An appreciation for Warren Zevon (and Warren Zevon, too)

Warren Zevon had already had one career in music. By the time he was eighteen, he'd already dropped out of Los Angeles' Fairfax High School and dropped into the music business, signed to White Whale with his friend Violet Santangelo as lyme and cybelle. With one minor hit to their credit, the raga-rock Nuggets treasure "Follow Me", the duo cut a schmaltzy version of Bob Dylan's then-unreleased "If You Gotta Go, Go Now", a song ostensibly about seduction, with the two friends coming on to one another in a way they never did in real life. Shortly after the song's banning, Zevon was replaced, left to work writing songs, playing guitar or piano on sessions and singing the occasional demo and jingle.

Zevon's first album, Wanted Dead or Alive, saw him teamed up with LA mainstay Kim Fowley. Released to the sound of one hand clapping, the twenty-something Zevon started recording a follow-up before abandoning his stillborn solo career for work with Phil and Don Everly as pianist and bandleader. After the Everlys split, Zevon toured with each, facing audiences disappointed at the prospect of watching one Everly brother without the other. Fed up with everything, he packed up his bride and though he didn't speak the native tongue, went off to Spain.

Though he was gone for just one summer, Zevon returned to Los Angeles refreshed, his songbook overflowing, determined to take on the world. Word of the bespectacled, boozing piano fighter had spread in the years since he had abandoned his solo career. With his friend Jackson Browne behind the boards, Zevon signed with David Geffen's Asylum Records in 1975 and set about recording his second debut album, the album that would properly introduce the man whom had already been hanging about for a decade.

A good way to look at Warren Zevon is as a series of vignettes all taking place along a Los Angeles city block. The Everlys inspired the opening track, "Frank and Jesse James", though the lyrics tell a straightforward historical tale of the brothers James. I've always imagined Zevon taking on the persona of an old Missourian, perhaps one who claims relations to the James gang singing wistfully about the larger-than-life figures of his youth. Melding a classically influenced piano with straight rock guitar and a country rock backbeat complete with banjo, the overall experience is unlike anything anybody else was doing in the City of Angels.

The second vignette, "Mama Couldn't Be Persuaded" is about the Zevon family itself. Warren William Zevon (the first name from his late uncle, the middle from his father) was the product of an unlikely relationship between William "Stumpy" Zevon, a rough and tough Jewish gambler born in the Ukraine and Beverly Simmons, a Scots-Welsh Mormon with a heart condition from Salt Lake City. His father, nearly twice his mother's age, was simply unsuited to family life, riding high when the good luck hit, riding low when the bad luck hit, stability nonexistent, stuck in the middle was their kid. Zevon himself was never quite sure exactly when his parents split up, passed back and forth between them throughout his youth, he never bothered to develop too deep a relationship with either. At least he got a song out of it…

If the rest of the album's full of portraits of crazed alcoholics, hookers and generally depressed figures, the portrait painted with "Backs Turned Looking Down the Path" is a bit of an anomaly. It's a song about the realization that things could be worse. If the eleven songs represent eleven different tales of a typical lower-rent Los Angeles block, at least this guy's got a somewhat decent woman on his side. Unless that's a figment of his imagination, which it certainly could be…

As for "Hasten Down the Wind", I've always pictured a husband getting a great job in Hollywood just after he married. His wife dutifully accompanies him to Los Angeles where they settled on the block. They had a few kids, he got promoted, he worked longer hours, and they saw each other less. After thirty years, the couple has graying temples, the kids have all grown and the husband's starting to slow down. The wife's started taking time for herself, expanding her horizons, though, and the husband realizes that he no longer recognizes the woman he thought he loved. She has moved on but she tries to kid herself that she's still in love with the man she married.

A madman rock star, a pervert and a drunk, inhabits the fifth vignette, "Poor, Poor Pitiful Me". He's got a home in the Hollywood Hills, but the studio's a hell of a lot closer to the dive efficiency apartment he still pays the rent on. An amalgamation of all of the various tales of debauchery in and out of Los Angeles complete with a failed suicide, a vague description of an obvious sexual encounter with one groupie and a near-description of sadomasochism with another groupie.

"The French Inhaler" is a story song, a hustler singing to his trick. She came to Los Angeles straight off of a Greyhound bus from some hick town in the Midwest where she was every man's fantasy. She's cute but she wasn't quite hot enough to make it as a sex symbol in Hollywood (even after making quite the impression on a number of Hollywood bigwigs) and when push came to shove she took to selling herself, for working nine to five wasn't her bag. She's the most attractive woman on the block but she's off-limits to her neighbors, they can't afford her. Sure, she's an actress, but the part's not the one she expected to have. She drowns her sorrows in cheap booze and illicit substances just to get through the day.

Life is hard, it's getting more and more difficult to afford material goods, a daydreamer's car needs gas and his stomach needs a decent cut of meat to make his meal complete. He looks out the window at a man dressed like a sheik with his transistor radio turned up for all around to hear. The daydreamer looks to his paper, Los Angeles is on edge, life's getting to everyone. "Mohammed's Radio" isn't quite like any other radio; it's an escape from the doldrums of life. There's only one problem- it doesn't exist. It can't possibly.

There's a party going on in the eighth vignette, "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead". It's been going on for a while now. The guy throwing the party spends his weeks at his job, working long hours for little benefit and even less pay. On Saturday night, though, he casts off his sorrows in a vat of libations, a respite from the grind. A Puerto Rican drinking buddy sings along in Spanish. By the end, everybody truly wants to believe that they'll sleep when and only when they're dead. Monday's coming up far too soon, though, they're ultimately only going to fool themselves.

It wouldn't be a portrait of run-down Los Angeles without a tale devoted to the addicts. The acoustic guitars and electric piano might mesh soothingly, but the lyrical content of "Carmelita" is par for the course. Zevon sings a portrait of a hapless addict, his life in shambles, in the throes of addiction, trying to make it through the night as best as he can. This guy probably had money once, but he got sucked into an addiction he couldn't break and lost everything. He's fortunate that he's had a stream of people who took pity on him; he's never had to spend more than a couple nights sleeping under bridges. Carmelita's the latest of these, a nice girl but she's not going to be able to save him. He's a goner.

There's always something going on in Los Angeles. The tenth vignette, "Join Me in L.A." isn't a suggestion, it's almost a demand. The shadowy figure doesn't really have a lot to say, the sultriness of the women with their come hither looks are more apt to draw you in towards Lalaland than any suggestion he can make. If you do go to Los Angeles, this guy might just get you hooked on something bad... he could have been the one who ruined all of the other figures.

Every day, individuals aspiring to become stars come into the City of Angels determined to hit it big. For every success story, there are millions who end up living their lives wandering through the dirty streets as the nobodies they could have been back home. A particularly low point in Zevon's life inspired "Desperados Under the Eaves". Without income, holed up at a low-rent apartment hotel, he snuck out without having paid his bill. Wracked by the guilt, with the addition of a sozzled narrator not unlike Zevon himself, the song practically wrote itself. With the vocal assistance of a chorus featuring Carl Wilson, the song's tag, "look away down Gower Avenue", adds to the hopelessness of it all. You can try anything to escape the nothingness but it's ultimately impossible.

Friends and collaborators like Browne, Buckingham, Nicks, Henley and Frey were apt to produce what could be considered standard LA fare of the 1970s. Zevon may have utilized all of them for the ensemble cast to his second debut but throughout the eleven tracks, he devoted himself to painting portraits of gray, dank figures suffering through gray, dank days in the City of Angels. The characters in the songs from Warren Zevon won't be eating lunch at Le Dome, more likely they'll be pawing at the orange-colored fried chicken from the Echo Park Pioneer Chicken stand while spending their last ten bucks on a quick fix trying to get used to the fact that they'll never really amount to anything.

The whole album ultimately comes across like a jaded portrait of life on the fringes of the large spotlight cast by the beautiful people. The cover photo almost summarizes the album without even having to listen to a single note of music. The beautiful people are inside, giving themselves awards for banality, the outcast stands next to their spotlight with his dress shirt and suit coat open, perhaps hoping for a glimmer of fame, a word or two of appreciation. He's not going to get it, at least not yet…

Warren Zevon finally gave the 29-year-old Warren Zevon a chance to shine. The album was a critical if not commercial success, paving the way towards brighter days. It showcases a matured man singing about the darker side of life in Los Angeles. A lifetime of paying dues both in and out of the music world led to the nascence of a career like no other. Another thirteen albums would follow, though only 1978's Excitable Boy and 2003's The Wind were commercial successes.