When The Beatles decided to call their 1966 album Revolver, they were joking. A record revolves, but it’s also a kind of handgun. Get it? The more ambitious they got, the more they courted controversy and they felt the downside of being a band that people didn’t just love but worship. America did not take kindly when John told the English journalist Maureen Cleave that The Beatles were “more popular than Jesus.” When Side One of Revolver revolved near the end, they heard John singing, “I know what it’s. like to be dead.” There were bonfires of Beatles albums and Klansmen making real threats. In some ways, it anticipated internet controversies that could sink a career overnight. That didn’t happen, but they did stop touring for good after that. They would retreat into the studio and into themselves. The deeper they went, their fringe got scarier. Revolver became an unintentional prophecy.
A revolver can spin music or kill. John Lennon grew up in a country with unarmed bobbies on the beat. He dreamed of coming to America, the land of Elvis, who surrounded himself with guns. And so, fresh off a trip to India, where he was supposed to be studying meditation but really getting deeper into songwriting—these things are connected—he came upon an issue of American Rifleman, the NRA magazine. I have no idea why George Martin was reading it, and Lennon didn’t either, but he came across a headline: Happiness is a Warm Gun. A Peanuts collection had come out called Happiness is a Warm Puppy. The author of the article wrote about the splendors of teaching your son how to shoot a rifle. Welcome to your manhood, son.
By 1968, Lennon was revising his ideas of manhood, because that was the year he fell deeply and insanely in love with Yoko Ono. It took a performance artist to show him the absurdity of the world. Before he met Yoko, he might have been amused by the title and joked about it, but it was only after meeting her that he would have made a song about it. This was for The White Album, which would contain another Lennon song about guns—”The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill,” featuring Yoko on vocals. Bungalow Bill is a buffoon, someone who needs to take his mommy on hunting expeditions. And of course, this is the album that inspired—if that’s the right word—the Manson killings. Lennon was so passionate about Yoko, the whole world saw them naked after they had their first shag. It changed everything—his ideas of how to use his fame as an advertising campaign for peace, his ideas about women—before Yoko, he said, “Women should be obscene and not heard”—and his ideas about himself. The White Album also included “Julia,” as vulnerable and authentic and gorgeous as anything he recorded. The song was about the mother he lost at 16, but he also calls Julia “ocean child,” English for Yoko Ono. Soon, he would tell the other Beatles, “I would sacrifice all of you for her.”
“Happiness is a Warm Gun” is a three part song, each of them almost discrete songs. It’s all about Yoko: “She’s not a girl who misses much.” There’s the girl section, the “I need a fix cause I’m going down” section, then there’s the chorus, with Paul and George singing “bang bang, shoot shoot,” doo wop style. “When I hold you in my arms, and I feel my finger on your trigger, I know nobody can’t do me no harm.” All he wants is his Ocean Child, who is mixed with Julia. It was the most intense drug he ever tasted, and he tasted them all. The next year, he’d be withdrawing from heroin in a medical chair in Abbey Road studios in front of the other Beatles, screaming at the top of his lungs. He did everything all the way. But he was addicted to Yoko even more.
Suddenly, the tough English kid that would never let you see him cry was grieving on record. He was tender, vulnerable, soft, poetic. And a bunch of innocent people, some freaks, and a few killers were also listening and scrutinizing every word, printed on the poster. Beatlemania was a mania, indeed. People thought they were prophets. It would be another year until Lennon wrote manifestos for peace. In 1968, the year MLK and RFK were gunned down, Lennon hadn’t gotten political yet, though he started with with the kind of cautious “Revolution.” (This song was used without permission at Trump rallies.) He did put a long, avant-garde track on The White Album—Paul, George, Ringo, and George Martin all wanted the space for “Hey, Jude”—called “Revolution #9.” An Englishman is repeating “Number 9.” Someone played it backwards, and it was, “Turn me on, dead man.” The only medium where you can hear it is the good old revolver.
We all know what happened on December 8, 1980. And we all know what’s happening in schools, supermarkets, 4th of July parades. John Lennon, who was on Nixon’s Enemies List, loved this country so much, he struggled for years to get a Green Card. When he finally did, just when his son Sean was born on his 35th birthday, October 9, 1975, it was the happiest day of his life. He loved New York, and he especially appreciated that the people were so jaded, he could go to the movies or a restaurant without being hassled. When people did want to talk, they would usually thank him for the music. “It’s been a pleasure,” he’d say. He gave up music for five years to be a househusband. He was not like the rest of us, but he wanted to be. If John Lennon had given up the fight and went back to bonny old England, he would probably still be alive. Someone turned on a revolver. Being a dreamer can be fatal. Happiness is a warm gun. I know what it’s like to be dead. I don’t want to be a soldier. Love is real. Half of what I say is meaningless. Because the world is round, it turns me on. Turn me on, dead man. The world keeps revolving. We got to have John Lennon in it for 40 years. It’s been a pleasure.
Wonderful piece on the still so much missed John. Of course, the NRA of today is so much crazier than that NRA of 68 from Gun safety to the right for mass murder. Yikes.
When I was little I thought Bungalow Bill killed John Lennon.