In the song, lead singer Axl Rose asks, "What's so civil about war, anyway?"

Several regions instead saw the release of The "Civil War" EP, including Ireland and the United Kingdom.

He departed the band several months after its recording and was replaced by Matt Sorum before the song was released as a single.

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.

[5] 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.

The song samples Strother Martin's speech in the 1967 movie Cool Hand Luke: "What we've got here is... failure to communicate.

Adler was replaced by then-drummer for The Cult Matt Sorum, the drummer for all but one of the other 29 tracks on the two-disc set.