lennon's most complex Beatles song, rivalled only by A Day In The Life and Strawberry Fields Forever, which are both complex for very different reasons.

Genesis

The original demo (recorded at George Harrison's house) has five sections one of which doesn't appear on the finished version. The White Album has four sections, two of which don't appear on the demo.

White Album                 Anthology 3 (Esher Demo)

She's Not A Girl             -
I Need A Fix                  I Need A Fix
-                                   Mother Superior
-                                   Yoko Ono Oh No
-                                   I Need A Fix
Mother Superior             Mother Superior
Happiness Is A...            -

The three distinct sections that make up the demo are all different songs that were pieced together (ticket 55). Though the weakest section was dropped (Yoko Ono, Oh No), two more sections were added between demo and studio sessions and were presumably written specifically for inclusion in this song. So there are four sections, but they're constructed from three separate 'parts'. With me so far?

In working this way Lennon was prefiguring the Abbey Road medley in his own miniature way, for, though he contributed fragments to 'The Long One', the latter was McCartney and Martin's baby and Lennon had little enthusiasm for it.

The song was fully formed by the time Lennon turned up at Abbey Road on Sep 23, 1968, which means the edits and revisions were mostly John's handiwork rather than a group effort (see below). But what the band undoubtedly contributed was nailing him down to specific time signatures and numbers of bars. Listen to the demo (above) to hear how (ahem) 'fluid' Lennon's timing is. Elastic doesn't begin to cover it. There are so many odd bars it's hard to know where beats have been removed (ticket 37) or added (ticket 52).

Though “95 takes” is often bandied about it actually took a mere 70 (!) to lay down the backing track (an edit of takes 53 and 65, probably spliced at 1:34). The remaining takes were spent overdubbing backing vocals, organ, piano, snare drum, tambourine, extra bass, barely audible tuba (!) and rerecording the lead vocals (you can hear a spill from a guide vocal at 2:21).

At the start of recording the title was Happiness Is A Warm Gun In Your Hand. It's unlikely that was the demo's title as that section hadn't been written yet!

Structure

Let's look at the song section by section.

Section 1: “She's not a girl who misses much”

John trims the fat (ticket 2) by having the intro consist of a single syllable “she's...”

What follows is the finger picking pattern John learned from Donovan in Rishikesh and used on Julia and Dear Prudence. Paul used it in a more primitive fashion on Blackbird. The guitar sounds heavy, almost slowed down in a similar way to the Rain backing track. The 2 chord pattern appears initially in the key of Em then switches to Am. The riff is in 4/4 albeit with a varying numbers of bars, and a single 2/4 bar appears during the words "donated to the...”

Lyrically this is, by far, longest section, there are no repeats and nothing in the 'first person'.

This section also features the work of one of the Beatles many uncredited co-writers (more on this here). Apple's publicist Derek Taylor* brainstormed lyrics on this section with Lennon and contributing the “lizard on a window pane” and “velvet hand” lines from personal recollections. Despite the bizarre stream of consciousness lyrics almost everything mentioned in this song has it 's basis in real life, or news reports. Donating what you've eaten “to the National Trust,” for example, is a euphemism for taking a dump outside.

Section 2: “I need a fix...”

Here we switch to 3/4 time and become modal. The centre is still A but the chord sequence (A7 - C - Am) veers between major and minor. The lyrics consist of two first person lines (one repeated). Lennon later (unconvincingly) denied “I need a fix cause I'm going down” referred to drugs.

Section 3: “Mother Superior jumped the gun...”

Here the chords (implied by the riffing) are Am C Am G. The time signature is either a 9/4 bar followed by a 10/4 bar (a clear Lennon extension – ticket 52) or a sequence of 6/8, 3/4 and 3/4 followed by 6/8, 3/4 and 4/4. Lyrically we have one line sung six times with melodic variations.

Section 4: “Happiness is a warm gun”


The chords switch from Am to the relative major key – C major. The progression is a stock doo wop pattern C, Am, F, G with an Fm (the m4 - ticket 8) preceding the false ending (ticket 47). The song boasts a second false ending as the track fades back in for a final drum hit.

Lennon took the title from a gun magazine, The American Rifleman, which he saw in Abbey Road studios.

Next time we'll get some tips for how to combine your random song fragments into a complete song, then take a closer look at all the rhythmic weirdness going on it this song, before concluding with what (if anything) ties together such a patchwork quilt of a song.

*Uncredited, he may have been, but he did get a namecheck in John's Give Peace A Chance

Ev'rybody's talkin' 'bout
John and Yoko, Timmy Leary, Rosemary,
Tommy Smothers, Bobby Dylan, Tommy Cooper,
Derek Taylor, Norman Mailer, Alan Ginsberg, Hare Krishna

10:2 Julia (pt.1) Introduction

Julia is another high watermark in John Lennon's songwriting with the Beatles. It is a masterclass in matching the mood of the music with the lyrical message and terrific example of how to write compelling, beguiling song even though you're breaking all the rules.

John wears a coat in India, Donovan hogs the guitar, Mike Love prepares to explore the Amazon

Written in Rishikesh, India it was recorded 3 days before the final mixing sessions of White Album. An entirely solo Lennon performance (with McCartney coaching him from the control room) it took a mere 3 takes to get the basic track down.

John used the same fingerpicking pattern throughout that he employed on Dear Prudence and the intro of Happiness Is A Warm Gun and which Paul used for Blackbird (though Paul's version is more of a sloppy half-strum). Both Beatles had recently learned this pattern in India from Donovan and/or Gypsy Dave. It's impressive to note that even at this late stage of their career they were still learning and incorporating new concepts into their compositions.

Donovan gives John a guitar lesson?

The track is ethereal and weirdly catatonic. The opening monotonal melody, the never changing picking pattern and the oddly stretched-out first syllable in the title all contribute. But beginning and ending each verse with the word Julia, starting on high A and finishing by descending to the lower D, always falling and appearing at the top again, always overlapping with itself like endless ocean waves is a crucial component in establishing the hypnotic, dreamlike mood.

The lyrics also play their part, effectively conveying the unreachableness of would-be mistress Yoko (John was with his wife in India) and his deceased mother Julia.

'Julia' is calling, but never touches him, her smile is as intangible as the wind (though 'windy smile' also conjures up a baby that needs burping!). She is 'sleeping sand' and a 'silent cloud', her smile and her eyes are calling him rather than any particular spoken message. She is always distant - most of the song is sung about her, rather than sung 'to' her. In contrast the singer can't stop 'speaking his mind', 'singing a song of love' even if 'half of what he says is meaningless'.

There is much more to this song than can be packed into a single post but here's some of the key points I'll be hitting in future posts. Get listening to Julia and see if you can spot where I'm heading.

• Consistency of lyrical imagery
• Out of key chords and their relationship to the melody
• Creative ways to compensate for lack of rhymes
• Using jazz song structures in folk/pop music
• A favourite Beatles chord progression (borrowed from Eleanor Rigby?)

Under The Influence: Radiohead

Thom Yorke: [Paranoid Android was written] in three different sections at different times in different states of mind, and then put together. Our working model for it was Happiness Is A Warm Gun. [I] Walked into the rehearsal room one day, 'Well you know Happiness Is A Warm Gun, you know that's like three songs put together? Let's do that.' And I didn't obviously think it was going to work, until we put it together finally, which was a f***ing shock”

Colin Greenwood: [We had become interested in] brutal editing, where you just splice bits of music together, like the Beatles on Magical Mystery Tour or whatever.

Thom Yorke: What can you say about the IMF, or politicians? Or people selling arms to African countries, employing slave labour or whatever. What can you say? You just write down “Cattle prods and the IMF' and people who know, know. I can't express it any clearer than that, I don't know how to yet, I'm stuck. That's how I feel about A Day In The Life, Lennon was obviously stuck and said, 'I'm going to write a song because I've got to get this down' and it's everything he didn't say by doing that...That was what I dreamed of doing on [OK Computer]

Exit Music: The Radiohead Story by Mac Randall (p.150, 151, 159)


(And for further evidence you could always check out the similarities between Sexy Sadie and Karma Police).