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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”.




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