Civil War

"Civil War" is a song by American rock band Guns N' Roses that originally appeared on the 1990 compilation Nobody's Child: Romanian Angel Appeal and later on the band's 1991 album, Use Your Illusion II. It is a protest song on war, referring to all war as "civil war" and stating that war only "feeds the rich while it buries the poor". In the song, lead singer Axl Rose asks, "What's so civil about war, anyway?" The song was originally released in 1990, when it peaked at number four on the US Album Rock Tracks chart (now the Mainstream Rock chart). It was then released worldwide in 1993, reaching number one in Poland, number two in Spain, and also charting in Australia, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, and New Zealand. Several regions instead saw the release of The "Civil War" EP, including Ireland and the United Kingdom. The EP reached number 11 on the UK Singles Chart and number 15 on the Irish Singles Chart. This is their last single to be recorded with drummer Steven Adler. He departed the band several months after its recording and was replaced by Matt Sorum before the song was released as a single. Background "Civil War" was the brainchild of the Guns N' Roses artists Axl Rose, Slash, and Duff McKagan. Slash stated that the song was an instrumental he had written right before the band left for the Japanese leg of its Appetite for Destruction world tour. Axl wrote lyrics and it was worked into a proper song at a sound check in Melbourne, Australia. On September 27, 1993, Duff McKagan explained where the song came from in an interview on 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.