WARREN ZEVON - The Wind (2003)

I've mentioned the impossibility of separating reactions to Zevon's last few records with knowing his eventual fate.  For The Wind, one doesn't need to bother.  This was always going to the be the last album, and was always going to be the one in which everyone recording it and every last listener would be fully aware of the mesothelioma thing.  In his non recording artist life, it sounds like our man was full of the usual contradictions - the pain and wasting away, obviously, but it sounds like a relapse on alcohol and a lot of solitude, with a mix of self-pity and cheerful indifference depending on the day.  Still, Zevon wasn't alone-alone at the end.  He had a professional best friend to the end in Jorge Calderón - whose rare absence from a Zevon album I probably should have noted on My Ride's Here - as his musical comrade in arms, performing on every song and cowriting most of them.  Zevon had both of his adult kids involved in helping him get through the recording process, with Jordan credited as a producer, and got back to collabs from all sorts of peers including Springsteen, Petty, Yoakam, Billy Bob Thornton (?), multiple Eagles, and so on.  On some level, Zevon died surrounded by friends, loved ones, and hangers-on, all while seemingly trying to the end to self-destructively push people away.  All of that is something that's very much supposed to be in someone's mind listening to the last musical will and testament of a guy who immediately saw his terminal cancer as a marketing opportunity - one more chance to make it back into the public eye.

Anyway, The Wind has a bunch of songs.  These are they.

Track One:  "Dirty Life And Times"

I've been wondering if on some level this was conceived as an intro to the record, to sum out "how we got here" to the uninitiated.  Heavy country influences, kinda like the offbeat country-adjacent stuff that Zevon's career started with, telling a story about a lifetime of questionable decisions that one can't quite tell how much the narrator actually regrets.  Kind of Zevon in a nutshell, to orient a potential new audience?  Except, of course, he was already performing the song on his final tour, presumably before the idea of The Wind had been conceived.  So I guess he was just still in the mode of backwards-looking summaries also seen on a few of the records leading up to it.

I'd rate the track as mid-tier relative to its artist's catalogue.  Dwight Yoakam's vocals echo Zevon's in a way that works way better for me than it did last time they teamed up.  The song is pleasant but I wish it grabbed me tighter - the turning everything into a meditation on kinds of women for the narrator to shack up with seems facile, and the riff doesn't really evolve much.  It's only in these most recent listens that I've cared to pay attention long enough to figure out how the narrative ends.

Track Two:  "Disorder In The House"

All right, yeah.  This rocks.  Zevon doesn't have to be the loudest or fastest to kick ass, he just needs a groove, as both the guitar and bass do here, separately and together.  Even if the individual images don't always fit together, the accumulating relentless chaos of a body and/or life falling apart comes through.  

Disorder in the house
The tub runneth over
Plaster falling down in pieces by the couch of pain
Disorder in the house
Time to duck and cover
Helicopters hover over rough terrain

I've even okay with the chuckling outro.  This is the sort of song about destruction that one wants to believe its creators had fun making.

Track Three:  "Knockin' On Heaven's Door"

One more cover for the road!  Apparently recorded on almost a whim, this is supposed to be one of the emotional centerpieces, a musically smooth but emotionally naked and unpretentious take that builds up to a dying Zevon singing "open up, open up!"  And... I've never really felt it.  I think there's a pretty simple explanation: "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" is not, to me, a very interesting song.  There are two kinds of Dylan songs that get covered - those waiting for someone with a more conventional voice to rearrange them to make them shine, and those that are pure Dylan such that cover versions by anyone else don't make sense.  I'll leave it to the listener to decide which one KOHD is.*  Here Zevon unsurprisingly bases his take purely on the original by his idol and onetime collaborator - at least I'm not hearing any obvious nods to either the Clapton or GnR versions.   And he... slows it down and adds some repetition.  Meh, not the best thing for a song so spare and repetitious!.  Obviously he was a fan of the song as it was - one of the seemingly everyone who considers it a classic - and wasn't interested in reinventing it for Philistines like me.  

Track Four:  "Numb As A Statue"

Another one with a bit of country feel, probably mostly due to the use of steel guitar.  Also a welcome and too-rare appearance of piano, which beefs up the riff.  The whole idea of leaning on others for feelings the way one might for drugs or money is one of those concepts that it takes a Zevon to both come up with in the first place and then embody with his delivery.  Good stuff.

Track Five:  "She's Too Good For Me"

Zevon's narrators in breakup songs often find interesting ways in splitting the difference between being self-involved and legitimately caring.  We open with this couplet: 

I could hold my head up high; say that I left first

Or I can hang my head and cry; tell me which is worse

On the one hand, it's kinda heartrending - cutting off a relationship that his own self-image has him convinced is doomed to fail, before it even does.  On the other, it's all about him - he's making the decisions about what she "needs" and then wallowing in self-pity about it.  The issue comes from the "me," and I assume everything is all about "me," for this narrator.  But on the other other hand,** it really does sound like he means it when he says "I want her to be everything she couldn't be with me."  So, interesting sort of sad song.

Musically, I like the way the languid guitar line and the percussion play off each other.

Track Six:  "Prison Grove"

You know, I don't hear people talk as much about "Prison Grove," which for me is the actual centerpiece of the album.  It doesn't have to be autobiographical to make one feel all the feelings; what could be more specific yet universal about a mournful dirge set in a prison yard on one's dying day?  Zevon's voice is of course perfect for the theme, and carrying the tuneful grove with the quavering raspiness it deserves.  I challenge anyone not to get a chill at:

Some folks have to die too hard

Some folks have to cry too hard

Take one last look at the prison yard

Goodbye, Prison Grove

... setting up Ry Cooder's slide guitar to gorgeously lead us into and out of the peak of the anthemic pre-chorus's search for salvation or meaning, which in turn sets up the array of deep voices chanting an instantly addictive wordless "chorus" that I can't believe hasn't always existed.  This is near perfection.  

Meanwhile, Zevon provides "hey!s" and "c'mon!s," with echoey reverb as needed.  He's been randomly inserting these punctuations into songs since Wanted Dead Or Alive, and if nothing else, "Prison Grove" teaches us that thirty-plus years and thirteen records have taught him exactly where and when to "hey!"

 

Track Seven:  "El Amor De Mi Vida"

I like the piano and percussion here too.  A rare use of foreign language in a non-cover, I believe he and/or Jorge (who I am led to believe is actually the one singing the chorus) just came up with the Spanish hook to provide something appropriately wistful for one of Zevon's better-than-average apology failed-romance songs.  Kinda similar lyrical themes to "She's Too Good For Me," although I think this song's narrator is less self-absorbed and more at peace with the fate he's made.  

Track Eight:  "The Rest Of The Night"

Here the context of the record and the placement is important.  I don't think there's any illusion that this little tribute to "Rock Around The Clock" is a party anthem.  Yes, it's catchy as hell and it rocks in a fashion, but it's too slow to be just about hedonism.  This is clearly a dying man trying to hold on to a fast-paced lifestyle for a few more moments before he runs out of steam, and seems to be successful in forgetting it all for those few minutes.  Taken on its own the song might be a pure lark; on The Wind, it's a lark from someone making a specific choice to get the most out of every lunchtime.***  "We may never get this chance again; let's party for the rest of the night."  Yeah, the first half of the thought is doing the heavy lifting here.  

Again, in this context, it feels totally appropriate to use a "laughing" vocal take, just remembering that he was having fun with being a recording artist making rock and roll music.

Track Nine:  "Please Stay"

From that, back to raw longing.  This record doesn't want to be alone right now.  I want to love "Please Stay" more than I do.  I do love parts of it, including the delivery on "you and me and the wind" and the use of Emilou Harris's backing vocals.  I don't know if the verses are Zevon at his best, though, the lyrics are just a tad too simple, and most damning of all... saxophone.  To be clear, I only mostly hate saxophone in rock music rather than universally despising it.  Here, I can imagine a universe in which the sax could work, but unfortunately in this universe not only is the sax playing a counterpoint that seems to be in a different rhythm than the piano, but it is mixed way, way, too loud.  Why you wanna do this to yourself, song?

Track Ten:  "Rub Me Raw"

I don't know if I need to ascribe a particularly deep meaning to Zevon deciding to put, as his second to last song as a recording artist, a traditional Chicago-style blues-rock song.  I think it's just that his love for this type of blues was unfeigned as we know from the blues covers he's recorded over the years, so it seemed appropriate to look backward that way at the end.  Despite a few good one-liners about gleefully rejecting the "insight" and advice of those who don't know shit about shit, "Rub Me Raw" isn't his most incisive, most innovative, or most moving composition.  It is, however, a song with a strong hook and quality lead guitar work, and also a song that I enjoy on its own, and also also a nice last burst of energy before the record winds down.  

Track Eleven:  "Keep Me In Your Heart"

If someone's read this far, or listened to Zevon's oeuvre this far, this one doesn't really require any explanation.  Either you get the beauty of a plain-spoken request to just be remembered favorably for a bit, here, and there, especially when paired with that almost casual "sha-la-la" part, or Zevon maybe isn't the artist for you.  I mean, I did try to be a little contrary and not over-ascribe too much to "Keep Me In Your Heart" at the expense of the rest of The Wind, or some of the other goodbye songs.  I tried not to get swept up in the hype of KMIYH as this Perfect Goodbye Song that the narrative/discourse says that it is.  I tried to divorce myself from all that and just listen to the track as a song.  Guess what?  It actually is that good.

Final thoughts:

And then that was that.  Zevon made a bunch of good music, and had the fortune to close with one of his stronger efforts - not S-tier across the board, but just full of good songs with a few classics.  He left his mark on music and developed a following.  The world still keeps him in its collective heart.  Nicely done, sir.

Hopefully this has been interesting to read for someone.  I'm just glad to have finally gotten the chance to explore this collection of music that mixed quirky with moving like I hoped it would.  If anyone else s Zevon-curious but isn't sure whether to dive in, I'd recommend doing so; greatest hits collections are a perfectly good starting point if not an ending point, or pick one of the higher-placed records on my list.  Or anyone else is like I was, a best-of-compilation sort of fan who hasn't made the time for a full discography deep-dive, maybe this can be the push to go ahead and do it.  I doubt you'll regret it.

Favorite track:  "Prison Grove"

Runner up:  "Keep Me In Your Heart"

Least favorite track:  "Knockin' On Heaven's Door"

Rating:  4.5/5

What's next now that the Zevon project is complete?  Well, I've got a lot going on at the moment in general, and a few metal projects I really want to move forward to on the blog first.  So my unofficial series of diving into quirky singer-songwriters who were "complicated" (e.g. often assholes) as human beings, as epitomized by Fish and then by Warren Zevon, will go on a bit of a break.  

But I would like to get back into it.  And instead of doing someone whose music I love unabashedly, I thought maybe next I'd do an artist whose music I like the idea of better than I've ever liked actually listening to, despite effort after effort after effort.  Will diving deeper make it finally click?  And if not, will I be able to articulate why?  So, I thought next I'd try to go deep into the career of Mark Lanegan, dissecting the stuff he did with Screaming Trees and under his own name, and at least touching on some of his countless other side projects and guest appearances.  I don't know if I can get it to work, but it might be even more interesting to read Sing Backwards And Weep alongside the music and comment on the writing in parallel.  All, as always, if and whenever I get around to it...

Definitive list of records by Warren Zevon, in order of what I have decided is unambiguously their quality

1)  Life'll Kill Ya

2)  Bad Luck Streak In Dancing School

3)  The Wind 

4)  Excitable Boy

5)  Mutineer

6)  Warren Zevon

7)  My Ride's Here 

8)  Transverse City 

9)  The Envoy

10)  Sentimental Hygiene 

11)  Wanted Dead Or Alive

12)  Mr. Bad Example

*Most Dylan songs will spur a huge argument about which is which, even if one accepts my framing here, heh.

**The metaphor doesn't actually require three hands; you can go back and forth between two.

***Can I make it through this whole post without, except in the endnotes, mentioning enjoying every sandwich?  We shall see.