Guns and music have always gone hand in hand. There are countless songs out there about guns, some of them based on things you can do with a gun, others simply featuring guns in their lyrics.
When it comes to guns and music, people inevitably think about Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Cash, or Kiss, but the list is much longer than that.
With these thoughts in mind, here are a few songs that take guns to another level.
Janie’s Got a Gun, by Aerosmith
This is the second song on the Pump album and features the story of a young girl who shoots her father for sexually abusing her. Steven Tyler is responsible for the song, and he claims his idea came from an article about gun related deaths in the USA.
Later on, he read another article about numerous cases of child abuse in the country. He thought he had to sing about this, so there’s one of the best gun related songs in the music industry.
Elephant Gun, by David Lee Roth
The song was featured on David Lee Roth’s first album after departing Van Halen. It was co-written by both David Lee Roth and Steve Vai. The song is about protection out of love, the type of protection made with an elephant gun.
The LP featured six songs and Elephant Gun was one of the most appreciated ones. When the song was in production, it was Diamond Dave who helped with the lyrics.
Lawyers, Guns and Money, by Warren Zevon
If there’s one main thing Warren Zevon was appreciated for, that was his imagination. The song didn’t come out of nowhere. It was based on Dear Dad, by Chuck Berry.
The interesting part is that Warren Zevon did own a gun, a .44 Magnum, the type of gun you could find today on the Gunsnprices guns search engine. He was quite fascinated by it, and once he said he thought he’ll start hallucinating and shooting guns during detox. Once again, his imagination was just something else.
Billy’s Got a Gun, by Def Leppard
Billy’s Got a Gun has a whole story behind it. The tale follows a man who’s ready to seek revenge after being imprisoned for a crime he never committed. According to Steve Clark, this was the main song of the Pyromania album, a song they loved playing live in front of their fans.
Furthermore, it was also the most demanding song on the album, since the Def Leppard guitarist had to come up with a very unusual riff.
Happiness Is a Warm Gun, by The Beatles
This was one of Paul McCartney’s favorite songs ever released by The Beatles, but George Harrison also agreed it’s a masterpiece. It has deep lyrics, most of them written throughout an acid trip with the band’s publicist.
The song is inspired by the American Rifleman magazine. One day, George Martin showed John Lennon the cover of the magazine and said happiness is a warm gun. He thought it was insane and wrote the song straight away.
A gun feels warm after you shoot something, so the song holds a lot of interpretation.
Machine Gun, by Jimi Hendrix
No one can deny Jimi Hendrix’s guitar skills, but he showed everyone how good he was with Machine Gun, a song included on the Band of Gypsys album. The song was dedicated to all the troops out there, but especially the ones in Harlem, Chicago, and Vietnam.
Many of the sounds you can hear in the background recreate the noises from the battlefield. Jimi Hendrix created all of them with his Stratocaster. All in all, apart from the deep lyrics, the electric guitar is what makes the difference.
Big Gun, by AC/DC
AC/DC has released quite a few songs about guns over the years. This one was released in 1993 and became part of the Last Action Hero soundtrack, a movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. The star has also appeared in the official video.
Other gun related songs from AC/DC include Guns for Hire, Gimme a Bullet, and Fire Your Guns.
Bottom line, guns, and music do have a lot in common. The exploration of guns in music serves as a powerful medium for storytelling, social commentary, and artistic expression. While the subject matter may be controversial, these songs provide insight into the human experience, sparking conversations and evoking emotions that resonate with audiences across generations.
Some of the above songs are clearly seen as evergreen masterpieces, the list is much longer than that.