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Tempo: A Rowman & Littlefield Music Series on Rock, Pop, and Culture
Warren Zevon: Desperado of Los Angeles
Warren Zevon was one of the most original songwriters to emerge from the prolific 1970s Los Angeles music scene. Beyond his most familiar song—the rollicking 1978 hit “Werewolves of London”—Zevon’s smart, often satirical songbook is rich with cinematic, literary, and comic qualities; dark narratives; complex characters; popular culture references; and tender, romantic ballads of parting and longing.
Warren Desperado of Los Angeles is the first book-length, critical exploration of one of popular music’s most talented and tormented antiheroes. George Plasketes provides a comprehensive chronicle of Zevon’s 40-year, 20-record career and his enduring cultural significance. Beginning with Zevon’s classical training and encounters as a youth with composers Robert Craft and Igor Stravinsky, Plasketes surveys Zevon’s initiation into the 1960s through the Everly Brothers, the Turtles, and the film Midnight Cowboy. Plasketes then follows Zevon from his debut album with Asylum Records in 1976, produced by mentor Jackson Browne, through his successes and struggles from a Top Ten album to record label limbo during the 1980s, through a variety of music projects in the 1990s, including soundtracks and scores, culminating with a striking trio of albums in the early 2000s. Despite his reckless lifestyle and personal demons, Zevon made friends and alliances with talk show host David Letterman and such literary figures as Hunter S. Thompson and Carl Hiaasen. It was only after his death in 2003 that Zevon received Grammy recognition for his work.
Throughout this book, Plasketes explores the musical, cinematic, and literary influences that shaped Zevon’s distinctive style and songwriting themes and continue to make Zevon’s work a telling portrait of Los Angeles and American culture.
Warren Desperado of Los Angeles is the first book-length, critical exploration of one of popular music’s most talented and tormented antiheroes. George Plasketes provides a comprehensive chronicle of Zevon’s 40-year, 20-record career and his enduring cultural significance. Beginning with Zevon’s classical training and encounters as a youth with composers Robert Craft and Igor Stravinsky, Plasketes surveys Zevon’s initiation into the 1960s through the Everly Brothers, the Turtles, and the film Midnight Cowboy. Plasketes then follows Zevon from his debut album with Asylum Records in 1976, produced by mentor Jackson Browne, through his successes and struggles from a Top Ten album to record label limbo during the 1980s, through a variety of music projects in the 1990s, including soundtracks and scores, culminating with a striking trio of albums in the early 2000s. Despite his reckless lifestyle and personal demons, Zevon made friends and alliances with talk show host David Letterman and such literary figures as Hunter S. Thompson and Carl Hiaasen. It was only after his death in 2003 that Zevon received Grammy recognition for his work.
Throughout this book, Plasketes explores the musical, cinematic, and literary influences that shaped Zevon’s distinctive style and songwriting themes and continue to make Zevon’s work a telling portrait of Los Angeles and American culture.
- GenresMusicBiographyNonfiction
296 pages, Hardcover
Published June 2, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
June 11, 2017
*3.5*
For Zevon fans. More about his music, than the man, which for me was fine, but a couple of errors the author made when attributing; "If my baby don't want me no more, I know her sister will" to Zevon, when in fact this line was in a song called 'Red House' written by Jimi Hendrix. Also the author at the begining of the book, whilst talking about hotels at which Zevon had stayed, mentions New York's Chelsea Hotel, where "Nancy Spungen, Johnny Rotten's girlfriend was stabbed." Spungen was stabbed at the Chelsea, but she was Sid Vicious' girlfriend. Not that this really matters, but it is a music memoir, so one would expect the author to check his facts. It makes me wonder what else Plasketes got wrong and undermines an otherwise excellent review of Warren Zevon's career.
For Zevon fans. More about his music, than the man, which for me was fine, but a couple of errors the author made when attributing; "If my baby don't want me no more, I know her sister will" to Zevon, when in fact this line was in a song called 'Red House' written by Jimi Hendrix. Also the author at the begining of the book, whilst talking about hotels at which Zevon had stayed, mentions New York's Chelsea Hotel, where "Nancy Spungen, Johnny Rotten's girlfriend was stabbed." Spungen was stabbed at the Chelsea, but she was Sid Vicious' girlfriend. Not that this really matters, but it is a music memoir, so one would expect the author to check his facts. It makes me wonder what else Plasketes got wrong and undermines an otherwise excellent review of Warren Zevon's career.
April 10, 2017
While this book is meticulously researched and detailed, it was not an engaging read. The analysis of Zevon's song-writing interested me, but the account is dry and mechanical.
September 19, 2021
A compendium of other's work, liberally sprinkled with nonstop musical name-dropping, which would be tolerable if not for factual inaccuracies. Nancy Spungen was not Johnny Rotten's girlfriend, she was Sid Vicious's. Skynyrd's "Free Bird" was not "a tribute to Duane Allman", the song was written prior to Duane's death. Speaking of the 2015 Letterman show cover of "Mutineer" by Amanda Shires and "Jason Isbell of the Drive-By Truckers", Isbell was already seven years post-Trucker and a bigger, more recognized act than the band that had (rightly) kicked him out. The most egregious errors are in quoting lyrics off "The Wind". The plaintive "open up, open up, open up, for me..." in "Knocking on Heaven's Door" is tear inducing, but Plasketes somehow substitutes "please" for "for me". It's as if he hasn't really listened to Zevon's music much at all, and simply found bad info on the web, or, while the "Engine driver's headed north to Pleasant Stream", Plasketes somehow missed that train and instead his "Engine driver's headed north to Pleasant Station". How someone writing a detailed book on the recorded work's of one of the all time greatest songwriters could not get the lyric correct to said songwriters' seminal work is astounding.
August 13, 2016
Sometimes these books that are part of a 'series' where publishers go hunting for writers to cover certain artists or subjects can be rather thin and formulaic.
But this author gets into the subject and his songs to a greater degree than many books of this type, plus his chosen subject is a more interesting and colorful topic than most as well.
Talkin' about the man!
But this author gets into the subject and his songs to a greater degree than many books of this type, plus his chosen subject is a more interesting and colorful topic than most as well.
Talkin' about the man!
February 6, 2020
The only reasons I don't give this a five are its liberal quoting of I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, and its need for a little more care in editing. It's like reading lit-crit, but of your favorite musician instead of your favorite author of fiction. Good stuff!
December 12, 2016
Great subject, horrible writing, zagat style, filled with quotes but missing originality
April 28, 2022
Dreadful book, very badly written. An overload of words, words, words... Looks like the author recently bought a thesaurus and is trying to get all those words in this one biography.
Crap.
Crap.
June 18, 2024
Warren Zevon: Desperado of Los Angeles by George Plasketes is a warm and wonderful, frank and funny, great and gritty look at Zevon's up and down career.
Plasketes excellent review of Warren Zevon's work is chockfull of alliteration on nearly every page-for example 191:
"Zevon's desperado Deteriorata was a distinctive and dignified requiem,
a captivating small-scale spectacle of compassion, curiousity, and chronicle."
Plasketes mentions what I consider to be the most alliterative song lyric ever devised, in Zevon's smash hit, 'Werewolves of London" with..."little old lady got mutilated late last night."
And I'll admit, towards the end of this book, my eyes moistened in sadness with the recounting of Zevon's last appearance on The David Letterman show.
-
Side Note: Warren Zevon, Peter Gabriel and Gil Scott-Heron are my 3 favorite singer songwriters.
Plasketes excellent review of Warren Zevon's work is chockfull of alliteration on nearly every page-for example 191:
"Zevon's desperado Deteriorata was a distinctive and dignified requiem,
a captivating small-scale spectacle of compassion, curiousity, and chronicle."
Plasketes mentions what I consider to be the most alliterative song lyric ever devised, in Zevon's smash hit, 'Werewolves of London" with..."little old lady got mutilated late last night."
And I'll admit, towards the end of this book, my eyes moistened in sadness with the recounting of Zevon's last appearance on The David Letterman show.
-
Side Note: Warren Zevon, Peter Gabriel and Gil Scott-Heron are my 3 favorite singer songwriters.
January 1, 2020
A Brilliant book about a Brilliant Mind.
September 11, 2016
Bio of one of my favorite singer songwriters. The book is kind of dry. Lots of facts about context in which he wrote and recorded songs. Some background about how he came to L.A. and the friends he made in the industry. Very little about personal life. Yet, even as I knew his story and followed his career and loved his music, I cried at the end.
George Plasketes, the author, helpfully adds Further Reading and Further Listening lists.
George Plasketes, the author, helpfully adds Further Reading and Further Listening lists.
November 6, 2016
The perfect counterpart to "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" by Zevon's ex-wife, Crystal Zevon. Her book, which is not the hatchet job that one might expect from an ex-wife, captures the personal and social milieu Zevon inhabited. Plasketes' book, on the other hand, while referencing Zevon's rather dramatic lifestyle throughout, is focused on the music. Want to know Warren Zevon? Read both.
November 8, 2016
an album by album, song by song explication of Zevon's work with context.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews