Hiding Under Covers

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 Ch...

THE MONSTER MASH Bobby (Boris) Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers (1962) It’s shifted millions of copies since its first release in 1962, but thanks to an initial ban by the BBC for being too morbid, it took eleven years to make the UK charts. Elvis Presley dismissed it as “the dumbest thing I’ve heard”. Bob Dylan, on the other hand, is a fan, featuring the crypt-kicking classic in his Theme Time Radio Hour. If Halloween has an official anthem, surely it’s “The Monster Mash”, one of the bestselling novelty singles of all time. “The Monster Mash” was written by Bobby “Boris” Pickett, who died in 2007. Back in 1960, Pickett had been part of a covers band, the Cordials, who played Los Angeles and even cut a couple of flop singles. One of their favourite live numbers had been a rendition of “Little Darlin’”, a 1957 hit for the vocal harmony act the Diamonds. In an effort to stamp his own personality on the song, Pickett took to ad-libbing through the spoken bridge in the style of ...

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 ...