Autobiography of a Pistol – Implements of Destruction, pt. 2
I’m a pistol, a forty-five,
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| Ellis Paul (From Meadowbrook Pavilion website courtesy of Matt Callahan) |
I just shot two men in this hot-house dive.
Now I’m smoking – burning hot barrel of metal.
Believe it or not, I was bought by this guy named Ray,
a card carrying member of the NRA,
But he left me out in his car one day,
And now the finger on my trigger hasn’t seen it’s sixteenth birthday.
Some things they never tell you when you’re riding the assembly line.
Like who’ll be the hands to hold you and what’s their state of mind – –
Hey, I’m not much bigger than a pointed index finger.
So who am I to lay the blame?
I’m only here to cause some pain…
The sirens —
I can hear them, they’re singing …
They’re singing my song,
“When the sun sets, I get upset —
Darkness fills me and I want to light up the world”…
Would you believe I’ve seen better days?
I starred in westerns and won rave reviews.
Now I sit on a shelf, tagged for judgment day.
I’ve got to change the jury’s point of view.
You see, guns don’t kill people, it’s the bullets that do.
I said guns don’t kill people, bullets do.
Yeah, the bullets do…
From the battle within the soul depicted in Dave Carter’s “41 Thunderer,” our “Implements of Destruction” series moves to a much broader kind of social and political conflict with the powerful “Autobiography of a Pistol” from Ellis Paul‘s 1995 album Stories. Although the song is still in the “first person,” that “person” is a pistol, and immediately invites the listener to think about broader forces and arguments. Despite this difference between the two songs, both songs explore the power of guns, the mystique of the American West, and the never-ending, musically-mediated debates about violence, responsibility, and the forces we can’t resist.
You may remember Ellis Paul’s music from a few months ago, when we listened to his “Who Killed John Lennon.” I included several other songs from Stories that rang some of the changes on our murder ballad themes of music and meaning. I held this one in reserve, with this series of posts on handguns in mind.
Just as with “41 Thunderer,” I was interested in the artist’s experience in performing a song like this, and how they perceive the song connecting with their audiences. Ellis Paul very kindly and very quickly responded to my questions (or short bursts of questions) sent via email, and provides added perspective not only on the themes I identified above, but also on how songs with a more polemical bent affect the interactions between artists and audiences.
MBM: What can you tell me about how the song came to be? When was it written? Were there any particular events in the news at the time that seem in retrospect to have triggered (…) its creation?
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| (photo by Jack Looney) |
The main trigger for finishing it was that quote people were saying at the time to defend gun rights, “guns don’t kill people, people do” and I thought it would be funny to have the gun blame the bullets. Everyone is shirking responsibility, even the gun. Having the gun talk was ridiculous, but created this voice– I was in movies, I was involved in a drug shooting by a young kid trigger man, I was stolen from the car of an NRA member. The gun wants street cred. There’s some irony there, too.
I grew up with guns, and I shot a bird once from 200 yards away at my family’s farm, just to see if I could make him fly off. It fell pathetically to the ground. There wasn’t an ounce of excitement from that moment. It was enough to make me stop.
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| Duke Levine |
The song wasn’t written to fix the situation, it was meant to be an irritant to those who disagree and to crack a smile in those who get it. The thing about folk music is it most often heard by the choir. That’s why mixing folk with rock and pop, can give it a better chance to make its way to the ears of Ted Nugent fans.
MBM: You created this song almost 20 years ago. Do you still perform it? EP: I don’t have this in my sets unless I am doing a retro catalogue show. This doesn’t mean to diminish its quality– I love this song. I’ve also got 500 other songs that demand attention, and beyond them, I am most eager and focused on working the new ones in front of the audience. This is the great thing about being a relatively obscure artist without hits, you just keep asking the crowd to come along to the new songs. I don’t have to play “Fire and Rain” or “Heart of Gold” every night. I just want to get better, and have a catalogue that is vast. The folk tag allows me to write kids’ songs, love songs, commercial sounding songs, protest songs, non protest songs, whatever. But I love this song, from Duke Levine‘s electric riff which is amazing, to the melody and content of the lyrics.
MBM: Relatedly, can you tell me about how the song has been received by audiences over the years? Do any particular reactions stick out? The song shades more toward a political perspective on gun violence and less toward a personal one, which leads me to suspect that people might want to debate you about it. Has that happened?
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| Bill Morrissey (1951-2011) |
except for this one song. That sentence always leads to “Autobiography of a Pistol.” Bill Morrissey, one of my favorite songwriters and a mentor to me who owned guns, coldly told me, ” .45s don’t smoke…” But it galvanized a lot of people to me as well, because they saw I was willing to have the songs touch on something important, that they thought needed attention. I won some and lost some. I’ve had people get pissed because I don’t play it. You cant win!
“A few people tell me how much they love me except for this one song. That sentence always leads to…”
MBM: The song refers to Westerns as well? Were they influential for you?
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| Lee Van Cleef (1925-1989) |
EP: Guns serve as characters in Westerns. When will they make their appearance? When will they save the day? Are they big or small, long stemmed or pocket sized, in gang-like numbers or one handed individuals. Who shoots first? Are they source of violence, or the savior? They swing the plot.
They obviously were an important part of our creation and identity as a nation. We needed them. They needed us. It’s not like dangerous Indians, rustlers, thieves and Buffalo were roaming about the UK, ya know? If they were, the Beatles would’ve been called the Bullets.
I had access to guns in elementary school. Not in the school itself, I mean I was an elementary age student. Fifth grade, I owned a .22. Merry Christmas. I had a bb gun in third grade.
My Dad tried to turn me into a hunter. I found that I liked the walking in the woods part, but spent most of the time worried that I would accidentally kill him, like Dick Cheney tried to do with his hunting partner. Hunting would be fun if guns weren’t so dangerous. It’s not in me. I really would’ve loved hunting if ducks were tin cans. I killed a lot of tin cans with guns. It was cruel. I slaughtered thousands of them. And I got off on it. Still would. Coke cans tremble when I enter a room. I can’t open them because they fizz.
That said, I think hunters with proper rifles and licenses should be able to hunt. I don’t like ball room dancing, or in-line skating, and I think responsible people should have the right to do those things. I just don’t get the semi-automatics in the home thing. When our forefathers gave us the gun bearing amendment (What is it, 9?) it took nearly two minutes to properly load a single shot musket that often would misfire or or just miss its target from twenty yards.
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| Minuteman |
If Franklin, Washington, and Jefferson saw an AK-47 they probably would’ve written the amendment as–” everyone can have a gun, as long as its a musket that takes two minutes to load, occasionally misfires and often misses targets from twenty paces.” They had no idea what was coming, or how their intentions would be warped and modified to fit future agendas. I love the argument that the right to bear arms includes, by some people, an understanding that we can use them against our own government. That’s a good one. The one thing that we all have in spades is a government that loves a bigger better gun. They will always be a step ahead of us. Pretty soon little people are gonna be fighting for personal home-owned drones. Guns are here, they are used in violent acts, violent accidents, and have also saved the day on numerous occasions.
MBM: “Autobiography” taps into the allure of guns to a certain extent, in personifying the pistol, but strikes me as more about broader social, political, and economic forces. Your song also includes the cleverly inverted line of “guns don’t kill people, it’s the bullets that do.” All these elements seem to be exploring the theme of responsibility in various ways. Do you see that going on here?
EP: I think the power of the song is in that line.
Like many of my songs and lots of my favorite songs, you can trim away the stone and find that one gem line that gives the song purpose. It implies that people are avoiding the responsibility of making changes.
MBM: What other songs in your repertoire seem to “speak” to “Autobiography of a Pistol,” thematically or otherwise? Do you have any favorite murder ballads, either or your own or by others?
“Eighteen” (lyrics and clip) was inspired by a kid that was killed in my high school, in the song he falls off a water tower when he tries to tag it with spray paint.
[The links in the above paragraph click through to Murder Ballad Monday’s earlier discussions of “Nebraska,” “Frankie and Johnny,” Johnny Cash’s murder ballads,” and “Who Killed Davey Moore?”. Ed.]
We’ll pick up the thread of these gun songs soon, so please stay tuned. Thanks for reading.
