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

10:6 Julia (pt. 5) The Last Post - Structure

Having looked at the songwriting magic that Lennon casts over Julia with imagery, weird chord progressions and odd scales lets finish with the big picture.

The coolest thing for me is that the song has two different (though not unrelated) verses. I don't just mean 'verse one' and 'verse two'. I mean verse 1 and 5 are constructed differently to verses 2-4 and 6-7. Different chord pattern, structure, amount of lines and bars. The only similarity is the 8 bar 'intro' verse has same last 4 bars as the 'regular' 12 bar verse (the latter, being a 'non-blues 12 bar pattern', is another example of ticket 35).

The inspiration for this unusual 'intro-verse' is clearly the jazz showtunes of to 20's, 30's and 40's - songs like I Got Rhythm, That Old Black Magic and The Lady Is A Tramp. If the source seems unlikely, remember that the Beatles covered songs such as Falling In Love Again and True Love while serving their apprenticeship in Hamburg.

You could also explain the genesis of the section as either ticket 4 - creating an intro from another section of the song (the 'normal' verse) or ticket 41 - using the same ending for two section (making it a relative of Golden Slumbers).

Either way, this 'introductory verse' idea can be heard on Beatles songs as diverse as Honey Pie, Here There And Everywhere and Do You Want To Know A Secret.

Regardless of versal weirdness (hey, I just invented a word!) the song is a solid member of the ticket 26 club. Julia is essentially an AABA structure with no chorus, just like I Saw Her Standing There or Eleanor Rigby.

We can spot a Lennon edit (ticket 37) on the end of most verses because stretching the title out for 7 beats (Ju-------li-a) means Lennon would have had to tack on an extra bar or two to finish the verse before the next one starts.

The song ends on a single ringing chord (ticket 18 - a favourite ending from the early days) made fresher by the fact that the only time Dmaj7 appears is as the last chord in the song!

Next time, a very different kind of love song - Why Don't We Do It In The Road?

10:5 Julia (pt. 4) Lyrics

Half of what I sing is meaningless?

Julia is a fantastic example of odd structures and out of key chords. But that was something John Lennon often excelled at. Rarer, though not unique, is his brilliant command of lyrical imagery and form here.

The lyrics here really draw you in to the singers headspace – all the more remarkable when you realise the Beatles method of parallel lyrics (ticket 24) is largely absent and is there is no rhyme scheme at all! How does Lennon craft such compelling lyrics without the most common structural device in pop music?

Firstly we are dealing with a very compact lyrics (ticket 23) only 54 words in total. The title appears 15 times, the refrain so I sing a song of love 5 times and the hook lines calls me/touch me appear twice each.

The title bookends the 12 bar verses

Julia, seashell eyes,
Windy smile, calls me.
So I sing a song of love, Julia.


and appears twice at the beginning of the first and third of these longer verses.

Julia, Julia,
Ocean child, calls me.
So I sing a song of love, Julia.

No one ever walked away from this song asking “what was that track called again?”

Internal Rhymes

Lennon uses poetic devices like internal rhymes

shimmering glimmering
sea-shell eyes windy smile
reach you Ju-lia

and alliteration

sing a song
sea-shell
her hair
sky is shimmering
morning moon
sleeping sand

to make the lyrics 'sing', but for me the high point of the lyrics is where Lennon rhymes an idea rather than a vowel sound creating a brilliantly unique turn of phrase.

When I cannot sing my heart
I can only speak my mind

cannot pairs with can, sing pairs with speak, heart pairs with mind

this technique is a major component of ancient hebrew poetry like the book of Psalms.

Sea And Sky


Lastly John is incredibly consistent with his imagery. Though the song is about a real woman almost all the imagery is focused on sea and sky.

Sea - ocean child, sea-shell eyes, sleeping sand
Sky - windy smile, hair of floating sky, shimmering, glimmering in the sun, morning moon, silent cloud

This last ticket to write is something I employed on a song called There Goes The Moon. It's another song about a mysterious lady, but in that instance I tried to employ only lunar imagery. (You can download a free mp3 demo here). Honing a songs images like this can give a real sense of unity to a lyric and limiting yourself in this way can also force you to come up with lots of fresh phrases.

(By the way – I used the 'rhyming idea' concept to generate the title. Can you work out which Beatles song's title concept 'rhymes' with There Goes The Moon?)

10:4 Julia (pt. 3) Melody

Last time we saw that Julia is a seething mass of non-diatonic chords. So it's surprising to see that, apart from the key change in the bridge, there is only one out of key note in the melody - the Bb that occurs on the Calls ME section of the verse. This song is a good example of ticket 14 - 'write an key melody over out of key chords' – which gives you the interest of unusual chord progressions while avoiding the complexity of an atonal melody.

So although we have an F# in the melody it never occurs at the same time as the F natural within the chord progression (as part of the Gm7 and G9 chords). It's the same for the C# and C, D# and D and B and Bb. The only point where the harmony alters the melody is the aforementioned Bb which is supported by the Bb within the Gm7 chord.

That same point in the song also contains a nice instance of contrary motion (ticket 12). The chords drop from G9 to Gm7 (B falling to Bb, and A falling to the already present F) but the melody rises from A to Bb.This combination of an out of key note, contrary motion, and interruption the 3 note rhythm makes this reoccurring phrase (calls me/touch me) really stand out.

The melody through out really has a sense of ebbing and flowing, perfect for a song with so much water imagery (we'll look at that in a future post).


Take Me To The Bridge


When we get to the bridge we have a true key change (like the bridge of I Want To Hold Your Hand or the chorus of Penny Lane) rather than remaining in the same key but using one or two out of key chords (like With A Little Help From My Friends). Here we head from D major to C#m minor and then C# phrygian.

The three scales involved in the song are as follows

D major – D E F# G A B C# D C#
minor – C# D# E F# G# A B C# C#
phrygian - C# D E F# G# A B C#

Bizarrely, the chord that establishes the C# phrygian tonality is D major. Why aren't we back in D major at this point? Because the melody is repeatedly using a G# note.

In fact the melody in the shimmering, glimmering part of the bridge has a distinctly japanese flavour, a subtle touch, appropriate for a love song to Yoko Ono. If we take D as the root note and select only the notes that actually appear in those 4 bars we get

D F# G# A B
R 3    #4  5  6

which is a lydian pentatonic scale but not the lydian pentatonic

Write Like Lennon

Creating a melody from chord tones is one of the simplest way to write. Just choose each melody note from the chord that supports it. So over a D major you could sing a D (the root), an F# (the third), or an A (the fifth). Extend the chord to a D9 and you could also pick the C (b7th) or E (9th). Many of Paul McCartney's melodies seem to function somewhat independently from the chord progression but John Lennon seemed to write from the chords, creating tension either by using chord movement to against monotonal melodies (the verses of I Am The Walrus and Help!) or by deliberate clashes between melody and harmony such as the repeated E sung over a Bm in Help's chorus or the I just had to laugh line in A Day In The Life where, instead of singing over a G chord as in the previous lines, Lennon introduces and F major chord which scrapes against the B natural in the melody to wonderful effect.

What has this got to do with Julia?

Lennon's melody as we've already seen is almost entirely chord tones. And yet it has none of the Twinkle Twinkle Little Star banality because his focus once again is on the chord progression rather than the melody. Once you have a chord progression this oddly compelling, almost any melody you can construct will be interesting.

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Can't get enough Beatles-style songs about mysterious women? Check out Sadie's Sister, my collaboration with Stuart Kidd – free to download here.

10:3 Julia (pt.2) Chords

The more I study Beatles songs the more it seems that for John Lennon the centre of his songs are the chord progressions (or the way the melody fights against the chord progression) whereas McCartney's best melodies could sit happily over any number of chord progressions or none at all. I'll expand on this more next time but today let's look at Julia's chord progressions.

The first and fourth verses have an 8 bar structure

D Bm7 F#m F#m
D Bm7 F#m A

whereas all the other verses have 12 bars

D    Bm7  Am7  Am9
B7  B7     G9     Gm7
D    Bm7  F#m  A

only the first two bars and last four bars are identical.

Obviously having verse with totally different construction raises some questions about whether you can even call them both verses. I'll get into that when we look at structure.

When the verse moves into a different section (verse 4 or the bridge) we get 2 bars of D breathing space. This is essential as the verse is designed to loop back on itself. So when it doesn't we need extra time to finish singing the final 'Julia' (and breathe!).

The 10 bar bridge changes key first to C#m then, when the D arrives, C# phrygian mode.

C#m  C#m    D          D
Bm7  Bm6
F#m7 F#m6  F#mb6  F#m

The Bm6 helps to re-establish the original key (as does the F#m7 and F#mb6). In fact the F#m(b6) to F#m to D forms a quite effective weird little cadence.

Out Of Key

So looking at our progressions we have a multitude of out of key chords (ticket 28). There's the old Beatles favourite, the minor 4 (iv) - Gm7, and the much rarer minor 5 (v) - Am7 and Am9. That's tickets 8 & 44. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Here's the full list with the out-of-key notes they contain

Chord  Interval  Note

Am7      v7           c
Am9      v9           c
B7         VI7         d#
G9         IV9         f
Gm7      iv7          bb and f
C#m     VII          g#
Bm6      vi6          g#
F#m6    iii6          d#

If you do the math (alphabet?) you'll notice that in the course of the song Lennon uses all 12 notes!

The Lost Chord

As well as what's in there, what's missing is also interesting. The 3 chord trick I - IV - V is the mainstay of all pop writing yet Lennon doesn't play a straight G major (IV) anywhere in the song. He doesn't even use it's minor substitute Em (vi)! (Ticket 7).

We have an example of a 12 bar pattern that isn't a blues tune (Ticket 35) which is a lot harder to pull off than it might sound (Fool On The Hill is another nice example).

As well as classic Beatles chords we have classic progressions. The bridge ends with a pattern containing a descending chromatic line starting on the b7 of the scale (ticket 31)

b7 – 6  –  b6 – 5
e  –  d# –  d  – c#

placed within the F#m chord that line gives us

F#m7  F#m6  F#mb6  F#m

which is exactly the same progression that most famously occurred in Paul McCartney's song Eleanor Rigby.

Em7              Em6              Emb6                 Em
All the lonely people where do they all come from?

Lennon creates a little subconscious hook in the chord part by hinting at the F#m7 - F#m6 - F#mb6 - F#m pattern with the Bm7 to Bm6 progression that comes just before it. (Ticket 9 – use fragments of the existing melody/chord to create new parts)

A far stronger instrumental hook (ticket 3) is the way Lennon plays almost whole vocal melody on the top string. This may have either been because he created the vocal line by singing the guitar part or wanted to play what he was singing to support his vocals (it is a pretty odd melody).

Either process could be a good starting point for YOUR next song.

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Can't get enough Beatles-style songs about mysterious women? Check out Sadie's Sister, my collaboration with Stuart Kidd – free to download here.

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: Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters, Nirvana)

When I was young, that’s how I learned how to play music — I had a guitar and a Beatles songbook, I would listen to the records and play along. Of course, it didn’t sound like The Beatles, but it got me to understand song structure and melody and harmony and arrangement. 


So, I never had a teacher — I just had these Beatles records. 

Dave Grohl: Access Hollywood

If I could write just one song as beautiful as Julia, I would achieve my life’s goal. This song has such a soothing and healing quality to it. I could hear it a thousand times in a row and it would draw me in every time. The guitar and vocals are so delicate and right – almost celestial. And when I found out it was about his mother, who abandoned him, returned, and then died - it just made it all the more amazing.

Dave Grohl: Lava Magazine