Warren Zevon – Often referred to as “The Soul Of Los Angeles”.

Warren Zevon for today’s installment of The Lunchroom. Recorded and broadcast live from The Roxy in West Hollywood on April 24, 1978 by KMET-FM.

In 1978, Warren Zevon released Excitable Boy (produced by Jackson Browne and guitarist Waddy Wachtel) to critical acclaim and popular success. The title tune is about a juvenile sociopath‘s murderous prom night and referred to “Little Susie”, the heroine of the song “Wake Up Little Susie” made famous by his former employers The Everly Brothers. Other songs, such as “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner” and “Lawyers, Guns and Money“, used deadpan humor to wed geopolitical subtexts to hard-boiled narratives. The single “Werewolves of London“, featuring McVie, Fleetwood, and Zevon’s signature macabre humor, reached No. 21 on the charts.

Dave Marsh called Zevon “one of the toughest rockers ever to come out of Southern California“.  Rolling Stone record reviews editor Paul Nelson called the album “one of the most significant releases of the 1970s” and placed Zevon alongside Jackson Browne, Neil Young, and Bruce Springsteen as the four most important new artists to emerge in the decade. On May 11, 1980, Zevon and Willie Nile appeared on the King Biscuit Flower Hour.

Zevon followed Excitable Boy with Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School (1980). The album was dedicated to Ken Millar, better known under his nom-de-plume as the detective novelist Ross Macdonald, one of Zevon’s literary heroes. Millar and Zevon first met in an intervention organized by Nelson, which helped Zevon temporarily curtail his addictions. Featuring a modest hit with the single “A Certain Girl” (Zevon’s cover of an R&B record by Ernie K-Doe) which reached No. 57 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, the album sold briskly but was uneven, and represented a decline rather than commercial and critical consistency. It contained a collaboration with Springsteen on “Jeannie Needs a Shooter”. The ballad “Empty-Handed Heart” (featuring a descant sung by Linda Ronstadt), is about Zevon’s divorce from his wife, Crystal, the mother of his daughter Ariel. (Zevon was in a long-term relationship with Marilyn “Tule” Livingston, the mother of his son, Jordan, but they never married.) Later in 1980, he released the live album Stand in the Fire, recorded over five nights at The Roxy Theatre in Los Angeles and dedicated to Martin Scorsese.

To get a taste of that halcyon period, here a night in 1978 at The Roxy with none other than Warren Zevon.