One listen was enough to prompt him to occasionally perform the song live as early as 1975 - three years before it was recorded. The following day in the studio with Jackson Browne, who was cutting some Zevon demos to solicit to the Eagles and Ronstadt to possibly record before the Warren Zevon sessions began, they mentioned the “new song” and recited the “Werewolves” lyrics. Zevon effortlessly sprinkled verses with punch lines: “You better stay away from him/He’ll rip your lungs out, Jim/Heh, I’d like to meet his tailor.” He drolly punctuates the prance with a salivating, “Draw blood.”įortunately, Crystal Zevon was present to transcribe the lively lyric exchange onto a steno pad that she always carried.
walking with the Queen, the dance endeavor Everly had hoped for, “doing the Werewolves of London,” and an “Aah-oooh” chorus. There is a warning of “the hairy handed gent who ran amok in Kent” alleviated with nifty alliteration - “little old lady got mutilated late last night,” droll fashion statements - “his hair was perfect,” characteristic celebrity name dropping - Lon Chaney, and Lon Chaney Jr. The trio frivolously alternated verses, beginning with what may be one of the all-time opening lines: “I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand/Walking down the streets of Soho in the rain.” The romp is comic noir, featuring a stylish werewolf on his way to Lee Ho Fooks for a “big dish of beef chow mein” and another “drinking a piña colada at Trader Vic’s.” When Wachtel heard the idea, he mimicked a wailing wolf - “Aahoooh” - which became part of the howling chorus.
#WARREN ZEVON SWEET HOME ALABAMA MOVIE#
The idea originated with Phil Everly who, after watching the movie Werewolf of London (1935) on late-night television, suggested to Zevon that he adapt the title for a song and dance craze. The spontaneous composition, referred to by Zevon as “a dumb song for smart people,” defied the conventional attributes of songwriting such as labor, craft, and agonizing.
F rom his 1978 album Excitable Boy, Warren Zevon’s terror trilogy - a ghostly, ghastly three-song sequence brimming with abandoned amusement - was comprised of “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner,” “Excitable Boy,” and “Werewolves of London.” The latter was another “literally 15-minute song” that none of its co-writers - Zevon, LeRoy Marinell, and Waddy Wachtel - took seriously.
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