“What’s so civil about war, anyway?” asked Axl Rose back in 1990, when he and his band had the world’s ear. Nobody would accuse Guns N’ Roses of being a political act like, say, U2, but releasing a single that paid homage to Martin Luther King Jr. while critiquing America’s misadventures in Vietnam was a risky move, especially considering the core demographics of their fan base. For extra pop-cultural cred, “Civil War” sampled the villainous prison warden played by Strother Martin in 1967’s Cool Hand Luke, whose ominously drawled warning of “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate” became a sort of sinister catchphrase—a euphemism suggesting progressive rhetoric wrapped around authoritarian brutality like barbed wire. It’s less that Martin’s character is worried about being understood than that he doesn’t want his charges to talk back.
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