Warren Zevon, What were you On?!!!

My crappy POS car has no working radio. Well, actually, the radio works, but it only gets AM stations, but since I'm not really old or a right-wingnut, I'm stuck using the old cassette player, which also doesn't always work that great. So, since I can't find one of those things that plugs into a discman and plays in a cassette player (Does anyone even remember what those things were called? Anyone?.... Bueller?....), for the sake of variety I've been buying used cassettes.

One of my recent purchases of the musical media that time forgot was A Quiet Normal Life: The Best of Warren Zevon, released in the mid-eighties. Now, I love Warren, I have for years, and I think the bittersweet brilliance of The Wind (his last album released during his lifetime) is unmatched by almost any other piece of modern music. I mean, he was recording this while recieving cancer treatments just to buy him enough time to finish the album and see the next James Bond film (he accomplished both, and I heard he liked the movie, which happened to be Die Another Day). The album is a fitting end to the over thirty year career of a man who always managed to be just to the left of massive fame and acclaim.

All that being said, however, I simply must ask, Warren, what drugs and how much were you taking when you wrote these songs? Even ignoring the enjoyably bizzare "Werewolves of London" (Why do you want to meet a werewolf's tailor? How can a werewolf's hair be "perfect"? What is "the werewolves of London" and how are Lon Chaney and Lon Chaney Jr. doing "it with the Queen?"), the greatest hits album is rife with imagery, lyrics, and concepts that make you go "WHAT"?

Here's a quick sample. This is from "Excitable Boy,"

After ten long years they took him out of the home,
Excitable boy they all said
And he dug up her grave and built a cage with her bones
Excitable boy they all said.

And that's the title track from one of his better selling albums!

Or here's another famous one, "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner." The song tells the story of a mercenary hired to fight in Vietnam who then has his head blown off by the CIA that hired him. Roland, naturally, rises from the grave to seek vengence as a headless thompson gunner. The song is either meant to be metaphorical, allegorical, or just weirdness for weirdness' sake. Or it could very well be all three.

Warren's surreal storytelling isn't limited to the supernatural, either. In "Ain't That Pretty at All," an angry sounding Warren backed by guitars that seem to be stoking his rage, describes travelling back to Paris, visiting the Louvre, and then he's going to get a good running start and hurl myself at the wall!

Why? What could you possibly have against the walls of the Louvre?

His interactions with women are just as odd. "Poor Poor Pitiful Me" ends with,

Well, I met a girl at the Rainbow Bar
She asked me if I'd beat her
She took me to the Hyatt House
... I don't want to talk about it

If its something even Warren won't share, God only knows how that night went.

Then there's what passes for a love song on the album. The lovely and sad "Accidentally Like a Martyr" is a brilliant and touching song, but just try and make sense of this refrain.

We made mad love
Shadow love
Random love
And abandoned love
Accidentally like a martyr
The hurt gts worse and the heart gets harder.

How can you.... What does that even.... Oh, nevermind. Rest in Peace, Warren. If I took twice as many drugs as you, I still wouldn't have half your talent.