Nothing's Bad Luck

by C. M. Kushins

  “Much of 1977 was a nightmare,” Warren later claimed. “Crystal and I lived apart for several months, and I was seriously into the noir life—vodka, drugs, sex. Somehow, I got the songs written for Excitable Boy. Jackson begged me to get more sleep for my voice’s sake. Waddy Wachtel looked like he wanted to tear his hair out for six months.”

  He added, “I thought my days were numbered in fractions.”

  The following month, Browne asked Warren to play a series of benefit shows with him. Browne was known for his environmental advocacy and often volunteered to perform charity concerts and fundraisers. Drawing positive media attention to the philanthropic causes of his choosing, Browne would surprise the crowds by bringing talented friends and fellow rock stars onstage to lend a hand. Having not seen each other since their disastrous tour of Europe, he now reached out to Warren to get their chemistry flowing once again.

  Browne had submersed himself in solitude while completing The Pretender. Using that time alone to grieve for his wife and re-prioritize his life and career, he now set out to tour again with a renewed energy and sense of focus. The sheer number of upcoming shows reflected the confidence Browne had in the tours to come. During the first week of February, he and Warren performed two shows dedicated to disarming the world of nuclear weapons, one show to save the whales, and another to benefit the United Farm Workers.

  The charitable gigs were the sell-out smash Browne had hoped, garnering both performers solid press and critical accolades. With those US dates a success, Browne decided to take the show internationally, quickly agreeing to a two-night stint at Tokyo’s Harumi Dome. Playfully entitled “The Rolling Coconut Review,” the concert series also attracted big names such as Eric Andersen, Richie Havens, David Lindley, Country Joe McDonald, John Sebastian, and J. D. Souther—all of whom agreed to perform for free in what would become one of the first major all-star “Save the Whales” events in rock history.

  Convinced that the drama that had plagued their European tour was behind them, Browne again extended the invitation to Warren. All was smooth until Browne revealed that the budget for such a charity tour wouldn’t allow for Crystal and Ariel to come along. He explained that all performers were working for free—even close cohorts Waddy Wachtel and J. D. Souther—and any family members would be coming along out-of-pocket. During the previous tour, tensions had occasionally run high, leading to more than one altercation. Now, like a rewind of their arguments in Amsterdam, the two nearly went to blows.

  Over their dinner with Don Everly later that week, Crystal made the grave error of admitting in front of a still-furious and heavily intoxicated Warren that she sympathized with Browne’s position. They too went to blows—but with much worse consequences. Warren punched her before passing out cold. Crystal fled but returned in the morning. When Warren awoke hours later, she showed him the black eye, now swollen and raised. She had hoped the sight would be sufficient evidence of his addiction and the damage it caused. To her shock, he angrily accused her of lying. Warren refused to believe he could be capable of such violence, calling the act itself “evil.” This time, he asked her to leave.

  As she had made her way back into the house that morning, Crystal took note of their front lawn. It was littered everywhere with Warren’s empties—liquor bottles and beer cans scattered throughout the grass. She hadn’t noticed them the night before.

  In the hopes of flexing some literary muscle, Warren decided to write a travelogue of his journey to Japan. He pitched his idea—a rock-and-roll chronicle in the style of “Gonzo” journalist Hunter S. Thompson, whom he admired—to Rolling Stone’s founding editor Jann Wenner. The young publisher not only agreed to run it, but also provided Warren with a young female editorial assistant to take on the trip.

  When they returned from Japan, Rolling Stone rejected the article. Warren turned lemons into lemonade, the way he always did. He went home with the assistant.

  As the clock ticked closer to the first few studio sessions, Warren drank with greater voracity. He had crashed at the San Francisco home of his Rolling Stone assistant for only a few weeks before returning to Los Angeles and taking a small apartment directly across from the Hyatt House. Rather than help his slipping focus, the new bachelor pad simply led to the continuation of Warren’s binges—all-night parties, drugs, alcohol—and no shortage of friends and groupies to share in the illicit mayhem.

  For Warren, it would take years of hard-earned sobriety before admitting the true depths of his self-loathing and denial.

  Those closest to Warren would sometimes spy a crack in the facade—a brief glimpse of the fears and insecurities driving his dependency. Crystal had recognized the denial in his response to the black eye—going so far as to call the violence behind it “evil,” yet still denying any responsibility for it. She understood now that Warren had no memories of his worst behavior. While part of him knew what he was, all of him seemed to deny it.

  The latest estrangement from Crystal had granted him the time and flexibility to work at his own leisure, as well as the freedom to behave—or misbehave—as he pleased. But it provided none of the structure of marriage and family. Now facing a pending deadline, Warren found himself conflicted, needing a bit from both worlds. And instead of fueling his creativity, the isolation was fueling his addictions.

  Warren called Crystal at her sister’s home in Montana and begged her to take him back. She eventually agreed to a trial reconciliation. They would start with marriage counseling and then a family vacation to Hawaii.

  Warren continued to pull creative teeth, using Stolichnaya as his proverbial novocaine. Needing a sense of balance between his personal and creative lives—and hoping to make good on his many promises to Crystal—Warren found them a new Spanish-style house in Los Feliz. Between the quiet, normal life symbolized by the new home with the liquor cabinets fully stocked, he believed he had finally found the balance he needed.

  In Los Feliz, Warren found it easier to finish his work, but he had very little time left. The sessions for the newly named Excitable Boy were soon to begin.

  Warren’s ongoing antics had taken their emotional toll on friends and family. Although no relationships had passed a point of no return, many had become strained in the years following production on Warren Zevon and the ill-fated tour of Europe. Having seen Warren at his worst, some musical cohorts were apprehensive about getting back into the studio with him.

  Jackson Browne was the first to admit that the combination of helping Warren both personally and professionally had left him exhausted. He’d bent over backwards to get David Geffen in Warren’s corner, had made Warren the opening act for The Pretender tour, and had even taken Crystal into his own home when Warren disappeared in Morocco. Last but not least, Browne had rolled with the punches when Warren was drunk and obstinate during the original recording process.

  Waddy Wachtel later recalled, “Jackson brought me in, and he said, ‘I need you to co-produce this record because Warren won’t listen to me—anything I say. He’ll give wise-guy cracks, but he won’t listen. But he will listen to you—now, anyway. That’ll change after Excitable Boy.’ And he was absolutely right.”

  They set up camp at the legendary Sound Factory in Hollywood. With both Wachtel and Browne officially attached to the project, assembling a strong studio band became that much easier. As both co-producer and lead guitar, Wachtel was surrounded by stellar and familiar company: Russ Kunkel took on drums and Danny Kortchmar added additional percussion, while Jorge Calderón returned for background vocals and harmonies to the full album. Various bassists were used for different tracks, and—like Warren Zevon before it—Excitable Boy was chock-full of cameo appearances by renowned musicians.

  They had even been able to land Fleetwood Mac’s Mick Fleetwood and John McVie to add their respective drum and bass skills to one of the first songs to be cut—that funny werewolf song audiences found so amusing.

  The origins of “Werewolves of London” went back to 1974, during the e
arliest sessions for the notorious John Rhys demos. Warren had only just come off his stint with the Everly Brothers when Phil Everly offered the casual recommendation that the young songwriter come up with a playful tune that could inspire a dance craze. An avid movie buff, Everly took it a step further and suggested a possible title, cribbed from an old Universal horror film he had recently caught on television—Werewolf of London. The obscure thriller held the distinction of being the very first Hollywood film featuring the mythical monster. In a description that could also have been made of Warren, upon the film’s 1935 release, The New York Times had called it “a charming bit of lycanthropy.”

  Throughout those years, he and Crystal spent many nights hanging out in the Venice Beach home of LeRoy Marinell. During one otherwise typical visit, the trio sat around smoking weed and horsing around when Warren decided to amuse Marinell with Everly’s silly idea about a werewolf dance. They were still laughing when Waddy Wachtel—straight from the airport, having just returned from a gig in England—walked through the front door.

  Warren later recalled, “Waddy walked in and said, ‘What are you guys doing?’ And I said, ‘We’re doing the “Werewolves of London.”’ And Waddy, without batting an eye, said, ‘You mean, “Aah-Ooh! Werewolves of London?’” And we said, ‘That’s right.’ And he sat down and we wrote it in twenty minutes.”

  Marinell had been saving the song’s now-signature guitar riff for years, and while there is no bridge or key change within the simple composition, its three-chord structure made it ripe for jamming. Wachtel wailed on his Stratocaster and, laughing, began to yell out a first verse about the werewolf seeking out Chinese food through the rainy streets of SoHo. “Yeah, passing a line from each of us around,” Warren added. “I remember certain lines and whose they were. I think most of the first verse was entirely Waddy. I thought it was pretty remarkable that he spontaneously delivered himself of this sort of Paul Simon–esque verse.”

  Hysterical, Warren chimed in for the second verse and, finally, Marinell concocted the third verse about the “hairy-handed gent” running amok in Kent. They were done in twenty minutes, giggling, but not really thinking too much of the song. At Wachtel’s request, Crystal had jotted down the lyrics in her steno pad—just for posterity.

  The following day, Warren and Crystal stopped by the studio where Jackson Browne was tinkering with some of his own demos. In passing, Warren mentioned the novelty song, then sat at the house piano and performed a bit. Browne loved it and soon added it to his concert repertoire. When they had toured Europe together, Warren and Browne often performed it as a duet.

  Encouraged to use it for something, Warren initially recorded a version for the Rhys demos, then later, the version Browne had shelved during the Warren Zevon sessions. During the many versions, multiple ensembles took a crack at the playful number, but none struck the recording team as a definitive—or rather, releasable—cut. Now feeling the crunch of meeting Excitable Boy’s studio deadlines, Warren decided to finally record that polished, definitive version.

  Warren later recalled the long road that the song had taken in becoming an addition to Excitable Boy: “Well, that was the last of several different ensembles that played [the song]. And I don’t remember how many we did, but I remember that Waddy said, ‘I think we’re done.’ And Mick [Fleetwood] stood up and said, ‘We are never done!’ But we played it before. We’d recorded it with different groups. And I remember that Jorge Calderón said, ‘I think you need a real band’.… And I said, ‘Really? You mean like Buddy Rich?’ I remember that. And Jorge said, ‘No, I was thinking more like Fleetwood Mac.’” After Calderón made a phone call, Fleetwood and McVie agreed to come to the Sound Factory and help hammer it out.

  According to Wachtel, the arduous recording session required for “Werewolves of London” was comparable to the infamous filming of Apocalypse Now. As co-writer, he had already performed lead guitar on every previously recorded demo. But now, with Browne at the switchboard and pros from Fleetwood Mac rounding out the band, the silly novelty tune from LeRoy Marinell’s house slowly morphed into a promising rock-and-roll track.

  By dawn, the group had cut sixty takes. They decided to use the second one.

  Warren had specifically penned “Johnny Strikes Up the Band” to play as the album’s opener. Led off by Wachtel’s signature licks, the track kick-started Excitable Boy like a finger-snapping, toe-tapping call to arms. Its opening lines, “Dry your eyes, my little friend,” playfully worked as a lyrical response to the heartbreaking fade-out coda of “Desperadoes Under the Eaves,” marking the first of numerous instances where Warren seemed to thematically link the “omegas to the alphas” of consecutive albums.

  Although the lyrics offer no direct identification of the “Johnny” in question, Warren often used certain first names for his characters more than once and with little explanation. Norman in “The French Inhaler” was one example. In the case of this song’s eponymous “Johnny,” various interpretations have made him a bandleader returning triumphantly to town, bringing with him the joy of music, or perhaps a drug dealer arriving with his long-awaited cache. In later years, Warren would also use “Johnny” as an endearing nickname for Jordan, as well as in other later songs.

  As always, Warren liked to simplify things: “I appropriated the title from an opera, Jonny Spielt Auf, by Ernst Krenek,” here referencing an obscure 1927 German opus that had been banned throughout Nazi Germany. As for the “Freddie” that is “getting ready,” Warren claimed he’d had blues legend Freddie King in mind. For the album’s master track, Warren and Wachtel were joined by Russ Kunkel on drums and Leland Sklar on bass, with Danny Kortchmar handling additional percussion.

  Had Kurt Weill ever written a libretto based on works by Edgar Allen Poe, it might have come close to the macabre tone of Warren’s prized collaboration with ex-mercenary and Dubliners owner David Lindell. “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner” was another older composition that Warren had been sitting on for years, pre-dating his contract with Elektra/Asylum. Written during the Zevons’ idyllic 1976 sojourn to Spain, Warren had used for inspiration Lindell’s true stories of his time in Africa as a soldier of fortune. He had worked closely with Lindell to get his dark ghost tale about a betrayed gun-for-hire as accurate as possible in its historical references and portrayal of life as an international mercenary.

  On the day of the recording, Wachtel had the band get to the studio earlier than scheduled, hoping to nail the song’s theatrical, orchestra-driven ending before Warren arrived. Wachtel took to the engineering booth and led the musicians through the extra rehearsal time, with every member of the ensemble repeating the nuances of Warren’s full arrangement until it was perfect. When Warren showed up, the band shocked him by executing it flawlessly on the very first take. As the crescendo of Russ Kunkel’s drum march brought the song to its thunderous conclusion, Warren dramatically leapt from the piano, his arms in the air.

  In later years, the song itself gained status as a supreme fan favorite, rivaled only by “Werewolves of London” as Warren’s best-known work. He not only included it on nearly all future set lists throughout the remainder of his career, but it would one day hold the profound distinction of representing his swan song from public performance.

  While the same profundity could not be said of the album’s title track, the rollicking, piano-driven rock and violent, offbeat lyrics of “Excitable Boy” instantly made it a notorious requisite for nearly all future Warren Zevon concerts—not to mention providing yet another outlaw sobriquet for his ever-growing list.

  An homage to classic R&B, “Excitable Boy” featured some of Warren’s most bizarre lyrics yet. The tale of an adolescent sociopath and his grisly spree included scenes of assault, attempted cannibalism, murder, and necrophilia—all culminating with the construction of a cage fastened of human remains. While horrific in theory, the dark subject matter is instead infused with Warren’s signature tongue-in-cheek humor and playful sense of shock v
alue. And it was very catchy.

  Like “Werewolves of London,” the principal draft for “Excitable Boy” started during a visit to LeRoy Marinell’s home in Venice Beach. Warren and Crystal had recently returned from Spain and were still awaiting Jackson Browne’s confirmation of the Elektra/Asylum deal. To celebrate their homecoming, Crystal had prepared Warren’s favorite dinner, pot roast. She became hysterical as he expressed his gratitude—tearing off his dress shirt and rubbing the meat all over his bare torso. When Marinell coincidentally prepared the very same meal for them a few nights later, the couple burst out laughing and shared the story with their very amused host.

  While jamming after dinner, Warren confided in Marinell his frustration that no one ever allowed him to play guitar on any of his tracks. When Marinell explained that that was due to Warren being a little “too excited” in his playing style, Warren leaned in and smirked. “Well, I’m just an excitable boy.”

  Undecided if the song was strong enough for his Elektra/Asylum debut, Warren tested the waters by performing it at parties for friends and guests. Usually, the piano-thumping yarn of rape, murder, and grave-robbing got an enthusiastic response—especially from those who were well accustomed to Warren’s sense of humor. At one Los Angeles soiree, however, he was disappointed to learn folk songstress Joni Mitchell found the tune less than amusing—although it is not remembered if the version sung for Mitchell included the omitted verse that described tearing off the prom date’s arm and fucking the cavity.