Warren Zevon

By Chris Ingalls

A Quiet Normal Life: The Best of Warren Zevon (1986) *

I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead: An Anthology (1996) *****

Genius: The Best of Warren Zevon (2002) ****

Reconsider Me: The Love Songs (2006) **1/2

Let me say right off the bat that I’m not necessarily a fan of greatest hits or compilation albums per se; I realize that they serve a variety of purposes, the most nefarious of them being that of the “cash cow” variety – a label wants to make a pile of money off one of their artists, perhaps even a recently deceased one, and mines said artist’s discography with readily repackaged tracks. But there are also well-intentioned compilations that help a newly minted fan make his or her way around the artist’s catalog, allowing them to become familiar with the artist’s work and perhaps help them navigate future individual purchases.

I’m an album guy – growing up in the ‘70s with three older siblings (and their record collections), I loved and still love the idea of the individual album as a comprehensive statement. Compilations jumble those intentions. But I’m also realistic – not everyone has the time or budget to go through everyone’s discographies, album by album. Hence, compilations. You can always count on a friend and fellow music nut to burn you a disc (or send you a file via Dropbox) to get you started. But why not be a slightly more scrupulous fan and allow some of your hard-earned money to make its way to the artist’s bank account (or estate)?

Warren Zevon was a unique and tremendously talented singer/songwriter/musician and if you’re just beginning to discover his ample talents, I’m jealous – there’s tons of good stuff to plow through, and there’s nothing like hearing it all for the first time. There’s also a few compilations that are designed to get new fans started. Some are great, some not so much. Allow me to separate the wheat from the chaff.

A Quiet Normal Life is best avoided, for a number of reasons. First of all, in only covers what basically amounts to Phase One of Zevon’s career, or as I like to call it, the Boozy Years. Sure, Zevon made a handful of fantastic albums between 1976 and 1982 (not including his 1969 debut album, Wanted Dead or Alive, also known as The One Nobody Bought). And I’m not by any means urging you to ignore these songs because he was high as a kite when he made them. It’s just too small of a sampling of Zevon’s greatness. The four albums represented here (Warren Zevon, Excitable Boy, Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School, The Envoy) are all wonderful, but after The Envoy’s disappointing sales, Zevon’s alcohol and drug use hit dangerous peaks, resulting in eventual sobriety (1986) and a fantastic comeback album (1987’s Sentimental Hygiene), which led to a string of terrific albums until his untimely passing in 2003. It’s entirely possible that A Quiet Normal Life was compiled and released for the primary purpose of keeping Zevon financially afloat while he plotted his comeback, and for that, it serves a noble purpose. But if you’re a fan, you need to dig deeper. It’s like buying a Stanley Kubrick boxed set that ends with Lolita. There’s a lot more to see. 

Also, remember that in 1986, there were still bugs to work out regarding the sound quality of the compact disc. If you’re like me and were buying CDs during the first few years of their commercial availability, you know that they sound fairly crummy, and A Quiet Normal Life is no exception. Here’s a thought: if you see A Quiet Normal Life on vinyl, snag it. It’s probably better than its digital counterpart (and perhaps worth more, too).

“But I don’t care about sonic fidelity or Zevon’s clean and sober years,” you protest. Well OK, strange person. It’s your money. Let’s pick apart the song list. Predictably, things kick off with what’s inarguably Zevon’s best-known song (and his only pop Top 40 hit, peaking at 21 in 1978), “Werewolves of London.” There’s also well-known rock radio favorites like “Excitable Boy,” “Lawyers, Guns and Money” and “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner,” as well as some deeper cuts like “Mohammed’s Radio” and “Johnny Strikes Up the Band.” Additionally, the highly underrated album The Envoy gets plenty of love, including the title track, the blistering (and hilarious) “Ain’t That Pretty At All” and the sunny power-pop of “Looking for the Next Best Thing.” I could think of worse ways to drop a few bucks, but you should really save your money. Trust me.

Ten years after A Quiet Normal Life, a healthier Zevon had four more studio albums under his belt: there was the jubilant, guest-star stuffed 1987 masterpiece Sentimental Hygiene (with R.E.M.’s Bill Berry, Peter Buck and Mike Mills constituting the core band), the odd but often brilliant cyberpunk-influenced Transverse City (1989), the sturdy combination of rockers and ballads that made up Mr. Bad Example (1991) and the one-man-band, home-studio-recorded Mutineer (1995). Eight solid albums total. Time for a boxed set!

I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead is only two discs, so calling it a “box” may be pushing it. But there’s such an enormous variety of tracks that it feels like much more than that. In addition to the usual songs everybody knows, there’s a ton of rare stuff, live stuff, and stuff that never made it onto a proper Zevon album. The live stuff is phenomenal – two tracks from his incendiary 1980 live album Stand in the Fire (like The Envoy, not available digitally until 2007) and two more from the excellent 1993 live acoustic solo album Learning to Flinch. The rare stuff includes “Frozen Notes” (an outtake from Excitable Boy) plus a ton of TV and film soundtrack songs, both good (“Roll With the Punches,” from the Tales From the Crypt TV show) and sort of bland and dated (“Real or Not” from William Shatner’s short-lived TekWars project). As an added bonus, you get one track from the semi-obscure Hindu Love Gods album, the 1990 release that chronicled Zevon, Berry, Buck and Mills jamming on cover songs during the Sentimental Hygiene sessions: their rough, fun cover of Prince’s “Raspberry Beret” is a pure delight. Like the aforementioned live albums, however, Hindu Love Gods really needs to be heard in its entirety. See how lousy I am with compilations?

I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead also contains a booklet with extensive notes by Zevon on every single track. A must for liner note geeks like me. If you want to get the best possible bang for your buck while exploring Zevon’s 1976-1996 timeframe, you can’t go wrong here.

In the years following I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead, Zevon released two more strong albums: the lean, black-humor-and-death obsessed Life’ll Kill Ya (2000) and the broader yet similarly-themed My Ride’s Here (2002). But in the summer of 2002, Zevon received the devastating news that he was suffering from mesothelioma, a terminal form of lung cancer. Obviously, everything changed. Determined to write and record one more album with what little time he had left, his record company in the meantime released another compilation, Genius: The Best of Warren Zevon.

At first glance, Genius seems like the ultimate cash grab – squeezing record sales out of a dying artist’s catalog – but I like to think that intentions were better than that. Zevon’s diagnosis gave him more press than he’d enjoyed in decades, so why not assist curious new fans with a helpful best-of collection?

Pound for pound, Genius is pretty terrific. In fact, if you don’t care much for the rarities, the live tracks or the soundtrack odds and ends, this is the one to get. Twenty-two tracks – all killer, no filler. Every studio album going back to 1976 is represented (and yes, they threw in “Raspberry Beret” as well).

The one problem with Genius is that it precedes what would be Zevon’s final album, The Wind, released on August 26, 2003 (a mere 12 days before his passing – he also lived to see the birth of his twin grandsons earlier that summer, and – as he explained with his usual dry wit, “the next James Bond movie”). While I have to honestly say that The Wind is not one of my favorite Zevon albums, it is a touching, eloquent and often beautiful rumination on death and loss. While there’s plenty of Zevon-esque rockers (“Disorder in the House”- his barn-burning collaboration with longtime friend Bruce Springsteen – and the mid-tempo stomper “Numb as a Statue,” among others), much of the album includes deeply personal ballads like “El Amor De Mi Vida,” “Please Stay” and the gorgeous cover of Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” Zevon’s calling card was his black humor, but I dare you to listen to the album’s closer, “Keep Me In Your Heart,” without bawling like a baby.

Perhaps predictably, the only posthumous Zevon compilation so far –Reconsider Me: The Love Songs – is heavy on tracks from The Wind. Not just because it’s the only post-Wind compilation; that final album was probably heavier on love songs than any other album of his (and understandably so). Still, it’s an uneven collection with a few glaring omissions (if we’re talking about love songs, where’s “Hasten Down the Wind” or “Tenderness on the Block?”). The collection is well-intentioned, but if you want songs from The Wind, just get The Wind.

If you want to bypass the collections and are looking for a good Zevon “starter pack,” you can’t go wrong with Excitable Boy, Sentimental Hygiene and Life’ll Kill Ya – three sterling examples of Zevon’s ample talents covering three separate stages of his career. And don’t pass up on those live albums. Zevon was a legendary onstage performer (and occasional song re-arranger). These two very different sets go a long way in proving this. And why don’t you pick up that Hindu Love Gods album, too? You really have no excuse to not hear Warren jamming on cover songs with three-quarters of R.E.M. It’s a great time.

Warren Zevon was a greatly admired, critically acclaimed artist, but also a highly misunderstood one – he gained fame and recognition in the mid-‘70s alongside tamer contemporaries such as the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac, and as a result he’s often lumped in with that crowd. It’s a shame, because his music is far more rich, eclectic and dangerous – imagine hiding Jackson Browne away in a Hollywood bungalow for a year and forcing him to read Norman Mailer and watch Martin Scorsese films and you’ve got the general idea of what you’re working with. Such a singular talent demands to be heard. I implore you to hear it; however you can.