The calendar makes its inexorable journey towards another Sunday, which can only mean one thing: yup, it’s Song Lyric Sunday again! This week Jim is inviting us to play a song from an album where the group or artist wrote all their own songs, as he tells us here. I have a great many singer-songwriter albums in my Apple Music library – it is, after all, one of my favourite genres – so my choice for this was wide. I’ve settled on one of the all time greats, and have chosen an album of his for which he wrote all of the songs, though several were in collaboration with others. That may feel like I’m cheating but who cares? I sure as hell don’t, and anyway Jim says that collaborations count, so who am I to argue?
The artist in question is the late, extremely great, Warren Zevon, and I’m going with his third album, Excitable Boy. I’m playing you three of its tracks which highlight his clever lyric writing abilities, and also his wry (warped?) sense of humour. This is the title track:
And in case you missed them, or just want to see them in all their gory glory, here are the lyrics:
Well, he went down to dinner in his Sunday best
“Excitable boy,” they all said
And he rubbed the pot roast all over his chest
“Excitable boy,” they all said
Well, he’s just an excitable boy
He took in the 4 A.M. show at the Clark
“Excitable boy,” they all said
And he bit the usherette’s leg in the dark
“Excitable boy,” they all said
Well, he’s just an excitable boy
(Ooh, ah-ooh)
(Ooh-ooh, excitable boy)
(Ooh, ah-ooh)
(Ooh-ooh, excitable boy)
He took little Suzie to the Junior Prom (Ooh, ah-ooh)
“Excitable boy,” they all said (Ooh-ooh, excitable boy)
And he raped her and killed her, then he took her home (Ooh, ah-ooh)
“Excitable boy,” they all said (Ooh-ooh, excitable boy)
Well, he’s just an excitable boy
After ten long years, they let him out of the home
“Excitable boy,” they all said (Ooh-ooh, excitable boy)
And he dug up her grave and built a cage with her bones
“Excitable boy,” they all said (Ooh-ooh, excitable boy)
Well, he’s just an excitable boy
(Ooh, ah-ooh)
(Ooh-ooh, excitable boy)
(Ooh, ah-ooh)
(Ooh-ooh, excitable boy)
(Ooh, ah-ooh)
(Ooh-ooh, excitable boy)
(Ooh, ah-ooh)
(Ooh-ooh, excitable boy)
(Ooh, ah-ooh)
Lyrics: Genius.com
Songwriters: Warren Zevon, LeRoy Marinell
I told you his sense of humour was unique, didn’t I: he never failed to amuse and entertain me. His family background may have something to do with his later development: he was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Beverly Cope (née Simmons) and William Zevon. His father was a Jewish immigrant from Ukraine, whose original surname was Zivotofsky. William Zevon worked as a bookie who handled volume bets and dice games for the notorious Los Angeles mobster Mickey Cohen. He worked for years in the Cohen crime family, in which he was known as Stumpy Zevon, and was best man at Cohen’s first wedding. Warren’s mother was from a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints family and was of English descent. Coming from a family that mixed mobsters and Mormons is fairly uncommon, but it probably helps explain that wry take on life in so many of his songs
Excitable Boy was Warren’s third album, released in January 1978, peaking at #8 and going Platinum in the US, and at #9 in Australia, but to our shame it didn’t make the UK charts. For some inexplicable reason he has enjoyed very little chart success here in the UK, but I love his music and have all of his albums. It was his breakthrough album and is still the best-selling of his career: I guess when at least four of its tracks make it feel like an early ‘Greatest Hits’ record that is hardly surprising. This song is written for laughs rather than being an attempt at horror, and at least one of the lines – the one about the pot roast – reflects an event from Warren’s own life. I hope the others don’t! There is a serious underlying point to the song, though: it describes a juvenile sociopath for whom friends and family make excuses, instead of attempting to get him the help he needs. I fear that many have been in a similar situation.
Here’s the second tune I’m playing from the album:
Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner was written after Warren met David Lindell in Sitges, Catalonia, where Lindell ran a bar named The Dubliner after working as a mercenary in Africa. Inspired by Lindell’s stories of his career as a mercenary, Warren decided to collaborate with him in making a song about a left-wing mercenary, and gave him a songwriting credit for it: I think this is all pure Warren, though! It is a wonderfully inventive story of a gunman for hire who comes back to haunt the guy who betrayed and killed him – you don’t get that with a Cliff Richard record, do you? This was the final song he played before an audience, during an appearance on David Letterman’s late night tv show in 2002, before we lost him to a virulent form of cancer in September 2003.
My final selection from the album is the one that you may well know already, even if the others are unfamiliar. There is a similar vintage official live video for it, but I’m going instead with an animated version from 2021 which is rather fun, and shows that it was conceived during pandemic days:
Werewolves Of London began as a joke by Phil Everly to Warren in 1975, after Phil had watched a television broadcast of the 1935 film Werewolf of London and suggested to Warren that he adapt the title for a song and dance craze. During the recording sessions for the Excitable Boy album Warren got together with two of his band – LeRoy Marinell and Waddy Wachtel – and they wrote this in about fifteen minutes. It was released as a single and made #21 in the US and reached the top twenty in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Again, it wasn’t a UK hit at the time but after it was used for a scene in the 1986 movie The Color Of Money it was re-released and climbed to the dizzy heights of #87 here. But it has become something of a sleeper, and was awarded a Silver Disc in 2023 for 200,000 sales. Quality will always succeed if you give it long enough!
That’s me done for today. Thanks as always to Jim for hosting the show, and I’m looking forward to seeing what the other participants are playing. I’ll see you again for Tuesday Tunes – with a new theme – so until then take care 😊
