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The Humor and Heart of Warren Zevon
There was so much more to the “Werewolves of London” guy.
This morning I was in the bathroom (too much information? Oh, well) when I heard music coming from the TV that took me a minute to recognize. It was a cover of Warren Zevon’s “Lawyers, Guns, and Money.” I have no idea who it was, but it got the song into my head.
Singing it to myself, I remembered the opening verse:
I went home with the waitress
The way I always do
How was I to know
She was with the Russians too?
To me, the funniest part of this verse is his use of the word “too” at the end. “Her too?” Like, this has happened to him before.
As in his most famous song, “Werewolves of London,” Zevon often used humor. Another favorite funny verse of his comes from “The French Inhaler:”
Loneliness and frustration
We both came down with an acute case
And when the lights came up at two
I caught a glimpse of you
And your face looked like something
Death brought with him in his suitcase
In addition to the observation of the last two lines, there’s also the creative rhyming of ‘acute case’ and ‘suitcase.’ I would never have thought of it.
Many singer-songwriters, I might even say most singer-songwriters, tend to be pretty serious. I admire those who aren’t…
