Selective annihilation

Allusions, sampling, and coversEdit

The song samples Strother Martin‘s speech in the 1967 movie, 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.”^[17]

It quotes a speech by a Peruvian Shining Path guerrilla officer saying “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”.^[18]

The song also includes the American Civil War song, “When Johnny Comes Marching Home“, whistled by Axl Rose in the intro and outro.

“Civil War” is the B-side track to the June 1991 release of Guns N’ Roses “You Could Be Mine” single, the promotional single for Terminator 2: Judgment Day. However, “Civil War” was not featured in the film.

Of the 30 combined tracks on Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II, “Civil War” (Track No. 1 on Use Your Illusion II) is the sole track to be recorded featuring original Guns N’ Roses drummer, Steven Adler, who was fired shortly after the track’s recording in 1990. Adler was replaced by then-drummer for The Cult, Matt Sorum, the drummer for all but one of the other 29 tracks on the two-disc set.

This song was covered by the band Hoobastank for an acoustic set.

The Shining Path (Spanish: Sendero Luminoso), officially the Communist Party of Peru (Partido Comunista del Perú, abbr. PCP), is a communist guerrilla group in Peru following Marxism–Leninism–Maoism and Gonzalo Thought. Academics often refer to the group as the Communist Party of Peru – Shining Path (Partido Comunista del Perú – Sendero Luminoso, abbr. PCP-SL) to distinguish it from other communist parties in Peru.