Back to Blog
Warren zevon mutineer5/27/2023 ![]() The Artemis Records disc debuted last week in the Top 20 of the nation’s pop charts, an unprecedented showing for the singer. Zevon spent much of his time during his illness doting on family and working in a home studio on a new album, “The Wind.” His popularity among his peers was underscored by a parade of contributors to the record, including longtime friends Bruce Springsteen, Don Henley and Jackson Browne. Hey, I feel like I’ve lived a couple of lives - and now when people listen to the music, they’ll say, ‘Hey, maybe the guy wasn’t being so morbid after all.’ ” Then for 18 years I was a sober dad of some amazing kids. I was a malfunctioning rummy for a while and running away for a while. “I was the hardest-living rocker on my block for a while. “I feel the opposite of regret,” he said then. The singer, a longtime smoker, learned in August 2002 that he was suffering from inoperable lung cancer and a month later he went public with his condition in an interview with The Times. Bad Example,” an altar boy grows up to be a vagabond con man: “I’m very well acquainted with the seven deadly sins/I keep a busy schedule trying to fit them in/I’m proud to be a glutton and I don’t have time for sloth/I’m greedy and I’m angry and I don’t care who I cross.”ĭeath and dying were among Zevon’s favorite topics (the cover of his 2002 album “My Ride’s Here” showed him in a hearse, while another collection was titled “Life’ll Kill Ya”), and when confronted with his own mortality, he continued the exploration with aplomb. CAPTION: Excitable Boy Warren Zevon is back with an almost totally solo effort.In a macabre songbook that includes “Excitable Boy,” “Lawyers, Guns and Money” and “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner,” Zevon presented a world of the undead and the unethical on the rampage in a mercenary world. To hear a free Sound Bite from this album, call 202/334-9000 and press 8130. On the other hand, nothing could have helped Zevon's hackneyed variations on the cliches of the unhappy clown, the rebellious musician and the inconstant girlfriend. With a flexible rhythm section and some real harmonies, these might have really amounted to something. ![]() In "The Indifference of Heaven," a holdup man takes a cynical view of the working-class optimism of Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen. Hiaasen also co-wrote "Rottweiler Blues," a sendup of modern-day paranoia. "Seminole Bingo," co-written with Miami Herald journalist and novelist Carl Hiaasen, is a funny number about Robert Vesco finally meeting his match at the bingo tables of South Florida. It's too bad, for several of these songs have real promise. The programmed rhythms are plodding and dull the vocals are halfhearted, as if Zevon meant to go back and overdub a master track later. As a result, the 10 tracks sound like songwriter demos taped well before the melodies have come into focus. So you have to wonder why Zevon recorded his new release "Mutineer" pretty much by himself at his home studio.Ī few friends, such as Bruce Hornsby and David Lindley, dropped by to add some overdubs, but for the most part Zevon played all the keyboards and guitars himself. On his best albums, Zevon has enjoyed high-priced help from such pals as Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Neil Young, Jerry Garcia, Bob Dylan and members of the Eagles, Beach Boys, Fleetwood Mac and R.E.M. pop-rock, the odd combination can be quite effective. ![]() ![]() He's often a gifted storyteller, though, and when his twisted tales of life on the fringes are reinforced by glossy L.A. WARREN ZEVON CAN'T really sing, and he's not much of a composer or a pianist. ![]()
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |