Today, we’ll skip over his forgettable 1969 album and launch right into 1976’s “Warren Zevon.”Īt the very end, I’ll pick two for my top 100 songs list. Because Warren Zevon just might be my favorite songwriter of all time. So, this week is a tribute to all of the G.O.A.T.s in Zevon’s catalog-and rather than do a “top 10,” I’m going to go album by album through his career. I can’t think of another musician who has done that. He continued to create, though, writing three albums of songs that feel like meditations on his awareness of death, and beautiful goodbyes to the world.
(minus their lead singer) as The Hindu Love Gods, and his career took off again, until he was diagnosed with cancer in 2002. He bounced back in 1987 with a fantastic album on a new label (Sentimental Hygiene), and then teamed up with R.E.M. Zevon then became a hitmaker, from Lawyers Guns and Money to Werewolves of London to Jeannie Needs a Shooter…And then drugs and alcohol took him down and in 1984 he disappeared into rehab. There hadn’t been much like it before, except maybe some Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard stuff-but there certainly wasn’t much darkness on the 1970s rock scene. On the strength of that tune and work he did with Jackson Browne and The Eagles, he got a reputation as a cowboy/outlaw songwriter and got his first major label deal, resulting in his eponymous first album (produced by Jackson Browne).
But then, after touring as the keyboardist for the Every Brothers, he met former mercenary David Lindell and together they cowrote Zevon’s first true Zevon song: Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner. In fact, there’s really not much there worth listening to other than a little cover of Iko Iko. Musically, he started out behind the scenes, writing a few songs for The Turtles, before producing a solo album, “Wanted Dead or Alive,” that was not well-received. He started with the kind of background you’d expect based on his songs: The son of a Russian Jewish bookie, “Stumpy Zevon,” who worked for Mickey Cohen, and a Mormon mother. Warren Zevon, born on January 24, 1947, is the only musician I can think of who took us gracefully through a career and on into death, letting his fans know where he was at every step of the way. But on the other hand, I didn’t want to have a top 100 with more than a couple by the same person or band.īut choosing just a song or two by some of these guys is too hard–they’re too special to me. But when it came to picking my favorite songs, there were some bands who had too many for me-and I felt bad not including some. feature, it was an excuse to post a bunch of cover songs.
#Carmelita warren zevon update#
The master list is here, and I update it about every two weeks or when I have another 10 songs or so.
#Carmelita warren zevon series#
THE GREATEST OF ALL TUNES (G.O.A.T.) is a series of posts, producing my 100 favorite songs of all time.
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