The French Inhaler is, on the surface, a song about a failed-actress turned prostitute and an alcoholic in a Hollywood bar who falls for her. The chorus goes “Poor, poor, pitiful me/These young girls won’t let me be/Lord have mercy on me/Woe is me.” He tells stories about a couple of encounters, the first of which goes: “I met a girl in West Hollywood/I ain’t naming names/She really worked me over good/She was just like Jesse James/She really worked me over good/She was a credit to her gender/She put me through some changes, Lord/Sort of like a Waring blender” the second features one of the funniest moments ever recorded in song: Zevon sings “I met a girl at the Rainbow bar/She asked me if I’d beat her/She took me back to the Hyatt House…” and then he stops for a moment before muttering, “I don’t want to talk about it.” Set to an upbeat barroom piano riff and stellar electric guitar licks, it’s an oxymoronic song that’s a Zevon classic. Zevon had a great sense of humor, and it’s never more on display than in this tongue-in-cheek appraisal of the L.A. The next track is titled Poor Poor Pitiful Me, but it’s anything but mournful. The fourth track is Hasten Down the Wind, a mournful breakup song with this lovely chorus: “She’s so many women/He can’t find the one who was his friend/So he’s hanging on to half a heart/He can’t have the restless part/So he tells her to hasten down the wind.” Linda Ronstadt covered this and used it as the title track for her Grammy Award-winning album. The song shows folk and country influences, and the best part is the chorus: “People always ask me why?/What’s the matter with me?/Nothing matters when I’m with my ba-aby/With my back turned/Looking down the path.” Next is the upbeat acoustic Backs Turned Looking Down the Path, which features Lindsey Buckingham playing lead guitar and Jackson Browne on slide.
#Hasten down the wind lyrics meaning professional#
As such, many of the songs are autobiographical: The chorus of this song is straight from Zevon’s parents (his father was a professional gambler): “My mama couldn’t be persuaded when her daddy said/Daughter don’t marry that gambling man.” He explicitly reveals it’s his family’s story in the verse when he sings “They all went to pieces when the bad luck hit/Stuck in the middle, I was the kid.” Zevon wrote many of the songs on this album while living in Spain and looking back over his life and seemingly failed career. His lyrics evoke the landscape of the West: “Keep on riding riding riding/Cross the rivers and the range/Keep on riding riding riding/Frank and Jesse James.” The jumping, syncopated piano work evokes those mountain ranges as well.Ī chunky electric guitar leads us into Mama Couldn’t Be Persuaded. The album opens with Frank and Jesse James, a narrative song that tells the story of the famed outlaws in a sympathetic voice (“No one knows just where they came to be misunderstood/But the poor Missouri farmers know that Frank and Jesse do the best they could.”) Zevon was one of the smartest songwriters ever, and his work tended toward stories, showing the influence of both folk music and the westerns and detective novels he loved. The long fade out of a beautiful string arrangement in the coda of Desperados Under the Eaves. Zevon grew up mostly in Fresno, California he’s been quoted as saying, “I’m the smartest guy to ever come out of Fresno,” but he did spend time as a youth in Fresno taking lessons from Igor Stravinsky, and his classical training shows in the intricate piano work throughout the album. The opening solo piano riff of Frank and Jesse James. Just look at the list of contributors on this album: Jackson Browne, Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks, Don Henley, Glenn Frey … it’s like a ’70s Southern California Hall of Fame. Zevon was a true songwriter’s songwriter, with both the good and bad implications of that title: He never achieved the commercial success his talent seemingly deserved (at least in part because of his self-destructive alcoholism and drug habits), but he was universally respected by other musicians. Jackson Browne talked him into returning to Los Angeles to record this album, which Browne produced. He had spent much of the early ’70s trying to get a record deal, without success, and had actually moved to Spain for a period, where he had a regular gig in a bar owned by a former mercenary (the inspiration for the song Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner).
Warren Zevon, recorded in 1975 and released in 1976, was Zevon’s major label debut.
A photo of the 29-year old Warren Zevon in black suit and unbuttoned white shirt, a dim, noirish image with only an offset stage light providing illumination.The image indicates a bit of Zevon’s past (he was a band leader for the Everly Brothers before starting his solo career) and future (he was friends with David Letterman and often filled in as band leader for Paul Shaffer on Letterman’s show).
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