CIVIL WAR
Axl Rose, Slash, Duff McKagan
The B side of the first single from the album Use Your Illusion II, with an early version on the charity album Nobody's Child: Romanian Angel Appeal.
Chart: #4 (mainstream rock). Time - 7:40. Flip Side: "You Could Be Mine".
Single released in U.S.A. June 21, 1991.
Recorded in the USA, June 1990. Produced by Mike Clink and Guns N' Roses. Engineered by Mike Clink.
From the title, it would seem to have been about the civil war in Lincoln's era, but it's not. It's about a more modern era, the civil unrest in the 1960's and events around it. It deals with the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement and the assasination of President Kennedy. The song was written for the Use Your Illusion II album released in 1991, but this song came out a year earlier, given to the charity album Nobody's Child. This was the only song on the album that Steven Adler played drums on as he was replaced shortly after the sessions began. - Larry -
Axl Rose - lead vocals, whistling |
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Duff McKagan - 1993: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."
Axle Rose - 1994:Rockline
"It ended up on the benefit album çause Tom Petty called me and asked me, which was really weird, asked me if George Harrison could call me. And when George Harrison called me and we were talking, and all of a sudden he started talking about his wife flying to Bangladesh. It just...All of a sudden my mind was like, boom...hyper-space, I'm talking to a Beatle. And he was very Beatle-esque talking about Bangladesh [lauphs]. It was pretty wild. They asked for the song and the inspiration was...A friend asked me to write a song about just how crazy the world is and certain things and...I just thought it was an interesting subject and just...Slash had this music and exactly fit what I'd written."
Slash - 2011:Music Radar
"That was actually one of the first songs Axl and I wrote after Appetite. The tour wasn't even finished, Axle heard me playing the acoustic thing and we started rehearsing it with the band in Australia. It was also the first song where we went in the studio with Steven and realised that he wasn't really playing up to par."
YOU TUBE LYRIC VIDEO YOU TUBE LIVE - Live in Rock in Rio 2, 1991 "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! N' I don't like it any more than you men." * Look at your young men fighting Look at your women crying Look at your young men dying The way they've always done before Look at the hate we're breeding Look at the fear we're feeding Look at the lives we're leading The way we've always done before My hands are tied The billions shift from side to side And the wars go on with brainwashed pride For the love of God and our human rights And all these things are swept aside By bloody hands time can't deny And are washed away by your genocide And history hides the lies of our civil wars D'you wear a black armband When they shot the man Who said, "Peace could last forever."? And in my first memories They shot Kennedy An' I went numb when I learned to see So I never fell for Vietnam We got the wall of D.C. to remind us all That you can't trust freedom When it's not in your hands When everybody's fightin' For their promised land And I don't need your civil war It feeds the rich while it buries the poor Your power hungry sellin' soldiers In a human grocery store Ain't that fresh I don't need your civil war Look at the shoes you're filling Look at the blood we're spilling Look at the world we're killing The way we've always done before Look in the doubt we've wallowed Look at the leaders we've followed Look at the lies we've swallowed And I don't want to hear no more My hands are tied For all I've seen has changed my mind But still the wars go on as the years go by With no love of God or human rights 'Cause all these dreams are swept aside By bloody hands of the hypnotized Who carry the cross of homicide And history bears the scars of our civil wars "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." ** I don't need your civil war It feeds the rich while it buries the poor Your power hungry sellin' soldiers In a human grocery store Ain't that fresh And I don't need your civil war I don't need your civil war I don't need your civil war Your power hungry sellin' soldiers In a human grocery store Ain't that fresh I don't need your civil war I don't need one more war I don't need one more war What's so civil 'bout war anyway?