Evan Rachel Wood Named Her Favorite Beatles Song

If anyone in Hollywood knows The Beatles‘ songs, it’s Evan Rachel Wood. She was in one of the biggest Beatles movies. She named her favorite Beatles song and named some others that might have influenced Radiohead.

Evan Rachel Wood’s favorite Beatles song that was in her movie ‘Across the Universe’

Wood’s first major movie role was as Lucy (get it?) in the Fab Four jukebox musical Across the Universe. One of the most famous musical numbers in the movie is a hallucinogenic staging of “Happiness Is a Warm Gun.” During a 2007 interview with The News-Times, Wood was asked to pick her favorite Beatles songs.

“It’s hard, because it depends on where you are in your life and what day it is, because they really covered everything,” she replied. “So right now, hmm, recently, I would sing ‘Happiness Is a Warm Gun.’ I got into that because of Across the Universe. It’s my favorite number in the movie, how it’s this strange, dark song.

“I like their weird stuff, too, even when they did ‘Blue Jay Way’ and ‘Fool on the Hill,'” she added. “You listen to it and it was so ahead of its time. You hear Radiohead nowadays and you’re like, wow, I can see these strange similarities.” Thom Yorke and company wouldn’t deny that The Beatles inspired them.

How an article inspired The Beatles’ ‘Happiness Is a Warm Gun’

The book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono features an interview from 1980. In it, the “Imagine” singer was asked if “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” was about guns. He replied in the negative.

“A gun magazine was sitting around and the cover was the picture of a smoking gun, he recalled. “The title of the article, which I never read, was ‘Happiness Is a Warm Gun.’ I took it as the idea of happiness after having shot somebody. Or some animal.”

John was then asked if the song was about sex. The former Beatle said he loved double meanings. While the magazine article influenced the song, John recalled writing the track at the start of his sexual relationship with Yoko. She revealed he was getting intimate with Yoko when he wasn’t working on music. He said the “Mother Superior” from the song was Yoko and that the rest of the track was different portrayals of her.

Paul McCartney said the song became poignant after John Lennon died

Paul McCartney had a strong reaction to “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” in retrospect. In the 1997 book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, Paul revealed that he thinks “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” is especially poignant because of the way John died. He also said the tune is a satire of trigger-happy people. He compared it to “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill,” another song from The White Album that mentions violence in a satirical context.

Paul was fond of “Happiness Is a Warm Gun.” The “Silly Love Songs” singer felt “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” had good vocals, a good set of lyrics, and a wonderfully complex beat. He said it was very characteristic of John’s songwriting.

Wood loved “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” and it had a special resonance for Paul.