Check out the sweet background vocals on this one curtesy of Linda Ronstadt and Stevie Nicks. Drugs, alcohol, general seediness is all on abundant display but the arrangements work against the lyrical atmosphere. It came out 7 years after his actual debut and it is apparent a lot of hard living occurred in the interim. And so the album flopped.Ģ) Mohamed’s Radio - Warren Zevon: A second debut of sorts. But overall, the disc attempts to jam too much of Warren’s musical diversity as it stood in his mid to late 1960’s work for The Turtles and the Midnight Cowboy soundtrack. It also prefigures Warren’s own solo acoustic album and two of his last three albums. It has a sort of alternative folk feel that prefigures the Unplugged rearrangements of the early 1990’s. The arrangement is a bit ahead of it’s time. It was actually cowritten by the album’s producer, the notorious Kim Fowley.
A career with a story arc like that has got to be memorable and indeed it was…ġ) Wanted Dead or Alive - Wanted Dead or Alive: Oddly Warren did not write this one but his attraction to it is obvious. Whatever else that was good or bad about Warren, he was a proud and driven musician and he proved it to the literal end, dying within days of his final release. He defied the odds to get one last record made…barely. Unfortunately, a heavy smoking habit and a fear of doctors lead to a too late cancer diagnosis. By 1987, he stabilized his addictions and was able to work consistently and cleanly for the rest of his life.
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What followed was a series of ups and downs and starts and stops through the late 1970’s and the early 1980’s. And all would have been fine had he been able to control his alcoholism.
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His work literally mirrored the record breaking and critical success of Browne, Ronstadt and Fleetwood Mac and, he, in turned got a secondary boost from that association. More alike professionally then perhaps Jackson Browne would care to admit, Warren became fast friends with the rising star and through Jackson he became part of the Southern California scene that was just about to dominate popular music for the rest of the 1970’s.ĭespite their quirky lyrics, Linda Ronstadt covered several of Warren’s song and almost simultaneously, he released his own versions on his major label debut album. As a veteran musician and more or less native son of the city, he wasn’t the least bit intimidated by all the musical carpetbaggers just gaining traction in the City of Angels.
The ropes having been mastered the hard way, Warren returned to his home town of LA. In other words, he saw the seedy side of the business and it suited and inspired his songwriting sensibilities. But other then that high end introduction to the world of music, he chose a haphazard bottom up approach to learning the business: jingle writer, folkie, expat dive bar balladeer, songwriter for hire, Kim Fowley, a flop first record and a road gig with the squabbling Everly Brothers just prior to their split. When Warren decided to pursue a musical career he actually personally got to know Igor Stravinsky. Was it because his father was closely associated with the LA mob of the Mickey Cohen era? That must at least partly explain his taste for James Ellroy style noir lyrics but there has to be more to it then that. That was Warren Zevon but how did he get that way? He was always ready to see the upside of the dark side of things. Quite the contrary and that’s even more reason to miss him. Incidentally, that doesn’t mean he would necessarily be critical. I can’t begin to imagine what his take on our current times would be. To be sure he seemed to be that rare person who, in life, was comfortable with death and rot and decay. Having no generally accepted line of communication, we have no idea if it suits him. Warren would have been 71 on January 24th had he lived.
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