Unless you're hard-core, what you know about Warren Zevon is that he wrote “Werewolves of London” and some song that had the line “send lawyers, guns and money,” and that he contracted an incurable form of lung cancer and made a final record and, in the fall of 2003, died.
Or you know his name because there's a tribute CD out [October, 2004], with folks like Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Jackson Browne, Don Henley and many more on it.
Why, you may wonder, were they so fond of this Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter?
Well, he was charming. Witty. Ironic. Self-deprecating. Not qualities often associated with rock stars. But then, Zevon was the son of a minor Los Angeles gangster; he knew his way around people.
More to the point, he was talented. Across the board. He wrote great lyrics. And he wrote great music. He was The Compleat Package. The bookend, in 1976, to Jackson Browne.
And it is to 1976 that we turn, on the theory that first releases are often the best releases --- the purest expressions of talent and ambition.
Certainly that was true of Warren Zevon's first, self-titled CD. It's got ambition all over it. Jackson Browne was the producer. Stevie Nicks and Bonnie Raitt and Don Henley and Phil Everly sang on it. The musicians are on the order of Lindsay Buckingham and Glenn Frey. Linda Ronstadt would get hit after hit from this collection.
There are eleven songs on this CD, and if there's one clinker, it has the good sense to be short. Most are love songs, though the love is bent all out of shape.
As here:
She's so many women
He can't find the one who was his friend
So he's hanging on to half her heart
He can't have the restless part
So he tells her to hasten down the wind
And here:
Well, I met a girl in West Hollywood I ain't naming names
She really worked me over good
She was just like Jesse James
She 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
Naturally, the man who endures these women has what might be called a tragic viewpoint:
I'd lay my head on the railroad tracks
And wait for the Double "E"
But the railroad don't run no more
Poor, poor pitiful me
That drunk/stoned take on life extends even to the last song, a serious meditation on the end of California as we know it.
Don't the sun look angry through the trees
Don't the trees look like crucified thieves
Don't you feel like Desperados under the eaves
Heaven help the one who leaves 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
Don't the sun look angry at me
I was sitting in the Hollywood Hawaiian Hotel
I was listening to the air conditioner hum
It went mmmmmm.
And then there's a gospel choir, singing “Look away...” But if you listen closely, they're singing “Look away down Gower Avenue, Look away...” --- that beautiful choral sound is an invitation to look down a grotty Los Angeles Street. You feel the inspiration and get the humor all at once; emotions wash together, and you realize you're in the presence of a presence.
Warren Zevon knew that a little sincerity goes a long way. In this CD, made before fame pushed his tongue further into his cheek, he had just the right amount. He'd go on to make other, bigger-selling CDs, but this one's the keeper.
--- by Jesse Kornbluth, for HeadButler.com
To buy "Warren Zevon" from Amazon.com, click here.
