Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner

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“Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner”

Single by Warren Zevon from the album Excitable Boy
Released	1978
Recorded	1977
Genre	Rock
Length	3:47
Label	Asylum

"Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner" is a song composed by Warren Zevon and David Lindell and performed by Zevon. It was first released on Zevon's 1978 album Excitable Boy. It is the last song he ever performed in front of an audience, on the Late Show with David Letterman, before his death in 2003.^[1]

[edit] About the song

Zevon met co-writer Lindell in Spain, where the latter was running a bar after a stint working as a mercenary in Africa.^[2] Typically interested in the darker side of life, Zevon decided to collaborate with Lindell on a song about a mercenary.^{[citation needed]}

Roland is a Norwegian who becomes embroiled in the Congo Crisis of the late 1960s. He earns a reputation as the greatest Thompson gunner, a reputation that attracts the attention of the CIA. Roland is betrayed and murdered by a fellow mercenary, Van Owen, who shoots him in the head. Roland becomes the phantom "headless Thompson gunner" (reminiscent of the Headless Horseman) and eventually has his revenge on Van Owen, when he catches him "in a bar room drinking gin." After this Roland continues "wandering through the night" as a sort of revolutionary spirit.

Besides the historical references to third-world conflicts around the globe and the often shadowy involvement of the CIA, the song is a sort of bittersweet rallying cry to the "revolution" in America. The final line of the song, "Patty Hearst heard the burst of Roland's Thompson gun, and bought it..", referring to heiress Patty Hearst's kidnapping and subsequent involvement in the Symbionese Liberation Army, throws a cynical twist into the song's portrayal of a mercenary come back from the dead for justice and revenge.