He's long overdue. When it comes to dry, laconic dark humour there's Leonard Cohen and Warren Zevon. Funnily enough both of their album discographies extend to 15 albums and both are certainly deceased, but I've been meaning to attack the Zevon back catalog for some time.
The list goes as follows:
The list goes as follows:
Wanted Dead or Alive (1969)
Warren Zevon (1976)
Excitable Boy (1978)
Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School (1980)
Stand in the Fire - Live(1980)
The Envoy (1982)
Sentimental Hygiene (1987)
Transverse City (1989)
Hindu Love Gods (1990)
Mr. Bad Example (1991)
Learning to Flinch - Live (1993)
Mutineer (1995)
Life'll Kill Ya (2000)
My Ride's Here (2002)
The Wind (2003)
WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE
Released: 1969
Warren Zevon
A seven year outlier at the start of his career. It explains why the title track sounds so much like Jethro Tull's 'Teacher', that kind of thing was fashionable in 1969. It reminds me of Peter Gabriel's first solo album too. There's a sense of experimentation with different styles without really settling on anything. It's recognizably Zevon, the gruffness of the voice never really changed through his career but it seems it was so poorly received it knocked him into continuing obscurity until 1976.
The production is quite ropey, and I'm guessing it's a remastered version on Spotify, but there's a real energy to some of the songs. He bangs away at the piano in a familiar style on 'Calcutta' but 'Gorilla' could be a better song if the sound on it wasn't quite so muddy and someone had tempered his descent into experimentation at the end.
The cover of Iko Iko is surprising, not least for the presence of female backing singers The Sweet Trifles who have no Wikipedia page. How's that for obscure? And 'A Bullet For Ramona' is a murder ballad done in the style of Kenny Rogers.
But right in the middle is a taste of things to come. 'On Travelling In The Lightnin'' he sounds like the finished article, and every time you remember that this was recorded in 1969 it begins to sound rather more visionary.
Wanted Dead Or Alive
Hitch Hikin' Woman
She Quit Me
Calcutta
Iko-Iko
Travellin' In The Lightnin'
Tule's Blues
A Bullet For Ramona
Gorilla
Fiery Emblems
WARREN ZEVON
Released 18th May 1976
Warren Zevon
This is effectively his debut after the misfiring false start of Wanted Dead Or Alive' 7 years earlier, in which case it must rank of one of the best debut rock albums of all time. The real joy of Warren Zevon is his storytelling ability. Nearly all his songs fit the definition of a ballad. The sense of place and time is tangible. He hits the target on the very first track with 'Frank And Jesse James'. Zevon's voice is suited to sorrow and tragedy so there's a sense of hopelessness about the brothers' quest for justice as outlaw underdogs. "Keep on riding riding riding" he urges, but you know its not going to be a happy ending - it rarely is in a Zevon song.
The gallows humor is is in place too. 'Poor, Poor Pitiful Me' tells of a guy who claims to be miserable because he's always being pestered by girls, the implication being that he might well be the pesterer in stead. At a push you might say Zevon was writing songs about incels in 1975. It's one of a string of classics that really don't belong on an album from so early in a career, along with 'Mohammed's Radio', the chaotically crashing 'I'll Sleep When I'm Dead' and the magnificent (and possibly my favourite Zevon song of all) 'Desperados Under The Eaves'. However, if you look at the personnel he'd managed to gather around him for this, he'd clearly been building a reputation in Los Angeles in those band-leading years since the first album. There's Jackson Browne, Lindsey Buckingham, Phil Everley, Glen Frey, Don Henley, Stevie Nicks and Bonnie Raitt all knocking around in the background. On top of that Linda Ronstadt took the breakup song 'Hasten Down The Wind' and made it her own.
And yes, as stated there is 'Desperados Under The Eaves'. A masterclass in unconventional songwriting with understated strong emotion running through it. It leaves me wrung out when I listen to it. A man at the end of his tether sitting in a hotel in a trance may not sound like a good basis for a song, but you'll rarely hear better.
Frank And Jesse James
Mama Couldn't Be Persuaded
Backs Turned Looking Down The Path
Hasten Down The Wind
Poor Poor Pitiful Me
The French Inhaler
Mohammed's Radio
I'll Sleep When I'm Dead
Carmelita
Join Me In LA
Desperados Under The Eaves
EXCITABLE BOY
BAD LUCK STREAK IN DANCING SCHOOL
Released: February 15th 1980
Warren Zevon
Warren clearly had the best contacts book on the West Coast. I failed to mention that those parts of Fleetwood Mac that provided the band's name turned up on Excitable Boy and half the Eagles. Linda Ronstadt and Jackson Browne (who's been on every one since the second) all turn up for a bit if session work too. Also, interestingly for me, is 'Jeannie Needs a Shooter', co-written with Bruce Springsteen. A very Bruce-ish title indeed and a recognisable amalgum of their styles.
HINDU LOVE GODS
Released: October 5th 1990
Hindu Love Gods
Zevon's collaboration with three quarters of REM (Stipe was tangentially involved for about 5 minutes it seems) has a fairly rich history culminating in this album reportedly recorded in effectively one take over the course of a booze fuelled night. If they were pissed then they must be bloody brilliant musicians indeed, because their timekeeping seems perfectly fine to me. A bunch of blues-rock cover versions, set apart by Zevon's manic growl and certainly organic sounding enough to convince that they didn't really go into it with a plan.
Prince's 'Raspberry Beret' is what passes for a centrepiece of the whole album. Zevon does some of his trademark vocal asides "That's when I saw her (ooh I saw her!)" but retains the Purple Poseur's incorrect pronunciation of "leisurely". He doesn't even have to do it in order to get the rhyme with "Mr McGhee" but it's
There's also 'Battleship Chains'. The Georgia Satellites' original was something of a minor favourite among my undergraduate social group. I was surprised to find it on here, thinking it must be an older standard blues song, but no, The Sats had the original version, though they didn't write it, nor record it originally, it was presumably quite obscure before then. The HLG's batter through it with a fair amount of gusto.
But largely it's a competent set of musicians blasting away at a number of songs from the usual array of R&B heroes - Robert Johnson ('Walkin' Blues' and 'Travelin' Riverside Blues'), Woody Guthrie ('Vigilante Man'), Muddy Waters ('Mannish Boy' - a bit underpowered if we're being honest) and so on. All good fun. Would get you through a drinking session in a Georgia bar cellar no doubt and who would deny them a night of drinking and jamming that turns into a decent little pay day? No budget for the artwork.
EXCITABLE BOYReleased 18th January 1978
Warren Zevon
I reproduce for you here, the 'Z' section of the index from the doorstop tome that is '1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die'. Note that not only is this album not listed, but there is a straight jump from Zappa to The Zombies. If I was given the money-for-old-rope of compiling a set of album reviews into a glossy stocking filler, I'd at least ensure that this is included as an indispensable entry. I reckon you can make a good case for its predecessor too.
But, there you have it. An album that includes 'Johnny Strikes Up The Band', 'Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner', 'Accidentally Like A Martyr', 'Excitable Boy', 'Lawyers Guns And Money' and 'Werewolves Of London' is apparently not up there with ZZ Top's Eliminator.
It's funny, scathing, sad, beautiful, deranged and quite political. It starts harmlessly enough though, 'Johnny Strikes Up The Band' is apparently simply a celebration of the joy of relaxing in front of the Johnny Carson show. The softness comes from 'Accidentally Like A Martyr' and 'Tenderness on the Block', both regretful gentle songs of love.
But if you're looking for a story of a vengeful headless Scandinavian mercenary ghost stalking the Congo on covert missions for the CIA then there's something here for you too. I claimed that 'Desperados Under The Eaves' might be my favorite Zevon song, but 'Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner' runs it a close second. Its such a well crafted song that tells a story, conveys the waste and horror of war, has a macabre humor and ends with a commentary on the never ending cycle of war across the globe.
Talking of macabre humor, the title track takes it to the limit. The psychotic protagonists crimes escalate until he emerges from jail to dig up bones of the prom date he murdered to make a cage when he gets out, but everyone just shrugs "He's just an excitable boy". It's all done with chirpy doo-wop backing vocals. There 's more of the same on 'Werewolves Of London' "Little old lady got mutilated late last night, Werewolves of London again". Like the marauding lycanthropes are just a bit of a local nuisance. It's easily Zevon's best known song, but at least it doesn't misrepresent him. For the record I'm not keen on Kid Rock's Frankenstein's monster of it in combination with Sweet Home Alabama.
'Veracruz' is overtly a reflection on historical events regarding US incursions into Mexico in 1914 (I had to do a bit of research). 'Lawyers Guns and Money' is a more comic take on an American getting in over their head in foreign parts.
In the middle of all this is an extended jazz-funk groove, 'Night Time In The Switching Yard', the idea being that the music recreates all the shunting and chugging of the rolling stock.
He looks like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth on the front cover.
Johnny Strikes Up The Band
Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner
Excitable Boy
Werewolves Of London
Accidentally Like A Martyr
Night Time In The Switching Yard
Veracruz
Tenderness On The Block
Lawyers Guns and Money
Released: February 15th 1980
Warren Zevon
Warren clearly had the best contacts book on the West Coast. I failed to mention that those parts of Fleetwood Mac that provided the band's name turned up on Excitable Boy and half the Eagles. Linda Ronstadt and Jackson Browne (who's been on every one since the second) all turn up for a bit if session work too. Also, interestingly for me, is 'Jeannie Needs a Shooter', co-written with Bruce Springsteen. A very Bruce-ish title indeed and a recognisable amalgum of their styles.
What I did mention in the Excitable Boy piece is my dislike for Kid Rock's hatchet job on Werewolves. Well maybe there's a tangential link that he didn't think of. He used Lynyrd Skynyrd's Sweet Home Alabama on that record, but Zevon takes a stab at the heart of the sentiment of that song with 'Play It All Night Long', a bleak condemnation of Southern American country living in which the family concerned are blighted by incest, PTSD, cattle diseases and dementia.
Elsewhere there's tales of yuppie gorillas and more mercenaries, but there's a lot of tenderness too, and Ronstadt adds nicely to these on 'Bed Of Coals' and 'Empty Handed Heart'. The one cover version is a goofy rendition of the fairly nonsensical 'A Certain Girl'. There's also a couple of odd little stringed instrument interludes.
This doesn't reach the heights of the previous two albums, although 'Play It All Night Long' is a bona fide classic and 'Jungle Work' prefigures the kind of sound he settled on in the mid-eighties.
Zevon seems to have a bit of a thing for songs about African colonialism, following the decapitated Roland there is now 'Leave My Monkey Alone', about the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya. It's kind of melancholy, but effectively suggests that the white colonizers were too laissez-faire to resist.
TRANSVERSE CITY
Released: October 1989
Warren Zevon
Feeling alienated by our modern technological and globalized world, the cult of celebrity and impending ecological doom? So was Warren Zevon in 1987. It pushes toward a concept album in that the themes are so strongly carried through. The Transverse City of the title track is a nightmare maze of neon, mylar towers and "the song of sheer and torsion", through which the song's protagonist tries to navigate with his "little Pollyanna". Then 'Run Straight Down' is backed by an iron-grey chant of chemical names as something resembling Mega City One and the Cursed Earth from 2000AD is portrayed.
Elsewhere he's on the run from the law down in South America in 'The Long Arm Of The Law', then a Russian soldier having a shitty time in Afghanistan in 'Turbulence', enslavement to computers ('Networking') and to consumerism ('Down At The Mall') and non-functional transport systems ('Gridlock') Even the more contemplative songs are bleak, 'They Moved The Moon' being about loneliness and abandonment.
He relents a little at the end. The closing 'Nobody's In Love This Year' is his customary tender love song
For me the standout track is 'Splendid Isolation', but you have to remember I was about 21 at the time and feeling pretty sorry for myself, so any song with the line "Splendid isolation, I don't need no-one" was bound to appeal. Love the lines "Michael Jackson in Disneyland; Don't have to share it with nobody else; Lock the gates Goofy take my hand; Lead me through the world of self" (although I now notice Hungry Heart levels of double negatives).
You'd think all this would be rather a trial to get through, but Zevon knows how to put a tune together and how to inject his material with just enough humour to sugar the pill. I could listen to this over and over again.
Spotify moves in mysterious ways. Transverse City is unavailable and yet the rest of the back catalogue is present and correct. I have it on CD, so not a big problem, although we expect music to be fully portable and those shiny plastic discs that Kieran Prendiville was smearing jam all over in the early eighties now seem a bit of a clunky solution. It wasn't all that long ago that we did all that ripping and burning of our CDs to get them on our iPods and mp3 players. Now that seems so hopelessly outdated you could probably create a meme of a picture of an iPod shuffle with the caption "No-one under the age of 18 will know what this is" and annoy me greatly by sharing it to my Facebook feed.
Elsewhere there's tales of yuppie gorillas and more mercenaries, but there's a lot of tenderness too, and Ronstadt adds nicely to these on 'Bed Of Coals' and 'Empty Handed Heart'. The one cover version is a goofy rendition of the fairly nonsensical 'A Certain Girl'. There's also a couple of odd little stringed instrument interludes.
This doesn't reach the heights of the previous two albums, although 'Play It All Night Long' is a bona fide classic and 'Jungle Work' prefigures the kind of sound he settled on in the mid-eighties.
Bad Luck Streak In Dancing School
A Certain Girl
Empty Handed Heart
Interlude No. 1
Play It All Night Long
Jeannie Needs A Shooter
Interlude No. 2
Bill Lee
Gorilla, You're a Desperado
Bed Of Coals
Wild Age
THE ENVOY
Released: 16th July 1982
Warren Zevon
We're skipping over Stand In The Fire since I wrote about that live album in the Live Albums 1979-1981 post. I reckon this starts a trilogy of extremely fine albums, being followed by Sentimental Hygiene and Transverse City. This was his 'new stuff 'when I first became aware of Zevon. It's more commercial but retains the mix of sentimentality and biting edge of the previous albums.
The title track is a song that was, is and will remain relevant for the foreseeable future. "Nuclear arms in the Middle East, Israel's attacking the Iraqis, the Syrians are mad at the Lebanese, and Baghdad does whatever she please". Zevon strikes a balance between the quiet heroism of the diplomat trying to make sense of an insane set of conflicts whose origins are lost in the mists of time and the sheer futility of even trying to sort it all out. Still, I guess things have moved on a bit from when Zevon wrote the song but not in a good way. The President's response now is to broadcast ignorance via social media to inflame the situation.
Conversely the opener of side two is the wild abandon of 'Ain't That Pretty At All', in which Warren works himself into a frenzy of rage to the point that he's throwing himself against the wall. His problems range from root canal work to the shortcomings of various European capital cities.
The tragic story in Charlie's Medicine must be assumed to not be about a drug rep who met an unhappy end at the hand of a doctor, but a drug dealer whose inevitable fate caught up with him. The lack of success of this album reputedly led Zevon down a pretty dangerous pharmaceutically enhanced route, so presumably any activity of that kind when the song was written was more or less under control.
There is a lot of gentleness on here as well 'Never Too Late For Love' and 'Let Nothing Come Between You' don't have a cynical note on the stave. The Hula Hula Boys is a sad song of being dumped in Maui which wouldn't be totally out of place on the soundtrack to Lilo and Stitch.
Cover photo shows Zevon about to go on a peace mission. Presumably not to Paris or RoooOOOOMe! where he might get so worked up he'll find an art gallery and hurl himself against the wall.
The Envoy
The Overdraft
The Hula Hula Boys
Jesus Mentioned
Let Nothing Come Between You
Ain't That Pretty At All
Charlies Medicine
Looking For The Next Best Thing
Never Too Late For Love
SENTIMENTAL HYGIENE
Released: 29th August 1987
Warren Zevon
What a great, great, great album. It was my first proper introduction to Warren Zevon and I hadn't listened to it in a long time, but it all came flooding back like it was yesterday. This was a staple of grotty student flats in the Sunderland in 1987 and I had it on tape
There's lots of good songs about boxing, but 'Boom Boom Mancini is my favourite. Of course back in the mid eighties, I had no way of knowing if there really was a fighter called Boom Boom Mancini of if he was a figment of Zevon's imagination. In fact I think I thought he was fictional. The internet provides instant gratification on these things today and in fact Boom Boom Mancini was a world champion and every detail of the songs is correct. The color in the song is in the names of the fighters, Bobby Ciccone, Alexis Arqeulle, Duk Koo Kim (who really did die after a fight with Mancini). I love it's relentless rumbling riff, reminiscent of a relentless pugilist.
Springsteen did a song called 'Factory' too, but his was more of a lament for the daily grind, Zevon's take is more playful I guess, although it does focus on the health and safety risks of working for The Man. It also raises more personal memories with the line "Making polyvinyl chloride in the factory!". I did work in a PVC plant for a year at the time, although not on the factory floor.
Of course Zevon had has his personal problems in the previous few years, so 'Trouble Waiting To Happen' covers his general poor life choices and 'Even A Dog Can Shake Hands' details how everyine wants a piece of you if you're a rock star in California in 1987 (and was co-written with the non-Stipey parts of REM). 'Detox Mansion' speaks for itself and there's also the appeal for forgiveness for past misdemeanours in the touching 'Reconsider Me'.
Zevon seems to have a bit of a thing for songs about African colonialism, following the decapitated Roland there is now 'Leave My Monkey Alone', about the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya. It's kind of melancholy, but effectively suggests that the white colonizers were too laissez-faire to resist.
Sentimental Hygiene
Boom Boom Mancini
The Factory
Trouble Waiting To Happen
Reconsider Me
Detox Mansion
Bad Karma
Even A Dog Can Shake Hands
The Heartache
Leave My Monkey Alone
Released: October 1989
Warren Zevon
Feeling alienated by our modern technological and globalized world, the cult of celebrity and impending ecological doom? So was Warren Zevon in 1987. It pushes toward a concept album in that the themes are so strongly carried through. The Transverse City of the title track is a nightmare maze of neon, mylar towers and "the song of sheer and torsion", through which the song's protagonist tries to navigate with his "little Pollyanna". Then 'Run Straight Down' is backed by an iron-grey chant of chemical names as something resembling Mega City One and the Cursed Earth from 2000AD is portrayed.
Elsewhere he's on the run from the law down in South America in 'The Long Arm Of The Law', then a Russian soldier having a shitty time in Afghanistan in 'Turbulence', enslavement to computers ('Networking') and to consumerism ('Down At The Mall') and non-functional transport systems ('Gridlock') Even the more contemplative songs are bleak, 'They Moved The Moon' being about loneliness and abandonment.
He relents a little at the end. The closing 'Nobody's In Love This Year' is his customary tender love song
For me the standout track is 'Splendid Isolation', but you have to remember I was about 21 at the time and feeling pretty sorry for myself, so any song with the line "Splendid isolation, I don't need no-one" was bound to appeal. Love the lines "Michael Jackson in Disneyland; Don't have to share it with nobody else; Lock the gates Goofy take my hand; Lead me through the world of self" (although I now notice Hungry Heart levels of double negatives).
You'd think all this would be rather a trial to get through, but Zevon knows how to put a tune together and how to inject his material with just enough humour to sugar the pill. I could listen to this over and over again.
Spotify moves in mysterious ways. Transverse City is unavailable and yet the rest of the back catalogue is present and correct. I have it on CD, so not a big problem, although we expect music to be fully portable and those shiny plastic discs that Kieran Prendiville was smearing jam all over in the early eighties now seem a bit of a clunky solution. It wasn't all that long ago that we did all that ripping and burning of our CDs to get them on our iPods and mp3 players. Now that seems so hopelessly outdated you could probably create a meme of a picture of an iPod shuffle with the caption "No-one under the age of 18 will know what this is" and annoy me greatly by sharing it to my Facebook feed.
Transverse City
Run Straight Down
The Long Arm Of The Law
Turbulence
They Moved The Moon
Splendid Isolation
Networking
Gridlock
Down In The Mall
Nobody's In Love This Year
Released: October 5th 1990
Hindu Love Gods
Zevon's collaboration with three quarters of REM (Stipe was tangentially involved for about 5 minutes it seems) has a fairly rich history culminating in this album reportedly recorded in effectively one take over the course of a booze fuelled night. If they were pissed then they must be bloody brilliant musicians indeed, because their timekeeping seems perfectly fine to me. A bunch of blues-rock cover versions, set apart by Zevon's manic growl and certainly organic sounding enough to convince that they didn't really go into it with a plan.
Prince's 'Raspberry Beret' is what passes for a centrepiece of the whole album. Zevon does some of his trademark vocal asides "That's when I saw her (ooh I saw her!)" but retains the Purple Poseur's incorrect pronunciation of "leisurely". He doesn't even have to do it in order to get the rhyme with "Mr McGhee" but it's
There's also 'Battleship Chains'. The Georgia Satellites' original was something of a minor favourite among my undergraduate social group. I was surprised to find it on here, thinking it must be an older standard blues song, but no, The Sats had the original version, though they didn't write it, nor record it originally, it was presumably quite obscure before then. The HLG's batter through it with a fair amount of gusto.
But largely it's a competent set of musicians blasting away at a number of songs from the usual array of R&B heroes - Robert Johnson ('Walkin' Blues' and 'Travelin' Riverside Blues'), Woody Guthrie ('Vigilante Man'), Muddy Waters ('Mannish Boy' - a bit underpowered if we're being honest) and so on. All good fun. Would get you through a drinking session in a Georgia bar cellar no doubt and who would deny them a night of drinking and jamming that turns into a decent little pay day? No budget for the artwork.
Walkin' Blues
Travelin' Riverside Blues
Raspberry Beret
Crosscut Saw
Junko Pardner
Mannish Boy
Wang Dang Doodle
Battleship Chains
I'm a One-Woman Man
Vigilante Man
MR BAD EXAMPLE
Released: 15thh October 1991
Warren Zevon
Inspirational. At least in the sense that two of the songs lent their titles to other forms of art. There's 'Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead' a film starring Andy Garcia whose character's name of Jimmy The Saint comes from the early Springsteen song 'After The Flood'. Never seen it and almost certainly never will. Also, there is the book, 'Quite Ugly One Morning' by Christopher Brookmyre, a blackly comic Scottish thriller which is the first of Brookmyre's Jack Parlabane novels. I have read that, at least twice, and would recommend Brookmyre to anyone willing to listen to me. The song itself has a thumping guitar riff, backed up some sitar-plucking and is suitable for anyone who doesn't like opening their eyes before noon.
This maintains Zevon's high standards but the subject matter is as skewed as ever. His 'Model Citizen' really isn't and 'Finishing Touches' is the bitterest of breakup songs. We spend some time in a crack den in 'Angel Dressed In Black' and the title track is just a relentless litany of misdemeanours crashed out to a one-man-band marching beat. Not so sure that a career in dodgy hair transplants is quite the moneyspinner he claims it to be though.
Renegade reminds me of 'Desperadoes Under The Eaves', there's even an echo in the respective titles. It could be a lament for a forgotten section of society in the Deep South, but with Zevon it's sometimes hard to get a handle on where he actually stands. It feels sad and touching though.
I really like 'Heartache Spoken Here', even if it is just for the unmistakable contribution of Dwight Yoakam on backing vocals and both Suzie Lightning' and 'Searching For A Heart' provide the slower, more thoughtful moments.
A portrait album cover as usual, with Warren setting a very bad example by having a drag.
Finishing Touches
Suzie Lightning
Model Citizen
Angel Dressed In Black
Mr Bad Example
Renegade
Heartache Spoken Here
Quite Ugly One Morning
Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead
Searching For A Heart
MUTINEER
Released: 23rd May 1995
Warren Zevon
My interest in Zevon never waned, nor in music in general, but there seems to be a clear point in the mid-nineties when I stopped buying music, and I never bought a Zevon album after Mr. Bad Example. FYI I got married in 1996, but remember stat-fans, correlation does not necessarily imply causation.
A couple of the songs on here were co-written with author Carl Hiaasen, so 'Seminole Bingo' in particular has a very Hiaasen-ish Florida setting. The other 'Rottweiler Blues' follows another key Zevon theme, animals, and particularly Monkeys and Dogs. There's also, 'Monkey Wash, Donkey Rinse' straight after it.
This feels like a calmer album than previous ones. Zevon always throws in some refelctive stuff, but it's more common on this. 'Something Bad Happened To A Clown' feels like a soothed version of 'Play It All Night Long' and 'Similar To Rain', The Indifference of Heaven' follow in the same vein. The latter of these also namechecks Bruce and Patti (and Billy and Christie).
But the bitterness remains, 'Poisonous Lookalike' is a misogynist take on a broken down relationship, with Zevon alleging the girl he fell in love with has been replaced by the title character, but it's pretty clear who is the real weak link.
This is one of the Warren-looking-ill covers, but he wasn't at the time, at least not to his knowledge.
LEARNING TO FLINCH
Released: April 13th 1993
Warren Zevon
I recently filled in one of those things on Facebook where you list out artists and songs in a number of categories with answers pertinent to yourself. One of them was 'The artist you wished you'd seen live but never have'. I answered the Stones, but I for some reason I forgot Warren Zevon, and unlike Jagger and co, who can still potentially come out for one more stagger across the world's stages, the opportunity for Zevon is gone, so it would have been a better answer. I don't usually include live albums, but Zevon has only done two and I'd already done Stand In The Fire for a previous post, so this one gets included. I'm glad I did, it's an acoustic set and the recording is sufficiently dodgy to give an impression that you might even be there. It also as most live albums tend to do, stands as a good 'Best Of...' compilation with the bonus of fresh interpretations.
The live album reviews I've done included a 'Band Bantz' section, in which the verbal musings of the artist from the stage were reported. Zevon provides some of this in German, at the end of 'Lawyers, Guns And Money', before launching into a busker-ish version of Mr. Bad Example which comes across as a rather cheery mischievous romp instead of a catalogue of appalling behaviour. He follows in the same vein with 'Excitable Boy' in a saloon piano style.
He tries his hand at slide guitar on 'Worrier King' with mixed results before launching into 'Roland Chorale' an extended pipe-organ style intro to 'Roland...' which is followed by a second common-or-garden intro before getting into an 11 minute version of the song which includes a what resembles a musical dream sequence just before the final verse which includes a Bill Withers Lovely Day length held note of the word "Berkeley".
There's a couple of previews of songs coming on the next album, Mutineer, 'The Indifference of Heaven' and 'Piano Fighter' but he finishes with a couple of favourites, adapting 'Poor Poor Pitiful Me' into a kind of southern bluegrass fusion with 'Waltzing Matilda' intro and 'Old Brown Rosie' bridge followed by 'Play It All Night Long', played as straight as it can be.
Splendid Isolation
Lawyers Guns And Money
Mr. Bad Example
Excitable Boy
Hasten Down The Wind
The French Inhaler
Worrier King
Roland Chorale
Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner
Searching For A Heart
Boom Boom Mancini
Jungle Work
Piano Fighter
Werewolves Of London
The Indifference of Heaven
Poor Poor Pitiful Me
Play It All Night Long
Released: 23rd May 1995
Warren Zevon
My interest in Zevon never waned, nor in music in general, but there seems to be a clear point in the mid-nineties when I stopped buying music, and I never bought a Zevon album after Mr. Bad Example. FYI I got married in 1996, but remember stat-fans, correlation does not necessarily imply causation.
A couple of the songs on here were co-written with author Carl Hiaasen, so 'Seminole Bingo' in particular has a very Hiaasen-ish Florida setting. The other 'Rottweiler Blues' follows another key Zevon theme, animals, and particularly Monkeys and Dogs. There's also, 'Monkey Wash, Donkey Rinse' straight after it.
This feels like a calmer album than previous ones. Zevon always throws in some refelctive stuff, but it's more common on this. 'Something Bad Happened To A Clown' feels like a soothed version of 'Play It All Night Long' and 'Similar To Rain', The Indifference of Heaven' follow in the same vein. The latter of these also namechecks Bruce and Patti (and Billy and Christie).
But the bitterness remains, 'Poisonous Lookalike' is a misogynist take on a broken down relationship, with Zevon alleging the girl he fell in love with has been replaced by the title character, but it's pretty clear who is the real weak link.
This is one of the Warren-looking-ill covers, but he wasn't at the time, at least not to his knowledge.
Seminole Bingo
Something Bad Happened To A Clown
Similar To Rain
The Indifference Of Heaven
Jesus Was a Cross Maker
Poisonous Lookalike
Piano Fighter
Rottweiler Blues
Monkey Wash, Donkey Rinse
Mutineer
MY RIDE'S HERE
Released: 7th May 2002
Warren Zevon
This still predates Zevon's terminal cancer diagnosis. He was always quite morbid but there's still a feeling he could see it coming. There's quite a different feel to the opening two tracks, which are hefty, guitar rock songs. 'Sacrificial Lambs' is a takedown of every religion you could possibly think of and 'Basket Case' reforges some kind of link back to Carl Hiaasen and his book of the same name. It's a fairly meaningless song in itself to do with mutual madness in a relationship.
Then he runs off in a Celtic folk direction with the next two, more Scottish for 'Lord Byron's Luggage' and definitely Irish for 'MacGillycuddy's Reeks'. A romantic tale that cutely relates "the valleys and the peaks" to more mundane things like EKG charts and the NASDAQ.
The rest is in a more conventional Zevon style. There's a collaboration with Hunter S Thompson with 'You're A Whole Different Person When You're Scared'. A mariage made in...somewhere? It meanders darkly, as you might expect.
There's something of 'Boom Boom Mancini' in 'Hit Somebody (The Hockey Song)', but the Canadian farm boy hockey enforcer Buddy is fictional I think. It's a sad tale, Buddy gets his big chance to score a goal in his final game and is violently nobbled by a Finn and seemingly dies on the ice. David Letterman interjects "Hit Somebody" at appropriate points in the song.
It's easy to ascribe hidden meaning and intuition of pending death in pretty much any of Zevon's songs. It's no big leap to think 'My Ride's Here' is another example of his foreknowledge, but who knows? There's a live cover of it by Sprinsgteen on the 'Enjoy Every Sandwich' tribute album, seemig recorded very soon after Zevon's death. They're very different interpretations, Springsteen makes it wistful, Zevon is a but more ebullient.
Dog and Monkey Watch: "Every dog has it's day" on 'Sacrificial Lambs' and "I've got a bitter pot of je ne sais quoi; Guess what-I'm stirring it with, a monkey's paw" on 'Genius' and "Like a dog that whines and cries" on 'This Time I Have To Leave". He is obsessed.
THE WIND
Released: 26th August 2003
Warren Zevon
Ah, the Impending Demise Album. A niche sub-genre indeed. Bowie knocked it out of the park and set the standard. Johnny Cash produced several as he saw the end coming. Roy Orbison didn't know he was producing one, but did himself justice. Zevon was fully aware that his time was limited, and although the themes are there, due to the nature of his whole body of work, you'd be forgiven for thinking that this is just business as usual.
There's a duet with Springsteen, 'Disorder In the House', where Bruce limits himself to yelping his vocal in the background. It's quite joyous and they sound like they're having a blast. 'Knockin' On Heaven's Door' is an obvious move really. No one can sing it wothout sounding weary and Zevon can do lugubrious like no other. He's pleading for it to "open up" by the end.
"Let's do another bad one then, cuz I like it when the blood drains from Dave's faaaace" drawls Warren at the start of 'Numb As a Statue', the first of a couple of simple love songs, the other being 'El Amor De Mi Vida', which features brushed drums that sound like a wheezing breaths. He gets a bit wheezy himself trying to cope with the more upbeat 'The Rest Of The Night' a real call back to the style of the Excitable Boy album and on 'Please Stay', the song that probably most directly addresses his fate, he really does sound like he's struggling a bit.
If you have any doubt about where Zevon sits in the rock pantheon just look at the musicians who came together to produce this album. The mournful 'Prison Grove', features Ry Cooder, Jim Keltner, Jackson Browne, Springsteen again and his mate Billy Bob Thornton. Elsewhere Emmylou, Tom Petty, Dwight Yoakam, Don Henley and John Waite put in a shift.
The last song on the last album, with the knowledge that it would always remain that way, is 'Keep Me In Your Heart'. No side, no cynicism, just a man leaving the world and asking to be remembered fondly.
LIFE'LL KILL YA
Released: 25th January 2000
Warren Zevon
Zevon doesn't really do 'returns to form' he's always been consistently good, but the tale told on his Wikipedia page is that he had two 'comebacks' and this marks the second. In this case it means he had a long lay off, 5 years, and while this is of his usual exceptional standard, it doesn't come after a series of time-markers that you might attribute to the king of the r.t.f, Mr D Bowie.
The title track is the essence of Zevon, dark funny and and uplifting all at once. Only he can get away with the line "Life'll kill ya, then you'll be dead". One of Zevon's favourite animal references is also back in 'Porcelain Monkey'. It refers to the item owned by Elvis and the song is a lament for his final decline. Here's a picture of the titular ceramic simian. There's no accouting for taste. There's also a passing reference to a dog in 'Hostage-O', which seems to follow another theme of songs about people in difficult situations (Desperado, Mutineer, Renegade)
For 'I'll Slow You Down' he goes a little Tom Petty backed by the Byrds. I'm not sure the strained vocal really suits him. Talking of Tom Petty, when Zevon's cover of Stevie Winwood's 'Back In The High Life' started up, I was struck by its similarity to 'Free Fallin'. You have to think that Zevon is injecting some irony into sentiment of the song.
The irony of the whole album is that there is a hell of a lot about death on it but Zevon hadn't had his diagnosis yet, and presumably had no inkling that he had only a couple of years left (or maybe there was an inkling and that's the point?). 'My Shit's Fucked Up' is a straightforward account of going to the doctor and being told you're in trouble. On the same theme 'Ourselves To Know' is an odd song. It seems to be about going on a mediaeval pilgrimage to Jerusalem from Constantinople with the advice to make your peace with the world before you depart. He can't have been feeling that well can he?
And finally, 'Don't Let Us Get Sick' might be an anthem for the turmoil the world is currently in at the time of writing. With everyone locked down in their houses as we wait for a killer disease to pass over. I reproduce the chorus in full here:
"Don't let us get sick
Don't let us get old
Don't let us get stupid, all right?
Just make us be brave7th May 2002
And make us play nice
And let us be together tonight"
Don't let us get old
Don't let us get stupid, all right?
Just make us be brave7th May 2002
And make us play nice
And let us be together tonight"
There's a spirituality to this album that hasn't been very obvious before with Zevon, the ultimate cynical humanist. His real troubles were just about to begin, but there is a feeling that he knew he was going to have to pay a price for the years of hard living.
I Was In The House When The House Burned Down
Life'll Kill Ya
Porcelain Monkey
For My Next Trick I'll Need a Volunteer
I'll Slow You Down
Hostage-O
Dirty Little Religion
Back In The High LIfe
My Shit's Fucked Up
Fistful Of Rain
Ourselves to Know
Don't Let Us Get Sick
Released: 7th May 2002
Warren Zevon
This still predates Zevon's terminal cancer diagnosis. He was always quite morbid but there's still a feeling he could see it coming. There's quite a different feel to the opening two tracks, which are hefty, guitar rock songs. 'Sacrificial Lambs' is a takedown of every religion you could possibly think of and 'Basket Case' reforges some kind of link back to Carl Hiaasen and his book of the same name. It's a fairly meaningless song in itself to do with mutual madness in a relationship.
Then he runs off in a Celtic folk direction with the next two, more Scottish for 'Lord Byron's Luggage' and definitely Irish for 'MacGillycuddy's Reeks'. A romantic tale that cutely relates "the valleys and the peaks" to more mundane things like EKG charts and the NASDAQ.
The rest is in a more conventional Zevon style. There's a collaboration with Hunter S Thompson with 'You're A Whole Different Person When You're Scared'. A mariage made in...somewhere? It meanders darkly, as you might expect.
There's something of 'Boom Boom Mancini' in 'Hit Somebody (The Hockey Song)', but the Canadian farm boy hockey enforcer Buddy is fictional I think. It's a sad tale, Buddy gets his big chance to score a goal in his final game and is violently nobbled by a Finn and seemingly dies on the ice. David Letterman interjects "Hit Somebody" at appropriate points in the song.
It's easy to ascribe hidden meaning and intuition of pending death in pretty much any of Zevon's songs. It's no big leap to think 'My Ride's Here' is another example of his foreknowledge, but who knows? There's a live cover of it by Sprinsgteen on the 'Enjoy Every Sandwich' tribute album, seemig recorded very soon after Zevon's death. They're very different interpretations, Springsteen makes it wistful, Zevon is a but more ebullient.
Dog and Monkey Watch: "Every dog has it's day" on 'Sacrificial Lambs' and "I've got a bitter pot of je ne sais quoi; Guess what-I'm stirring it with, a monkey's paw" on 'Genius' and "Like a dog that whines and cries" on 'This Time I Have To Leave". He is obsessed.
Sacrificial Lambs
Basket Case
Lord Byron's Luggage
MacGillycuddy's Reeks
You're Whole Different Person When You're Scared
Hit Somebody (The Hockey Song)
Genius
Laissez-moi Tranquille
I Have To Leave
My Ride's Here.
Released: 26th August 2003
Warren Zevon
Ah, the Impending Demise Album. A niche sub-genre indeed. Bowie knocked it out of the park and set the standard. Johnny Cash produced several as he saw the end coming. Roy Orbison didn't know he was producing one, but did himself justice. Zevon was fully aware that his time was limited, and although the themes are there, due to the nature of his whole body of work, you'd be forgiven for thinking that this is just business as usual.
There's a duet with Springsteen, 'Disorder In the House', where Bruce limits himself to yelping his vocal in the background. It's quite joyous and they sound like they're having a blast. 'Knockin' On Heaven's Door' is an obvious move really. No one can sing it wothout sounding weary and Zevon can do lugubrious like no other. He's pleading for it to "open up" by the end.
"Let's do another bad one then, cuz I like it when the blood drains from Dave's faaaace" drawls Warren at the start of 'Numb As a Statue', the first of a couple of simple love songs, the other being 'El Amor De Mi Vida', which features brushed drums that sound like a wheezing breaths. He gets a bit wheezy himself trying to cope with the more upbeat 'The Rest Of The Night' a real call back to the style of the Excitable Boy album and on 'Please Stay', the song that probably most directly addresses his fate, he really does sound like he's struggling a bit.
If you have any doubt about where Zevon sits in the rock pantheon just look at the musicians who came together to produce this album. The mournful 'Prison Grove', features Ry Cooder, Jim Keltner, Jackson Browne, Springsteen again and his mate Billy Bob Thornton. Elsewhere Emmylou, Tom Petty, Dwight Yoakam, Don Henley and John Waite put in a shift.
The last song on the last album, with the knowledge that it would always remain that way, is 'Keep Me In Your Heart'. No side, no cynicism, just a man leaving the world and asking to be remembered fondly.
Dirty Life And Times
Disorder In The House
Knockin' On Heaven's Door
Numb As A Statue
She's Too Good For Me
Prison Grove
El Amor De Mi Vida
The Rest Of The Night
Please Stay
Rub Me Raw
Keep Me In Your Heart
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