I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.
-Groucho Marx
Warren Zevon was one of the most unique and uncompromising singer-songwriters of his or any era – sometimes to his ultimate consternation and detriment. He was the troll under the bridge, the voice in the wilderness, the yin to pop music’s yang. Listening to Zevon is like taking an odd turn down the wrong street that either sends you scrambling back to the boulevard or being intrigued enough to be enveloped in imminent danger. It’s a strange combination of unsettling and comforting. Not for everyone, and not (so far) for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (42 years and counting) either. I think that is a glaring mistake and I wish to discuss this further.
Now, as I have written in this paper before, the idea of a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is idiotic on its face.
- As an artform, rock and roll is supposed to obliterate institutional thinking.
- Music is subjective and what constitutes greatness is elusive – there, of course, are perennials, but once we’re over four-decades of jamming artists of questionable and certainly debatable merit in there, things should have loosened up considerably.
- There appears to be a consortium of shrouded judges deciding this, also antithetical to the ethos of rock and roll – the people’s music – and, to be frank, the entire enterprise comes across as somewhat sketchy.
But if there is going to be a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, then Warren Zevon needs to be included. Period.
Full disclosure: I did spend a few years of my life on a book about Zevon’s music, Accidentally Like a Martyr – The Tortured Art of Warren Zevon. Through the collection of essays therein, the goal was to find the man behind his songs, form a biographical underpinning within the lyrics and themes. So, I am, to say the least, a fan, and have been since my high school days – something I touch upon in the book – and coined a term that has taken off to describe the precious ownership of Zevon fandom, Zevonites. To be a Zevonite means to be all-in on the Zevon canon, and to shout about it from the nearest rooftop. I am pleased that I have put in my little contribution to the cause of getting more people interested in his work, but I do not speak today as that guy – although it is hard to separate this – because my reasoning (as opposed to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame) is sound.
So, let’s cover the reasons that Zevon is not in there and refute them verily.
He did not sell enough records over his four-decades-plus career.
This is bullshit, since when I wrote about Alice Cooper and KISS not in the Hall of Fame back in 2010, I was told that record sales, of which both acts sold tons, was not a key prerequisite. “The influence and significance of the artists’ contributions to the development and perpetuation of rock and roll” (taken from the Hall of Fame website) is paramount.
Warren Zevon was extremely influential. Probably his most powerful argument for inclusion. Everyone in the highly successful West Coast/California movement of the late 1960s through the seventies and eighties were shifted into different musical corners by Zevon. The Eagles play and sing on several of the tracks on Zevon’s eponymous first Asylum album, including its final track, “Desperados Under the Eaves,” a song using a hotel as a metaphoric prison. Three months later they recorded their seminal album, Hotel California, with the title track depicting a hotel as a metaphoric prison. Linda Ronstadt famously and beautifully recorded four of Zevon’s songs and named an album, Hasten Down the Wind, after one of them. Neil Young, who also played on Zevon records and on stage with him, has cited Zevon’s effect on his songwriting. Bruce Springsteen, who counted Zevon as a friend and penned a song with him and covered his songs in concert, often marveled at his diverse musical and lyrical palette. Bob Dylan, who during the early aughts played a mini set of Zevon songs during his shows, dubbed Zevon “the musician’s musician.” Jackson Browne, too, who told me himself that Zevon had awakened his ability to touch upon subjects previously beyond him after producing his first two albums.
This is not to mention many of the younger artists who over the years count him as a major influence: Dawes, Jill Sobule, the Wallflowers, Counting Crows, Dwight Yoakam, and many more.
Zevon was a lunatic drunkard during his heyday who pissed off a lot of people, namely Jann Wenner, publisher of Rolling Stone, the man who started the Hall of Fame and (despite being disgraced and tossed from the committee due to racist and misogynistic falderal a couple of years back) still holds sway on keeping him out.
The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is filled with rapists, drug addicts, pedophiles, domestic abusers, murderers. In fact, the entire history of the genre is one big crime spree undertaken by immoral libertines. Let’s not get precious about one guy.
Aside from David Letterman, there is very little clamor about his absence.
I am not going to name the dozens of artists and celebrities that have been vocal about Zevon’s snub, but I will mention that two years ago when Zevon was put on the fan-voting ballot, he came in third behind George Michael, who won that year and was inducted, and Cyndi Lauper, who is going to be inducted this year. I worked hard with the Zevon family, especially his son Jordan, who is a friend, to help make that happen. We watched the ticker daily. Zevon got a shitload of votes, (from the people, not a dubious consortium) proving that there is indeed more than enough “clamor” to induct him.
Now, to the important stuff. Why is Warren Zevon eligible for the Hall of Fame?
First and foremost, he is one of the great songwriters of all time. As stated above, unique in his unflinching ability to cross into taboo subjects that both satirize and humanize much of humanity’s foibles, joys, humor, sadness, and demons. Only Randy Newman (already in the Hall of Fame) has done more to expand the themes and subjects of songs in the pop music pantheon (both men had their biggest hits around the same time with lighter and kitschy songs – Zevon, “Werewolves of London,” and Newman, “Short People.”)
This is why a bevy of authors (yours truly) came to Zevon – Steven King, Hunter S. Thompson, Carl Hiassen, Dave Barry, Ross McDonald, Amy Tam, and more.
Zevon, beloved by those who understand the complicated expression of songwriting, stand in awe of him. One of the few composers and performers beyond the self-aggrandizing realm of prog rock to use classical motifs, Zevon was a tireless creator. Long after the music industry and greater public abandoned him, he continued to put out self-produced, stripped-down albums, toured solo, and played clubs and bars to keep going – never giving into the idea of “retiring” from his art despite personal and professional travails. He is an inspiration to those who don’t live on the charts, take harbor on magazine covers, or move through the talk-show circuit. And those albums he made were great through his becoming sober in 1986 until the end, when arguably his most lasting tribute to the craft was The Wind, an album he recorded when he was dying of inoperable lung cancer at just 55-years-old (he passed at age 56), a lasting legacy since undertaken by such legendary artists as Johnny Cash and David Bowie.
It is important that the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame not merely cater to the über-famous and instead take the time to shine a light on those who expanded the genre and traversed outside its parameters. Zevon lived on the bleeding edge of those parameters and came back to tell us all about it in incredibly moving, funny, and raucous songs about love, loss, death and the occasional lycanthrope.
And finally, as I wrote in 2002 upon hearing of his diagnosis, Warren Zevon was one cool fucker, whose music and humor and pathos made life better, and remains one of the finest live performers I’ve seen with an uncompromisingly smart and, yes, sinister side that always made me smile. He would do the same for the crusty institution that so far has seen fit to keep him out.
Of course, never invited to the big parties and skulking in the shadows of more celebrated artists, maybe not being in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is a final tribute to the man.
