"
Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner" is a song composed by
Warren Zevon and David Lindell
[1] 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.
[2]Zevon met co-writer Lindell in Spain, where the latter was running a bar after a stint working as a mercenary in Africa. [3] Typically interested in the darker side of life, Zevon decided to collaborate with Lindell on a song about a mercenary.
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 in foreign conflicts. Roland is betrayed and murdered by a fellow mercenary, Van Owen, who blows off his 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Besides the historical references to third-world conflicts around the globe, the 'Troubles' in Northern Ireland, and the often shadowy involvement of the CIA, the song is a sort of bittersweet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.
