Why write a top ten Zevon song list? I dunno, I really think he was L.A.'s single saving grace, yeah, they gave us Stevie Nicks and Jackson Browne, and Don Henly, but get your head out of the marijuana patch and into the bottomless pit of Jack Daniels and find yourself in an air conditioned motel room, your body a shaking wrecked as you tilt the medicine deep inside and sleep thru days after days and you will be playing frisbie with "One Of These Nights" and turning to the Raymond Chandler of rock. The greatest gift to self-destruction, who puked himself straight and was destroyed any way, WARREN ZEVON! 2Pac couldn't do it, the Germs couldn't, Zevon is the only musician to ever trounce nyc at its own game.
1. Desperadoes Under The Eaves – This song could not be one but better, couldn't have a better lyric, couldn't match song and words: this is my dream of the West Coast. "Waking up in the morning with shaking hands" is good, but rhyming it with "and trying to find a girl who understands me" is even better. Plus his greatest image of all time: California not slipped into the Pacific Ocean till Warren has paid a bill. This is a true song .
2. Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead – Easily the best song name of all time, it is so good they named a movie after it and it reaches to its finite conclusion.
3. Dirty Life And Times – The only good thing about Warren's death sentence was it gave him the opportunity to write about it and it and the songs on The Wind are among his best. Terminal illness has never been described better than "Some days I feel like my shadow's casting me, Some days the sun don't shine"
4. Ain't That Pretty At All – From 1982, and the banging two note motif suggests he had a punk hangover and and and "I'd rather feel pain than feel nothing at all" is the aphorism to die for.
5. Hit Somebody (The Hockey Song) – OK, it is second tier, I admit it, but yes that is DAVID LETTERMAN shouting "hit somebody". Plus it is really a story, and the cold cocking and flashing red light? Hysterical.
6. Studebaker – I am listening to the demo version and I've also heard his son cover it, and it is really, really great. Whoever sings it , whatever you think, it is as pure and clever a metaphor as humanly possible.
7. Keep Me In Your Heart – The best song ever written about the encroachment of death on love. An ineluctable tenderness is given voice. Maybe his greatest song.
8. Mutineer – I saw Dylan perform a terrific version of this years ago. It is surprising how lovely his love songs could be.
9. Werewolves Of London – Here we go, this is why he will never be just a cult artist. People will keep coming back to this wonderful song.
10. Knocking On Heavens Door – The third song off The Wind, and why not? This is the only version you need ever hear, wait for the ending…