[2] He derived the title from an article in American Rifleman magazine and explained that the lyrics were a double entendre for guns and his sexual desire for Yoko Ono.
Although tensions were high during the recording sessions for the White Album, the Beatles worked together as a unit to complete the song's challenging rhythmic issues and time signature changes.
Despite mixed reviews for the White Album on release, "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" was positively received by music critics, who highlighted the song's complex structure and lyrics for praise.
suggested that the "warm gun" could refer to Lennon's sexual desire for Yoko Ono or, due to the drug connotations in the lyric "I need a fix", to a heroin syringe.
[17][18] This two-minute solo performance of "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" was edited for release on the Anthology 3 compilation album in 1996, with over 30 seconds being cut from the middle of the song.
Although tensions were high among the Beatles during the album's recording sessions, the band collaborated as a close unit to work out the song's challenging rhythmic and metre issues.
[19] Having spent much of the first session discussing the individual sections, the group completed a satisfactory basic track on 24 September, albeit by editing together two separate performances: takes 53 and 65.
[26] A tape containing just the 25 September instrumental overdubs reveals that the guitar solo was added to the previous day's backing track, along with organ (over the opening section of the song), tambourine and extra hi-hat, and piano (throughout the closing, "doo-wop" portion).
[12][27] In his description of this tape, music critic Richie Unterberger comments that the organ part, which appears low in the final mix, sounds "so churchly downcast it would do the Zombies proud".
[28] Apple Records released The Beatles on 22 November 1968, with the double LP soon gaining the informal title "the White Album" due to its stark cover art.
[31] Nik Cohn gave the album an unfavourable review in The New York Times,[32] but he wrote: "The only track that I've found myself actually playing for pleasure has been 'Happiness Is a Warm Gun', which is obviously mostly by John Lennon and which stands [in] roughly the same tradition as 'A Day in the Life' and 'I Am the Walrus'."
"[33] Hubert Saal of Newsweek was also highly critical of the Beatles' propensity for pastiche, yet he included "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" among the few successes that result when they abandoned their attempts to be "Alexander Pope or Max Beerbohm".
[34] Record Mirror commented that the song starts as "a serene ballad, but is soon taken over in the true vein of this foremost stylist", with the arrival of the "deep guitar" solo and lyrics referencing Mother Superior and the sensation of "my hands on your trigger".
"[36] Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of its release, Jacob Stolworthy of The Independent listed the song at number 2 in his ranking of the White Album's 30 tracks, below Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps".