Still, this came as a shock. In one of the Rock Hall's patented, gasp-worthy twists, Zevon was announced as a 2025 inductee under the Musical Influence category alongside of hip-hop trio Salt-N-Pepa. Deserved inductions, both. Further, Zevon's placement under the Hall's "Influence" column puts him alongside such august company as Woody Guthrie, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, and Gil Scott-Heron. Poets, emotive vocal stylists, bandleaders, folk singers... one would be hard-pressed to say Warren isn't qualified to sit among them.
Zevon's Musical Influence induction is a reminder of the Hall's "left field" potential, and that it will find bold new ways to fill out its rock and roll puzzle. It defies expectations, as most figured Zevon would either return to the official ballot or get placed in the increasingly broad Musical Excellence category. On a side note, this year's Influence maneuvering feels tectonic, as it's shifted the category's timeline forward to as recent as 1986, Salt-N-Pepa's debut album release year. (Going forward, the Musical Influence possibilities are head-spinning. Iron Maiden? Sure. Black Flag? They really should get in. Alt-rock instigators Jane's Addiction? Their first LP was 1987. Hair metal door-kickers Quiet Riot? Ice-T? He was, after all, the original gangster. But, time to digress.)
Zevon passed from cancer in 2003, but not before a landmark appearance a year earlier on "Late Show With David Letterman." Dealing with his prognosis yet determined and composed, Dave's pal and frequent guest sat for an interview and performed "Mutineer," "Genius" and "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner." He also gave a bit of sage, perspective-giving advice: "Enjoy every sandwich." This phrase has reverberated in many ways — in 2017, my wife and I walked into a tiny lunch spot in Chincoteague, Virginia, and painted above the counter were those three words. This was Warren showing up unexpectedly on a humid island, speaking words of wisdom.
Across 11 more official studio releases (one as part of the band Hindu Love Gods, his collaboration with three-quarters of R.E.M.), Zevon went on to excel in the realm of popular music. His work is about outsiders, for outsiders, with harsh reality checks along the way. Still, a certain magic and je ne sais quois radiates from this discography. Zevon's vivid storytelling and self-aware confessionals really stick with you. There's the writer/addict hitting bottom (albeit to the beautiful sound of flamenco guitar) in "Carmelita"; the apocalyptic angst of "Run Straight Down" ("Pretty soon there's not a creature stirring / 'Cept the robots at the dynamo"); the hypnotic, jilted-lover disenchantment of "Genius" ("Did you light the candles / Did you put on 'Kind of Blue' / Did you use that Ivy League voodoo on him too?"); and 1989's "Splendid Isolation," which became an unofficial pandemic anthem ("Don't want nobody coming by without calling first / Don't want nothing to do with you"). And not that Zevon's "rock" credentials were ever in question, but the flurry of piano notes at the 3:02 mark of "The French Inhaler," followed by Waddy Wachtel's resolving guitar chords, conjure an incandescent moment — an emotional avalanche that reveals itself as one of rock and roll's most extraordinary scorched-earth kiss-offs. "I stamped and mailed her," declares Zevon.
In the Warren-verse, there's much to marvel at lyrically and musically, but the man's sense of duty in his final stretch is also inspirational. Zevon refused to let his illness stop him, enlisting key collaborators (David Lindley, Jorge Calderรณn) and major-dude friends (Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Don Henley, Jackson Browne, Billy Bob Thornton, etc.) to craft an exceptional swan song effort. The Wind hit shelves just two weeks before Zevon left us, and went on to win two Grammys.
"Disorder in the House" is a stirring track from The Wind, and it's tempting to extrapolate that notion to the Rock Hall in the context of Zevon's induction journey. So many worthy artists are on the outside looking in, but by any standard, Warren was overdue. Wanted Dead or Alive, his relatively forgotten first LP, came out in 1970, so he was technically eligible in 1995. When he finally got his first nomination for the Class of 2023, it was exciting, then sharply disappointing when he didn't get in. When you have such powerful advocates as Billy Joel (who wrote a letter to the Hall on Warren's behalf) and David Letterman going to bat for you, and so many friends in the industry (everyone from Neil Young to Linda Ronstadt to R.E.M.), the only thing a Zevon fan could feel was bafflement.
It wasn't a matter of qualifications, of course. A classically-trained musician that briefly crossed paths with composer Igor Stravinsky, Zevon's formative era involved session work and jingles, writing songs for the Turtles, and even road work as the Everly Brothers' bandleader. In the mid-'70s, Browne lent a key assist, producing and appearing on Zevon's self-titled 1976 album, which featured contributions from a murderer's row of future Hall of Famers: Henley, Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks, Ronstadt, Glenn Frey, Bonnie Raitt, and Carl Wilson, among others. With such iconic songs as "Poor Poor Pitiful Me," "The French Inhaler" and particularly "Desperados Under the Eaves," Warren Zevon is considered one of the high watermarks of the Southern California sound.
It makes sense that Zevon properly emerged in the mid-'70s, post-Nixon and in the heart of what author-journalist Tom Wolfe coined as the "Me Decade." Culturally, the communal idealism of the '60s had been abandoned for individual development and self-actualization. Discovering that the world is bullshit is a very adult realization, and a motivator for turning inward. So much of the music that came out of Los Angeles in this era reflects this paradigm shift, including Zevon's. Across the board, the lyrical messaging echoed what everyone was thinking: "Poor poor pitiful me," "You can go your own way," "Running on empty," "Already gone."
Without this social climate, the trajectory of rock and roll might have been so much different (and probably worse). On May 31, 1976, a mere 13 days after Warren Zevon was released, Steely Dan put out The Royal Scam, another artistic skyscraper poking through the smog of L.A. The proximity of these two albums is heady to contemplate, as is the fact that each opens with outlaw character studies ("Frank and Jesse James" and "Kid Charlemagne"). While divergent in many ways, Zevon and Steely Dan were each meticulous in their songwriting, and tempered cynicism with a dark sense of humor. Steely Dan's line "He will make your mugshots disappear" is one that Zevon would have presumably appreciated, while "I'm drinking heartbreak motor oil and Bombay gin" (from Zevon's "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead") seems custom-made for Donald Fagen to sing. Dark underbellies, desperados, debauchery, divorce... both acts trafficked in all this nasty medicine, with elegant songcraft the spoonful of sugar helping it go down. There must be something in the L.A. water.
Speaking of that city, Warren Zevon is finally a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, and the ceremony will be held this November 8th in Los Angeles. There couldn't be a more appropriate location to honor him. Perhaps Billy Joel said it best: "He exemplified the soul of L.A. — if there is one."
