Civil War (song)

"Civil War"
Song

"Civil War" is a song by the hard rock band Guns N' Roses, which originally appeared on the 1990 album Nobody's Child: Romanian Angel Appeal. It is a protest song on war, stating that a "civil" war only "feeds the rich while it buries the poor."

Background

"Civil War" was the brainchild of the Guns N' Roses artists Slash, Axl Rose, and Duff McKagan. Slash stated that the song was an instrumental he had written right before the band left for the Japanese leg of its Appetite for Destruction world tour. Axl wrote lyrics and it was worked into a proper song at a sound check in Melbourne, Australia.. On September 27, 1993, Duff McKagan explained where the song came from in an interview on Rockline: "Basically it was a riff that we would do at sound-checks. Axl came up with a couple of lines at the beginning. And... I went in a peace march, when I was a little kid, with my mom. I was like four years old. For Martin Luther King. And that's when: "Did you wear the black arm band when they shot the man who said: 'Peace could last forever'?. It's just true-life experiences, really."

Music Video

A music video was made for "Civil War" but it was lesser known than the other videos possibly due to the fact it does not feature any members of the band in it, instead it features bits from the Nobodys Child film, The video was absent from the Welcome to the Videos DVD Possibly for that reason as You Could Be Mine was not included. The opening sequence for the song "Breakdown" was used at the start of the video.

Song Interpretation

• Notably, the United States was involved in no major military operations at the time of its recording, so it is mostly thought of as a tribute of sorts to 1960s anti-Vietnam War protest songs.

• The song also mentions John F. Kennedy's assassination with the lyrics: "and in my first memories they shot Kennedy," as well as the battle for civil rights and the Vietnam War. Rose was only a one year old when Kennedy was killed. Duff and Slash were born after that. It could also refer to Robert Kennedy's assassination.

• The song ends with the telling line, "What's so civil about war anyway?", a word play on the dual meaning of the word civil.

Trivia

• "Civil War" reached number four on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart in Billboard magazine.

• "Civil War" is the last song on which drummer Steven Adler played for Guns N' Roses before being replaced by Matt Sorum.

• The opening speech was used again in the G N' R song "Madagascar" which appeared on Chinese Democracy, mixed in with other quotes.

• Guns N' Roses performed the song at Farm Aid IV on April 7, 1990. This performance was televised.

• The song samples Strother Martin's speech in Cool Hand Luke ("What we've got here is... failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach. So you get what we had here last week, which is the way he wants it... well, he gets it. I don't like it any more than you men.").

• The line, "Did you wear a black armband when they shot the man who said, 'Peace could last forever'" could be referring to the black hand's assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand that triggered World War I. It could also refer to the assassination of John Lennon, who strongly opposed the Vietnam war. The black armbands a sign of mourning, so the whole line asks whether we mourned for John Lennon as many others did at that time.

• It also quotes a Peruvian militant general's speech ("We practice selective annihilation of mayors and government officials, for example, to create a vacuum, then we fill that vacuum. As popular war advances, peace is closer").

• The song also plays homage to American Civil War song "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" with snippets of the tune used in the introduction, and then again in the outro.

• Nobody's Child: Romanian Angel Appeal, the album on which "Civil War" debuted, was a fund raising compilation for Romanian orphans.

• Civil War is also the first track on Use Your Illusion II. It also appears on the compilation Use Your Illusion and Guns N' Roses Greatest Hits.

• Although it says You Could Be Mine was released as the first single from the Illusion albums, that's not actrully true, Civil War was, but it was released as a single a year before the albums release.

External links

• Songfacts