5/30/2023 0 Comments Warren zevon songsFollowing 1982’s The Envoy, he publicly fell off the wagon, resulting in a five-year creative hiatus. During his peak of popularity, following the “Werewolves of London”-backed LP Excitable Boy, he was frequently angry, reckless, and consumed by alcohol. Those who counted Zevon as a close friend - Jackson Browne, Jorge Calderon, and Carl Hiaasen, amongst others - are familiar with his weaknesses, as is anyone who has read the gripping, painful tales in I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead. Part of what makes his morbid tracks so powerful are all the times when he’s unflinchingly honest someone willing to face off with the bleakest aspects of humanity is bound to get a few tears sliced into his armor. Songs like “Empty-Handed Heart” and “Hasten Down the Wind” early in his career and “Don’t Let Us Get Sick” as his time came to a close gave the public a portrait of a man who, while uniquely able to handle the harsh realities of life, hadn’t become desensitized to the pains of living - the self-deprecating “Numb as a Statue” notwithstanding. While Zevon’s signature darkness is indeed one of the characteristics that makes him so distinctive a songwriter, there’s a tender heart a few inches below the skull wearing aviator sunglasses. If Zevon’s lyrics are any indication, he greeted Death as an old friend, one who knew all of his stories long before the scythe bore down. It wasn’t just that Zevon was spitting in Death’s face-he pulled up a barstool next to the hooded reaper, ordered whiskeys for the both of them, and challenged him to a conversation. At the end of his career-both before and following being diagnosed with mesothelioma, a terminal form of lung cancer-he put out albums with titles including Life’ll Kill Ya and My Ride’s Here. His tumultuously productive career as a songwriter only further demonstrates his unmitigated interest in the dark side of life, whether it be the Hyatt House S&M of “Poor Poor Pitiful Me” or the Uzi atop the ballerina shoes on the back of the sleeve art to his third LP, Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School. …Warren took his right hand and stretched it behind his back at the same time he looked over his right shoulder and said in his best JFK accent, “Jackie, I’ve got this real bad pain in my head.” Kennedy being announced over the loudspeakers at his high school, Zevon turned to his friend Danny McFarland, who recalls his macabre candor: In the oral biography compiled by his first wife Crystal, I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead, it is written that upon hearing the death of John F. But still he yearns for something more: “He never lost a fight on his icy patrol/ But deep inside, Buddy dreamed of a goal.” It all comes down to the final game of his career: as Buddy squares off with a Finnish player from the opposing team, “Thirty seconds left, the puck took a roll/ And suddenly Buddy had a shot on goal.From as early as his teenage years, it was plain that Warren Zevon was never going to be an ordinary person, or at the very least an ordinary writer. The chorus lays out his dilemma: “There were Swedes to the left of him, Russians to the right/ A Czech at the blue line looking for a fight/ Brains over brawn that might work for you/ But what’s a Canadian farm boy to do?”īuddy’s career progresses, full of “blood on the ice” and many minutes in the penalty box. “There’s always room on our team for a goon,” a scout tells him. Ironically, Buddy’s only way to reach the big-time is to embrace his pugnacious side. But he does prove useful on the ice: “Buddy’s real talent was beating people up.” The song tells the story of Buddy, a would-be hockey star who, unfortunately, isn’t able to master the glamorous aspects of the game. Nor could Albom have imagined who would end up helping Zevon with the song: most of David Letterman’s Late Show band, including Paul Shaffer on organ, with Dave himself belting out the refrain of “Hit somebody!” throughout the proceedings. “He said, ‘You know, I’d like to do a sports song that nobody has done before.’ And I said, ‘Hockey’ And he said, ‘What?’ And I said, ‘I can’t think of a single hockey song.’ And he said, ‘Great! You should write me one!’” Albom began the process and the two later got together to complete it, with Albom never thinking the song would end up on Zevon’s 2002 album My Ride’s Here. “This song came about when my friend Warren Zevon and I were talking one day,” Albom writes. On his website, Albom explains the origins of the song.
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