YMMV / Warren Zevon

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• Covered Up: Zevon covered Bob Dylan, Steve Winwood, Ernie K-Doe and (with his side project the Hindu Love Gods) Prince's "Raspberry Beret".
  • Linda Ronstadt had a hit with Zevon's "Poor Poor Pitiful Me", and Terri Clark covered up her version.
    • The title track of Linda's album Hasten Down the Wind is a Zevon cover.
  • As did Stevie Nicks with "Reconsider Me".
  • Dylan later repaid the favor by putting a whole bunch of Zevon songs on his regular set list.
  • The Grateful Dead frequently played "Werewolves of London" live between the late '70s and early '90s.
  • After his death, a bunch of artists made a tribute album titled Enjoy Every Sandwich, after a quote from his last appearance on Letterman. It includes covers by Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Pete Yorn, The Wallflowers, his son Jordan, and a surprisingly good cover of "Werewolves of London" by Adam Sandler.
• Crosses the Line Twice: "Excitable Boy". The title character rapes and kills his prom date, drives her corpse home afterward, is committed to an insane asylum for 10 years for his crime, then when he's let out, digs up her grave and makes a cage with her bones.
• Crowning Moment of Funny: The song titles. "Gorilla, You're a Desperado". "Hostage-O". "I Was in the House When the House Burned Down". "For My Next Trick I'll Need a Volunteer".
  • "Lawyers, Guns, and Money"
  • "The Hula Hula Boys"
  • "Hit Somebody (The Hockey Song)"
  • "Monkey Wash, Donkey Rinse"
  • During the VH-1 documentary on Zevon's bout with cancer, he was recording "Disorder in the House" with Bruce Springsteen. Bruce just ended a take with a blistering guitar solo. Warren's response? "My God. You really are him."
  • In Jackson Browne's eulogy for him, he relates an incident where Zevon was in an airport accidentally overdosing on a Chinese herbal remedy. His last thought before passing out: "Lord, don't let me die and have Jackson Browne write my eulogy."
• Crowning Moment of Awesome: When he announced that he was dying from cancer, Zevon said that he just hoped he would live long enough to see the next James Bond movie. He did.
  • The song 'Boom Boom Mancini' about the boxer of the same name:
    "From Youngstown, Ohio came Boom Boom Mancini
    A lightweight contender,
    Like father, like son.
    He fought for the title with Frias in Vegas,
    And put him away,
    In round number one."
• Crowning Music of Awesome:
  • When Warren was diagnosed with lung cancer and told he had months to live he started recording a final album and called in every favor he was owed. That is how you get Bruce Springsteen to play guitar and Billy Bob Thornton and Tom Petty to do background vocals on your album. The full list of all the people who performed is here.
  • It's said that while he wasn't nearly as famous as folks like Springsteen, Warren Zevon was a friend or associate of damn near everyone in the business. When you know you're dying of cancer and you've got half of rock music's legends in your address book, it makes sense to start calling in final favors.
  • "Genius" is probably his most highly-regarded song, lending its name to his "best-of" album. It features an intricate lyric structure (including one line in each chorus that only rhymes with its counterparts in the other choruses), an arrangement that combines a string quartet with a rock rhythm section, and a subtle use of Auto-Tune that gives it an otherworldly feel. According to his biography, the string players - a group of jaded session musicians with no stake in the piece - were in tears by the end of the recording session.
• Genius Bonus: Lee Ho Fook's Chinese restaurant of London did not have beef chow mein on its menu at the time Warren Zevon wrote "Werewolves of London." Implying that the werewolf in question was going out for...something else at the restaurant...
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • After his diagnosis, songs like "My Ride's Here", about a last ride in a hearse, "Don't Let Us Get Sick", and "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" took on a whole new, terrifyingly sad meaning.
  • "The Factory" includes the lines "Kickin' asbestos in the factory" and "Breathin' that plastic in the factory." Mesothelioma is a rare form of lung cancer commonly associated with exposure to asbestos.
  • The third to last album he released was entitled Life'll Kill Ya, and has its own list of examples:
    • The title track mentions dying of the "awful, awful diseases." He died of pleural mesothelioma (cancer of the lining of the lung).
    • "Don't Let Us Get Sick" opens with the words, "don't let us get sick, don't let us get old." He got very, very sick, and so he didn't get old.
    • "Porcelain Monkey" tells the story of another hard-living musician's death.
    • Another song on the album is called "My Shit's Fucked Up".
  • He described his second-to-last album, My Ride's Here, as "a meditation on death:"
    • The title track describes a last ride in a hearse.
    • "Macgillycuddy's Reeks" is narrated from a hospital bed.
    • While they're not explicitly about death, the titles "I Have To Leave" and "You're A Whole Different Person When You're Scared" seem prescient in hindsight.
    • Notably, the album was recorded before his diagnosis, but released after, making it a much quicker example than usual.
  • His last album, The Wind, was recorded after his diagnosis, and so falls more into Real Life Writes the Plot.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: From "Disorder in the House":
  "I just got my paycheck, I'm gonna paint the whole town gray
  Whether it's a night in Paris, or a Fresno matinee."
  • The song was released about a year before Paris Hilton's sex tape. It wins extra hilarity points for being the exact reference Warren would've made.
• Magnificent Bastard: "Mr. Bad Example" from Mr. Bad Example: The titular "Mr. Bad Example" is a gleefully crooked scoundrel who relates his life of swindling and scheming with charming hilarity. Getting his start as a youth who would swipe cash from his church and use his father's carpet store to bed housewives then steal their furniture, Mr. Bad Example would go on to have successful careers in both lawyering and hair transplanting, amassing a fortune. Even when he loses said fortune on cards, Mr. Bad Example just flees the country, starts his own mining operation, and cheats his countless workers out of profits to once again become rich. Mr. Bad Example is proud of his many double dealings, yet ends the song noting that he'll likely retire soon and will "see you in the next life, wake me up for meals!"
• Posthumous Popularity Potential: His only Grammys were awarded after his death.
• Sampled Up: Kid Rock used the "Werewolves of London" riff for "All Summer Long".
  • Raised to funny by the fact that Kid Rock also used, and mentioned in the lyrics, Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama", which Warren had previously ripped in "Play It All Night Long".
• Signature Song: "Werewolves of London".
• Suspiciously Similar Song: Warren was hired to write several of these for a Tales from the Crypt episode called "King of the Road". One of them, "Roll with the Punches", appears on the album I'll Sleep When I'm Dead.

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