Enjoy Every Sandwich

11.15.2008

1. Oklahoma newspaper says Zevon was the antithesis of the sensitive singer-songwriter. (CD review, NewsOK)
2. In a list of top 10 songs about athletes, "Boom Boom Mancini" makes the grade, but "Bill Lee" and "Hit Somebody" miss the cut. (Sporting News)

 

11.15.2008 | Classic Rewind: 4. Hasten Down the Wind

Zevon played "Hasten Down the Wind" at his piano audition for the Everly Brothers. In September 1975 Zevon learned that Linda Ronstadt was thinking of calling her next album "Hasten Down the Wind." Zevon was afraid to think about it, apparently not wanting to jinx it. Ronstadt had just had a hit album that included songs like "You're No Good" and "When Will I Be Loved," so this was a huge deal for Zevon. She eventually did do the album, and after trying to change the gender of the song, decided to leave it mostly the way it was. (The album included "That'll Be the Day.")

While Zevon cultivated an image as the hard-drinking tough, his love ballads demonstrated a side far more tender than what many imagined, and his body of work in the genre went far beyond what was collected for the anthology "Reconsider Me." This was the first of many heartbreakingly tender love songs, and Zevon said the song was so personal that it had to be written in the thid person.

"She tells him she thinks she needs to be free / He tells her he doesn't understand / She takes his hand / She tells him nothing's working out the way they planned."

The song also has the great lyric: "She's so many women, / he can't find the one who was his friend."

Literally, a "he said, she said" then, "Hasten Down the Wind" is about the difficulty of two people breaking up, and the poetic title is simply a euphemism for "leave -- and leave fast."

11.14.2008 | Classic Rewind: 3. "Backs Turned Looking Down the Path"

According to "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead," Zevon finished writing BTLDtP by May 29, 1975, when he was in Madrid. It was often viewed as a minor song, but Zevon felt that when he was gone, people would look back and consider it his best. Simple and elegant, it captured his feelings about what was most important to him and about his decision to abandon his California dreams to make a go of it in Spain.

Note: Zevon didn't use punctuation in song titles, and this one obviously called for a comma. As did Poor Poor Pitiful Me.

11.13.2008 | Classic Rewind: 2. "Mama Couldn't Be Persuaded"

O.K., we're two songs into Zevon's career and he's writing again about an outlaw, something he would do throughout his career. This time the outlaw is his father, Gambler:

"Gambler ambled down a country lane / Looking for a game of chance / She was twenty-one or two / And she knew what she wanted / And she wanted that gamblin' man."

We know from the biography "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" that Zevon's father, William, met his mother, Beverly Simmons, when Willie was 42 and Beverly was 21. Willie was a gambler. On Christmas Eve 1956 Willie gambled all night and came home on Christmas with a Chickering piano he won at poker. Zevon in "Piano Fighter" (1993): "Mom and Papa bought a Chickering / Every day I'd sit and play that thing."

So this song and "Piano Fighter" are autobiographical bookends. (Of course, it could be argued that any song in his career and any song on "The Wind" are bookends.) In MCBP Zevon looks at his family in a nonjudgmental, sympathethic light: as a group of people who just made some mistakes, as all people do. Later, in PF, Zevon takes the same attitude when he holds up a mirror to his own decisions.

In the biography, we learn that Zevon wrote the beginnings of MCBP on hotel stationery, probably the Landmark's, while on a trip to Las Vegas, where he was playing piano for the Everly Brothers.

11.12.2008 | Classic Rewind: 1. "Frank and Jesse James"

It all began with the great piano intro to “Frank and Jesse James.” That was the world’s introduction to Warren Zevon. The eponymous album, released as Zevon’s major label debut, in 1976, opened with the song, which he wrote in honor of the Everly Brothers, for whom he played piano in his first road gig. “Frank and Jesse James” was one of Zevon’s first narrative songs shaped around a character or an event, predating songs like “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner” and “Veracruz.”

According to his ex-wife Crystal’s book, “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead,” Zevon wrote “Frank and Jesse James” right before Christmas in 1971. Roy Orbison came backstage one night to say how much he enjoyed his performance of it. Zevon was hopeful that Orbison might want to cover it, but Orbison thought Zevon should be singing his own songs, which made Zevon even happier.

When he first heard it, the bass player Doug Haywood told Warren, as a compliment: “Wow, man, that’s great. You obviously like Aaron Copland.” According to Haywood, Warren got up, left the room and didn’t return. Haywood said he blew his chance of playing on the album because of the comment, but was later hired to tour with Zevon. I don't quite get this anecdote, as Copland was a source of inspiration for Zevon and would be throughout his career. Perhaps he thought Haywood was saying he was copying him instead of paying tribute to him.

Not only did FaJJ open Zevon’s first real album, but it also opened his 1996 anthology,  “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead,” 20 years later. So the opening notes, and the song itself, always felt like the start of something.

Note: Sometimes overlooked is that the piano intro of FaJJ returns as the orchestral intro to “Desperados Under the Eaves” on the album’s final track, thus tying the record together in a neat package. Also note that Jesse James pops up again later in the album, in "Poor Poor Pitiful Me."

11.11.2008 | Remastered "Warren Zevon" released

So today was the big day: the release of a two-disc version of the mid-70s classic. I got mine at the Virgin Megastore in Times Square for $19.50. "Learning to Flinch" was selling for $5. Some reviews are already out. (11/11/2008, Kansas City Star)

2.4.2007 | Warren Zevon, Under the Covers

From Berkeley Place, an A to Z of Zevon covering songs, from Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower” to “What’s New, Pussycat?” My own recollections of Zevon covers include an ill-received version of Julie Gold’s “From a Distance” and, of course, “Winter Wonderland,” his Christmas evergreen, which often had the great lyric “In the meadow we will build a snowman / Then pretend that he is Jackson Browne.”

OK, top 5 songs covered by Warren Zevon and released on his studio albums:

• Back in the High Life Again (Steve Winwood)
• Certain Girl (Ernie K-Doe)
• Raspberry Beret (Prince)
• Jesus Was a Cross Maker (Judee Sill)
• Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door (Bob Dylan)