Warren Zevon
Excitable Boy ****
Stand in the Fire *****
The Envoy ***
Although he’s among the major songwriters, Warren Zevon’s catalog has almost randomly gone in and out of print, and his scattershot compilations routinely miss crucial tracks. With those facts, the reissue of 1982’s Excitable Boy is slightly dulled by the fact that the title track, “Werewolves of London,” “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner” and “Lawyers, Guns and Money” are all present on 2002’s single-disc anthology, Genius. Of course, Zevon’s career was heavily front-loaded (despite two significant artistic comebacks in later life). And so essentials like “Accidentally Like a Martyr” and “Tenderness on the Block” and the historical epic “Veracruz” are all still easiest to find on Excitable Boy. Of the three bonus tracks, “I Need a Truck” proves the most fun at less than a minute long with Zevon’s unaccompanied vocal offering lines like “I need a truck to haul my bad thoughts around/I need a truck to haul my Percodan and gin.”
Zevon fans have been screaming and campaigning for an official CD release of the live album Stand in the Fire for decades, and it’s finally available for the first time since the original vinyl was released in 1980. Zevon promises on the custom-written title track that opens the disc: “I might pitch a fit, but I won’t put on my breaks.” He keeps his word. Whatever make for the greatest rock moments (cockiness, beauty and mission fused into lockstep) are all on this disc. All of Zevon’s studio recordings are anemic demos compared to this night as Zevon revamps everything from “Werewolves of London” to should-have-been contenders like “Mohammed’s Radio.” At the end, on a bonus track, his voice wasted, Zevon empties the last drop of fuel in his tank with a deeply moving reading of “Hasten Down the Wind.” On any given night some otherwise forgotten group manages for a moment to be the greatest band on Earth. This is one of those nights, and after 27 years you can still hear it on this disc.
By 1982’s The Envoy inspiration and alcohol/substance abuse were taking a toll, and Zevon settled for familiar but inferior takes on old themes. Still, there are some fantastic songs here that get lost in Zevon’s catalog. “The Overdraft” and “Charlie’s Medicine” both cover his wild side in splendid fashion, while “Jesus Mentioned” might be the best of all the Elvis Presley elegies. But no doubt ideas were in short supply here, and after The Envoy, Zevon entered his darkest period before emerging a half-decade later with Sentimental Hygiene.