“Yeah, we gots lotsa of time,” he laughs. The dark, deep voice is measured and precise, the long pauses between phrases appropriately disconcerting and the humour with a sardonic edge is intact. Yet in his apartment in West Hollywood he sounds just fine, thank you. Try this from his album, Mr Bad Example, the song Model Citizen: “torment the mailman, terrorise the maid, try to teach ‘em manners, whip ‘em into shape.down in the basement I’ve got a Craftsman lathe, show it to the children when they misbehave.” Preconceptions are inverted and the clown has a dark heart.Īge doesn’t seem to have mellowed him much as this “unapologetically harsh, nasty, ironic and really rather terrific” singer-songwriter (Time, late 91) still spins out a weird lyric. Like Gary Larson’s Far Side cartoons, Zevon’s songs offer skew-headed humour with an undercurrent of disturbing distortions of reality. You suspected Zevon wasn’t in the rock encyclopaedias simply because he didn’t quite fit. Nor does it allow for years of alcohol addiction (seven in all, the result of stage fright), his reputation for erratic and dangerous behaviour (put him at the top of stairs and he’d dive off to see how it felt was the usual story) or for the boy who loved Stravinsky growing into the man who would pen those classic, desperate lines “send lawyers, guns and money, Dad, the shit has hit the fan.” Time to move on to the Zombies.īut that doesn’t quite explain a song like Excitable Boy, about a guy who rubbed pot roast on his chest, sank his teeth into the leg of an usherette, raped and murdered a girl at the junior prom, then built a cage with her bones. Include the words “psyche” and “disturbing” and you’ve probably got “Warren Zevon (b Chicago 24 Jan ’47)” down into a few neat paragraphs. Ī few album titles down the subsequent years and the occasional quick quote to round out his career. That he played piano for the Everly Brothers, wrote a few jingles, penned Poor Poor Pitiful Me and Hasten Down the Wind which Linda Ronstadt turned into hits in the mid-70s, was part of that Eagles/Jackson Browne LA clique and scored his own one-off hit with Werewolves of London. He got a snippy microscopic reference in the 91 New Illustrated Rock Handbook (“well-established but usually hitless”) and a massive tome from the same period by Phil Hardy and Stephen Barnard didn’t mention him at all.Ī few others get to the usual stuff. ∙ 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.The various encyclopaedias of rock don’t do justice to Warren Zevon. ∙ 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.” released a 1990 album of covers, landing an Alternative radio hit with their take on Prince’s “Raspberry Beret.” ∙ Under the name Hindu Love Gods, Zevon and three members of R.E.M. 8 on Billboard’s Pop chart and producing the hit “Werewolves of London.” ∙ The Jackson Browne-produced 1978 LP Excitable Boy was his highest-charting album, reaching No. ∙ 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.” ∙ 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. ∙ 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. The late Warren Zevon was a singer-songwriter and musician known for his wry, cynical, and often self-deprecating lyrics.
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