“There was simply nobody else writing like Warren Zevon at that time. He was one of the most interesting writers of the era, and certainly ahead of his time.”  – Gore Vidal, in I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead

Introduction

I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead is a brutally honest biography, and not quite like any I’ve read.  Then again, Warren Zevon was one-of-a-kind, so I guess that makes some sense.  What little I’ve been able to say for sure about Warren in the last two posts, and what’s coming in this one, is really based on that book.  If you find any of this compelling, I highly recommend it – it’s well worth the money.


So, where are we with our Warren Zevon week?


In my first post, we looked at some of Warren’s early songs that fall within a loose definition of ‘murder ballad’, or perhaps more precisely, songs that ought to be included in an expansive, contemporary definition that includes ‘murder ballads’ and more.


In my second post, several of Warren’s classic songs from Excitable Boy gave us a chance to flesh that ‘expansion’ out a bit, and to see how meaning is made from scratch in those songs, by the listener even more than the songwriter.


Today though we’ll look at the maturation of Warren’s songwriting with regards to the themes we explore in this blog.  In his later work all of the artistic spark of the earlier, spontaneous songs is still very much present.  But something is gained – Warren was able at his height to carefully craft meaning in his lyrics without shutting out the listeners’ ability to do so for themselves – indeed, while augmenting it.  Warren’s friend David Landau makes it clear in the biography.

“His thing was not to come up with musical, hooky catch-phrases that everybody relates to—phrases that are lying around in the language. Warren’s thing was to make up phrases and make them mean something. To really imbue them with meaning that other people could then relate to. It is a much more ambitious thing to do.”

His later songs, to my mind, surpass songs like “Werewolves of London” in both craft and inspiration.  Almost all are strong, and some are masterpieces, though it may yet be too soon to see it.  They fit even less neatly into the traditional definition of ‘murder ballad’, but I feel they come closest to the power of the traditional songs, boldly (though not fearlessly) exploring that space.


Life’ll Kill Ya

By jumping to Life’ll Kill Ya straight from our second post on Excitable Boy, I’m skipping over some choice songs.  “Jeannie Needs a Shooter“, “Play it All Night Long“, “Jungle Work“, and “Bed of Coals” on Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School are all worth some time here.  “Boom Boom Mancini“, “Splendid Isolation“… aw, I could go on and on.  

I guess I’m saying two things.  First, given the sheer amount of art Warren created on and around that line between life and death, it’s pretty clear that if he’d been born four hundred years earlier he’d have been one of those balladeers, an integrator, writing original songs about lords and ladies behaving badly.  As well, given the scope of what I’m not covering this week, we’ll probably see him in this blog again.


But for now, I want to skip to one album of his later work produced at, I feel, the creative height of his career.  I bought Life’ll Kill Ya very soon after it was released and was, and still am, blown away.  The album taken as a whole is not to me as dark as some say, though there’s no denying that suffering and death are two core themes of the work – but then again, they’re clothed in a wry, sophisticated humor.  Now, that’s typical of Zevon, but what he achieved with this album is remarkable balance – a true descent into the dark without losing a view of the light.  It’s a dance he did his whole career; but for my money, he never did it better than on this album.


Be warned: From this point on, the language in some of these songs is not safe for work or school.  It’s also brilliant.  (The album is not on Spotify, so we’ll have to rely on YouTube alone.)


“I met the man with the thorny crown…”


The album opens with a driving, desperate song of survival in the face of disaster – “I Was in the House When the House Burned Down.”   Right from the get go, we’re looking into a deep canyon.

There’s no question of ‘accidental’ meaning as in “Werewolves of London“.  Warren puts us right on the edge, quite purposefully…  but he leaves it up to us to descend.  If you can relate, you go.  This song might seem autobiographical, but there’s room in it for us all.  Indeed, Warren uses the suffering of Jesus in a way that fits some of what we’ve seen here before, and though he does it with a certain humor, the depth of the image is no joke.


I think I’ve put this song on more than a dozen mixed cd’s for diverse friends of mine (and for myself) since it came out.  There’s something about it that makes me want to share, aggressively.  “Have you heard this???”


It may not be a murder ballad, but it sure sets us up for what comes next.


“You’ve got an invalid haircut, and it hurts when you smile…”


The opening lines to the title track, next on the album, leave little doubt that Warren Zevon is at his creative peak.  The whole song… well, you just gotta hear it first.

This song is not specifically about murder, nor is it a ballad.  Yet, the psychological terrain Warren covers is well-known to us who love the genre.  I don’t really know another song that faces death in quite the way it does; it is essentially a musical vanitas.  (I suppose in a sense that’s true of the album as a whole.)

Vanitas Still-life – Pieter Claesz, ca. 1630

The first verse sets the perfect tone.  Not only are the outward things by which we identify ourselves rendered invalid, we must walk with spiders and ants.  It’s a tone we’ve seen before, especially on Excitable Boy.  But here there’s no time spent in veiling the existential truth.  All artistic energy is spent getting to the ultimate.  What we can’t know is left to the imagination, and what we must accept is laid bare before our eyes.  

Again, how you take it is up to you – it’s an incredible balance.  Is it dark and depressing?  Sure, if that’s where you go with it.  I don’t see it that way, though I can’t exactly tell you why.  I think it has something to do with the piano work, and maybe the line about the President and the rock star.  He’s really not defining at all how to see what we all must face, only that, smiling or crying, we must face it.

As he made clear later, his phobia of doctors informed this album; and within two years of its release, his first trip to a doctor in twenty years revealed his terminal disease.  The prescience of this song, really of the whole album and much of his other work, was not lost on Warren or those closest to him when his diagnosis came.

“I went to the doctor, I said “I’m feeling kinda rough…” “


The next six songs on the album are all strong, and some are wonderful.  I think “Dirty Little Religion” for example is truly phenomenal.  However, for what we write about in this blog, the ninth track really fits, although again without an act of violence in it. 


Because of the title, it does not explicitly appear on the album cover or the cd itself.  I even admit to hesitance in posting it here, though the song is really quite deep and there’s nothing vulgar or violent about it.  It’s high art, and we have to consider it.  The title sounds like a joke.  It isn’t.  Again, I rank it at the level of Warren’s best work.


If you can get over the language, just let it go, you’ll see it.  They interplay of the melody and the cadence of the lyrics, the simple power… this is poetry.   Here are the lyrics.

Here’s the studio version on YouTube which is clear, but I want to include as well a performance that, though you’ll need to turn up in volume, just can’t be beat for facial and vocal expression.

I always heard it as a dialogue between a man and his psychiatrist, but I’ve seen other interpretations that it is a medical doctor and a terminal patient.  I suppose either interpretation works and it may not matter in the end, though I would note that the song was written before Warren’s diagnosis and the initial dialogue between the characters suggests a question of mental health.  Whether it’s physical or mental decay that’s the subject, the central theme is pain and its inevitability.  “The rich folks suffer like the rest of us… it’ll happen to you.”

Warren being examined after his diagnosis by Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

Coda – “Just make us be brave and make us play nice…”


I don’t know how to wrap all this up.  Part of it is that I don’t want to – but I know I must.  I have to come back to Warren again sometime, but it’s time to let go for now.


Why did he choose to so often explore these themes?  Why do we connect?  I suppose the question of why some of us are so drawn to Warren’s music is the same question we keep asking – why are we so drawn to murder ballads?


Even if I could answer it, I’ve learned by all the writing I’ve done in this blog that I shouldn’t.


We’ve got to come as we are to these songs, and Warren’s approach to songwriting is as good an example as any that the artist and the audience are both part of something larger.  I will not be so arrogant as to try and define what that is.  


These songs works for me, and I’m happy to have the chance to share them and my little thoughts about them.  Take what you need, or leave it for something that speaks to you more clearly.


I’ll leave you with one of the loveliest, most prayerful, and saddest songs I’ve ever heard – the closing song on Life’ll Kill Ya.   

“Don’t Let Us Get Sick” – Lyrics     Studio version on YouTube

That’s all she wrote.