-
THE WEREWOLVES OF LONDON
Warren Zevon 
(1978)


Warren Zevon was the renegade West Coaster. While his mid-seventies Los Angeles contemporaries were taking it easy and running on empty, Zevon’s albums swilled with troubling tales of mercenaries, psychopaths and bent lawyers. In 1975, Zevon signed to David Geffen’s Asylum label, on the promise that Jackson Browne would produce his first, self-titled, album. Around this time he began work on a song which would have to wait until the second album, Excitable Boy, for release. “The Werewolves of London” was written by Zevon, with the songwriter LeRoy Marinell and the session guitarist, Waddy Wachtel. Taking a title suggested to Zevon by Phil Everly, the three sat down one hot Californian afternoon.  

 Marinell had a guitar figure, which had been floating around unused for some months. It was translated into a piano vamp by Zevon, a classically trained pianist, and Wachtel ad-libbed some lyrics: “I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand / Walkin’ through the streets of Soho in the rain / He was lookin’ for the place called Lee Ho Fooks / Gonna get a big dish of beef chow mein.” Zevon loved the surrealism. “I said ‘Okay, fine. There’s your first verse’,” Wachtel recalled. “You write the rest; I’ve gotta go into town.” The meaningless story about the “hairy-headed gent, who ran amok in Kent” was duly completed. Browne performed the song live for some months, before Zevon took it to the studio, towards the end of 1977, with Browne and Wachtel jointly producing. 

 The rhythm was deemed too cute, however. It didn’t sound “stupid enough”, according to Wachtel. Someone suggested the drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie. “There was the werewolf right there,” said Wachtel. “It was perfect!” Wachtel unplugged a bottle of vodka for his brief guitar solo and Zevon, who later admitted he was drunk during most of the sessions, greased the piano riff with his warm-resin vocals. Fifty-nine takes later, with the Fleetwood Mac rhythm section, the track was a wrap and Zevon added the final, cryptic line: “I saw a werewolf drinking a pina colada at Trader Vic’s and his hair was perfect.” Although the single was never more than a turntable hit, the powerhouse riff later formed the basis for Kid Rock’s “All Summer Long”, a marriage of the Zevon song with Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama”.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

THE BATTLE OF EPPING FOREST

-
Image
Genesis (1973) The Story of the Song (Updated October 2017) I’ve been listening to the Genesis album  Selling England by the Pound  now for 40 years. One track that I have always had something of a soft spot for is “The Battle of Epping Forest”. Although there are objectively better and more musically satisfying tracks elsewhere on the album, “Battle” kept my attention as a teenager; and still does. I love the witty lyrics, the double entendres and the cartoon-like characters with Bash Street Kids-style names.  I grew up in East Anglia and often went down to London, so I knew roughly where Epping was on the map. To me, then, the song appeared rooted in the real world. It seemed to report on real events, real-time, unlike the myth-laden (but equally attractive) romance of “Dancing Out with the Moonlit Knight” or “Firth of Fifth” or the rustic whimsy of “I Know What I Like”. “Battle” was packed with words and colourful characters, with humour and menace – and it had
Read more

JUDEE SILL IN THE U.K. (1971–1973)

-
Image
Search up the American singer-songwriter Judee Sill on YouTube and the first two hits will probably be her appearance on BBC2's Old Grey Whistle Test in 1973. It was her second time on the show and Judee is singing two songs from her second (and, as it turned out, last) album, Heart Food: The Kiss and The Pearl, introduced by 'Whispering' Bob Harris. Here they are. I love these clips. It reminds me what an important show Whistle Test was, back in the days when there was so little decent music on television beyond the pop charts. But also because this is pretty much the only surviving footage of Judee performing. Anywhere. Yes, there is some grainy black and white film of her playing somewhere in America. But this is in the studio and in colour. And it was in London. So who was Judee Sill? Her story is breathtaking and tragic. Read it here or better still go see the movie documentary Lost Angel if you can.  "Judee is probably this year's reigning queen of the non-s
Read more

A TALENT FOR LOVING: THE BEATLES COWBOY MOVIE THAT NEVER WAS

-
Image
In 2009, a script for A Talent for Loving was auctioned at Bonhams . It was a treatment for a movie and was signed by all four Beatles. It apparently sold for a little under £8,000. I hadn’t heard of this movie before and was curious. What was it and why was it signed by the Beatles? It turns out that the Beatles’ involvement with A Talent for Loving goes back to early 1965, some months before their second feature film Help! was released. It was adapted for the screen by Evelyn and Richard Condon, from Richard Condon’s 1961 offbeat novel of the same name.  According to Wikipedia,  A Talent for Loving  tells the tale of a sixteenth-century Aztec priest who cut off his own hand and used the bloody stump to lay a curse upon a blasphemous Spanish conquistador and all his direct descendants. Three centuries on, in 1871, the beautiful young virginal daughter of a fabulously wealthy Texas rancher and gambler is its latest victim. The action centres around a cowboy race, run to decide wh
Read more