Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner

Just in time for Halloween, here's Warren Zevon preforming Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner. This video is from a few short months before his death and his voice is very weak. The song loses something without his deep voice, but the Late Night Band adds so much that I didn't seek an earlier version.



This song grabbed me the first time I heard it. It is a tale of heroism out of time, heroism in an unheroic age.  Zevon's Roland is not a great warrior whose sacrificial rear guard action saves a Charlemagne. He is not a Rollo who establishes Normandy as the home of wandering Vikings from whom William the Conquerer will spring. This Roland is a mercenary who is betrayed by a colleague in the pay of the CIA.

Roland's revenge, his hunting down of Van Owen and his haunting of the world's messy on-going struggles (Ireland, Lebanon, and Palestine), turn him into the personification of the "small" wars that roll unchecked across the planet. The United States is not exempt from the lure of the Thompson gun, as shown by "Patty Hearst heard the burst / of the Roland's Thompson gun/ and bought it." I particularly like the "bought it" line. Patty Hearst didn't take up arms, she bought them. Shopping, then revolution.

Once, a warrior like Roland would have been a conquering hero. Today, after his personal revenge, the hero loses his personality. Roland diffuses into a destructive force that flows from battlefield to battlefield, pointless and uncontrolled. There is no place for heroes anymore. Or maybe the heroes are just different and I don't like the new ones.

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This song also appeals to my love of narrative. In six short verses, Zevon tells a story neatly and precisely. The first two lines appeal to a heroic past that is long gone.  The setting is quickly established and action described in broad, clean strokes. In one verse, Roland's "comrade" Van Owen is introduced, takes the CIA's money, and kills Roland.

The story then turns to the dead Roland, sans head, tracking down Van Owen "in Mombassa, in a barroom drinking gin." That's it for the traitor and the headless Roland comes the Flying Dutchman of the Thompson gun, haunting battlefields around the world. It is as if he has become the spirit of the nasty, internecine wars in places like Ireland, Lebanon, and Palestine.

That story could have been a book, although without vampires or werewolves it would have no hope of publication.

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Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner, Warren Zevon

Roland was a warrior from the Land of the Midnight Sun
With a Thompson gun for hire, fighting to be done
The deal was made in Denmark on a dark and stormy day
So he set out for Biafra to join the bloody fray

Through sixty-six and seven they fought the Congo war
Fingers on their triggers, knee-deep in gore
For days and nights they battled the Bantu to their knees
They killed to earn their living and to help out the Congolese

Roland the Thompson gunner...

His comrades fought beside him - Van Owen and the rest
But of all the Thompson gunners Roland was the best
So the CIA decided they wanted Roland dead
That son-of-a-bitch Van Owen blew off Roland's head

Roland the headless Thompson gunner (Time, time, time
For another peaceful war
Norway's bravest son But time stands still for Roland
'Til he evens up the score)
They can still see his headless body stalking through the night
In the muzzle flash of Roland's Thompson gun
In the muzzle flash of Roland's Thompson gun

Roland searched the continent for the man who'd done him in
He found him in Mombassa in a barroom drinking gin
Roland aimed his Thompson gun - he didn't say a word
But he blew Van Owen's body from there to Johannesburg

Roland the headless Thompson gunner...

The eternal Thompson gunner, still wandering through the night
Now it's ten years later but he still keeps up the fight
In Ireland, in Lebanon, in Palestine and Berkeley
Patty Hearst heard the burst of Roland's Thompson gun
And bought it