After a lot of thought, I decided not to put this in Cafe Society. If you don’t know, “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner” is a song by Warren Zevon. Here’s the lyrics.
What I’m asking is, what is this song about? Can I get some background on the war that’s mentioned? Was there really a “Roland?” How does the CIA factor into this? Who is Van Owen? And what’s with the reference to Patty Hearst?
Keep in mind I was born in '83, so most of this was well before my time. Sorry.
Please don’t take it too seriously. It’s just a pop song.
Warren Zevon delights in songs of ultraviolence. He loves to sing about realistic political horrors when all hell breaks loose. He wanted to be the bad boy of rock-‘n’-roll but couldn’t rock as hard as the punk rockers. So to his innocuous musical arrangements he adds lyrics of death and destruction. He’s sort of a P.J. O’Rourke set to music.
There were two different postcolonial civil wars in Africa in the 60s that Zevon conflates in this song. The Katanga/Congo war (documented in the recent film Lumumba) took place in 1960-63 or thereabouts. The Biafra/Nigeria war (as the song notes, in 1966-67) had nothing to do with the other war. He just uses them loosely to set a mood of violence.
I would guess that Roland and Van Owen were fictional mercenaries in the two wars already noted. Mercenaries were, and I think there was some stink about the CIA and Mobuku being involved in Lumamba’s assassination.
My WAG on the Patty Hearst, Lebanon, Palestine et al lyrics is, Warren’s implying the CIA’s still (at the time he wrote the song, anyway) betraying people.
Roland and Van Owen are fictional characters out of Zevon’s rather strange mind. The post-colonial African wars of the 60’s and 70’s were a magnet for mercenaries, who fought in the Congo, Biafra, Angola, etc. Many of them had CIA backing, and the CIA formed a shell company which funded air support for the war in the Congo. Most notably, mercenaries under one Colonel Mike Hoare damn near took over the Congo outright.
I like this song, and the rest of Zevon’s black humor, though. It’s possible Zevon picked the name “Roland” to evoke the classic Frankish hero from “Le Chanson de Roland”, but perhaps not, also.
Damn fine song, like most ZevonTunes.
After a bit of thought, I decided to put this in Cafe Society.
bibliophage
moderator GQ
You want pervese violent lyrics, you gotta love “Excitable Boy”…
There are two characters in Jurassic Park 2 named Roland and Van Owen, after the song.