Among the most notable acts of personal altruism to have occurred in rock music are the nurturing of a young Rod Stewart by Long John Baldry and the generous guidance Pete Townshend gave Thunderclap Newman in bringing their superb 1969 single ‘Something in the Air‘ and equally memorable ‘Hollywood Dream‘ album to fruition.
But in terms of selfless dedication on behalf of another, then the case of Jackson Browne and his unstinting dedication to make known the songwriting genius of Warren Zevon is hard to beat.
Such was the belief Browne had in his extraordinarily talented but wayward friend, when Zevon quit the L.A. music scene in the early-70s to begin a life that would entail drinking copious amounts of vodka while playing in the bars of Sitges (a coastal town in northern Spain), it was Browne who kept the light burning for Warren on the Hollywood home front.
Regularly performing Zevon compositions at his concerts, these songs were picked up by songstress supreme Linda Ronstadt and subsequently became a feature in the run of excellent albums she was making at the time.
Eventually, having secured Zevon a recording contract with Asylum, the label to whom he, Ronstadt and the Eagles were signed, Browne persuaded his estranged compadre to end the Spanish sojourn and return to Los Angeles – the clincher being Jackson carrying out producer duties on the record Zevon had been booked to make.
With a trove of outstanding songs to record, Browne carolled members of Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles, along with Bonnie Raitt, J.D. Souther, Ned Doheny, Bobby Keys, a Beach Boy, an Everly Brother and almost every name session player in town to Sunset Sound studios during the summer of 1975.
Even now the roster of musicians and singers looks too good to be true, a description which also fits the album to which they contributed – and in a year when Asylum Records could also boast ‘Hotel California‘ (Eagles), ‘The Pretender‘ (Browne) and ‘Hasten Down the Wind‘ (Ronstadt), ‘WARREN ZEVON‘ is so remarkable to be, by a pinch, the pick of this brilliant bunch – and perhaps by virtue the best LP made by anyone in 1976.
Born in Chicago on January 24 1947, his father William Zevon, a Russian-Jewish immigrant, was a known associate of notorious L.A. mobster Mickey Cohen. When Warren, an only child, was 13 the family moved to Fresno, California, where it was later reported young Zevon had the highest IQ ever recorded at the local school. During the same period his proficiency at the piano was brought to the attention of Igor Stravinsky, the teenager playing several times for the legendary classical composer at his Los Angeles home.
After his parents divorced Zevon set out on the long, meandering path that would eventually lead to stardom, his first brush with fame occurring as part of a folk-rock duo named Lyme and Cybelle, Zevon penning an engaging Byrds-sounding number entitled ‘Follow Me‘ which was a minor US hit in the Spring of 1966.
When further success proved elusive Zevon headed back to the West Coast, where between developing into a Hollywood barfly he became a songwriting gun for hire, composing Kinks-like material for The Turtles before landing the folk-blues cut ‘She Quit Me‘ (performing the song himself), on the soundtrack of Oscar winning 1969 film drama ‘Midnight Cowboy.’
The same year, under the guidance of L.A. music scene maverick Kim Fowley, he cut the largely dreadful ‘Wanted Dead or Alive‘ album, a record which despite a couple of songs hinting at his potential sank without trace as a forgettable late-60s curio. It would resurface from the abyss on the back of Zevon hitting the big time with the ‘Excitable Boy‘ LP ten years later, but is for completists only – naturally your genial host at SAMTIMONIOUS.com has a, rarely-played, copy.
Through the early 70s Zevon held the job as bandleader and arranger for the Everly Brothers – the role allowing him to forge connections with guitarists Waddy Wachtel and future Fleetwood Mac man Lindsey Buckingham. Sessions for a second Warren Zevon album became of a stop-start nature, but the repute of songs such as ‘Join Me in L.A.,’ ‘Hasten Down the Wind,’ ‘The French Inhaler‘ and ‘Carmelita‘ proceeded the reputation of a record that rarely appeared likely to be completed.
An early convert to the cause, Jackson Browne quickly realised Zevon was far superior to what ‘Wanted Dead or Alive‘ had suggested.
Two excellent albums into a career that would see him become, in the words of Bonnie Raitt, ‘a seminal artist of our time,’ Browne drew on a mix of folk and country rock in delivering his exquisite lyrical ballads that at times were appeals for redemption on behalf of a generation who had seen hopeful 60s idealism replaced by the darker tones of 70s cynicism.
While they had friendship and musical sensibilities in common, the two men differed greatly in the theme and context of their lyrics. Browne placed great faith in mankind collectively rising to a greater level of empowerment and although Zevon was not exactly saying it was too late for such aspirations, the lowlife protagonists in his downbeat Los Angeles-based dramas had long since passed the point of salvation – be they the hopeless junkie in ‘Carmelita‘ or narrator of ‘Join Me in L.A.’ who admits in the very first line:
‘They say this place is evil/That ain’t why I stay.’
But even songs as accomplished as these could not save his 1972 album project from being aborted (most of the intended tracks appear on the 2008 ‘Preludes‘ collection confirming it as the great ‘lost’ album of the era). With funds along with interest in his career at negligible levels, Zevon upped sticks for Catalonia. The man persuaded to return from Spain by Browne was apparently upbeat about his prospects, came armed with more songs for a list already compiled by the producer – and was by now a full-blown alcoholic.
Suffering from blackouts, obsessed with guns, fascinated by violence and moving from one scene of alcohol-induced late night carnage to another, the life of Warren Zevon at this time was that of a character who someone could write great songs about – that somebody of course being Zevon, the deranged figures in the crunching rock tracks and human flotsam in his loser-bar laments, all bearing resemblance to their creator.
Guns and violence are to the fore on the opening track although not in relation to mid-70s Los Angeles – Zevon going back a century to recount the story of ‘Frank and Jesse James.’ From a gentle piano opening the words quickly mythologise these ruthless sibling killers of the Old West, a top-notch session band including Wachtel and David Lindley, with Everly Brother Phil singing harmony, quickly into the fray as Zevon sets the scene:
‘On a small Missouri farm back when the west was young, two boys learned to rope and ride and be handy with a gun/ War broke out between the states and they joined up with Quantrill/And it was over in Clay County Frank and Jesse finally learned to kill.’
Cited by ex-wife Crystal as the song he was most proud of, his eulogising of the bloodthirsty brothers concludes with, ‘No one knows just where they came to be misunderstood/But the poor Missouri farmers knew, Frank and Jesse would do the best they could,’ and while a hell of a way to begin the album, it is not the best song on the record or even the first side – that honour, in the latter case, belonging to song-noir masterwork ‘The French Inhaler‘ which closes side one.
Running a dual narrative of his failing relationship with former girlfriend Tule Livingston and scenes from the Norman Mailer biography of Marilyn Monroe, the themes overlap with deeply affecting poignancy – ‘How’re you going to get around, in this sleazy bedroom town/If you don’t put yourself up for sale‘ – the days when Monroe was a starlet not altogether different to the present day, both sexes frequenting the same dives in the hope of making connections or just drinking to forget:
‘So I drank up all the money, Yes, I drank up all the money, with these phonies in this Hollywood bar/These friends of mine in this Hollywood bar.’
But this being Warren Zevon cynicism rather than self-pity is the order of the day.
‘Loneliness and frustration, we both came down with an acute case/And when the lights came up at two/I caught a glimpse of you/And your face looked like something death brought with him in his suitcase.‘
With a subtle string arrangement, superb harmonies from Eagles Henley and Frey and just enough electric guitar from Wachtel to prevent the melody from becoming mawkish, ‘The French Inhaler‘ is so vivid it could be a missing scene from ‘L.A. Confidential‘ – Zevon writing like James Ellroy, even before Ellroy did.
The shadow-lands of Los Angeles and the forlorn, often bewildered individuals who inhabit them are rarely far from the surface on an album that paints a far from flattering portrait of the ‘City of Angels.’
With its Mexican-folk overtones, the drug addict boyfriend of ‘Carmelita‘ is ‘strung out on heroin‘ – this depiction of L.A. as far removed from ‘Life in the Fast Lane‘ as it is possible to be. By way of irony Eagle Frey does a nice turn in Latin flourishes on guitar (chord sequences that would serve him well on the Eagles’ forthcoming opus), but as ever the real glory belongs to Zevon, whose imagery even reaches to a meeting with the dealer:
‘And I went to meet my man/He hangs out down on Alvarado Street, by the Pioneer chicken stand.’
If he is not the sorry case at the centre of that song, there is a sense of his own persona running through the fiery rockers, ‘Poor Poor Pitiful Me‘ and ‘I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead.’
Covered majestically by Ms Ronstadt, ‘Poor Poor Pitiful Me‘ is an explosive tale of Warren being pursued by smitten women and the woe it is causing him. The backing line-up (Wachtel again excelling on guitar) rock with the abandon of ‘Sticky Fingers‘ era Stones, sax man Keys sounding right at home. By verse two Warren has met a girl in West Hollywood (‘I ain’t naming names‘) his attention by the final lines taken by one whose acquaintance was made at the Rainbow Bar, the listener left to draw their own conclusions from:
‘She took me back to the Hyatt House, I don’t want to talk about it.’
If anything ‘I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead,’ packs an even bigger punch. Thundering in like something from side two of ‘Quadrophenia‘ Warren celebrates raucous behaviour and self-destructive revelry with joyous glee, ramming home the message with repeated use of the title:
‘I’m drinking heartbreak motor oil and Bombay gin, I’ll sleep when I’m dead/Straight from the bottle, twisted again, I’ll sleep when I’m dead.’
Throughout there is strong feeling mayhem is only a moment away, the last couplet leaving nobody in any doubt pandemonium could ensue, particularly as there is a handgun on site:
‘I’ve got a .38 special up on the shelf, I’ll sleep when I’m dead/If I start acting stupid, I’ll shoot myself/I’ll sleep when I’m dead.’
Built upon the meshing acoustic guitars of Buckingham and Browne, ‘Backs Turned Looking Down the Path‘ is the most upbeat piece, lyrically speaking, of the eleven song set. Almost a throwback to the days when Stephen Stills wrote great songs, the harmonies provided by the two guitarists, give it a distinct CSN feel, Warren extolling the virtues of a close, fulfilling relationship up to and including his final assertion of ‘Some may have and some may not, God I’m thankful for what I got/With my back turned looking down the path.’
On ‘Mama Couldn’t Be Persuaded,’ the most straightforward autobiographical song on the record, Zevon tells his parents’ story, his grandparents pleading with their daughter not to marry that ‘gambling man.’ Warren sounds confident in the claim ‘they’d still be offended at the mention still, if they heard this song which I doubt they will.’ With Browne and Souther providing background vocals and the fiddle of Lindley giving the tale around-the-campfire feel, the writer maintains a tongue in cheek approach right to the end, signing off with, ‘it all fell to pieces when the bad luck hit, stuck in the middle I was the kid.’
The closest Zevon comes to encroaching on territory Browne had marked out for himself is ‘Hasten Down the Wind,’ a song that actually predates ‘Late for the Sky‘ – both ballads exploring the complexities and uncertainty of a situation where neither party are quite sure where they stand. While on the title track of his most recent album Browne sounds intent on finding a semblance of hope through which the union can be maintained, for Zevon that point appears to have already passed:
‘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.’
‘Hasten Down the Wind‘ and ‘Late for the Sky‘ are both superbly atmospheric pieces, rich in literacy and resonance (virtually the same group of musicians perform on each), Linda Ronstadt performing a stunning cover as the title track of her next album – even if it is hard to say for sure what the phrase ‘Hasten Down the Wind‘ actually means.
The nuances moving between Browne and Zevon as songwriters could be said to move back the other way of ‘Mohammed’s Radio.’ Another song depicting the less glamorous side of tinsel town, (‘Everybody’s desperate trying to make ends meet/Work all day, still can’t pay the price of gasoline and meat‘). In this emotive, gospel-tinged piano ballad, featuring Buckingham and Stevie Nicks singing harmony, phraseology such as ‘In walked the village idiot and his face was all aglow/He’s been up all night listening to Mohammed’s Radio,’ sounds uniquely Zevon – the term obviously noted by Browne who would include the line ‘I’m going to be a happy idiot‘ on the title track of ‘The Pretender‘ on which he would start once the Zevon sessions were done.
Performed by Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead when they toured together in the mid-80s, ‘Mohammed’s Radio‘ would receive regular airings in Dylan performances for the next forty years.
From having a Dylanesque folk flavour on the failed early-70s attempt at a Zevon album (as revealed on ‘Preludes‘), by 1976 ‘Join Me in L.A.’ has been transformed into a brilliant soul workout, reminiscent of what Bowie was up to on ‘Young Americans.’
Zevon and Ned Doheny lay down funky rhythm guitar patterns and with Bonnie Raitt and Rosemary Butler pitching in with sublime harmonies, the song conjures a Los Angeles nightspot full of femme fatales, people who cannot be trusted or not who they say. The inference is clear – L.A. might be evil, duplicitous and dangerous, but that is precisely how Warren likes it.
Closing track ‘Desperados Under the Eaves‘ begins with the striking image Zevon revealing, ‘I was sitting in the Hollywood Hawaiian Hotel/I was staring in my empty coffee cup,’ the composer performing the melody on piano accompanied by a tasteful string section. On sifting between truth and lies, Warren decides he needs a drink:
‘All the salty margaritas in Los Angeles, I’m gonna drink ’em up.’
With location and mindset established, Zevon takes his narration skills to their highest level of accomplishment yet, writing in the vein of Raymond Chandler and sounding like Bogart or Mitchum in the guise of hard-boiled private detective Philip Marlowe:
‘And if California slides into the ocean, like the mystics and statistics say it will/I predict this motel will be standing until I pay my bill.’
With a delightful sense of the ironic Zevon has Carl Wilson join him in singing the word ‘California‘ but this is no Beach Boy paradise of surf, sunshine and beautiful girls – Zevon, the stark realist noticing ‘Don’t the sun look angry through the trees/Don’t the trees look like crucified thieves,’ all of which makes the dejected and downtrodden feel like ‘Desperados under the eaves.’
For his part Warren is ‘Still waking up in the mornings with shaking hands/And I’m trying to find a girl who understands me,’ the symptoms of a muddled life laid bare with no immediate likelihood of improvement. At the close Zevon is back in the Hollywood Hawaiian Hotel, one of the most outstanding narratives rock music has produced finding him listening to the air conditioner hum. The massed voices of the Gentlemen Boys, a choir consisting of Browne, Souther, Wachtel, Kenny Edwards and Jorge Calderon, suggest he ‘Look away down Gower Avenue,’ the background strings evoking another sultry evening descending on Southern California – Zevon, along with the misfits and marauders he has been describing, about to head for the shadows and dens of inequity they frequent.
On release Dave Marsh in Rolling Stone described ‘Warren Zevon‘ a masterpiece, while in a follow-up article Paul Nelson writing in the same publication claimed ‘it gave singer-songwriter albums the kick in the ass they needed.’
Commercially it failed to pull up any trees, palm or otherwise, peaking at 189 on the US Album chart, but Van Morrison, Bruce Springsteen and Phil Lynott all made known their admiration of the record – that without an obvious or apparent hit single was perhaps destined to struggle in a market place where Ronstadt, Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles were cleaning up.
That said, during the sessions Zevon cut an early version of ‘Werewolves of London‘ (with some humorous ad-libbed lyrics) which Browne rightly thought did not fit the overall theme of the record – Zevon and Browne keeping the track up their sleeve for the follow-up album, being lifted from the monumental first side of ‘Excitable Boy‘ to finally bring Zevon some significant chart action, the single and album both returning impressive sales figures.
But if he dealt with obscurity badly Warren handled fame even worse, his drinking by then at life-threatening proportions leading to mental and physical abuse being inflicted on wife Crystal, who subsequently filed for divorce. They did, however, reconcile as friends, Crystal going on to write a highly readable biography of her ex-husband in 2007, four years after his death from cancer.
Like ‘Blue‘, ‘Tapestry‘ and ‘The Pretender‘ albums in whose company it is not embarrassed, ‘Warren Zevon‘ is a work of breathtaking intuition and originality, Los Angeles, the less salubrious quarters at least, as fundamental to these snapshots of Gomorrah by the sea, as they are to say, ‘The Long Goodbye‘ or even ‘The Big Lebowski‘ – the ‘Dude’ surely a composite of Zevon characters.
In a year when Jackson Browne strolled into the cool of the evening and the Eagles evoked spirits from 1969 it was Warren Zevon who summoned the most gripping evocation of 1976 Los Angeles – not from a rented house in the shade of the freeway or a hotel with mirrors on the ceiling and pink champagne on ice, but from the bar of the Hollywood Hawaiian Hotel.
And to the sound of a humming air conditioner.
‘WARREN ZEVON‘ (Released May 18 1976):
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 L.A./Desperados Under the Eaves;
NEIL SAMBROOK is the author of ‘MONTY’S DOUBLE‘ – an acclaimed thriller now available in paperback and as an Amazon Kindle book.