Trivia / Warren Zevon

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• Creator Breakdown: Zevon was a very personal songwriter. Many of his songs reflect his romantic feelings ("Reconsider Me", "Searching for a Heart"), his issues with drugs and alcohol ("Desperados Under the Eaves", "Trouble Waiting To Happen"), his experiences with Los Angeles and California in general ("Carmelita", most of Transverse City possibly). Of course, the man had a sense of humor, so this is lampshaded frequently (see "Poor Poor Pitiful Me", "Bad Karma", "Mr. Bad Example", etc.).
• No Export for You : For many years, many of Zevon's albums were unavalable in different parts of the world, particularly Europe, for different reasons. Thankfully, this was largely changed in the 2000s when previously rare albums were finally released... with bonus tracks.
• Production Posse: They didn't all show up on every album, but you can reasonably expect the following names to show up in the credits: Jackson Browne, Waddy Wachtel, Jorge Calderón, David Lindley, J.D. Souther, at least one Eagle (usually Glenn Frey, but sometimes almost the entire band), at least one member of Fleetwood Mac, and, in the later ones, his son Jordan Zevon.
  • Also could apply to his friend David Letterman who always had him on to promote his albums and he was the usual fill in bandleader when Paul Shaffer was sick.
  • Oddly enough, a few of the Beach Boys. Most famously his duet with Carl Wilson on "Desperados Under the Eaves", but David Marks and Bruce Johnston also played with him from time to time.
• Revival by Commercialization: "Jungle Work" was featured in a brief but memorable moment in the Hearts of Iron IV mod The New Order: Last Days of Europe, specifically as the song that plays if you reunify Russia as Mitchell WerBell III, the leader of a team of mercenaries hired by the Free State of Magadan who launch a coup against the warlord who brought them into Russia. Within days of the update to The New Order that added that path, more than half the comments on the YouTube video for "Jungle Work" were by fans of the mod referencing the game.
• Swan Song: His last album, The Wind, was written and recorded against his impending death from mesothelioma. It opens with a reflection on his "Dirty Life and Times," includes a cover of "Knocking on Heaven's Door," and closes with the melancholy "Keep Me In Your Heart." The credits in the liner notes contains a who's-who of musical legends, as Zevon called in every favor the music business ever owed him. He passed away two weeks after its release.
• Technology Marches On: From "Networking" on 1989's Transverse City:
  "Networking, I am user friendly
  Networking, I install with ease
  Data processed, truly Basic
  I will upload you, you can download me"

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