Warren Zevon was the best one-guy-with-instrument live performer I've ever seen.

From the title cut of Life'll Kill You:

Life'll kill ya
That's what I said
Life'll kill ya
Then you'll be dead
Life'll find ya
Wherever you go
Requiescat in pace
That's all she wrote

From "Keep Me In Your Heart", on The Wind

Hold me in your thoughts, keep me in your dreams
Touch me as I fall into view
When the winter comes keep the fires lit
And I will be right next to you

Engive driver's headed north to Pleasant Stream
Keep me in your heart for awhile

These wheels keep turning but they're tunning out of steam
Keep me in your heart for awhile

Sha-la-la-la-la-la-la-li-li-lo
Keep me in your heart for awhile

The one I can't stop thinking of is "Desperados Under the Eaves."

The Leannan Sidhe got another one, damn her.

Even with a year's warning, Warren Zevon's passing still hurts like hell. We don't have enough guys like him in the rock world to be able to afford to lose one so prematurely. I guess we'll just have to be grateful for 'The Wind', and that, for a man who burned both ends of the candle with a blowtorch at times, Zevon lasted as long as he did. 'Bye Warren, and thanks for a heck of a lot of great music that I'll be listening to until I join you.

Re: quote from Letterman

"...the cattle all have brucellosis
We'll get through some how.

Sweet home, Alabama
Play that dead band's song
Turn those speakers up full blast
Play it all night long.

'Look away, down Gower Avenue...
Look away...."

I heard Woodrow Wilson's guns
I heard Maria crying
Late last night I heard the news
That Veracruz was dying
Veracruz was dying

When Alexis R Quayle gave Boom boom a beating,
six weeks later, he was back in the ring,
Some have the speed and the right combinattons
If you can't take the punches, it don't mean a thing

That's a mondegreen (not surprising). Boom Boom fought Alexis Arguello.

Thanks. It's off the lyric sheet in my retrospective set, which shows a skull smoking a cigarette on one of the CDs

The eternal Thompson gunner, still wandering through the night
Now it's ten years later but he still keeps up the fight
In Ireland, in Lebanon, in Palestine and Berkeley
Patty Hearst heard the burst of Roland's Thompson gun
And bought it

Hear us howling. Open up the gates of Stubblecore for a brave walleyer.

Always an excitable boy . . .

I saw a werewolf drinkin' a piña colada at Trader Vic's
And his hair was perfect

I'm Mr. Bad Example, take a look at me
I'll live to be a 100 and go down in infamy

Now I'm hiding in Honduras
I'm a desperate man
Send lawyers, guns and money
The shit has hit the fan.

I want to be like Georgia O'Keefe
I want to live on the Upper East Side
And never go down in the street

Splendid Isolation
I don't need no one
Splendid Isolation

Michael Jackson in Disneyland
Don't have to share it with nobody else
Lock the gates, Goofy, take my hand
And lead me through the World of Self

Splendid Isolation
I don't need no one
Splendid Isolation

Don't want to wake up with no one beside me
Don't want to take up with nobody new
Don't want nobody coming by without calling first
Don't want nothing to do with you

I'm putting tinfoil up on the windows
Lying down in the dark to dream
I don't want to see their faces
I don't want to hear them scream

Splendid Isolation
I don't need no one
Splendid Isolation
Splendid Isolation
I don't need no one
Splendid Isolation

I was staying at the Marriott
With Jesus and John Wayne
I was waiting for a chariot
They were waiting for a train
The sky was full of carrion
"I'll take the mazuma"
Said Jesus to Marion
"That's the 3:10 to Yuma
My ride's here..."

The Houston sky was changeless
We galloped through bluebonnets
I was wrestling with an angel
You were working on a sonnet
You said, "I believe the seraphim
Will gather up my pinto
And carry us away, Jim
Across the San Jacinto
My ride's here..."

Shelley and Keats were out in the street
And even Lord Byron was leaving for Greece
While back at the Hilton, last but not least
Milton was holding his sides
Saying, "You bravos had better be ready to fight
Or we'll never get out of East Texas tonight
The trail is long and the river is wide
And my ride's here"

I was staying at the Westin
I was playing to a draw
When in walked Charlton Heston
With the Tablets of the Law
He said, "It's still the Greatest Story"
I said, "Man, I'd like to stay
But I'm bound for glory
I'm on my way
My ride's here..."

They say Jesus will find you wherever you go
But when He'll come looking for you, they don't know
In the mean time, keep your profile low
Gorilla, you're a desperado

Anyone care to recommend one or two Zevon albums?

It's a toss-up between the first and the last one here as to which I'd recommend first. After you get one of those, then I'd say get one of the other two if you aren't sure you like him.

Warren Zevon, 1976, his first successful album. Some songs: "Poor Poor Pitiful Me", "The French Inhaler", "Carmelita", "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead".

Sentimental Hygiene, 1987, the rockin' one with R.E.M. backing him up. Some songs: "Detox Mansion", "Boom Boom Mancini", "Reconsider Me", "Even A Dog Can Shake Hands".

Transverse City, 1989, oddly enough, was not nominated for a Hugo. Some songs: "Spendid Isolation", "Run Straight Down", "Turbulence", "They Moved The Moon".

Life'll Kill Ya, 2000, at the peak of his powers, as a singer, instrumentalist, songwriter, with just three years to live. Some songs? All of them, but: "Porcelain Monkey" (Elvis in a Nutshell), "My Sh*t's F*cked Up", "For My Next Trick I'll Need A Volunteer", "Life'll Kill Ya". By the way, anyone remember Warren Zevon's comment to Rolling Stone about Elvis' death?

All the collections are okay, but there just aren't many bad songs on any of his albums. The live one I have (I'll Sleep When I'm Dead) is out-of-print and fantastic.

I had to think it over, and then realized that adamsj is exactly right: if you're going to get two, they should be Warren Zevon and Life'll Kill Ya.

And for a third, Excitable Boy.

I called up my friend LeRoy on the phone
I said, Buddy, I'm afraid to be alone
I got some weird ideas in my head
About things to do in Denver when you're dead

I was working on a steak the other day
I saw Waddy in the Rattlesnake Cafe
Dressed in black, tossing back a shot of rye
Finding things to do in Denver when you die

You won't need a cab to find a priest
Maybe you should find a place to stay
Some place where they never change the sheets
And you just roll around Denver all day

LeRoy says there's something you should know
Not everybody has a place to go
And home is just a place to hang your head
And dream up things to do in Denver when you're dead

You won't need a cap to find a priest
Maybe you should find a place to stay
Some place where they never change the sheets
And you jut roll around Denver all day
You just roll around Denver all day

And I'm fairly sure Blondie is the only group to ever use "sacroiliac" in a song. ;)

I knew there were more songs than that which said sacroiliac, but untill I googled sacroiliac lyric, I didn't know that Frank Sinatra sang it in three different recordings.

We made mad love, shadow love
Random love and abandoned love
Accidentally like a martyr
The hurt gets worse as the heart gets harder.

Excitable Boy is, for me, one of the Perfect Albums: those rare achievements where there isn't a single bad or boring track on the disc.

Sleep well, Warren.

The summer I was at Clarion (1981), "Lawyers, Guns and Money" was the unofficial anthem of the workshop. In moments of desperation and writers' block the lyrics tend to waft through my thoughts. A few years later I titled a story (subsequently shelved) "Accidentally Like a Martyr." Certain of Zevon's song seem inextricably bound up as part of my personal soundtrack, and I truly hate that he won't produce any more. He made, from all reports, a very graceful end; wish that made the loss easier.

You know just what you mean but it might mean too much
So you limit yourself to a smile and a touch
But the lips have gone dry and the hands
Are as cold as the clay
All that silence can say

No one's said their goodbyes but it's still time to go
So you stand by the road in the long-distance glow
Of the eyes burning red in the West
At the end of the day
All that silence can say

(Don't go looking; Zevon didn't write that. Some of us owe him in other ways.)

Actually, I'll Sleep When I'm Dead is an excellent two-disc retrospective. Good overview of his career through 1996, and great liner notes. (And, according to Rhino's site, still in print.) It's got the theme song to the William Shatner 'Tekwar' miniseries, too.

On "Mutineer:" "I intended this song as a gesture of appreciation and affection to my fans, none of whom bought the record."

Any folks heard of whether Warren's theme for the remake of the "Route 66" show and for the television show "Action!" have been collected?

George: the Route 66 song ("If You Won't Leave Me I'll Find Somebody Who Will") is on the collection I'll Sleep When I'm Dead.

The Action! song ("Even a Dog Can Shake Hands") was originally on Sentimental Hygiene. Dunno if it was rerecorded for the TV show or not.

Travis:

Many thanks. I had a complete brain fart because I've got both but hadn't made the connection...

Turmoil back in Moscow
Brought this turbulence down on me

It's scary to think that a singer-songwriter such as Warren Zevon could understand world geopolitics 1000 x better than the president of the United States.

...too old to die young
and too young to die now

Forever in our hearts

Just bbefore I left DC I bought "The Wind", thinking to myself that I was surprised to find (when I got back to the States) that Warren was not yet dead, and glad of it (though with heavy heart).

I didn't get to see him in concert enough, and the list of quotations above is more epitaph than most of us will ever get... so much of what he wrote is so appropos of life.

No one gets out alive, and Warren certainly lived as he preached. No regrets, just a wistful wishing he were still around.

Terry K.

Trouble Waiting to Happen
I woke up this morning and I fell out of bed
Trouble waiting to happen
Should've quit while I was ahead
Trouble waiting to happen
I turned on the news to the Third World War
Opened up the paper to World War IV
Just when I thought it was safe to be bored
Trouble waiting to happen
Trouble waiting to happen

The mailman brought me the Rolling Stone
Trouble waiting to happen
It said I was living at home alone
Trouble waiting to happen
I read things I didn't know I'd done
It sounded like a lot of fun
I guess I've been bad or something
Trouble waiting to happen
Trouble waiting to happen

Trouble waiting to happen
Teardrops ready to start
Trouble waiting to happen to my heart

This just ain't gonna be my day
Trouble waiting to happen
Things just ain't gonna go my way
Trouble waiting to happen
My day was over by a quarter to ten
I climbed right back into bed again
I'd write this down if I could hold a pen
I might get better but I don't know when
So I'm gonna wait right here 'til then
Trouble waiting to happen
Trouble waiting to happen

Trouble waiting to happen
Teardrops ready to start
Trouble waiting to happen to us all

The phone don't ring....
and the sun refused to shine
Never thought I'd have to pay so dearly
for what was already mine.

Godspeed Warren.
...wish you hadn't had to pay so dearly for what was already yours...........Thanks for your last gift to us: "The Wind".
I'm glad I got to see him live years ago. His lyrics revealed a keen, witty, wry outlook on life and an incredible intellect, the likes of which will not be seen for a long while, sadly.