Guns N’ Roses – ‘Civil War’ (1990)
Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke. Warner Bros.
Movies are a huge part of the Guns N Roses story, as lead guitarist Slash told us in a 2022 interview – the group has been richly influenced by movies, and many, many films have been improved by Guns N’ Roses songs.
But “Civil War,” a fascinating product of early ’90s hip-hop inspired sampling culture, is the only Guns N’ Roses song to outright borrow lines from a film. The song is about a lot of things – the murders of John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King, among them – but also about the hollow justifications for war. It opens with Strother Martin’s speech in 1967’s 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.”
And if you think Metallica and Guns N Roses are too new to be classic rock — well, they’re at least instant classic rock.
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