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Happiness Is a Warm Gun
Composer(s) : Lennon and McCartney
Year : 1968
Chords/Tabs: Happiness Is a Warm Gun
Notes on "Happiness Is A Warm Gun" (HIAWG)
KEY C Major, converged upon from a minor
METER Various
FORM Part 1 -> Part 2 -> Part 3 ->
Part 4 (Finale) w/complete ending
GENERAL POINTS OF INTEREST
Style and Form
- This song represents a most intruiguing formal experiment, one
that you might describe as a "teliological medley." It manages
to project an integrated impression in ironic spite of its acyclical
form, and varied sequence of styles, and meters. The Beatles'
ultimate grand example of this formal approach is, of course,
the "Huge Melody" that ends _Abbey Road_, but, it's *this* track
on which you hear it first!
- In contrast to the AR medley, where most of the sections could survive
extraction from their immediate context to serve as an independent
"numbers" per se, you find here, with perhaps the exception of the
final "title" section, that the individual components are quite
fragmentary and rely heavily on immediate repetition of a single
idea to establish any sense of formal autonomy. There's not quite
enough substance in any of them to stand on their own; otherwise you
just might go as far as calling this a "suite;" which latter term,
now that I think of it, *would* be appropriate for _Abbey Road_.
- The primary force that holds it together and prevents it
from otherwise sounding like a random grab bag is the modulated
development of intensity and mood created by the specific
sequencing of the sections; each new section builds on what
has preceded it while adding something new. Secondarily, the
changes of meter either between or within every section
establish themselves as a kind of leitmotif.
- In both _Recording Sessions_ and his liner notes to Anthology 3,
Lewisohn blithely asserts that this track is made up of three
songs. From where does he get it? I count four, at least.
Melody and Harmony
- The song finishes up in a mid-50s cliche-saturated dialect
of C Major. The introductory three sections establish the
relative minor key of 'a' in droning, modal-rather-than-tonal
harmonic terms. Note how the opening chord of the piece is
an a minor 7th which, just like its close cousin, the C Major
added 6th, combines the triads of both the Major key and its
relative minor in a single chord; see our comments on this
phenomenon back in the likes of such early efforts as
"Ask Me Why,"
"Do You Want to Know a Secret,"
and the forever emblematic
"She Loves You."
- Also note the extent to which the melodic material frequently
incorporates pentatonic-like riffs that couple the two related
triads together; dig parts 2 and 3 in particular.
Arrangement
- The sequential nature of the form carries through to the handling
of the instrumentation:
Part 1a -- Features plucked guitar arpeggios, bass guitar, and
single track vocal. A drum crescendo starts from
nothing in last measure and leads into next section.
Part 1b -- Adds percussion and chordal chops on guitar. The vocal
overdub in the last 2 phrases sounds like John.
Part 2 -- Is characterized by the fuzz guitar and cymbal
slashes, the latter falling on every second measure
The vocal overdub here sounds like it could be Paul.
Part 3 -- Adds tambourine. Vocally starts off with John
single tracked but with Paul joining him in the
second phrase.
Part 4 -- Features a trio of backing vocals, some of whose phrases
make for clever byplay with lead vocal; sometimes as
counterpoint, sometimes as a sustained background wash,
and even sometimes making a hocket with lead. At the
very bottom of the instrumental track there is what
sounds alot like a bowed bass fiddle; perhaps I'm hearing
the tuba part that Lewisohn says was mostly mixed out.
- It's no surprise that the ensemble should sound a bit rickety-ragged
in places, given the constant changes of meter and use of unequal
phrasing.
SECTION-BY-SECTION WALKTHROUGH
Part 1: She's Not A Girl Who Misses Much
- The track opens with two phrases that project an 'AA', even-lengthed
symmetry. I analyze them as though they were clearly in the home
key of a minor, but this is an after-thought considered in light
of the rest of what follows. In all honesty, you probably here
this opening as if it were a Plagal (i.e. iv->i) cadence in a
home key of e minor:
--------------- 2X --------------
|a7 |- |e |- |
a: i v
- This placid opening is counter-balanced by a definite increase
intensity and an implied transposition of the opening iv-i chord
progression to the key of a minor; not to mention our first example
in the track what the old computer game, Adventure, described as
twisty passages, "all different":
|d |- |- |a |- |
iv i
|d |- |a |- |
iv i
|d |- |a |- |
iv i
|d |- |- |a |- |
iv i
Granted, the *middle* two phrases of this quatrain are four-
square, but the first phrase is longer by a full measure, and
the final one is extended in its middle by a half-measure.
This particular sequencing cleverly deprives the section of all
symmetry, in spite of the fact that two phrases are identical to
each other! To understand this a bit more clearly, contemplate
how much more symmetry *could* be added here if the identical
phrases were deployed in either in any of the following
positions: 1/3, 2/4, 1/2, 3/4 -- instead of the 2/3 configuration
we are given.
- You might argue that what I've labelled a d minor chord above
is more to be more precisely analyzed as a half-diminished 7th
chord on b in its "first" (or "6/5") inversion; i.e. ii6/5,
instead of iv. However, I'm parsing it with d as the root because
I hear the root movement in terms of iv->i; especially because of
the way it parallels the first sub-section above.
- The very last measure of this section is *one* of the more
conspicuous rough edges in the ensemble playing, as if one or
more of the players was already shifting into 3/4.
Part 2: I Need A Fix 'cause I'm Going Down
- We transition from the ranting march-beat rhetoric of section 1b
into a heavy-but-flowing, bluesy waltz in which the same eleven-
measure phrase is repeated twice.
- This time our sense of differing twisty passages comes from
both the wobbly "3+4+4" phrase structure, and the fact that the
vocal line does not literally repeat the guitar line. You might
say the vocal variation is the one that more clearly projects
the pseudo ABA inner structure of the eleven measure phrase:
guitar |E G E |C A C |E DCA |
vocal |E G E |C A C |E DCA |
|a |- |- |
a: i
|E G E |C A C |E G |EDE |
|E G E |C A C |E G |E G |
|- |- |- |- |
|G |C A C |E DCA |- |
|E G E |C A C |E DCA |- |
|c |- |a |- |
III i
- There's a quarter-tone-flat blues spin applied to several of the
E naturals in this section; an effect that appears nowhere else in
the song.
Part 3: Mother Superior Jumped The Gun
- This section is characterized by a special rhythmic effect
that occurs in the first measure of every phrase, technically
referred to as a "hemiola." The term is applied to any situation
in which a phrase of music written in a ternary meter (e.g. 3/4)
contains one or more instances where either an isolated single
measure is accented as if were 2 triplets (i.e. 6/8), or a pair
of measures are accented as if they were 3 measures of 2/4. If
you're at a loss for a pop-music precedent, try "America" from
Leonard Bernstein's _West Side Story_.
- The section is built out of 3 phrase pairs, the second of which
is consistently one beat longer than the first; is it John or
Mr. Martin who proposed such details?
6/8|a 3/4|C |- |
a: i III
6/8|a 3/4|G 4/4|- |
i flat-VII
- This section resonates subtly-if-not-surprisingly with section
1b both in terms of mood as well as melodic emphasis on the
B->A motif.
- The individualized, unique contribution of this section is the
introduction of the flat-VII chord.
Part 4: Happiness Is A Warm Gun (Bang-Bang, Shoot-Shoot)
- By virtue of its full-fledged, albeit cliched, harmonic progression,
the song finally arrives in this section for its big finish; the
rest of the track to this point left to serve a a multi-faceted
introduction. And based on all the preceding material, who, indeed,
would have expected this doo-wop, harmonic cliche as our ultimate
destiny?
- So here, in spite of all strangeness, we find the old "I-vi-IV-V"
over and over and over (again), with one penultimate tip of the hat
to the dramatic (but equally "old") minor iv chord:
--------------- 2X --------------
4/4|C |a |F |G |
C: I vi IV V
--------------- 3X --------------
3/4|C |a |F |G |
I vi IV V
--------------- 2X --------------
4/4|C |a |F |G |
I vi IV V
4/4|f |- |- |- |
iv
--------------- 2X --------------
4/4|C |a |F |G |
I vi IV V
- The three phrases in 3/4 here are the are the most raggedly
performed in the entire track; poor Ringo particularly sounds
like he's struggling.
- The phrase on the f minor chord sounds almost as though
performed ad libitum, but I believe on hears it as if it
fills approximately the 4 measures I've given it above.
SOME FINAL THOUGHTS
- During the last seconds of the finished mix, the engineer
suddenly lifted the faders just before the final chord had
completely died away, thus adding punctuation-like heft to
the one last drum beat.
- It's an effect that uncannily reminds me of the sound you hear
in recordings of 18th century keyboard music performed on very
large period harpsichords; the kind with 2 keyboards and still
more registers and color stops. The performer holds down the
keys to the final chord, waiting for the sound to fade almost
completely away, and then releases the all the keys at once,
allowing the jacks to make their own hefty "thunk" as they fall
upon the damped strings.
- And lest you think this association has nothing to do with the
Beatles, I should point out that Francois Couperin Le Grand, a
composer whose keyboard pieces count among some of the most
idiomatically indgenous music written for such large harpsichords,
held a long term post as the official court keyboard teacher to
the household of The Sun King.
Regards,
Alan (awp@world.std.com)
---
"...and by the way, what's that?"
"My name's Betty... Do you want a punch up your frogged tunic?"
110997#136
---
Copyright (c) 1997 by Alan W. Pollack
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