Life’ll Kill Ya…

It was twenty years ago today that Warren Zevon left this world, aged only 56 years old. And though it seemed too soon, he always seemed like someone who came from elsewhere, like a visitor from another planet. He was an artist who didn’t quite seem to fit the fame hungry rat-race of La La Land. Perhaps because he grew up in LA, despite being born in Chicago. His family had some interesting connections in the Windy City. His father, a Ukrainian Jewish immigrant, had been a boxer before becoming a special kind of accountant: the move to a new turf in California was carefully calculated. Zevon senior handled volume bets and craps games for LA mob boss and underworld legend Mickey Cohen. It’s often said that Zevon junior’s first piano was acquired as part payment for reneged gambling debts. After the move West, Warren attended Fairfax Senior High on Melrose in the heart of West Hollywood. He dropped out in his Junior Year however, when his Dad gave him a Corvette won in a card game, and drove off across the country to explore the exploding Folk scene in New York.

Warren’s aptitude for music was spotted early on; one of his early teachers after his move to Hollywood was none other than neoclassical giant Igor Stravinsky. He would have his first minor hit record by the time he was 16 in a duo called lyme and cybelle. The follow-up single in 1966 was a cover of Bob Dylan's 'If You Gotta Go, Go Now' but it flopped. It was a pattern that would recur in Zevon's career. By the time he was 22 he'd got a song onto the soundtrack to Midnight Cowboy and a year later he put out his first album. It took him six years to release his second. That eponymous effort contained the phenomenal 'Desperados Under The Eaves'. Zevon had a wicked sense of humour and a forgiving sense of man’s folly: I think he was probably a natural cynic because of it. He was also, at certain times in his life a violent alcoholic. The self confessed Mr. Bad Example wrote about human nature because he was an intimate associate of human frailty.

As I write this I too am 56 years old and it gives me pause. I didn’t know Warren, but I spent a few days with him at the start of this millennium. Back in May of 2000 I got a call to go and join Mr. Zevon on tour and look after some of the backline, including his electric piano. He had already been playing the British Isles for a few days to promote his new album, kicking off with an appearance on Later With Jools and a radio session for Andy Kershaw, before heading out to Ireland and Scotland. I don’t know, maybe somebody else had left the tour. I was working with very different bands back then, touring with Red Snapper in 1999 (including a memorable fortnight in Zevon Senior's motherland), then seeing in the new Millennium with Orbital, before holidaying in the heat of the Australian new year with Basement Jaxx on Big Day Off. My brief stint with Warren Zevon brought me back to the '70s music that was a big part of my life growing up. 

If I remember right the keyboard I was looking after was a Yamaha P80 electric piano: 88 fully weighted keys in about as compact a chassis as you could expect and some great sounds for it’s vintage. My wife has one and we keep it at New Cut for studio use if you fancy giving it a try. Yamaha have been making pianos even longer than they’ve been making motorbikes of course. The Team Yamaha wheel emblem has spokes made of tuning forks for a reason. The only other one I’ve ever seen on stage was at Cornbury Festival when I was assistant stage manager years ago and it was being used by Jackson Browne. Browne of course was not only Zevon’s sometime producer he was also his champion. It was Jackson Browne playing the song all the time (as early as 1975 by some accounts) that got Warren’s biggest hit ‘Werewolves Of London’ noticed the first time round. Zevon's first album, 1969's Wanted Dead or Alive produced by Kim Fowley, had bombed; so it took some persuasion by Jackson Browne to get David Geffen to sign Zevon to Assylum. That album bombed too, but Browne got another chance to produce Warren two years later with 1978’s Excitable Boy and the lyrical lycanthropy of what would, for most people, become his signature song.

An American Werewolf… 

After I met my wife on a Massive Attack Tour in 1998, we lived in Notting Hill and our local Chinese restaurant was called the Lee Fook. It suddenly struck a chord when I got to hear ’Werewolves… ‘ every night, because of course Warren’s hirsute hero “was looking for the place called Lee Ho Fook’s, For to get a big dish of beef chow mein”. Zevon opens the song talking about the establishment in Gerard Street in Soho. But the one I used to go to with my dad in the ‘80s was it’s sister restaurant in Westbourne Grove. My father lived in the area from the early ’80s and told me that the proprietor was forced to change the name of the place after they first put up a sign with the first two words reversed. Apparently residents had complained about the amount of raucous laughter from passers-by after the pubs closed, when they shouted out what sounded like “Holy Fuck Chinese restaurant”. In David Bowie’s cover of ‘Werewolves…’ he very clearly sings it as “Lee Ho Fucks”. It’s long gone now but I found a reference to it online. “In 2002 Ringo Lo moved his restaurant from Westbourne Grove to Surbiton in much the same way that he had previously left behind premises on Queensway to relocate to Westbourne Grove.” 

The song was christened by Phil Everly, the title coming from the 1935 monster movie Werewolf Of London, and some of those lyrics about a Chinese menu and Soho in the rain came from superstar sideman Waddy Wachtel. Here's a great video for the song which uses some beautifully sync'd footage from the 1935 movie. Wachtel and Jackson Browne jointly produced the parent album Excitable Boy, which would be released six days before Zevon's 31st birthday on the 18th of January 1978. There were some remarkable collaborators on this album: as well as Jackson & Wachtel there were appearances by Linda Ronstadt, Jeff Porcaro, JD Souther, Leland Sklar, Jenifer Warnes — by this time of course pretty much everyone knew Warren. Perhaps they also knew how important it was to be forever associated with songs like 'Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner' and 'Lawyers, Guns and Money'. Do I need to point out that this was only his third album? Warren's previous self-titled collection had an even longer list of names; the personnel list reads like a Who's Who of the '70s scene. As well as some of the players on Excitable Boy, legends like the aforementioned Everly Brother and Wilson Brother Carl rubbed shoulders with Lindsey Buckingham & Stevie Nicks, Don Henley & Glen Frey, Bonnie Raitt & Bobby Keys, and other session aces. People always wanted to play for Warren, even Bob Dylan guested on 1987's 'The Factory'. Here's a couple of Dylan anecdotes from Warren, the first from Letterman in July of that year, the second from that Andy Kershaw show on May 25th 2000, recorded just a few days before I worked for him.

The rhythm section on 'Werewolves... ' were a hairy faced pair — as well as being two of the most famous names in Rock N' Roll of the 1970s. Fleetwood Mac were recording in the same studio at the time and Mick Fleetwood and John McVie were apparently delighted to offer their services. It's said that the first take is the one that made the cut. Seven years before that Fleetwood Mac were forced into another one of their line-up changes when Jeremy Spencer quit by literally walking out. He disappeared on the 15th of February 1971 when he left the Hawaiian Hotel heading for Hollywood Boulevard and never came back. Ray Davies wrote ‘Celluloid Heroes’ in that same hotel but in Rock N’ Roll folklore it is most famous for the opening line of Warren Zevon’s ‘Desperados Under the Eaves’, a line repeated at the end of the song: 

“I was sitting in the Hollywood Hawaiian Hotel,

 I was listening to the air conditioner hum.

 It went hmmmmmmm... “

The Song Remains the Same

Warren never performed 'Desperados... ' during his many appearances on Letterman despite it being one of Dave's faves. (He had to wait for Dawes to do a version in 2015 about a month before he retired.) Letterman was a huge champion of Zevon, almost single handedly keeping him in the wider public eye. Warren's first appearance came soon after Dave became Johnny Carson's successor in 1982. As well as appearing regularly as a guest Warren sometimes sat in for Paul Schaffer as band leader. On one of those occasions he turned down Dave's request that he play 'Desperados...' live on air. I’m amazed you could never hear the air conditioner hum through the TV when watching Letterman. I once asked one of the crew why it was always so frigging cold in the Ed Sullivan Theater during Letterman’s tenure. Apparently during one of the new host's very early broadcasts he had taken his jacket off revealing sodden arm pits: the notices the next day could talk of nothing else. So every time you did the Late Show you knew to wear a coat onstage. "As long as its not in here, this is freezing" said Robert Plant the last time I did Letterman. Yeah, you heard me, that's a memory alright.

I only did Letterman a handful of times. I’ve done Stephen Colbert’s show, which took over in 2015, more often. The last time Warren did Letterman was in 2002, and he was the only guest for the October 30th broadcast. He would be dead within a year. He already knew he was dying of mesothelioma lung cancer and Dave raised the subject straight away. The last time I did Letterman I had one of the more surreal moments of my career. Also on the show were the surviving members of Led Zeppelin who had just been presented to President Obama at the 35th Annual Kennedy Center Honors. Watching ¾ of Led Zepp walk past me as I stood by my 6-way guitar rack was more than a little dreamlike. The first proper vinyl album I bought was Led Zeppelin II, and the second was Led Zeppelin IV. Looking it up, the episode aired on the 3rd of December 2013 and I was there on that occasion with Paloma Faith who I worked with for about five years.

We took a promo trip to New York and Los Angeles to perform the single ‘Picking Up The Pieces’ on prime-time TV; and to promote the launch of her second album Fall To Grace. It was highly unusual to be doing both Letterman and Leno in the same week; as rival chat shows they never usually wanted the same guests without a bit of separation, even with a big movie release. It seems like it was a result for Paloma however: on December 4th 2012 Digital Spy reported that the dual appearances had catapulted the album to number 13 on the iTunes US chart (even though we didn't do Leno until the 6th). Two days later as we were walking across the Burbank Studios lot before recording The Tonight Show I thought I'd give P an ego boost. "Look at you and your Betty Grable legs," I said. (Incidentally when Betty Grable was walking across the same ground in April 1939 to appear on The Bob Hope Show it was still known as NBC's Radio City West.)

Despite her flair for retro Hollywood glamour P didn't get the reference and I think she thought I was insulting her. Indeed she challenged me with something like "What the fuck does that mean?" Paloma was always exactly the same person offstage as on, just with a bit more swearing. I had to explain that Betty, and her legs, were painted on the sides of dozens of WWII aircraft and her pins had appeared in a million pin-ups. I also mentioned that, even if it was a studio publicity stunt, in the 1940s 20th Century-Fox insured her legs for a million dollars. (In a similar move in 2015, Taylor Swift apparently insured her legs for $40 million before going on tour.) Betty Grable should have had her lungs insured instead. In 1973 she died aged 56 of lung cancer, just like Warren Zevon would 30 years later.

“The shit that used to work — It won’t work now.”

Warren Zevon was a writer’s songwriter, the kind of artist that leaves you amazed at their turn of phrase. In ‘Desperados Under The Eaves‘ he conjures a Cali Calgary that leaves my heart in my mouth and says more about the Hollywood he grew up in than seems possible with ten little words: 

“Don't the sun look angry through the trees, 

 Don't the trees look like crucified thieves?” 

For me he was the Raymond Chandler of Rock, evocative and succinct, capturing LA at a time and place like no other. His songs are peppered with LA locations. The Hollywood Hawaiian is still there, close to the old Capitol Records Building, though it’s now called The Princess Grace Apartments. Walk East on Yucca a couple more blocks past the tower and, as the celebrity chorus asks of us in the closing refrain of ‘Desperados... ’, you can “Look away down Gower Avenue” — though it’s really called Gower Street. 

The record Warren was promoting on that tour I briefly joined was called Life'll Kill Ya. His tenth studio album, it was released on the 25th January, the day after his 53rd birthday. In later years it would be named by Rolling Stone as his best since Excitable Boy. It featured an eerily prophetic song about a terminal prognosis: 'My Shit's Fucked Up' is a song that manages to be sombre and hilarious in equal measure. There are very few people who could manage that. There's a great solo performance of it from that Later... in May 2000 — I've found that on YouTube as well. The exhortation to "enjoy every sandwich" that Warren dropped into his final Letterman appearance a couple of times was taken up by his host at the end of the show and has become a mantra for Zevon fans, and even the title of a tribute covers album. I hope Warren is finding out that there really are 'Things To Do In Denver When you're Dead', a song that name-checks his 'Werewolves... ' co-writers LeRoy Marinell & Waddy Wachtel.

A short time before Warren's Letterman sign-off Bob Dylan had performed a few of Zevon songs over three nights at The Wiltern in LA. Warren's reaction showed he hadn't lost his gallows humour even as it cast its shadow across him: “Nothing tells a man he’s about to die like when Bob Dylan starts doing your music.” Maybe we should leave the last word to Dylan, as we’re talking about writers' writers here. When he sang “Play it for Carl Wilson too, Looking far, far away down Gower Avenue” on 2020’s ‘Murder Most Foul’ he was singing about the Beach Boy not as the man who sang lead on 'God Only Knows' and 'Good Vibrations', but who sang backing on ’Deperados Under The Eaves’.

PS, my youngest daughter just came in from work with her boyfriend. Everyone's hungry so I said I'd get Chinese and I swear to God young Matt just ordered beef chow mein. He's kind of a hairy guy, should I be worried? She grew up with the Twilight franchise after all.

©️Mark Vickers September 2023