Upon first meeting Warren Zevon, says Barney Hoskins in his 2006 book California Rock, Linda Ronstadt “thought he was a psychopath.” I’m sure she wasn’t alone. Hollywood’s notorious excitable boy was spinning out of control at the time, a one-man alcohol and drug-fueled perma-binge that led even the most decadent members of the Hollywood demimonde to nail shut their doors. But just when he seemed primed for self-immolation, he sobered up long enough to record his sixth album, 1982’s The Envoy. (He would fall on and off the wagon until his death in 2003.)
Zevon’s third LP, 1978’s Excitable Boy, which includes his signature song “Werewolves of London, ” is unarguably his best, and you’ll need lawyers, guns and money to convince me The Envoy comes close. The irresistible charm, razor wit, and dark worldview are all there, but then again so is the generic L.A. sound that blunted the edges of so much of the music coming out of the Hotel California at the time. Much to his detriment, Zevon chose to remain a part of the scene’s old boy network—inviting the bland likes of Don Henley, Lindsey Buckingham, and J.D. Souther to sit in on your sessions was hardly the act of a musical bomb thrower. Yet the LP works despite itself, and includes some of the best songs Zevon would ever write.
On The Envoy you get Zevon’s usual mix of sex, drugs, love, booze, violence, and international intrigue. The title track is a tip of the cap to Philip Habib, the U.S. special envoy whose job it was to clean up America’s self-inflicted problems and broker peace in Vietnam, the Middle East, and Central America. Zevon provides a rather dry rundown of Habib’s iron-fist-in-velvet-glove diplomacy (“Things got hot in El Salvador/CIA got caught couldn’t do no more/He’s got diplomatic immunity/He’s got a lethal weapon that nobody sees”) but the real kicker comes at the end—Habib may have the power to patch up the United States’ problems, ‘except,” concludes Zevon, “for me.” It’s a very good song, but underscores one of Zevon’s chief problems as a songwriter; his hard rockers can be ham-fisted affairs. That bass drum thump of an anchor drags the song down with it, and as result “The Envoy” lacks the nimble touch that make hard-rockers like “Lawyers, Guns and Money” so memorable.
The up-tempo “The Overdraft” is an otherwise nifty number dragged down by the L.A.-itis I mentioned before. Co-written with noted American novelist Thomas McGuane, “The Overdraft” is about a guy flirting with a Mann Act violation who knows he could get burned: “I had a little girl now/We crossed the state line/It was more than just an overdraft/We were looking at time.” Unfortunately there’s nothing to set it apart musically from that of Zevon’s bland contemporaries, all of whom were all drinking from the same take-no-chances well.
Zevon finally nails it on “The Hula Hula Boys.” with its doleful strains and story told from the point of view of a sad sack who’s gone the whole way to Maui only to be cuckolded by his wife and various members of the hotel staff. He delivers such immortal lines as “Yesterday she went to see/The Polynesian band/But she came home with her hair all wet/And her clothes all filled with sand” with a catch in his voice, and sums the whole affair up with a self-pitying “She’s gone off with the hula hula boys/She don’t care about me.” And he sets these glum going-ons against an ironically upbeat chorus that goes, “They’re singing/Ha’ina ‘ia mai ana ka puana/Ha’ina ‘ia mai ana ka puana/Ha’ina ‘ia mai ana ka puana/Ha’ina ‘ia mai ana ka puana.”
The solo acoustic number “Jesus Mentioned” is a minor miracle in and of itself. What starts as a trip to Graceland takes a macabre turn when in a tone of reverence Zevon sings, “Can’t you just imagine/Digging up the King/Begging him to sing/About those heavenly mansions/Jesus mentioned.” And the Elvis of “Jesus Mentioned” doesn’t just sing about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He even performs one of Jesus’ trademark miracles with the aid of some chemical enhancement: “He went walking on the water/With his pills.” The buoyant love song “Let Nothing Come Between You” is another minor gem that mates a happy-go-lucky melody to some wise motherly advice that goes, “De de de de de de de de de de/Let nothing come between you.”
Album standout track, the headbanging (literally!) “Ain’t That Pretty At All,” is a semi-autobiographical portrait of the artist as a jaded young man. He’s seen it all, done it all, and he’s come to the conclusion that the so-called pleasures of life aren’t all that. But he has an appropriately self-destructive solution:
“I’d like to go back to Paris someday and visit 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.”
And speaking of throwing yourself at walls, I have to fight the urge to do just that every time I hear “Looking for the Next Best Thing.” The rhythm’s clunky, Zevon’s synthesizer line belongs in a time capsule, and the entire song reeks of Jackson Browne’s vomit. Songs like this helped put paid to L.A.’s AOR corporate machine, and good thing. And it doesn’t have a single funny line in it.
The going to church gospel number “Never Too Late for Love” isn’t much better. The piano and pedal steel guitar are nice touches, but while Zevon sounds heartfelt, the lyrics are so many clichés strung together to form a convenient garrote to strangle yourself with. There’s no shame in telling us to hang on when times are tough, but if a blackguard and cynic like Warren Zevon expects to pull it off he’d better bring something original to the table.
Fortunately we have “Charlie’s Medicine.” Over a cool shuffle and repeated guitar lick Zevon provides a short description of the murder (“Some respectable doctor from Beverly Hills/Shot him through the heart/Charlie never felt a thing/Neither of them did/Poor kid”) of a Hollywood drug dealer. Those last two lines are a curt diagnosis of a post-sixties counterculture that, unlike the Zevon of “Ain’t That Pretty at All,” just said yes to numb. But self-anesthetization came at a cost, and nobody got off scot-free—like the murdered dope dealers in Neil Young’s “Tired Eyes” and Blue Öyster Cult’s “Then Came the Last Days of May,” “Charlie had to take his medicine/Charlie got his prescription filled.”
The Envoy is a very good album that is nearly undone by Zevon’s inability to look beyond the insular—and collapsing—musical community surrounding him. Instead of looking to a group of musicians who might have captured the unhinged spirit of his songs, he chose to make a cage for himself out of the bones of the same slick session pros responsible for the homogenized “LA Sound.” He might have taken a cue from X and brought their anarchic musical intensity to his songs. They deserved better than the likes of such dinosaurs as Jeff Porcaro, J.D. Souther, and Waddy Wachtel. Just compare Zevon’s version of “Play It All Night Long to the Drive-By Truckers’ cover on their 2003 LP The Fine Print. That’s what Zevon’s songs might have sounded like. A song is only as good as the company it keeps, and Zevon’s kept some very bad company.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
B
