Child Killers
In the opening track to Harry's Gone Fishing, Leon hears a voice telling him to "go electric" to broaden his appeal. Seven songs on, he does just that, with Robb Johnson's searing guitar feeding back behind the vocals - the closest Leon has come to recording in the conventional rock style.
The song deals with the recurrent tragedy of children turning guns on their classmates with deadly consequences, something which seems to be an exclusively American phenomenon. And it takes a profound view, drawing links with the foisting of toy guns on children and contrasting this waste of humanity with the US government's assertion that the lives of Americans are of sacred importance to them. That being so, one wonders why the gun culture is so rife, and why nothing is done about it.
The song deals with the recurrent tragedy of children turning guns on their classmates with deadly consequences, something which seems to be an exclusively American phenomenon. And it takes a profound view, drawing links with the foisting of toy guns on children and contrasting this waste of humanity with the US government's assertion that the lives of Americans are of sacred importance to them. That being so, one wonders why the gun culture is so rife, and why nothing is done about it.
"Am I being presumptuous in trying to get inside the mind of an American child killer and in making connections between the child's gun culture violence and the belligerence of the USA in the New World Order? Perhaps. But what's songwriting for if not to be presumptuous and make connections?" - LR (sleevenotes to Harry's Gone Fishing, 1999)
"'Child Killers' is an attempt to get inside the mind of a boy who is explaining how he came to do what he did. The shooting of 12 students and a teacher in Columbine High in Colorado was only the latest in a long line of apparently motiveless massacres in affluent American schools... The chorus is based on Clinton's justification for bombing Sudan in 1998 which itself echoed Reagan's justification for bombing Tripoli 12 years earlier: 'America will protect its citizens and will continue to lead the world's fight for peace, freedom and security.'" - (Turning Silence Into Song (songbook), p45)
"'Child Killers' is an attempt to get inside the mind of a boy who is explaining how he came to do what he did. The shooting of 12 students and a teacher in Columbine High in Colorado was only the latest in a long line of apparently motiveless massacres in affluent American schools... The chorus is based on Clinton's justification for bombing Sudan in 1998 which itself echoed Reagan's justification for bombing Tripoli 12 years earlier: 'America will protect its citizens and will continue to lead the world's fight for peace, freedom and security.'" - (Turning Silence Into Song (songbook), p45)
Recordings
Version 1 (1999)
- Harry's Gone Fishing
- War on War Various artists compilation album, released in USA. Believed to contain the 1999 version