Warren Zevon, "Excitable Boy"

CJ gets a big dish of beef chow mein

CJ’s Pitch:

I’m rolling down Route 95 toward Providence (at speeds approaching the route number) in the passenger seat of a rattletrap VW Rabbit whose model year pre-dates my birth. The driver, my boss in my first job out of college, glances over at me and says, “Wanna hear something cool?” When I nod, he dives under his seat and pulls out a case-less cassette tape. Flourishing it dramatically, he reaches over the tennis ball that has replaced the knob of the gearshift and pops it into the tape deck. After some uncertain whirring and clicking, the open strains of “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner” emanate from the dusty speakers. We are listening to dangerous music in a dangerous car traveling at a dangerous velocity. I am immediately enthralled.

Warren Zevon is a writer’s musician. Springsteen is too, but Zevon is at the top of my list. It’s an understatement to call him a storyteller which, by the way, is a wildly overused term. Warren is erudite, literary in the way he constructs his songs. And he juxtaposes gloriously beautiful melodies with some of the most horrifying lyrics ever heard in popular music.

Consider the title track of this week’s EONS candidate. “Excitable Boy” is the story of a sociopath whose friends and relatives keep excusing his disturbing behavior by telling everyone that he’s “just an excitable boy.” When he inevitably murders his prom date, those same supporters double down on the “excitable” excuse. But then Warren takes it to another level with an epilogue that has our title character digging up the girl he murdered and making a cage out of her bones. All while the backup singers do-wop happily behind him. Somewhere in Maine Stephen King is shuddering.

Then, there’s the story of the aforementioned Roland, who starts out as a gun for hire in the Congo War. Unfortunately for Roland, he does his job too well and is murdered by one of his fellow mercenaries at the behest of the CIA. Undeterred, Roland’s corpse avenges his murder and then haunts all the world’s bloody conflicts for the next several decades.

Let me pause here to state that there are four or five songs on this album that would’ve made fantastic movie plots. And I would’ve stood in line for all of them.

There’s little I can add to the tale of “Werewolves of London”. If you have ears and a radio, you’ve likely heard that song hundreds of times over the years. And it doesn’t sound any worse for wear. But I do want to point out a couple of the overlooked songs on this magical album.

“Accidentally Like A Martyr” is a heartbreaking song of regret made even lovelier by Zevon’s scotch and sirloin voice. In “Veracruz”, Warren gives us a history lesson of the U.S. occupation of that Mexican city from the point of view of one of its residents. And “Tenderness on the Block” is what I consider Zevon’s “Rosalita”. Co-written by Ken’s man-crush Jackson Browne, the song has Warren trying to convince the parents of an unnamed girl to let her grow up and find her own way to true love. I enjoyed the song as a young man. As the parent of an adult daughter, it crushes me.

The last song on “Excitable Boy” is my favorite. As a young writer, I was told that you had to grab the reader with your first line. Zevon opens “Lawyers, Guns and Money” with the following:

I went home with a waitress,

The way I always do.

How was I to know,

She was with the Russians too?

Could Ludlum or le Carré have penned a better first sentence to one of their spellbinding spy novels? I think not. The rest of the song spools out like a Hunter S. Thompson fever dream set to a rousing clap-a-long track. It’s an exclamation point on a classic, timeless album.

So, how about it, Ken and Mitch? Wanna grab a piña colada down at Trader Vic’s? I guarantee that our hair will be perfect.

Bap!

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Mitch’s Response:

Whenever someone is described as a “songwriter’s songwriter” or a “comedian’s comedian” what it really means is that they’re a respected artist that was never quite as successful as their peers thought they deserved to be.

So is the case with the late, great Warren Zevon, who - as crazy as this sounds - is technically a one-hit wonder, with his highest-charting single, “Werewolves of London”, clawing its way to #21 in 1978. (“Werewolves” actually hit #8 in Australia but I’ll be long dead before I recognize the existence of that cursed island-continent that foisted AC/DC upon us.)

I’m in full agreement that Zevon is a tremendously gifted songwriter and storyteller with a unique (and twisted) perspective and a solid hit-to-miss ratio, especially on Excitable Boy (his best album), with the glaring exception of "Nighttime in the Switching Yard” (which makes one yearn for the high-quality disco-rock of KISS’s “I Was Made For Loving You”).

I’m glad that CJ mentioned “Accidentally Like a Martyr” because I think it perfectly explains exactly why Zevon was a “songwriter’s songwriter” rather than being a popular songwriter. It’s a gorgeously crafted ballad that is unfortunately let down by Zevon’s performance - his vocals can’t quite carry the tune and his chopsticks-like piano is a distraction - and yet, it’s such a perfectly crafted song that it still shines through - and makes me wonder what a great vocalist could have done with it.

But we’re picking nits here. Excitable Boy is a fantastic album. I’ve always adored “Veracruz”, loved when the Dead would cover “Werewolves”, and I never get bored of “Johnny” or “Lawyers”. Tell Lon Chaney and Lon Chaney Junior to move over and make some room for Warren Zevon in the Newbury St. Collection.

• Pitch Successful (We’ll keep you in our hearts, WZ)

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Ken’s Response:

I had a whole thing about how Warren Zevon looks like a guy that was fired from his teaching position at Hogwarts for excessive Hufflepuff, or how “Excitable Boy” makes Harlen Coben step back and say “Hey, you might want to tone down the violent imagery.”  Then I read Mitch’s response and while I’m very happy to see that this week’s album will be accepted into the Newbury St. collection, I wholeheartedly disagree about “Accidentally Like a Martyr”.   

While I agree that it is a beautifully-crafted ballad, I take exception with the words “his vocals can’t quite carry the tune.”  Now I may be biased because this has long been my favorite song on the album (which is quite a statement considering that this album contains a song penned by Jackson Browne), but as a guy with some musical street cred I can’t for the life of me figure out what he means.  Every note is on pitch and there is emotion and emphasis in all the right places.  I’ll grant you Zevon’s voice isn’t as bright and clean as say James Taylor or Freddie Mercury, but couldn’t the same thing be said about Dylan, or Petty, or Mitch’s man-crush Tom Waits?

Zevon is the Robin Williams from Dead Poet’s Society of songwriters; he gives us totally insane lyrics juxtaposed with beautiful music and harmonies in “Excitable Boy”, he challenges us to suspend our disbelief on “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner”, he makes our hearts collectively ache on “Martyr” and he does it all with the most serious humor.

• Pitch successful (Strike up the band!)

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CJ’s pitch was successful and Warren Zevon’s Excitable Boy has been added to the Newbury St. Collection!

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Jeannie needs a shooter, but we need you to head over the comments section and let us know if you’re still looking for the next big thing, or if you want to play Warren Zevon’s Excitable Boy all night long.

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Please join us next week as Mitch comes in incense and patchouli to take you on a mysterious trip through Al Stewart’s The Year of the Cat.

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Exile on Newbury St. is a weekly newsletter competition between 4 friends to see who has the best taste in music. Learn more about us and the rules of the game.