Sunday, January 19, 2025

Warren Zevon's Manifest Destiny

How crazy is it to mess with one of the best albums of all time and hope to get away with something worthwhile? Probably plenty crazy, but the One Buck Guy fears no challenge. It helps that this classic album is still somewhat underappreciated and overlooked, a lot like the man who created it. Warren Zevon may be the man to those who know him, but unfortunately a big part of the general population either doesn't know him or - if they're of a certain age - only know him as a sort-of goofy one-hit wonder with "Werewolves Of London". Zevon was so much more, and his second album Warren Zevon told you as much. Not a real debut album, that was the ill-conceived, low-budget Wanted Dead Or Alive by Zevon (no Warren yet) produced by gadfly Kim Fowley for Imperial in 1969 - but a real and utterly compelling introduction to the poet laureate of L.A. Noir rock'n'roll.

It's also pretty crazy that this blog has been kicking about for almost a year and a half and I haven't gotten around to posting anything by or about Warren Zevon, one of my favorite artists. On the other hand, most of his albums are what they are, which mostly means great to very good, but also without a lot of material to do alternate albums and the like. More importantly, most Zevon albums feel like they don't need an alternate album. Warren Zevon certainly doesn't, and yet here is one. Most alt albums that I propose on this blog are real alternatives that - at least to me - improve on the released version in one way or the other. But there's room for another sort of alt album, a companion piece that shows the road(s) not taken. Manifest Destiny squarely falls into that concept. No alt album could supplant Warren Zevon, but an alt album can support it and bring some of its underlying ideas closer to the surface. 

The concept of Manifest Destiny isn't entirely mine. About twenty years or so ago I was hanging out at the Warren Zevon Bulletin Board and one of the members there posted the observation that Warren Zevon was both a tresk westwards and from past to present, starting in mid 19th Century Missouri and ending up in 1970's L.A. From this observation sprang the idea of Manifest Destiny, though I had to tweak the track list a bit to make it work in the way I wanted it to. First off, I wanted two specific tracks on the album that weren't on Warren Zevon. One is "Vera Cruz" which could have been had producer Jackson Browne chosen differently. He picked the line-up from the songs Zevon had amassed over the years, deciding to hold back "Werewolves Of London" and "Vera Cruz" for the follow-up. But not only does the song feel like it should be with the ones on Warren Zevon, it also fits into the concept, even though the geographical route now leads through the south rather than Chicago. 

The second song is one that Zevon probably wrote for a follow-up to Wanted Dead Or Alive on Imperial Records that never materialized. "Studebaker", with its Southern California setting and travel motif seemed to fit right into the concept of Manifest Destiny  - all the losers and schemers and lowlifes in L.A. have to come from somewhere, right? There was one issue though: The song was never entirely completed, basically just stopping - so I had to get creative to produce an ending for the song. I did, together with a new opening that fits the narrative and hopefully comes off as hoped.  

The rest of the songs come from Warren Zevon, though in order to fit my idea of the album, two tracks were dropped. I couldn't find a logical way to integrate "I Sleep When I'm Dead" and then dropped "Hasten Down The Wind" at the last second. "Hasten Down The Wind" is a fantastic song, but it just didn't fit well into the road and traveling motif I imagined for side one of Manifest Destiny and also had that (imagined vinyl) side run too long, so with a heavy heart I deleted it from the line-up. 

At first I had a pretty healthy mix of versions from the finished album and the alternative takes and outtakes on its disc of bonus track from the 2008 Collector's Edition. But finally, bit by bit, I replaced the glossier originals by their alternatives, save for the majestic closing track "Desperadoes Under The Eaves" - in my opinion Warren's best song, bar none - which just sounded wrong in its embryionic early version - and "Mama Couldn't Be Persuaded" for which no alternative version has been issued. It just felt right that the road trip concept of at least the first part of Manifest Destiny would push for an earthier instrumentation - see David Lindley's banjo & fiddle that are almost entirely buried in the original version of "Frank And Jesse James", but come to the fore here or the added emphasis on Wddy Wachtel's guitar work that the lack of overdubs reveal. Lindley's fiddle, also much more prominent on the alt version of "Poor Poor Pitiful Me" becomes a real presence on the album while being almost inaudible on Warren Zevon

I got into a bit of a pickle when coming upon "Mohammed's Radio"as I didn't want to go with the extremely produced original, including the lush overdubbed backing vocals of Mr. Buckingham and Mrs. Nicks and Bobby Keys' sax that I could go without. I also didn't want to use the alternative version, which in return really clarifies how much of a Bob Dylan rip off/homage the song with its elaborate metaphors is, as Warren tries at one point - rather unsuccessfully, one might add - a Dylanesque vocal delivery. So I 'cheated' and included the version Zevon did for The Old Grey Whistle Test BBC TV show with Jackson Browne. It is one of Zevon's best ever vocal and has just the right amount of instrumentation, including of course a contribution by David Lindley. 

The alternative, more bare-bones versions of "The French Inhaler" and "Carmelita" bring out a more vulnerable aspect to their respective tales of hustling, pimping, drug-taking and despair, with Warren's voice essentially naked. "Join Me In L.A." always had an undercurrent of barely concealed menace, but the alternative version (a.k.a. take 2) with its sinewy, snakey guitar lines brings the menace right to the surface, making the song sound sinister at times, especially in the instrumental interludes, with Warren's protagonist making spoken word offers you should probably refuse, like going off to Griffith Park to take a couple of Octamols. The journey of Manifest Destiny changes, musically and lyrically. The protagonists of the first part, 'The Road' (which would be vinyl side a) are sometimes in trouble or downtrodden, but the promise of something better down the road is still there, and the music still sounds upbeat and determined. But when they have reached 'The Last Frontier' (vinyl side b), a.k.a. the city of angels, things take a turn for the worse, and the music itself becomes moodier and less upbeat. Then again, you'll be hard-pressed to find L.A. rock as noir and despairing as "The French Inhaler", "Carmelita" and "Desperadoes Under The Eaves". 

I still could go on for hours about what makes these songs great, but this is already one of the longest write-ups as is, so I'll just leave you to get to Manifest Destiny to either rediscover these songs in a new context and new versions, or to discover them for the first time. Either way, you're in for a treat. 

2 comments:

  1. Manifest Destiny

    https://workupload.com/file/AfQwpyGPgyN

    ReplyDelete
  2. If you are a Zevoneer, then what is your favorite song by Mr. Zevon?

    ReplyDelete

Warren Zevon's Manifest Destiny

How crazy is it to mess with one of the best albums of all time and hope to get away with something worthwhile? Probably plenty crazy, but t...