newcritics

For a brief moment, as the Carter years slipped somnambulantly into the Reagan years, it looked like Warren Zevon was going to be a real rock star.

It was the heyday of laid back LA rock, when the Eagles were king and Linda Ronstadt was queen. And Warren Zevon was Madcap Prince Hal–a boozing good time genius who, after years of work as a rock and roll journeyman, had a fluke hit with a lupine novelty.

In 1978, with Excitable Boy at #8 on the charts, it must have seemed like Prince Hal was ready to become Henry the Great.

Zevon never fit comfortably in the land of Takin’ It Easy. His LA was more Raymond Chandler than Buckingham-Nicks. But punk had begun to curdle the mood of the rock cognescenti into something sour and dark.

It was a change that set up well for Zevon, after all the title track of his breakout album told the ironically humorous tale of a disturbed, sheltered lad and the prom night murder he commits. (Zevon’s greatest album–his eponymously titled second record–was full of doomed western outlaws, boozing Hollywood losers, and strung out junkies.)

But the sound of Zevon’s music remained state of the art LA session AOR.

That changed when Zevon took it on the road in 1980 in support of Excitable Boy’s follow-up, Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School. Instead of hiring the usual cast of characters Zevon hired a bar band called Boulder. The group regularly performed Zevon covers and Zevon was impressed by a version the band recorded of his Join Me In LA. Augmented by NY guitarist David Landau the band played an audition with Zevon–a fire-breathing jam on Johnny B. Goode. They were ready to go.

I saw Warren Zevon in the spring of 1980, though spring had yet to arrive at the venue in Ithaca NY that April. I guess I expected a cerebral piano playing songwriter, a hipper, West Coast version of Billy Joel. What I got was a man with a Les Paul in his hands charging around like a rhinoceros with an absent, wild look in his eye leading a Warren Zevon cover band through a titanic medley of Poor Poor Pitiful Me and I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead. It was rock that would have made Crazy Horse proud.

Stand in the Fire, the live album WEA released that December (a day AFTER the end of the Christmas buying season?!) was flawed. Pride of place was extended to one of the most cynically careerist songs Zevon had ever written, Jeannie Needs a Shooter, billed as a collaboration with Bruce Springsteen but really a Springsteen knock off with a title borrowed from an unreleased Bruce song. A never before released Zevon original, The Sin was a heartfelt, new waveish, guilt-ridden redemption song, but one that was tuneless and forgettable. The rest of the record was like a Roman candle. The most explosive and indelible stuff was the Pitiful Me/Dead set closer and an encore medley of Bo Diddley songs. This was wild man rock and roll, sung with lunatic abandon, in a voice Zevon hadn’t used since Hitch Hikin’ Woman from his forgotten (and forgettable) 1969 debut!

The record marked the end of Zevon’s career as Henry the Great, peaking at #80 and quickly falling out of print, where it remained until it’s first-ever CD release this month. The hot parts of the record still smoke–with a definitive version of Lawyers, Guns & Money to go with the reference standard Poor, Poor Pitiful Me and I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead. There are great bonus tracks here too–better songs than Jeannie and The Sin like a tender, immaculate rendition of Johnny Strikes Up the Band and a classic solo piano performance of Frank and Jesse James, a piece of historical fiction with an Aaron Copland Hoedown-esque instrumental break. (The song had been written for and turned down by the Everly Brothers in the early 1970s when Zevon worked for them.)

Warner Brothers and Rhino botched an opportunity to do more with whatever recordings Warnerd made during Zevon’s five-night stand at the Roxy–if not releasing a whole set at least releasing a collection of 14 songs that feel more like a concert performance with a beginning, middle and end. The CD, like the original album, lacks the coherence and flow of the rock era’s greatest live albums (James Brown’s Live at the Apollo, The MC5’s Kick Out the Jams, Van Morrison’s It’s Too Late to Stop Now–I’m not counting archival releases of complete concerts, and I know Live at Leeds ain’t here, well, too bad it’s MY list, not yours!). Still, for Pitiful Me/I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead, and for proof that rock’s Prince Hal really was all that, I’m glad to have Stand in the Fire back in print.