10. Happiness Is A Warm Gun
(Lennon/McCartney, 1968)
The Beatles - The Beatles (White Album)

“If you go to a whore, you actually say, ‘I admit that I am not able to meet a woman in an ordinary way. I am too lazy to invest time, energy and love in a woman, and I don’t have any pride or self-respect either.’ But a lot of men pay a whore also for comfort and tenderness. A hole to fill and a shoulder to cry on. Very typical is the case of the murderer of John Lennon. That man, Mark Chapman, ordered a call-girl the night before he shot Lennon. Later, she told the police he had asked her to be completely silent during the deed, ‘like you sleep.’ And ‘sleep’ of course stands for ‘dead.’ That’s why I chose the call-girl disguise for the picture of Happiness is a Warm Gun.

“This one (the call-girl) is so sweet. If her customers want to shit on her, she speaks softly, ‘No, we’re not gonna do that, that is not your thing.’ She is the prototype of the abused woman who approaches assholes in an understanding way.” [Samsonic - Sept/Oct 2001]

“One of the last people Mark David Chapman called before he killed John Lennon was an escort service. And we don’t know if they had sex or if they just talked, but he told her to 'be silent.' So this is sung through the eyes of that call girl.” [AP - October 2001]

“Lennon saw an ad for a gun, and he was murdered by a gun years later. It started to strike me that this was going to be a canvas, a backdrop for the fact that no changes have really been made [in gun control] that are effective.” [Ice - September 2001]

“[Lennon was] a man who had seen an ad that said, ‘Happiness is a warm gun’ and he asked in interviews, ‘Why is it warm? Because it’s just been fired’ - without knowing, when he said this, that one would be fired on him. Now, cut to the shooting incident [at a high school] in San Diego. I knew that Happiness... was on the record. It’s been circling me for a few years now, because yes, we have a gun culture. And, yes, we have a Second Amendment. As you and I know, when it’s easier to get a gun than a driver’s license, something is just intrinsically wrong. When the school shooting happened again, I heard comments like, ‘Look, there are bad seeds out there and it's going to happen.’ It just seemed like this absolving, this kind of washing of hands, like ‘Hey it's not us,’ meaning those on the gun side. And I have friends who are part of the whole gun movement. But you have to go, "Why do we have to be so resistant to the fact that we have blood all over our hands - that kids are killing each other?’ When do people turn around and say, ‘Whatever we’re doing is not working...’?? On this record, the whole Second Amendment is talked about by my father on the single mainly because I figure if we’re going to have the Bushes, Sr. and Jr., then I needed to have the Amoses, Sr. and Jr. I thought that was fair.” [Next - September 7, 2001]

“It’s easier to get a weapon than to get your driving license. Why don’t we make it more difficult to get your hands on a weapon? I’ve always worried about these kind of things, but since Tash came into my life, I think the stupid American right to sell weapons‚ like it were a kilo of apples‚ is a straight threat. It got to me so much that I sang Happiness Is a Warm Gun from the same feeling. Audio fragments have been added from political discussions about the trading of weapons. That is a statement that I wanted to add myself. I want to make people aware of the mad society my daughter has to grow up in.” [Oor - September 8, 2001]