Elizabeth Platt ([email protected])
Fri, 3 Jul 1998 20:58:37 -0700 (PDT)
>As was previously pointed out, "Happiness is a Warm Gun" was a Beatles
>song written by John Lennon, which he pieced together from various song
>fragments he had written. The "warm gun" part was from a particularly
>weird NRA magazine ad, and the song as a whole is about his relationship
>with Yoko Ono ("Mother Superior" for instance, was his nickname for Ono).
>As Ian MacDonald writes, "...the song would seem to concern sexual
>authenticity in a sordid world of unfeeling voyeurism and violence."
>
>U2, or course, covered the song because they were asked to for an
>American TV series called "Gun."
All you whippersnappers on the list may not be old enough to recall, but
back in the late 60s or early 70s, there was a big "Peanuts" merchandising
craze over the comic strip's "Happiness Is..." book. Best known of the
slogans was "Happiness is a warm puppy", with a picture of Lucy hugging
Snoopy. For a while, there wasn't an elementary school that didn't have
that poster hanging somewhere. Now, I don't know if the NRA pinched that
tagline for their ad, but it would seem so. And the Lennon in turn
pinched it from there. Being a kid, and not generally seeing NRA adverts
around the house, we all assumed that Lennon was satirizing the
sappy-happiness of the "Peanuts" merchandise!
Slan,
Elizabeth Platt
[email protected]
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b2 on Fri Jul 03 1998 - 20:59:31 PDT