Nothing's Bad Luck

by C. M. Kushins

  Although vocally the two performers couldn’t be less alike, it was songs like “The French Inhaler” that earned Warren early comparisons to fellow Elektra/Asylum artist Tom Waits. For this ballad, Warren offered a genuine “story song,” a smooth yet lecherous come-on from one barfly (the song’s narrator named Norman) to another (an unnamed aspiring actress, based largely on Tule). The dirty poetics, heavy in their innuendo and cynicism, come off as if Los Angeles skid row poet laureate Charles Bukowski had written “Eleanor Rigby.” Warren’s autobiography is also present in the fictional tale, as his references to the sad bar culture and the alcoholics that cohabit there—con men and washed-up wannabe starlets—were figures he had already rubbed elbows with in real life. The lyrics seem to exhume ashtray debris and Formica, and the tale’s denouement is mournfully left open-ended.

  The lush chorus of “The French Inhaler” was greatly aided by Eagles front men Glenn Frey and Don Henley, who popped into the studio to contribute vocals and rhythm guitar. Old Hollywood television composer Sid Sharp and his orchestra added the somber strings to both this track and the album’s closing epic, “Desperadoes Under the Eaves.”

  Written at his in-laws’ lodge during a visit to Aspen the year before, “Mohammed’s Radio” was one of the first tracks laid down for the sessions and recorded the first week of November 1975. Warren constructed it as a gospel song, with the mellow, sing-song feel deliberately working its way up into becoming an adoring anthem for the love of music and all its healing powers.

  Like the track before it, Warren created a tapestry of colorful fictional characters, all of whom are counted among the downtrodden: the local sheriff, the village idiot, and the rest of the young disillusioned baby boomers who can’t pay for meat in the post-Watergate economy all switch on their radios for the solace and escapism that the soundtrack of the American airwaves provides. For the session, Warren was joined by the initial core band, plus Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks; Bobby Keys returned for the soulful saxophone breaks.

  Warren’s wiseass intellectualism could always be counted upon as a defining characteristic in his work. “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” was a perfect example. The origins of the track’s title stemmed from a sarcastic retort he had once given to Crystal when she had tried to help him relax at home. The two had both laughed so hard that the phrase quickly became both Warren’s personal mantra and a song idea. Later, Warren would cryptically explain to interviewers that he’d written the song “on a practice drum set in the middle of the day at a friend’s house in Death Valley.”

  He had envisioned it as a march that slowly built to a crescendo and incorporated the party atmosphere of the studio with all its lively, beautiful dissonance—whoops and hollers (many of which were provided by Jorge Calderón) included. The only catch was that he had, initially, insisted on playing drums for the track, although he wasn’t much of a drummer at all. As a compromise, Browne recorded Warren doing his best John Bonham impression, then played that demo for professional drummer Gary Mallaber to use as the framework for the real recording. Mallaber, who had created the memorable jazz-infused high-hat intro to Van Morrison’s “Moondance,” easily replicated Warren’s march concept and aided in crafting this song’s signature cadence.

  “Sometimes, you don’t really know the strength or the endurance of the recordings that you’re working on until after they hit,” remembered Mallaber. “Then, you look back and say, ‘Wow, this somehow became iconic.’ I think that that was the feeling with my work with Van Morrison, and those recordings kind of got me the key to the city around LA, and at least, with Jackson’s trust. I always believed that my work on Van’s stuff made me a ‘go-to’ player for Jackson and, ultimately, the Warren tracks.”

  “On this song, Jackson had told me that Warren wanted to play the drums himself, but was talked out of it,” Mallaber added. “Evidently, he had had fun going crazy demonstrating his ideas on the demos. But I was able to put that ‘march’ feel to it, really spirited, the way that Warren had envisioned it.”

  As far as the autobiographical quality to the song, Warren had begun collecting guns.

  The gentle, Mexican-infused guitar opening to “Carmelita” was something that Waddy Wachtel had been refining ever since Warren first played the then unfinished song for him on the road with the Everly Brothers. Warren had also continued to refine the song over many years, recording numerous demos of alternate lyrics—even one with himself on lead guitar. In later years, Warren referred to the song as a “cheerful number about heroin,” although that was one substance that, while he had sampled, he never abused. Other elements in the ballad, such as geographic references to the Pioneer Chicken Stand and Alvarado Street were real Los Angeles locations that he had frequented all the time. Aside from its tragic lyrics, the beautiful simplicity of the song would garner numerous cover versions in later years, starting with Linda Ronstadt’s the following year—again featuring Wachtel on lead guitar. The stripped-down nature of the song contained the initial group lineup, plus Glenn Frey returning for some additional guitar.

  In late November, just as the sessions were truly picking up steam, the group recorded one of the more soulful and funkier tracks on the album, “Join Me in LA.” Warren had been sitting on the song for a while and had recorded a few demo versions in years past. Although not nearly as autobiographical as the rest of the songs, the track still fits into the chronological order of the full album by bringing the listener into the modern era of Los Angeles. Its “come hither” quality to the sin and promise of late-night Los Angeles oozes along a slow funk vibe. To fully capture the slow R&B tone of this atypical composition, Browne added a full section of female backup singers—Rosemary Butler, Stevie Nicks, and Bonnie Raitt. Bobby Keys again created the standout saxophone sections.

  Like a great novel, Warren Zevon closes its final chapter in grand, epic style. “Desperadoes Under the Eaves” is Warren’s magnum opus. Recorded near the album’s home stretch in mid-January, the heartbreaking confessional on addiction, depression, and longing had been inspired by Warren’s frequent solitary nights in seedy motels with no other company than his thoughts and his demons. And while it is clear that the song’s narrator is shamefully hiding from the outside world, unable to face the judgment of the angry sun or the punishment of the threatening trees below, brilliant self-deprecation and Chandler-esque wit remind the listener that Warren is very much aware of who and what he is.

  Although still under thirty, Warren wrote the song from the perspective of a man who has lived many lifetimes, condemned to repeat an entire stretch on earth over and over again until he gets it right. But it’s as if his addictions follow him throughout every reincarnation. If the motel in which he is staying can withstand even the power of mother nature in order to keep running until the room bill is paid, then even death isn’t an escape from the greatest of all Grand Inquisitors—himself. Warren would later admit that “Desperadoes” was, truly, the most autobiographical of all his songs.

  For the operatic conclusion to the album, Warren and Browne brought back all key members of the band, plus Sid Sharp’s strings, and enlisted Carl Wilson to help in arranging the all-important vocal chorus.

  Wilson brought along his brother-in-law, Billy Hinsche, a Philippines-born session musician who had been one-third of the vocal group, Dino, Desi and Billy. “Jackson had contacted Carl Wilson, and Carl called me,” Hinsche remembered. “He went, ‘How would you like to be on a Jackson Browne album?’ I loved Jackson’s work, he’s another LA guy, you know, so I was thrilled. We went down to the Elektra studios, which was really new and state-of-the-art at the time, and it was maybe nine at night. Jackson was in the booth with some other people—there were a lot of people at the session—but I had no idea that the session was for Warren. I hadn’t heard of him at that time. Finally, I see this guy come out of the booth, long hair and glasses, and he sits at the piano and starts yelling something to Jackson across the room. He goes, ‘Forget playback�
�I’ll show you!’ and started demonstrating some changes right there on the piano. So, I laughed and thought, ‘Now I get it.’ But, really, that right there was my first impression of Warren—coming out of the shadows when coming to fit his vision.”

  Like Gary Mallaber, Hinsche observed that Browne seemed to take the lead in organizing the sessions’ production and transitions. “Warren was very quiet, very focused, almost invisible,” he recalled. “It seemed like it was Jackson’s show until Warren had something that he was compelled to add in. Carl was brought in for ‘Desperadoes’ because of the gorgeous harmonies on it and, I think, had that Beach Boys type of harmony. I knew exactly what they were going for right there in the booth with my headset on. The arrangement is still one of my favorites.”

  Following the session, Hinsche and Warren became friends. “It was later that I really got to know Warren,” he remembered. “There was one time when we were hanging out together, Warren and I, and we were in a Denny’s in the middle of the night. We finished up and went outside and he flagged a cab. I said, ‘Where are we going?’ and he just smirked and said, ‘You’ll see.’ So, he makes the cabbie take us out to the middle of nowhere, like a field or something, and he pulls a gun out of his jacket! He made this cabbie drive us to God-knows-where so he could show off shooting beer cans.”

  Warren again played the waiting game while the final recordings went into the postproduction stage.

  In Browne’s deliberate effort to establish Warren as a serious songwriter of true literary caliber, several of the tracks—the maudlin “Frozen Notes” and novelty songs “Excitable Boy” and “Werewolves of London”—were placed back on the shelf to be used at a later date. Biding his time, Warren kept himself busy by working on new songs and aiding a very pregnant Crystal settle into their new two-bedroom house in North Hollywood. Wanting his love of music to continue in both his children (son Jordan had, after all, been named after an amplifier), Warren played Beethoven and Beatles music against his wife’s stomach, hoping for the baby to kick.

  Browne was aided in the mixing by John Haeny and engineer Fritz Richmond. His intention was to unveil the finished album to Geffen and Elektra/Asylum president Joe Smith for a summer 1976 release. Just prior to that crucial meeting, however, personal tragedy struck. Browne, who was already in the early stages of recording his own new album, The Pretender, suffered a devastating blow when his young wife, model and actress Phyllis Major, committed suicide with an overdose of sleeping pills. While the glamorous couple had been dating ever since their chance meeting at the Troubadour in 1971, Browne and Major had only been married for four short months. Shocked and grief-stricken, the only twenty-eight-year-old Browne now found himself a widower and single father to their baby son, Ethan.

  In an effort to stay on deadline, Browne enlisted the help of close friend Jon Landau, a fellow producer and manager who had been privy to much of Warren Zevon’s recording sessions. Landau’s credits included not only managing up-and-comer Bruce Springsteen but also co-producing that artist’s breakthrough album, 1975’s Born to Run. Browne assigned the young producer to the all-important Geffen/Smith executive meeting on his behalf. A firm believer in Warren’s work, Landau pushed hard at the unveiling, ultimately scoring Warren Zevon a release date for the second week of May.

  Peaking at 189 on the Billboard charts, sales were underwhelming, but Warren’s lyrics and composition—not to mention the lush arrangements and sleek production—made the debut a critical darling almost instantly. Robert Christgau of The Village Voice claimed he liked the way Warren resisted “pigeonholes like ‘country-rock’ while avoiding both the banal and the mystagogical.”

  Rolling Stone’s Stephen Holden concurred, stating, “Zevon’s style, however, is distinct.… Despite its imperfections, Warren Zevon is a very auspicious accomplishment.… Who could have imagined a concept album about Los Angeles that is funny, enlightening, musical, at moments terrifying and above all funny?” Kit Rachlis of The New York Times wrote, “Part of Zevon’s appeal is the knowledge that he will only improve. He is already like a good boxer; he jabs with his romanticism, sits back on the ropes and challenges with his humor; his combinations are straight rock ’n’ roll.”

  The critics may have loved Warren’s intellectual brand of rock and roll, but it was the album’s commercial appeal that would ultimately dictate his future on the Elektra/Asylum label. Executives agreed that while the release of Warren Zevon warranted a tour, he was too new as an act to pack out a large house. They were forced to get creative in presenting him to the public, while still keeping travel and venue costs within check.

  The label’s solution was to book Warren and his band cabaret-style, in smaller clubs primarily along the East Coast, targeting venues that would appreciate his unique blend of story songs, biting lyrical humor, and—when the mood struck him—wild-child, piano-driven rock.

  The gamble paid off. Under the guidance of road manager Howard Burke, the Warren Zevon tour—also referred to as the I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead Tour—launched on June 11, 1976, with a kickoff performance at New York City’s the Bottom Line, to great success. Word of mouth had spread of Warren’s unique act and many of New York’s biggest names came out for the debut gig. Not only was Bruce Springsteen spotted in attendance, but comedy bad boy John Belushi introduced the show and personally brought Warren out on stage.

  There were compromises, however. Jackson Browne skipped Warren’s tour, instead taking refuge from his wife’s death in the studio to complete his own album. News of Waddy Wachtel’s guitar prowess had spread far and wide and he was in demand more than ever; he was already off to Europe to back Linda Ronstadt’s tour. In his place, American-born but England-raised rock guitarist Jerry Donahue took over the lead guitar duties, and longtime Jackson Browne veteran Mickey McGee was hired on drums. Warren was able to retain bassist Doug Haywood from the album sessions. The summerlong tour took Warren and crew south through Nashville and Philadelphia, then westbound again for final stops in Chicago and Denver. The roadshow made its triumphant ending back in Los Angeles at the Roxy.

  As had been the case with the album he was promoting, Warren’s live performances were the subject of almost unanimous critical praise. His greatest advocate was Rolling Stone staffer Paul Nelson. An aspiring novelist, Nelson’s published criticism bordered on genuine literature, and the care he gave his output often gave his editors their fair share of headaches. Blurring the line between critic and artist, Nelson often sought out the performers with whom he was most enamored. While rock stars usually kept reporters at arm’s length, Nelson could count Jackson Browne and Bruce Springsteen among his circle of friends. With Warren, Nelson immediately sensed a creative connection. While Warren was in New York for the album’s tour, he took the time to dine with Nelson and the two became fast friends.

  “They both had this affinity for Ross Macdonald and Lew Archer,” explained Nelson’s official biographer, Kevin Avery. “Their shared interests certainly helped propel the friendship forward. But, I think that Paul saw in Warren the same thing that Warren saw in Paul, and that was an understanding of what it was really like to be an artist. They both knew how difficult it is to take that vision that you have in your head—in Warren’s case, setting it to music, and in Paul’s case, putting it on the page. It wasn’t easy for either of them.”

  Nelson quickly won Warren over with his own glowing review. “Although such oversimplification hardly does Zevon or the LP justice,” he wrote, “it would suggest that he is a talent who can be mentioned in the same sentence with Bob Dylan, Jackson Browne, Randy Newman, Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, and a mere handful of others—no apologies necessary. If it doesn’t, I’ll come right out and say it: Warren Zevon is a major artist.”

  Many critics took note of Warren’s onstage antics, not quite realizing that he was often very drunk during the performances. Alcohol had long been his solace during frequent bouts of depression, writer’s block, and self-doubt. However, he could be ju
st as indulgent, if not more so, when faced with the prospect of having to finally deliver the goods to a paying audience. Behind the scenes, the band, roadies, groupies, and celebrity admirers were always present to party and keep the drugs and booze flowing. With Warren, however, there were usually no limits, and his newfound success was proving an unfortunate catalyst in keeping his severe addictions going. Fortunately, he was able to perform as a functioning alcoholic and the show always went on.

  For the time being, things were truly in Warren’s favor. Only a few days after returning from the tour, Crystal went into labor and made Warren a father for the second time. Ariel Erin Zevon was born August 4, 1976.

  Warren had made a vow that as long as the birth went well, and both his wife and child made it out okay, he would swear off vodka for a month. He kept the promise.

  The record company had selected “Hasten Down the Wind” as the first single off the album, coupled with “Mohammed’s Radio” as the B-side. It was followed swiftly by “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead.” During the fall of 1976, it wasn’t uncommon to hear these and other tracks off the LP in normal rotation on the radio, finding them in good company on the air with the likes of the Eagles, Elton John, and Linda Ronstadt. And, of course, Jackson Browne, whose album The Pretender was due out in November.

  Still deep in mourning, Browne had been advised by family and friends to keep himself busy. Following that advice, he decided to go back on the road a month before The Pretender was due to hit, both as a strategy for early promotion and an effort to occupy his mind. He asked Warren to perform a series of joint concerts along the East Coast again during the month of October, and when those proved hugely successful, Warren was extended an offer to be Browne’s opening act on a nine-city tour throughout Europe. As Browne had his three-year-old son to tend to and Warren and Crystal were nursing infant Ariel, Browne mandated that all friends and family were welcome on the tour, free of charge.