Nothing's Bad Luck

by C. M. Kushins

  The session for the upbeat love tune found the core ensemble returning, with Jorge Calderón visiting for harmony vocals that Warren later said “gave the song a great life,” and Jeff Porcaro’s regular bandmate and fellow Toto founder Steve Lukather filled in for David Landau on guitar.

  The Envoy’s second side opened with a signature Warren rock anthem that would go on to be a consummate staple in rousing his largest crowds. “Ain’t That Pretty at All” was one of the mean, smart-alecky hard rockers that worked to remind listeners that maybe Warren hadn’t grown up all that much after all. Directly inspired by his absurd jaunt through Europe with George Gruel, the song’s title became a humorous catchphrase between the friends at stops along the tour. Throughout the hard track, on which old friend LeRoy Marinell had stepped in to provide some additional colorful punch lines, Warren angrily lists the major sites of the world he’s seen, leaving him unimpressed and jaded. At the Louvre in Paris, he cries his intentions to get a running start and hurl himself against the wall—curiously comparing even the most elegant of cultural experiences to undergoing a root canal. It was as though his brazen inner ego had been held prisoner within his matured, peaceful, and domesticated id—that voice of relative reason that had revealed The Envoy’s most introspective and pensive moments. The wild ego had been awakened, leaving Warren wailing for blood.

  During the sessions, Warren’s bloodcurdling howls of rebellion were matched with his guitars and synth. It was completely appropriate that the track welcomed back so many faces from Warren’s three previous projects: J. D. Souther stopped by to add to the whoops and hollers; old friend and co-writer LeRoy Marinell was on hand for additional guitars; and for the first time since his contributions to Excitable Boy in 1978, Danny “Kootch” Kortchmar arrived, blending his own heavy guitar work with David Landau’s stinging licks. Stepping in on drums and percussion, Bread alumni Mike Botts and Steve Forman added to the energetic anthem. For “Ain’t That Pretty at All,” the all-encompassing electric sound stood out, especially as the only song that found Wachtel poring over the engineering controls in lieu of playing along on the track. More than one critic likened the ferocious track to the then burgeoning Los Angeles punk scene.

  “Looking for the Next Best Thing” was probably the most commercially acceptable and uplifting track on the album—not to mention the most accessible for critics who viewed deconstruction as their bread and butter. Its knowing and joyous acceptance of life’s obstacles had many convinced Warren was addressing his own approaching middle age and his blissful relationship with Kim Lankford, although he was quick to indicate his minor participation in the song’s writing. “LeRoy [Marinell], Kenny Edwards, and I wrote this one,” he later commented. “In a rare outburst of social organization, I was inviting various musician friends over for songwriting evenings in a big, gruesome house I’d rented in Nichols Canyon.”

  Even so, the song’s overall theme of a fruitless lifelong quest to find true love, then finally settling on “the next best thing” as a form of a defeatist, yet mature, lesson learned, seemed awfully autobiographical to many critics and listeners. And who else could lyrically liken such a romantic crusade to those of Don Quixote, while perfectly rhyming Ponce de León’s “cruise” with Sinbad’s seven-voyage “ruse”? In the meticulous eyes of many critics, the intelligence behind the song’s humor gave much of its true authorship away.

  Warren’s previous albums had all ended on rousing high notes, rock anthems whose respective fade-outs could be interpreted as the singer’s own spirit of never-ending youth and rebellion. “Lawyers, Guns and Money,” for example, drifted off with Waddy Wachtel’s seething guitar leading its listener down a path of raucousness along with Warren as a hedonistic pied piper. Likewise, on Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School, the cinematic fade-out of “Wild Age”—further enhanced by the symbolic harmonies of maturing rock bad boys Glenn Frey and Don Henley—offered all the bittersweet melancholy of watching your closest buddies drive off into the sunset following a long weekend of boyish adventures. But it was with the latest closer, “Never Too Late for Love,” that Warren ended an album with a heartfelt, gentle ballad for the first time since the revelatory “Desperadoes Under the Eaves,” off his 1976 self-titled release—and drew comparisons to other recent albums that likewise seemed to “celebrate domesticity,” Lou Reed’s The Blue Mask and John Lennon’s final collaboration with wife Yoko Ono, Double Fantasy, among them.

  In light of Warren’s ongoing public romance with Kim Lankford, most critics were quick to read between even the most seemingly unrelated of his lines. This track, however, made it easy for them. He explained to Robert Palmer of The New York Times: “When I started writing songs for the album, I knew I had a lot of emotions available to tap… But I also felt that if I happened to stumble on something positive, like the lyric I wrote for one of the love songs on the new album, ‘It’s Never Too Late for Love,’ that maybe I could sing with a certain amount of credibility.”

  He added, “The experience I’ve been having lately is love, so that’s what I’ve been writing about. But love can be terrifying.”

  Every element of The Envoy spoke of Warren’s relationship with Kim Lankford, including its iconic cover. Aiming for the “James Bond” mystique of Warren’s vision, Jimmy Wachtel and George Gruel had gathered a full studio’s worth of extras—mostly made up of Lankford’s Knots Landing co-stars—for an ambitious photo shoot at Burbank Airport. With Warren centered against the Warner Bros. jet, dressed dapper in his 007-inspired suit and with trench coat slung over his arm, he looks every bit the proper man of action. On the back cover, he had written his dedication simply, “For Kim.”

  Unfortunately, the innocence and anxiousness of newfound love wasn’t exactly the kind of terror Warren’s listeners had come to expect. While critics pulled no punches in their conflicted assessment of his new work, fans merely ignored it. The Envoy was released on July 16, 1982, and spent a total of thirteen weeks on the Billboard chart, peaking at a disappointing Number 93 by mid-September. “Let Nothing Come Between You” / “The Hula Hula Boys” had been issued as the only US single, peaking at a noticeably low Number 23. It was only on the chart for just over a month before falling off completely. The label may have had more success had they issued singles matching the promo editions sent to radio stations and media outlets. Along with PR materials, The Envoy’s title track had been sided with “Looking for the Next Best Thing,” guaranteeing those songs would be in rotation, while having no effect on the charts.

  “We were really crushed by how it was received,” Wachtel remembered. “We had worked really hard with that album and were particularly proud of it when we were done… I think we got like a four-star review in Rolling Stone saying it was the best thing [Warren] had ever done—and then it just didn’t sell.”

  In his highest praise since Excitable Boy, Robert Christgau of The Village Voice joined the many critics pleased with Warren’s mature offerings. “It’s a wise, charming, newly written going-to-the-chapel number that I would have sworn was lifted from some half-forgotten girl group,” he wrote. “If ‘Never Too Late for Love’ and ‘Looking for the Next Best Thing’ announce that this overexcitable boy has finally learned to compromise, ‘Let Nothing Come Between You’ is his promise not to take moderation too far.”

  Craig Zeller of Cream, however, was merciless in his words, claiming Warren to be one of the music scene’s most “critically overrated troubled troubadours,” adding, “’Member those in-print cartwheel raves his debut garnered? Ever listen to the damn thing? A very dull dry run, easily as somnambulistic as the worst (best?) of Jackson Browne.”

  “[Warren’s] lyrics have all the trademark macho bluster and dark humor—about international terrorism, Wild West outlaws, B-movie monsters and what-all,” wrote Davin Seay in People magazine. “But also as plain as the piano he pounds is what may be the real Warren Zevon: introspective, solemn, maybe even nervous.”

  “Asylum Records reall
y should get rid of Warren Zevon,” Sandy Robertson of Sounds quipped. “He’s so good he shows just how dire everybody else on the label really is.” Big words, considering the label then counted Jackson Browne, the Eagles, Queen, Linda Ronstadt, and Carly Simon among their bestselling artists.

  Warren’s initial signing with Elektra/Asylum—being listed within their ranks was a badge of honor around the Los Angeles scene—earned him a certain amount of recognition before his first label release. Founder David Geffen’s idealistic intentions had always been in providing a creative vanguard for artists he deemed just off the radar of the mainstream, but much had changed within the music industry since his 1975 departure. One entity in particular was quickly shaping every facet of how American youth was discovering new music and the hottest trends—and its name was MTV.

  The revolutionary cable network, running all-day music video programming, had instant viewership among America’s teens—and had launched only nine months prior to The Envoy’s release. Warren had rightly predicted the inevitable importance of the music video format and had unsuccessfully pushed Elektra/Asylum for a promo video to accompany Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School. By the time The Envoy hit the market, however, his demographic was largely past the age of MTV’s cultural influence. Nonetheless, the channel soon provided the perfect outlet to mark this era in Warren’s career—the peak of his popularity and the hardest he ever rocked.

  A tour had been booked for the later part of 1982, curiously constructed as both an extension of Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School’s well-received hard-rocking spectacle—which was supposed to have officially ended in a blaze of glory with the Roxy’s five-night residency—and as a promotional tour for The Envoy. After the arduous journey that had been 1980’s All Hell Is Breaking Loose Jungle Tour (aka The Dog Ate the Part We Didn’t Like Tour) all across the United States, this trip would be shortened and tightened. Over the course of one month, Warren would embark on a whirlwind tour that hit thirty stops in fifteen states, and included in-store appearances and a tv performance.

  Toward the end of September, Warren, George Gruel, and a new band of backup musicians hit the road for 1982’s To the Finland Station Tour. After a few warm-up gigs at the Metro Club in Boston and around Connecticut and upstate New York, Warren had his major launch at the Ritz in New York City.

  The night before the large kickoff show, he was booked for his first major late-night television appearance as the musical guest on NBC’s popular Late Night with David Letterman. A self-professed Zevon fan, Letterman was as curious to meet the singer as Warren was anxious to nail the appearance. At the time, Letterman’s edgy follow-up to the late-night staple The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson was only in its first season, but the youthful and irreverent host drew both iconoclastic guests and a hip, youthful viewership. When Warren took to the Late Night stage on September 27, 1982, Letterman had only been on the air for half a year. Warren would share the bill with conservative political commentator and editor of the National Review William F. Buckley Jr. George Gruel recalled Warren’s awkward pre-taping greenroom encounter with the famed journalist: “[Buckley]… proceeded to ramble on and on, about how many times he’s had his picture taken, which segued into something about sailing and his new book.”

  Once Warren was onstage, Letterman’s own line of questioning ran the gamut, everything from the truth behind reports of Warren rubbing a pot roast on his chest in real life to his well-known intervention for substance abuse. Sandwiched between two musical numbers—“Excitable Boy,” at Letterman’s backstage request, and an appropriately rocking rendition of “The Overdraft”—the playful yet revealing interview set a warm precedent between Warren and the host. Humorously pointing out that the high-profile example for intervention therapy had already been set with the widely publicized scandals surrounding the New York Yankees’ heavy-drinking manager Billy Martin, Warren opened up about his alcoholism to Letterman with candor and self-deprecating, biting humor.

  With chemistry and a natural camaraderie, the two hit it off, both on- and offscreen. The appearance marked the first of many for Warren on Letterman’s show, as well as the beginning of a twenty-year friendship.

  Warren’s kickoff show was only a night away. “When he first performed in New York six years ago,” Stephen Holden in The New York Times wrote, “Warren Zevon wasn’t so much a rock-and-roller as a singer-songwriter with a feisty, cynical edge. He seemed like a performer capable of exploding into something quite different, though one wasn’t sure just what… Now it turns out that Mr. Zevon is a rock-and-roller to the bone.”

  As a commencement show for a tour that had never really ended, Warren’s appearance at the Ritz was both a critical success and an audience draw. Although he had been unable to retain the members of Boulder for this second tour leg, a fresh crop of young musicians with similar hard-edged sensibilities rose to the challenge. Guitarist Randy Brown, drummer Joe Daniels, bassist Larry Larson, and lead guitarist John Wood had been successfully added to Warren’s To the Finland Station Tour back in Los Angeles. Critics were pleased with the seamlessness with which the new band took over from Warren’s former ensemble. Holden added, “Driven by hard, lean arrangements, featuring two guitars and keyboard, these and other songs assumed a furious, compelling irony… Mr. Zevon’s droll, rusty-voiced delivery tinged everything with sarcasm.”

  The Envoy meant to represent the new leaf Warren had turned through his apparent sobriety and a new, optimistic outlook on life. Audiences, however, had grown accustomed to the physical pyrotechnics and unadulterated rock and roll his concerts delivered. As an amalgam of both the new album’s artistic themes, and the brazen fury of Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School, this new tour had to satisfactorily strike the right balance of both. As Stephen Holden concluded following the Ritz kickoff, “Mr. Zevon, who began as a relatively sedate performer, has developed a charismatic grace that included such acrobatic feats as leaping double-splits. On Tuesday, the acrobatics were very much connected to Mr. Zevon’s songs, many of which celebrate the spirit of anarchic, boyish adventure.”

  The New York Times’ affectionate review couldn’t have run on a better morning. That night, Warren and crew were headed to Passaic, New Jersey, preparing to give their first-ever live televised performance via MTV’s new concert series. For his Late Night with David Letterman appearance, Warren had performed his two songs with the program’s house ensemble, Paul Shaffer and the World’s Most Dangerous Band. MTV was slated to be the glorious debut of Warren’s new official lineup.

  While MTV’s increasing popularity would soon have wide-ranging influence over trends in the very music and pop culture they broadcast, as an evolving junior network, executives were still open to experimenting with programming and content. Overall, Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School’s tour had received better write-ups than the album itself, making it the ideal rock-and-roll circus for a live television event. MTV’s all-music dictum could provide the perfect venue for bringing the energy and excitement of Stand in the Fire into every American household with a cable-box.

  Only a few months before, MTV had launched what would later be regarded as one of the most successful advertising campaigns in television history: “I Want My MTV!” provided a brilliant means of getting nationwide cable providers to offer the network—and inadvertently introduced a new idiom into mainstream pop culture. As reported in The New York Times, by its one-year anniversary, the network added 145,000 subscribers throughout New York alone, thanks largely to its generation- defining slogan.

  The network’s viewership was at its highest peak on October 1, 1982, when Warren went live. George Gruel, appropriately attired in his own “Excitable Guy” T-shirt, brought a hand-cuffed, leather-jacketed Warren out onstage to thunderous applause. “Rock and roll,” Gruel shouted, commencing a raucous night on par with the best of Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School’s tours. “They say that everything that dies will come back—and if that’s true, I hope I come back as Suzanne Somers,�
� Warren quipped just before the dynamic show’s encore. “No, just kidding—but in case I don’t, I’d like to thank everyone for a great time—and have a great life!”

  He closed with “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead.”

  The band was back home in Los Angeles the first week of November. That same week, Warren’s whirlwind media blitz continued with a lengthy profile in People magazine. It was an unlikely periodical for the now “former” excitable boy, but such mainstream attention had become normal as one half of a celebrity power couple. People’s feature piece was as much about Kim Lankford’s career as Warren’s music and sobriety—but nowhere else provided a better place to play up the “domestic bliss” angle of The Envoy.

  “By rights,” he told People, “I shouldn’t be here—I was on a straight Jim Morrison course. I know I owe a lot to God and even more to the friends He has blessed me with. So many people have been so supportive, and Kim has been the most supportive of all.” In the same article, the couple mentioned their “aim to wed, someday, on the Montana ranch of their novelist friend, Tom McGuane.”

  By the time the issue ran, however, things between them had drastically changed. Despite Warren’s public professions to have achieved a level of sobriety almost akin to enlightenment, nothing could have been further from the truth. While he had managed to cut back drastically on his drinking, even going so far as to show off his soft drinks and cups of coffee to interviewers as proof, he had substituted numerous narcotics in its place. He’d been smoking marijuana from such a young age, it barely registered as a slip of sobriety by his logic, while cocaine and prescription painkillers and downers had slowly become addictions. Lankford later recalled returning home to find Warren and a few unfamiliar friends—among them the drug dealer and later inspiration behind “Charlie’s Medicine.” Much to her horror, the group was sitting around shooting heroin.