Warren Zevon

Essential Albums

  • Excitable Boy
    Excitable Boy
    Excitable Boy

    With his eponymous 1976 album, Warren Zevon had established himself as one of the distinctive singer-songwriters of the era. Fueled by a lurid intelligence and gonzo sense of humor, as well a growing drinking problem, Zevon was about to enter the most successful and turbulent period of his life and career. While he’d had years of material stockpiled for his Asylum debut, his second effort for the label found him dusting off old songs and writing new ones in the middle of the recording, which was again produced by his friend and champion Jackson Browne—who enlisted the help of guitarist Waddy Wachtel to wrangle Zevon during what provided to be a series of chaotic sessions at Hollywood’s Sound Factory. The album’s centerpiece, “Accidently Like a Martyr,” was a pop tune Zevon had reworked over the years, slowing it into a magisterial ballad. But six of the nine songs on Excitable Boy would be Zevon co-writes—with Browne, with Wachtel, and with old pals like LeRoy Marinell (the gleefully ghoulish title track), David Lindell (the surrealist soldier of fortune narrative “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner”), and Jorge Calderón (the anti-imperialist tale “Veracruz” and the disco groover “Nighttime in the Switching Yard”). The album’s smash, “Werewolves of London,” was born out of a suggestion made by Zevon’s old boss, Phil Everly of The Everly Brothers, that he write a dance number, offering up the title of an old 1930’s English horror movie as a starting point. Zevon, Marinell, and Wachtel would finish off the song, with Fleetwood Mac’s rhythm section of Mick Fleetwood and John McVie coming in to give the track its signature bounce, nailing the song in just a couple passes (though they would, famously, record almost 60 takes). Excitable Boy would capture the extreme poles of Zevon’s songwriting persona, with the title track, a shock number about rape and murder, contrasted by the sweet sentiments of “Tenderness on the Block,” inspired by Zevon’s newborn daughter. At Wachtel’s insistence, a couple vintage numbers Zevon had recut were jettisoned from the LP’s sequence at the last minute. Zevon would instead pen two new songs, the musical call-to-arms “Johnny Strikes Up the Band” and the cloak-and-dagger drama “Lawyers, Guns and Money,” which would serve as bookends to the album. Released in January 1978, Excitable Boy was the success that Zevon—who was more than a decade into his career—had long hoped for. The record hit #8 on the Billboard charts on its way to going gold, spurred by a Top 40 hit in “Werewolves of London,” which peaked at #21 that summer—commercial heights Zevon would never again reach in his lifetime.

  • Warren Zevon
    Warren Zevon
    Warren Zevon

    Warren Zevon had spent a decade scuffling around the Los Angeles music business prior to the release of his self-titled 1976 album. The Chicago-born Zevon—the product of an unlikely marriage between a Jewish gambler/gangster father and strict Mormon mother—had been a childhood piano prodigy, written songs for The Turtles, played in a boy-girl folk duo called lyme & cybelle, and made ends meet penning jingles for Gallo wine and Chevrolet. Zevon’s first shot at a solo career came in the late-’60s, under the guidance of Sunset Strip Svengali Kim Fowley. His psych-flecked debut album, Wanted Dead or Alive, was released in 1970 by Liberty Records and promptly flopped. Zevon went on to become the bandleader for The Everly Brothers, struggled to find another record deal, then entered a kind of professional exile in Spain. He was performing nightly in a Sitges bar in 1975 when his old pal, singer-songwriter Jackson Browne, sent a postcard urging Zevon to come back to America, promising to get him a contract with David Geffen’s Asylum label. The resulting 11-track Warren Zevon album—enriched by years of personal struggle and infused with bits of deeply felt autobiography—would prove an uncommonly powerful song cycle. Zevon’s finely etched portraits of the Hollywood demimonde—the hustlers, junkies, rogues, and bit players—came alive in jaw-dropping detail in songs like the desperate addict elegy “Carmelita,” the brutal barroom kiss-off “The French Inhaler,” and the apocalyptic self-examination of “Desperados Under the Eaves.” While a keen student of rock ’n’ roll excess—captured vividly in “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” and “Poor Poor Pitiful Me”—Zevon also proved a fine writer of emotional ballads, with the album’s “Hasten Down the Wind” among his most affecting. Produced by Browne and colored by Waddy Wachtel’s lead guitar work, the album sessions would attract the top names in the LA music scene, with the Eagles’ Don Henley and Glenn Frey, Fleetwood Mac’s Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, the Beach Boys’ Carl Wilson, Bonnie Raitt, and J.D. Souther among those who contributed. Released in May of 1976, Warren Zevon was not a commercial hit but caused a critical stir, with reviewers hailing the arrival of a major songwriting talent. Further confirmation came when Linda Ronstadt—then at the height of her fame—made “Hasten Down the Wind” the title track to her million-selling album a few months later, and covered several more Zevon songs over the next couple years, setting the stage for his own 1978 breakthrough, Excitable Boy.

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About Warren Zevon

The late Warren Zevon was a singer-songwriter and musician known for his wry, cynical, and often self-deprecating lyrics. ∙ With his duo lyme & cybelle, Zevon had a minor Billboard Pop chart hit in 1966 with the song “Follow Me,” which was produced by sunshine-pop icon Bones Howe. ∙ In the early 1970s, he served as band leader and touring keyboardist for The Everly Brothers and also contributed songwriting and arrangements to several Phil Everly solo albums. ∙ His fame grew after Linda Ronstadt cut several of his songs, including “Hasten Down the Wind”—the title track of her Grammy-winning 1976 LP—and “Carmelita.” ∙ The Jackson Browne-produced 1978 LP Excitable Boy was his highest-charting album, reaching No. 8 on Billboard’s Pop chart and producing the hit “Werewolves of London.” ∙ Under the name Hindu Love Gods, Zevon and three members of R.E.M. released a 1990 album of covers, landing an Alternative radio hit with their take on Prince’s “Raspberry Beret.” ∙ He filled in as host or bandleader on David Letterman’s late-night TV show numerous times, and during a 2002 appearance he shared memorable life advice: “Enjoy every sandwich.” ∙ Zevon won two Grammys for 2003’s The Wind, including Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group With Vocal, for “Disorder in the House,” a duet with Bruce Springsteen.

FROM
Chicago, IL, United States
BORN
January 24, 1947
GENRE
Rock

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