Mercenaries
The musical basis of this song, with its quick-shuffling chords, is possibly developed from the similar sequence in "The Rules of the Game". Guitars here are by Leon and Robb Johnson, in a song voiced from inside the mind of a paid killer. To him, he is no different from the rest of us: after all, as workers, we all take money for playing our part in the capitalist system (the "money machine", in Leon's words). There is some validity in this perspective, but few would accept it as an absolute truism.
"I don't know why mercenaries so often get a bad press. After all, they're only doing what everybody else is doing - selling their skills in the market place." - LR (sleevenotes to Harry's Gone Fishing, 1999)
"Mercenaries, too, are, in a sense, among the excluded - disapproved of because they kill for money and not for good patriotic reasons... There are songs where the story needs to be told in the first person to avoid finger-pointing and to understand the narrator's point of view. 'Mercenaries' is one of those songs." - (Turning Silence Into Song (songbook), p45)
"Mercenaries, too, are, in a sense, among the excluded - disapproved of because they kill for money and not for good patriotic reasons... There are songs where the story needs to be told in the first person to avoid finger-pointing and to understand the narrator's point of view. 'Mercenaries' is one of those songs." - (Turning Silence Into Song (songbook), p45)
Recordings
Version 1 (1999)