In the twilight years of the 1970’s, the Los Angeles music scene seemed to be in trouble. After a run that lasted more than a decade, Los Angeles could easily have laid claim to being the epicenter of the American music scene, but there was trouble in paradise.

The city’s two most popular bands, Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles, had more or less simultaneously released albums that were so spectacularly successful that they seemed invincible. “Rumours” and “Hotel California” were two of the most popular albums of all time, and deservedly so, but success of that nature can cause problems. The principal artists of each band seemed to let the fame and fortune go to their heads, and the pressure of creating a follow-up album that matched these expectations took a toll.

Lindsay Buckingham (Fleetwood Mac) and the songwriting duo of Frey/Henley (Eagles) seemed to be lost in their own image of themselves, feeling the need to sustain their level of popularity, while being completely out of touch with their audience. They could no longer relate. A solipsistic, self-centered attitude took over and destroyed the liveliness of their music. They spent years working on material that was either boring or inscrutable, and quite simply, they lost their mojo. Their subsequent albums, “Tusk” and “The Long Run”, took years to be assembled, and the fans who waited (and waited…) patiently did eventually buy the albums on release, but it was all too obvious that the bloom was off the rose.

The fun and liveliness of the music was missing. The albums sounded calculated, lacking the human touch that inspired their fame in the first place. The amount of time and money spent on making “Tusk” and “The Long Run” was almost criminal, in the end resulting in the permanent obsolescence of purely egotistical production, and good riddance. Personally, I couldn’t tell if I hated these albums, or if they just bored me to death, but I could tell that their lifelessness destroyed the ‘fun in the sun’ vibe of the Los Angeles music scene. 

The Los Angeles ‘vibe’ seemed to be over and done, but nothing ends in an instant and luckily, a few holdouts salvaged what remained, and the most conspicuous of these holdouts was Warren Zevon. Zevon himself had just recently released his first hit album (although modest in proportion to those mentioned above) a year earlier, so he was also due for a follow-up. Unlike the others, though, he was still hungry and filled with an excess of creativity.

“Excitable Boy” was full of life, comedy and weirdness that drew an audience rather than boring them to death. He combined pathos and humor in a way that could make you laugh while walking through the graveyard, and his newfound audience loved it. Of course, “Werewolves of London” became an all-time classic track, but there are plenty of others here that could have followed suit. Unlike his cohorts The Eagles and Fleetwood Mac, he didn’t waste time staring at his navel. Instead, he metaphorically stared his listeners straight in the face so they could determine truth from fiction, while having some fun doing it. By proxy, Zevon became the standard bearer for West Coast rock and roll.

Featured tracks:

Johnny Strikes Up the Band

Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner

Excitable Boy

Werewolves of London

Accidentally Like a Martyr

Nighttime in the Switching Yard

Veracruz

Tenderness on the Block

Lawyers, Guns and Money

January 1978 - Billboard Charted #8