Warren Zevon was one of rock’s great crazy men. When drinking—and in general pursuing oblivion the way Ahab did a certain white whale—Zevon was notorious for vomiting off interior balconies at staid record company meet-and-greets and much, much, worse. He never went to the Troubadour with a Kotex affixed to his forehead like that idiot John Lennon, but his wife was once awakened by gunshots to discover Zevon had put three bullet holes in his head—on the cover of his Excitable Boy LP. Call it suicide by proxy—and a cry for help—but all Zevon had to say was, “It’s funny, isn’t it?”
Meanwhile Zevon was writing songs like “Mr. Bad Example,” which included the lines, “I like to have a good time/And I don’t care who gets hurt.” In short, he was a latter day Jerry Lee Lewis, only 500 times more literate. While Zevon shared The Killer’s love for guns, at least he never managed to shoot one of his own musicians in the chest with a .357 magnum, as Jerry Lee did at his own 41st birthday party.
I’ve blown chunks at inappropriate moments and fired off guns in the house while drunk too, but I’m no Warren Zevon, who was a bona fide lyrical and songwriting genius. His second and third LPs (1976’s Warren Zevon and 1978’s Excitable Boy) established him as the only lyricist of the era who could hold a candle to Randy Newman, and the sheer insanity of his songs—it’s impossible to imagine anyone else writing about a walking headless mercenary seeking revenge on his killer, or a kid who builds a cage for himself from his girlfriend’s bones—left the competition in the dust.
Zevon may have kept bad company—one wonders what drew such a rabid wildebeest to the insipid likes of Jackson Browne and The Eagles—but their deleterious habits (like writing really shitty songs) fortunately didn’t rub off on him. But I’m wrong actually. As great as his songs are, they lack the rough edges that would have given them the raw immediacy to match his insane lyrics, and this has everything to do with his reliance on slick studio musicians and his equally slick rock star chums—them’s Don Henley and Glenn Frey singing harmony on “The French Inhaler,” and Jackson Browne and the loathsome J.D. Souther singing harmony on the great “Desperadoes Under The Eaves”—when making his albums.
Zevon was born in Chicago, and his old man was a bookie and best man at infamous mobster Mickey Cohen’s wedding. But Zevon gave up a cool career in crime for the music biz, playing in a duo called lyme and cymbelle, writing advertising jingles and songs for the likes of The Turtles, and touring with The Everly Brothers as their keyboardist and band leader/musical coordinator. Zevon then embarked on a solo career, and released 12 studio LPs between 1969—his obscure debut album was produced by that legendary urine-stained rock opportunist Kim “Runaways” Fowley—and his untimely death in 2003.
I planned to review Excitable Boy, Zevon’s strongest LP, but I simply couldn’t live without “Play It All Night Long,” “Ain’t That Pretty At All,” “Poor Poor Pitiful Me,” and “Desperadoes Under The Eaves.” So I elected to review The Best of Warren Zevon, even though reviewing greatest hits packages is often seen as a critical cheap shot and the equivalent of shooting Stevie Nicks in a barrel.
But fuck it. I am a cheap shot artist. Besides, I don’t see why a greatest hits package isn’t every bit as valid an artistic statement as any other LP. It may not serve as a snapshot of a single moment in an artist’s musical development blah bullshit blah, but it gives you better value for your entertainment dollar. I mean, who wouldn’t infinitely prefer the zero great songs to be found on Barry Manilow’s Greatest Hits to the zero great songs to be found on his individual albums?
The Best of Warren Zevon opens with Zevon’s best-known song, “Werewolves of London.” Everybody’s heard it a billion times, and I don’t have anything new to say about it except it’s cool, Zevon’s piano riff is wonderful, those are Mick Fleetwood and John McVie of Fleetwood Mac holding down the fort on rhythm, and the “hyuk!” that follows, “I saw a werewolf drinking a pina colada at Trader Vic’s/His hair was perfect” always makes me happy. Then again, I’m a zombie guy, and might like the song a lot more if it were called “Zombies of London.” But then I’d miss all those great “Aooooohs,” so I suppose things are better off the way they are.
“Excitable Boy” is pure genius, a happy-sounding pop song complete with a bouncy sax riff and girl-group harmonies (thanks to Linda Ronstadt and Jennifer Warnes) about an “excitable boy” (the understatement is wonderful) who is obviously a full-blown psychotic. He rubs the family’s Sunday pot roast across his chest, rapes and kills his prom date—then, in a nice touch, takes her home—and finally, after 10 years of incarceration, digs up her body and makes a cage of her bones. (How Zevon came up with that “cage of bones” idea is beyond me. That’s why he’s the genius and I’m an ink-stained scribbler.) The ironic contrast between the perky melody and the macabre lyrics is a stroke of brilliance, and “Excitable Boy” remains one of the sickest—if not the sickest—song ever to receive regular radio play.
“Play It All Night Long” is a cool rocker—so cool the Drive-By Truckers saw fit to record an amped-up cover of it—about a loser farm family with cow paddies’ worth of problems. Zevon is at his hilarious best, opening the song with the lines, “Grandpa pissed his pants again/He don’t give a damn/Brother Billy has both guns drawn/He ain’t been right since Vietnam.” And from there things only go downhill: dad’s fucking sis, the cattle have brucellosis, and frankly country living doesn’t amount to much: just “sweat, piss, jizz and blood.” But the song’s strongest point is its chorus, which pays (perhaps ironic) homage to Lynyrd Skynyrd: “’Sweet home Alabama’/Play that dead band’s song/Turn those speakers up full blast/Play it all night long.” It’s tied for my favorite song of Zevon’s, along with “Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner,” and is the perfect song for farmers as well as people who don’t have intercourse with cows.
As for “Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner,” it’s mid-tempo, piano-driven, and features some of the greatest lyrics I’ve ever heard—their depth of detail and cool story line make “Roland” a really wonderful short story—from its opening (“Roland was a warrior from the Land of the Rising Sun”) to its great closing lines, “Patty Hearst heard the burst/Of Roland’s Thompson gun/And bought it.” As for the chorus it’s both catchy and brilliant, and I wish I know who was accompanying Zevon on vocals. Meanwhile Roland searches the world for the man who separated him from his noggin, and eyewitnesses “see his headless body stalking through the night/In the muzzle flash of Roland’s Thompson gun.” He finally finds his killer and blows him “from there to Johannesburg.” But he continues to show up “In Ireland, in Lebanon, in Palestine and Berkeley,” and I can only hope he one day shows up at the apartment of a former girlfriend who, in explaining why she was breaking up with me, actually said she “belonged to the world,” like she was a national landmark or something. (Actually I’m not bitter. I swear. The whole tortured relationship was worth it for those final words.)
The mid-tempo “The Envoy,” the title cut off Zevon’s 1982 LP of the same name, boasts a big guitar and is loosely based on the exploits of Philip Habib, U.S. special envoy to the Middle East during the early 1980s—who reputably liked it so much he sent a letter of thanks to Zevon on official letterhead. I’m glad Habib liked it but I never have, probably because the lyrics, while topical, are neither witty nor particularly berserk. Besides, Don Henley sings on it. But most importantly I don’t give a flying fuck about the world or its affairs, and would like nothing more than for the whole shebang to go belly up. That said I do like the ending, where Zevon sings in a guttural voice, “Send the envoy/Send for me, yeaaaaah/Send for me/Send for me.”
The slow but sweet “Mohammed’s Radio” opens with some nice piano and guitar, and features a great chorus with a pseudo-gospel feel (“But don’t it make you want to rock and roll/All night long/Mohammed’s Radio/I heard somebody singing sweet and soulful/On the radio, Mohammed’s Radio”) thanks to the Mac’s Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. As for the lyrics, they have something to do with resentment over the price of gasoline and meat, and military suspicion of “Mohammed’s lamp.” But they also wander into the realm of the bizarre, with Zevon singing, “You know, the Sheriff’s got his problems too/He will surely take them out on you/In walked the village idiot and his face was all aglow/He’s been up all night listening to Mohammed’s Radio.” In short, I have no idea what the point of “Mohammed’s Radio” is, and I don’t care, because while it may not be my favorite tune on The Best of Warren Zevon, it’s wonderful melody and beautiful chorus definitely make it a keeper.
The slow and beautiful “Desperadoes Under The Eaves” is another fantastic song and a semi-autobiographical account of Zevon’s descent into chronic alcoholism. It’s funny yet poignant, and features great vocal harmonies on its brilliant chorus (“Don’t the sun look angry through the trees/Don’t the trees look like crucified thieves/Don’t you feel like desperadoes under the eaves/Heaven help the one who leaves.”) “Desperadoes” opens with Zevon singing, “All the salty Margaritas in Los Angeles/I’m gonna drink ’em up,” then, “And if California slides into the ocean/Like the mystics and statistics say it will/I predict this motel will be standing/Until I pay my bill.” Those are some great School of Randy Newman lyrics, and Zevon’s desperation only becomes more palpable as he sings, “Still waking up in the mornings with shaking hands/And I’m trying to find a girl who understands me/But except in dreams you’re never really free.” He then goes on to imitate the humming of an air conditioner and closes the song by repeating, “Look away down Gower Avenue, look away” as if he can see his future there, and it’s as hopeless as a Mick Jagger solo album.
I never “got” “Johnny Strikes Up The Band,” a straight-ahead rocker that features an okay melody but only so-so lyrics that are neither funny nor particularly savage or sarcastic. Why, it reminds me more than anything of Dire Straits’ “Sultans of Swing,” that’s how boring it is. I like the way Zevon sings, “Freddy gettin’ ready/Rock steady,” that’s how desperate I am to find nice things to say about this song. And hired gun Danny “Kooch” Kortchmar’s pair of guitar solos, while studio slick, aren’t bad, although if it was me looking for a studio guitarist with super chops I’d have called Rick Derringer, who put the bite into the likes of A. Cooper’s “Under My Wheels and Steely Dan’s “Show Biz Kids.”
The title “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” is self-explanatory, while the song is a pounding mid-tempo rocker featuring a cool harmonica riff by Zevon that runs through the song, Gary Mallaber’s roughneck drumming, and Jorge Calderón chattering away in Spanish in the background. Calderón practically steals the song with his behind the scene goings-on, and I love Zevon’s choice of the word “harm” in the lines, “Saturday night I like to raise a little harm/I’ll sleep when I’m dead” almost as much as I like the lines, “I’m drinking heartbreak motor oil and Bombay gin/I’ll sleep when I’m dead/Straight from the bottle, twisted again/I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” This is the one song on The Best of Warren Zevon that doesn’t sound like it was buffed to a fine sheen by the work of crack studio musicians, and it gives you a fair idea (as does Zevon’s final LP, The Wind, of what a rawer, less caught up in studio perfection Zevon would have sounded like.
“Lawyers, Guns and Money” is pure dead brilliant, a tale of a feckless rich kid wandering the Third World who just can’t seem to keep himself out of the deep shit. With its booming power chords and big handclaps it’s one of the hardest rockers Zevon ever recorded. Meanwhile Richie Rich’s troubles pile up; the waitress he takes home (“the way I always do”) turns out to be a Russian spy, a Havana gambling spree goes bad, but he’s always “an innocent bystander” (yeah, right) and caught between a rock and a hard place, and calling out “Send lawyers, guns and money/Dad get me out of this, hyaaah!” He finally sings, “I’m hiding in Honduras/I’m a desperate man,” and concedes “the shit has hit the fan.” The final third of the song consists of Zevon, growing ever more frenzied, singing, “Send lawyers, guns and money” over and over, punctuated by lots of cries of “Uh!” and “Alright!” and “Yea!” And you’re left with the suspicion that this time our wealthy little wastrel may have finally gone too far.
What was I saying when I said “Play It All Night Long” and “Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner” are my faves on The Best of Warren Zevon? Because my real favorite is the savage rocker “Ain’t That Pretty At All,” which features Zevon at his most scathing and self-destructive. He’s been to Rome, he sings, and he’s been to Paris, and “they ain’t that pretty at all.” Meanwhile a guitar wails as he snarls, “You know I just had a short vacation Roy/Spent it getting a root canal/Oh, how’d you like it?/Well it ain’t that pretty at all.” And I love the lines, “I’d like to go back to Paris someday and go to the Louvre museum/Get a good running start and hurl myself at the wall/Going to hurl myself against the wall/’Cause I’d rather feel bad than feel nothing at all.” While Zevon’s synthesizer and Danny Kortchmar’s guitar play a repetitive riff a big chorus of vocalists (or maybe not so big: the only backing vocalist listed is J.D. Souther) repeats slight variations on “Ain’t that pretty at all” as the song fades out.
“Poor Poor Pitiful Me” is a very funny and up-tempo salute to feeling sorry for yourself, albeit with some dark undertones, and features backing vocals by Fleetwood Mac’s Lindsey Buckingham, sax by the great Bobby Keys, and some hot guitar by Waddy Wachtel. Linda Ronstadt turned it into a hit, which I found amazing given its lines, “Well I met a girl at the Rainbow Bar/She asked me if I’d beat her/And she took me back to the Hyatt house/I don’t wanna talk about it.” Then I found out she changed them. Anyway, Zevon opens the song with the great lines, “Well I lay my head on the railroad tracks/Waitin’ for the double E/But railroad don’t run no more/Poor poor pitiful me.” And no wonder he’s suicidal; he meets a woman in West Hollywood who “Really worked me over good/She was a credit to her gender/She put me through some changes lord/Sort of like a Waring blender.”
“Accidently Like a Martyr” has a Dylanesque title and is a slow and very beautiful piano-driven number that shows off Zevon’s bruised romantic side. It features a lovely chorus (“We made mad love, shadow love/Random love and abandoned love/Accidentally like a martyr/The hurt gets worse/And the heart gets harder”) and some nice backing vocals by Karla Bonoff and some male humans, and it drives me nuts that I don’t know who they are. Probably the fucking Eagles. “Accidentally Like a Martyr” demonstrates that Zevon had a knack for the love song, as do the lovely “Hasten Down the Wind” and The Wind’s remarkably touching “Keep Me In Your Heart” and “Please Stay.”
Remember how I said I didn’t like “Johnny Strikes Up The Band?” Well, “Johnny” is solid gold compared to the big, bland “Looking for the Next Best Thing,” which is a terrible way to end an album and boasts a rousing guitar solo by Waddy Wachtel but no other redeeming features whatsoever. “Looking for the Next Big Thing” sounds like just another anonymous slice of 80s rock, especially with the horrible synthesizer riff that runs like a symptom of tetanus through it.
Plenty of rockers couldn’t write a decent one-page essay on what drugs they did during their summer vacation. And that’s fine; I just happen to love some of those rockers. But when somebody comes along with the wit and talent of Warren Zevon, well, that’s something to be celebrated. Anybody who could come up with a song title as great as “Quite Ugly One Morning” that includes lines like “Don’t the sky look funny/Don’t it look kinda chewed-on like/Don’t you feel like running/Don’t you feel like running from the dawn’s early light” to describe the aftermath of a drinking binge is a marvel, and we were all lucky to have Warren Zevon for the 56 years he spent on this planet, looking at things through a gimlet eye, and in so doing making the unbearable and unspeakable a little less so. Which is what great artists do, that and take a good running start and throw themselves against walls.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
