Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Guns N' Roses - Civil War (Live/Voodoo Child Intro)

Civil War Lyric


"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
And I don't like it anymore 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 they'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 the 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
And I went numb when I learned to see
So I never felt 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 fighting for the 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
Whaz so civil about war anyway

Son Notes : "This song is politically charged, and has an entire verse about President Kennedy's assassination. It also deals with the Vietnam War and the battle for civil rights in the US"

"Slash (Saul Hudson), Duff (Michael McKagan) and W. Axl Rose wrote this for Use Your Illusion 2, which was released simultaneously with Use Your Illusion 1. The song originally appeared on the 1990 album Nobody's Child, a fundraising compilation for Romanian orphans"

On September 27, 1993, Duff explained where the song came from in an interview with the radio show Rockline: "Basically it was a riff that we would do at soundchecks. Axl came up with a couple of lines at the beginning. I went in a peace march, when I was a little kid, with my mom. I was like 4 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.'"

The speech at the beginning of the song is from the movie Cool Hand Luke: "What we have here is a failure to communicate..."

"Part of the American Civil War song "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" is used at the beginning and end of the song"

"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"

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