Tuesday October 12, 2021 “Excitable Boy” Warren Zevon
“Excitable Boy” comes from Warren Zevon’s third album of the same name, an album that would be the commercial breakthrough for Zevon. Now you may ask yourself, is this my beautiful house, no wait that’s a different song. What you may really ask yourself is how this song made it onto the radio. Me too.
I always try to keep these songs of the day concise but there is just so much to consider relative to Warren Zevon so I will try to speed date it. His father was a bookie who worked for notorious Chicago gangster Mickey Cohen; Warren studied piano with Igor Stravinsky; he roomed with Lindsey Bickingham and Stevie Nicks as they were being assimilated into Fleetwood Mac; he wrote jingles for commercials; he was the musical director and bandleader for the Everly Brothers when they toured; he wrote songs that were hits for Linda Ronstadt; he opened for Jackson Browne...whew...so much more.
The album Excitable Boy contained the title track along with “Werewolves of Lodon”, “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner” and “Lawyers, Guns and Money” not one of them a love song. And he had some help on the Excitable Boy album from friends like: Linda Ronstadt, Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Jackson Browne, Karla Bonoff, Jeff Porcaro, Leland Sklar, J.D. Souther, Waddy Wachtel and Jennifer Warnes among others.
Google any name you might not recognize in that group and you will find an amazing list of recording credits for each one of them.
Warren Zevon left us in 2003 and in an interview with David Letterman, after Zevon had been given a diagnosis of terminal cancer, he shared the wisdom of a dying man saying that "I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." When Letterman asked if the diagnosis had provided him with any additional insights he added “Enjoy every sandwich.”
Stay safe and well...and only Warren Zevon could create a hit song about murder that included the lyric “and then he raped her and he killed her and he took her home”. Or maybe others could as well, which we will see through the week.