Mick and the PhatMan Talking Music
Join Mick and Jeff as they talk about artists, albums and music genres with passion that comes from personal connection. They’ve seen artists in concert at venues that don’t even exist today, bought albums when they were released on vinyl and, in some cases, met the artists.
Sometimes they love the artist or music they're talking about. Sometimes they don’t. But, without fail, you'll always hear something you didn’t know.
Mick and the PhatMan Talking Music
Warren Zevon – Finally inducted into the Hall of Fame!!
Send us a message, so we know what you're thinking!
A while back, we talked at length about Warren Zevon, one of the great American songwriters and one of our idols. So, this year, Warren Zevon has been inducted into the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame, along with Bad Company and Cyndi Lauper, and we thought that was a perfect excuse to close the loop on our coverage of his career. It’s all here – his later career, final album, appearances on Letterman. We loved doing it, and we know that you'll love listening to this one!
Our “Album You Must Listen to Before You Die” is John Lennon’s 1980 hit, “Imagine”. As usual with Lennon’s solo albums, it’s more (and less) than it seems on the face of it, containing some of Lennon’s best work along with some filler. But, hey, it’s a strong album and gave Roxy Music their worst-ever cover (FYI - “Jealous Guy”).
We also venture into the world of ChatGPT to find out the Best Albums of 1972. Fairly strong list – Jethro Tull, Deep Purple, Lou Reed and .............................. Wishbone Ash! Who?
References – Globite Travel Bag, Warren Zevon, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, “The Wind”, Zach Starkey, The Who, Bad Company, Paul Rodgers, Cyndi Lauper, Jordon Zevon, CHAT GPT, 1972, Letterman, alcoholism, Rolling Stone magazine, Jann Wenner, Zevon Live in Australia, The Bridge Hotel, St Mary's Band Club, The Hilton Sydney, Little River Band, Linda Ronstadt, pleural mesothelioma, Enjoy Every Sandwich, “Sentimental Hygiene”, Neil Young, “Detox Mansion”, “Splendid Isolation”, “Heartache Spoken Here”, “Searching For a Heart”, “The Indifference of Heaven”, Life'll Kill Ya, My Ride's Here, “Hit Somebody”, Tony Levin, “Basket Case”, Carl Hiassen, “Bad Monkey”, “The Wind”, Crystal Zevon, Springsteen, “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”, Dylan, Grammy Award, “Keep Me in Your Heart", “Enjoy Every Sandwich”, Jackson Browne, Billy Bob Thornton, David Lindley and Ry Cooder, Pixies, Jorge Calderón
Playlist – Music from the episode
I was just fine up until I heard that particular version. I think it's amazing that you've used AI to come up with a version of our theme song that emulates every single band that we hate and we've ever gotten a it is great.
SPEAKER_03:It is awful. It is great.
SPEAKER_05:Bring back the the the the young rock chick you had last time. Oh, this is this is the I feel this is the pinnacle of our work. It's awful. It makes Toto sound good.
SPEAKER_04:Mick, Toto, Toto were just here recently, and I feel that you're you're you're dissing them a little bit. They had a very successful tour. They did. They did. People loved them.
SPEAKER_05:Well they didn't. They just didn't slander them as much as they I know you love it, Mick.
SPEAKER_04:I know you really love it. And I know that, you know, you would have loved to have been at the Toto concert. I know you missed it, I know you're a little bit cranky about it. I missed the bus. Um but a lot of people went, a lot of people loved it. There were songs there that I think they did a song they did a song called Africa. I think what a great title for a song. I think they did a song called that. Um But I've been looking um just while just because that whole thing uh of Toto coming out, I've been looking at masked bands of Toto songs, and I'll tell you what, they are just everywhere. Just everywhere. It lends itself to massed bands, doesn't it? Just I I don't know. It must be really good if you're in the audience, I guess. I don't know. But it's it's not good to listen to. Oh dear. Oh, anyway, Mick. Uh happy rock and roll to you, sir. How have you been travelling?
SPEAKER_05:Man, I'm not bad. I'm carrying a bit of a Lurgy at the moment. Oh, for our overseas uh listeners, Lurgy is uh is an Australian term meaning a bug or a uh or a uh a flue sort of thing. So That's not good. So ladies and gentlemen, if we suddenly cut away for a moment, that's me coughing my heart up and uh and dying in a pile on the on the bottom of the studio.
SPEAKER_04:Then I'll just roll him out the door and uh roll him down the hill on his way home.
SPEAKER_05:Oh, that'll be good, yeah. Well if I can get to the car, the car knows its way home, so it'll be right.
SPEAKER_04:But one thing you did do, Mick, is you did bring the uh beautiful pink glow-bite travel bag with luxurious interior, and it is once again bursting at the seams with Watson.
SPEAKER_05:Mate Anyone who's a long-term listener to us knows that we absolutely adore Warren's Yvonne. And finally, finally, it nearly thirty years too late, Warren has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for Musical Excellence.
SPEAKER_04:He actually has been inducted for musical um uh now what is it? Uh Influence. That's because he's so excellent. He he's um yeah, so it's actually musical influence. Something like musical influence, not the excellence bit.
SPEAKER_05:Oh, they've changed it on the on the way to the to the final post.
SPEAKER_04:But there's it's it doesn't matter. He's in good company. He's in good company.
SPEAKER_05:Look, it's about bloody time.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:Apparently an artist becomes eligible to be inducted into the it's a US type of thing, yeah. People in the real world don't do don't care about this sort of nonsense. But as if it's there, yeah, we want Warren to be in it because after all, he wasn't American. So he bought into that whole uh um American exceptionalism, um which we don't necessarily and certainly Canada doesn't.
SPEAKER_02:No.
SPEAKER_05:Um yeah, and apparently an artist becomes eligible to be uh inducted into the Hall of Fame twenty-five years after their first commercial release. Is that right? I didn't know that. Yeah. He was eligible in 1994. So I reckon they waited a bit, maybe maybe just to see if he put any more out after 2003. There wasn't a lot of releases after 2003. Certainly no very, very, very little new music. Four years ago, mum.
SPEAKER_04:Bit chucky from the grave.
SPEAKER_05:It's been done. It's been done, I think. I think, yeah. Um and and with AI these days. We gave a seance. Well, they did, yeah. They had lots of uh yeah, all of the Beatles, all of the dead beetles have been able to release new songs. Yeah. Or or contribute to new new songs. That's right. There wasn't wasn't there one recently where they put free as a bird or something. Some awful thing or something. Oh yeah, yeah, it was awful, yeah. Well, naturally, it's bloody AI, like that stupid theme song that you had playing for for us uh about no less than five minutes ago. That was great. And uh four years ago, mate, we talked about Warren Zevon. Can you believe that it was that long? Is it really?
SPEAKER_04:Since we since we're the first first of the last we've done oh yeah we did two shows back to back, didn't we?
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, we did two shows back to back, and that was in our first halfway through our first season. Wow. Uh look, as it as it turned out, he's one of your oh I knew that already. He was one of your favourite artists too. Yep. Um today, funnily enough, years later, he's still near the top of our download figures. People people discover us, you know, hundreds and thousands of people discover us, and then go back and mine their way through uh gee, look at what they've got there. They've got Warren's EVON and Queen and and what the fuck's Warren's Eve on? What's a Warren's EVON? Is that some sort of clickbait? So they listen to it, and he's right near the top of our download figures. So people go back, they find him, they search for Warren's EVO and they get Mick and the fat man and say, Oh, bloody Google's made a mistake again. And people regularly access those two episodes. We had so much information when we talked about him. That's why we got to two episodes. Yeah. And we still didn't get to the end. Because one of us was talking quite a lot about his lyrics. Which and I'm not going to say who. No, no, because regular listeners would know who. Yeah. And I don't reckon it was you. No, it wasn't me. Um so we didn't get to the end of his career even. We only got halfway through his albums. What I'd like to do today, b in to uh to honour his induction into the Hall of Fame, is to round out our coverage of his career. The last few albums that he did. Um his last album, The Wind, which uh which he recorded sounds morbid, but recorded as he was dying.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:And uh and some of the tributes paid on his death, and the covers of Zevon's songs, which uh some of them are really, really nice.
SPEAKER_04:I've got a bit of a treat for you during this as well, so I won't mention it at this stage, but there is a little treat in there for you.
SPEAKER_05:Oh, I love surprises. Oh no, not your surprises, no.
SPEAKER_04:Joe, we're not. You'll love this one. Oh, good. You'll love this one. All right, well, let's continue on then, and I think we need to do a bit of rock news!
SPEAKER_02:Rock news! Everybody's talking about rock news. The fat man is bringing all the news and all the views. It's rock news.
SPEAKER_04:Well, Mick. This is big news. Zack Starkey, who has played drums for the Who for the last twenty odd years, was sacked. Hard to work out what it was, whether we were sacked, whether he left, whether it was disagreement, was it was it who was it? Who did what? But anyway, there was a big big uh concert at Royal Albert Hall, and they basically said, Fuck off, we're not we're not doing it anymore. But breaking news. He's back That's the good news Um Zack Starkey has been reinstated as the Who's drummer just days after parting company with the band. Townsend said in a statement he's not being asked to step down from the WHO. There's been some communication issues. Personnel and private on all sides that needed to be dealt with, and these have been aired happily.
unknown:Happily.
SPEAKER_04:So Roger Daltrey chimed in uh by blaming social media for everything.
SPEAKER_05:Well, I think I think that's fair. It's social equals fake, and it seems to be the the political go-to that uh anything that comes out that you don't like it's fake media.
SPEAKER_04:That's right. So we're talking about uh Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and Bad Company has uh made it into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as well.
SPEAKER_05:Uh I can't get enough.
SPEAKER_04:And interestingly, the actual ceremony is not until November this year.
SPEAKER_05:Plenty of time for more people to die.
SPEAKER_04:Plenty of time, plenty of time. So the surviving members of Bad Company say they are elated to have finally been inducted into the Rock and Role Hall of Fame, with two of them saying they intend to perform at the November ceremony. I hope I hope it's Paul Rogers. I hope the voice is better than a lot of the people of his age. I'm a little worried. It gets a little bit stringy, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_05:It does.
SPEAKER_04:Um Anyway, and uh the drummer Simon Kirk added, Um it's been a long time coming. I'm not taking anything away from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame committee, but they had their reasons. But it's a welcome edition, uh, if you will. So that's great news. Uh next, Cindy Lauper is also been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Um and she said, I'm humbled to be in the company of so many of my heroes. Aretha Aretha, I beg your pardon, Tina, Chucker, Joni, Wanda. Who's Wanda? Wanda Beach.
SPEAKER_05:Oh right. Wh where the the the girls got murdered.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Uh just to name a few. Uh women have made so many important contributions to music to and to rock and roll. And a win for one of us is a win for all of us. Thank you for voting, members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for this honour. And thank you to my fans for supporting me throughout my career. I could not have done without you. Now, Warren Warren uh you've already mentioned Warren has been inducted, so it's for musical influence. And uh his son Jordan wrote I've seen some people comment that my dad's Hall of Fame induction isn't real. Or ask if I'm disappointed because he's not inducted under the because he was inducted under the Musical Influence Award. It is real. He is now in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and I'm quite the opposite of disappointed. Some of the past musical influences include Robert Johnson, Bessie Smith, Harry Belafonte, Louis Armstrong, Hank Williams, Howland Wolfe, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie. Not a bad uh group to be involved with. Not a bad at all.
SPEAKER_05:He's got a point.
SPEAKER_04:So well done, um Well done, Waza. And uh thank you, Jordan, for clarifying that.
SPEAKER_05:I'd like to uh I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall in their last meetings. Jesus, we run out of stars. Have they all died? God, we better go back. What about what about that English band? Bad something or other? Yeah, bad, bad. Who is the Australian uh no the American bloke from California, the one who did werewolves, that song? What about him? What about the chick with all the jewellery? Don't know who you're talking about. Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course not. Now he's dead. Everyone in our bloody influence is dead.
SPEAKER_04:Anyway, so it would have been interesting. Now, you have been getting down hard on me, mate, about talking about 1971, the year that was the greatest year of rock and roll. So I've decided to move on to 1972. Whoa, advancement! And uh so I've uh put it to ChatGPT. Uh what are the greatest uh rock and roll m albums for 1972? And uh ChatGPT said to me, 72 was a legendary year for rock music with brown breaking albums that define genres and pushed boundaries. Here's a list of the top albums of 1972. A mix of critical acclaim, uh critical acclaim, commercial excess, and lasting influence. So they're not they're not I don't know what order they're in Thirstin' A order. Uh Exile on Main Street. Great choice. One of my favorites from their golden period. Fantastic album, without doubt. Uh The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders for Mars. Oh, which one's that? Uh it's a fellow by the name of David Bowie. You're probably not familiar with him.
SPEAKER_05:No, no.
SPEAKER_04:Um ChatGPT says it's a glam rock masterpiece. Other than calling it a glam rock, I I've got to agree. Um and uh Harvest Neil Young. I haven't heard of that one either. Machine Head by Deep Purple. I guess so. Yeah, well, it it it it spawned a single. I've seen a few uh other lists and they it seems to get up there. Close to the edge by yes. What do you think of that?
SPEAKER_05:Well, I think I think it's well known, our opinion of yes. But to be fair, this is back when they were good.
SPEAKER_04:This is this is um according to ChatGupert, they say it's a cornerstone cornerstone of progressive rock. And she they're probably right. It probably is.
SPEAKER_05:Complex, symphonic, but not absolutely ego-driven and boring. No.
SPEAKER_04:Uh Thing is a Brick by Jethro Tull. Nice one. Nice. Uh Transformer Lou Reed. Roxy Music, Roxy Music.
SPEAKER_05:Excellent. I I think we've talked about that one before, haven't we? Yeah, many times.
SPEAKER_04:It's a stunning album. Um Can't Buy a Thrill by Steely Dan. Fantastic. Eagles, the Eagles. Um That's before they started knifing each other on stage. It's the Taboo album. Um, this next one you're gonna love because it's been on high on our playlists, and if you go back through our our playlists over the years, you'll see it there all the time. Argus by Wishbone Ash. I think that's a a strange choice, perhaps. I'll just I'll just w whiz through the other couple. All the young dudes, um not the hoople and sail and shoes little feet. So I I went, what Wishbone Ash. So I went back to GBT and said, What what makes um what makes Argus by Wishbone Ash so such a great album? And I said, She said, because I have a female chat G BT talking to me, um twin guitar harmonies, epic emotional songs, the atmosphere, a warm analogue sound and cohesion. The album flows like a single story, even though the songs are individually strong, together they make a bigger emotional impact. It's not just a collection of tracks, it feels like an album.
SPEAKER_05:That would be the uh the the twelve-inch wide circle of uh uh vinyl that makes it feel like an album.
SPEAKER_04:That would be the description of every album from the seventies, pretty much, because they were all making albums, not bits of songs put together unless they're a best of.
SPEAKER_05:And they didn't have digital, so that it all had analog sounds.
SPEAKER_04:So I thought, oh, okay, Miss JPT, you've I would say fucked up a little bit really on that one. Because I could think of a few, maybe Genesis Foxtrot, perhaps. Perhaps indeed. Alice School Alice School Alice Cooper School's out, perhaps. Who remembers Hot August Night by Neil Diamond? Good Lord. Uh if you're in the jazz sort of side of things, Chick Career, Return to Forever. Elton John, Honky Shadow. Dunk ding dun dun dun dun dun. And Stevie Wonder Talking Book uh Talking Book, I beg your pardon. So look, a couple of op options there for ChatGPT. Wishbone ash. Okay, whatever. I listened to it again. I haven't I haven't heard Wishbone Ash stuff for I don't know. I went back and had a listen to it and there's nothing wrong with it. Basically.
SPEAKER_02:Anyway.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, mate. 1001 albums you must listen to before you die. Uh Big Bad Bob Dimmery. Page 232, John Lennon, Imagine.
SPEAKER_05:Imagine.
SPEAKER_04:Imagine. Uh now what year was this? I forgot. 1972. I think it's 1972 as well, actually.
SPEAKER_05:71.
SPEAKER_04:Seventy one, is it? 71. Um produced by John Lennon, Phil Specter, and Yoko Ono. What does Yoko do in the production space? Screet us. Okay, good. So I know. Cover art, quite good. Yoko did the cover art. Uh 39 minutes and she's a great she's a great artist as long as she doesn't get recorded. I remember listening to John Lennon describe uh one of her artworks, and um uh it was a sort of I don't know, it was probably in New York somewhere, but there was a one of the artworks, there was a ladder, and you went up the top of the ladder, and the top of the ladder was the word yes. And um that was sort of close to the edge? It was it was well it was sitting on the top of the bay, sort of thing.
SPEAKER_05:Oh right.
SPEAKER_04:Um waiting for the morning. Um yeah, and he thought that was very, very positive. So yeah, that's fantastic, isn't it? It's really get you. It does get you. Um uh Chart Success in Australia, but it was number one for four in number one and was in the charts for 48 weeks. And the single, imagine number one was in the chart for 21 weeks. Um huge commercial success uh upon its release and even and even more so after Lennon's murder. Uh it's generally seen as a bit of a gap between the release of this album and Lennon's murder. Yeah, but I mean he s he gets he gets a free run on that one. All you gotta do is get yourself killed and you can make more money. That's right. Not you can do much with it. Um it's uh it's an easy inevitable uh return to conventional pop after the ferocious flurry of avant-garde experiments, protest singles, primal confessionals, and live rave-ups of the Yoko Ono led 68-70 period. Um anyway, but there's Phil Spector there, obviously. George Harrison is in there. Um Mick, what do you think about it? I imagine.
SPEAKER_05:Um look you n this is an argument in favour of us actually picking our our albums out of uh a thousand and one albums you must hear before you die. Because this is not a great album. This is not and I but I don't like except for Coldplay, I don't like slamming other people's material because they've done something I couldn't. Okay. So um but this is not a great album. Uh even Imagine is not a great song, but yeah, it's it's it's done the time and it's it's got the rewards. Good on 'em. But the rest of the album is not great songs in general. There's some good stuff, there's some patchy stuff, and there's some bloody awful stuff on there. Um I uh I think that for most of his solo career Lennon was trading on the fact that he was a Beatle. Uh as could be argued has his uh has his uh erstwhile mate McCartney. Uh although I would suggest that McCartney's commercial commercial work is probably better than uh than Lennon's. But you can see in both of them how much they added to each other. Yeah, McCartney's sugary sweet, Lennon's acerbic and um has lots of ideas, but doesn't necessarily follow them through to something um something final. Yeah. And putting those two together, you came up with some really good stuff. And even some of the Beatles stuff was crap, yeah, particularly their later stuff where they said, Oh, come on, George, come on, what's this button do? Um and and and yeah, you can see that that was Lennon doing that, uh, or Paul after a couple of dubs. Uh but the album itself I was never excited about it. Uh we've talked about this before, uh, how when you uh when you're young and you and you're brought up with music, you had an older brother, so you were into the Beatles, right? One of your formative albums was Revolver uh and and a couple of the other Beatles albums. You cite them as as early influences on you. I had to go back in uh in my musical taste once I discovered other people and go back and find the Beatles uh because they were a little before both of us. They'd broken up before both of us sort of woke up that hey, music is better than two SM plays.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:Um so I've never been um I've never been much interested in the sniping between Lennon and McCartney. It's always struck me as fairly childish and undisciplined. And when we were talking about it, you said, come on, boys, you're multimillionaires.
SPEAKER_03:Move on.
SPEAKER_05:Bloody, move on, yeah. Hide the bloody thing. Yeah. How do you sleep? And it Crippled Inside doesn't get any mention, but Crippled Inside is bloody nasty as well. Yeah, but it's not much of a song. It's got a nice little chorus, but so what?
SPEAKER_04:Um The album, yeah, it's not it's not a groundbreaking song.
SPEAKER_05:It's just a just a just another song on this album, which is about all you can say about it. Uh it does have some good songs. Jealous Guy is probably one of his best songs and Roxy Music's worst. Um Gimme Some Truth. Interestingly, Gimme Some Truth started. Here we are in 1971. It started as a demo for uh for Let It Be in 69. Yeah, interesting. Um and uh I like his wordplay on Gimme Some Truth, but it really doesn't get anywhere. No short haired, yellow bellied son of tricky dicky is gonna mother hubbard soft soap me with just a pocket full of hope. No wonder Nixon wanted him out of the US. It's pretty insulting. And and you know we've got the album uh we've got the song Imagine. Imagine there's no heaven, easy if you try, no hell below. Uh it's it's no wonder that Steeley Dan released Only a Fool Would Say That.
SPEAKER_04:It's a direct attack on Lennon and the sentiments in the But I think I think uh imagine sort of um appeal to the broad audience, the the LA set and you know the all that sort of stuff happened.
SPEAKER_05:People who don't listen to lyrics perhaps.
SPEAKER_04:That's it. That is just and it's and it's got a very nice melody, um yeah, and which is which is one of the things they're good at. Absolutely. And so it became a worldwide hit.
SPEAKER_05:Well it did. Look, he's got some great players on this album. Nikki Hopkins on piano, yeah, who despite the rivalry inverted commas, fingers in the air, between them and the stones, Nicky Hopkins contributed to both bands uh uh a lot of their work. So uh Joey Molland and Tom Evans from Badfinger contributed, you know, played a lot on this album because obviously McCartney had introduced them to the Beatles Circle and uh and then once but interestingly, Joey Molland is the person that Pete Ham had an argument with about songwriting credits uh before he uh before he killed himself. So that's uh that's pretty nasty. I I did notice one probably one of the the more interesting lyrics on this album is on and uh the last song I think it is, God. He says, I don't believe in Elvis, I don't believe in Zimmerman, and I don't believe in Beatles.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_05:That's interesting. But you know, there there's not a lot of in-depth um here I'm burying my soul to here lyrics.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, a little bit cranky.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. I agree, I I mean Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Um the same as um Mind Games, yeah, Mind Game, great song, Mind Games. Which is but the rest of the album is sort of m hit and miss, a bit like this. I think it's just a bit hit and miss, and um I don't know. We'll we'll just move on, eh?
SPEAKER_05:Well, I I was listening to it and I think this would make a great EP. Yeah for for those who remember EPs. Yeah. Four or five songs.
SPEAKER_04:That would have been great. It would have been great. Yeah. All right. Well, Mick, on that note we say thank you, Mr. Lennon, for all your work and um we'll we'll move on to someone who we both enjoy a lot. Let's hear about Warren Zevon.
SPEAKER_05:Warren Zevon. Now, if you haven't heard of Warren Zevon, you haven't been listening to us. Yeah. Seems like he gets a run a few times every season. And uh and as I said before, in the first season he got two complete episodes all to himself, and here we are five years down the track, and here's his um here's his uh farewell uh episode. Why are we talking about him again? Because he's just been put into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Or he will be in November. But there's nothing.
SPEAKER_04:It's a bit weird.
SPEAKER_05:Well, a bit of controversy, a bit of why didn't so and so get in. It all adds uh it all adds to the publicity. I guess so. Warren Zevon was a bad boy with an angelic talent. He his ability to to write lyrics compared to Mr. Lennon was unsurpassed. He was he's as good as the people who are recognised as masters for writing lyrics. I would put him in the class of being as good as Dylan. And look y a Dylan fan might say, Well, no, what about what about? And I'd say, Well, what about yeah. Um and to top it all off, they were mates. That's right, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I mean both of them had the enormo had an enormous regard for each other. So yeah. It's not an insult to say that I think he was better than Dylan, because I think at the very least he was as good as Dylan and I revere Dylan.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, so I think anybody that can come up with a song called Lawyers, Guns and Money is a fucking genius.
SPEAKER_05:Absolutely Absolutely. But some of the highlights that we talked about, uh Zevon in the past about he was an alcoholic, uh screaming alcoholic. He um he was aware that he had a drinking problem, didn't do anything about it, of course, but uh he was quoted as saying that there's nothing romantic, nothing grand, nothing heroic, nothing brave about alcoholism. It's a real coward's death.
unknown:Okay.
SPEAKER_05:He he was very self-aware, Mr. You know, which you don't see that in a lot of a lot of artists. So no, I'm alright, no, I've got no problem. He knew he had a problem, but he tried to work around it. You recall the Rolling Stone Party, uh, very early in his career when uh when he released Excitable Boy, which is a terrific album. He was beginning to break through, and he was invited to a cocktail party by uh Jan Wenner, the publisher of Rolling Stone. He was nervous, had a few drinks to uh to steal him before he got there, had a few more, see where the first ones went, and got totally, totally pissed. He gave his opinion on the world to Wenner and was a banned he was banned from Rolling Stone forever. It didn't last, but you know, the symbolic, what are you doing?
SPEAKER_04:Don't come here, come, come here. Warren, get away from that bug.
SPEAKER_05:Don't say that.
SPEAKER_04:Fucking hell.
SPEAKER_05:We saw him in Australia. Yeah, he actually toured quite a bit, given you know that he probably couldn't cross the road without having a drink. He uh managed to get out here a couple of times, which was nice. Uh we first saw him at the or we saw him at the bridge. I didn't see him at the bridge, you did.
SPEAKER_04:I did, yes. I saw him at St. Mary's Band Club, which was weird.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, and that's the one where we where we actually took the name of our episode. Uh I'd rather you didn't dance. These songs are kind of personal. Where as you pointed out, you remembered, you tried to the uh a couple was dancing to to Zevon's songs, which you don't do. It's just no and my wife said, Well, why should that matter to you? You think music's too important to dance to anyway. Um but they were dancing like uh waltzing waltzing sort of thing. Oh shit, what are you doing? Stupid. And he said, I I'd rather you didn't dance. These songs are kind of personal. And they stayed there. Yeah. He stared at me, he was gonna walk off. He did.
SPEAKER_04:He remembered he stood up and started to walk off, and people said, No, no, no, and they they finally walked off the dance floor.
SPEAKER_05:Um talk about entitled. Jesus, what a fan. Yeah, and and and I saw him then at the Hilton, believe it or not, yeah, Warren Zevon at the Hilton, but he was supporting Little River Band. So some of the members of Little River Band, I would expect, were fans of Zevon, and that given their history, that's not a surprise. Uh the first uh when we saw him at the Bridges uh when I saw him at the Bridge and St. Mary's Band Club, he was recording his live album, so the uh so the label had funded the tour. Uh which was really nice. He played a whole lot of stuff and did some really interesting treatments of some of his songs. Um, you know, he didn't turn around and do uh do reggae versions of them or anything else, but he put in some extra bits, put in some lyrics, like putting in um Uh waltzing Matilda in the middle of poor poor pitiful me, you know, to commemorate being in Australia.
SPEAKER_04:And he did some um really good um intros to the song. Absolutely, which is really different. And one of the songs ended up on the live album too.
SPEAKER_05:Yes, yes. From St. Mary's Band Club. Absolutely. And another one from the bridge. Yeah. So it's it's really nice when you go to see a concert and then buy the live album and oh, I was there. And that's that really adds a whole new element to the I was there and I love this guy, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_04:It was great. It was really a really good concert, too.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, yep. Linda Ronstadt, yeah, very close linked to Warren's Yvonne. Yep. Um she was on she was uh climbing, her career was a bit beyond started, but she wasn't the huge uh huge star that she became in the 70s and early eighties. Her covering some of his early songs was a big help to her, poor poor pitiful me and hastened down the wind. But it was a huge help to Warren's Yvonne, too. It uh it it it gave journalists a famous name to hang his hat on. So uh uh he was uh people would say Warren's Yvonne, who is who Linda Ronstadt picked up some of his early songs to uh to to cover. So it it it it it was a nice thing that actually helped both of them and and and some of those covers by Linda Ronstadt were really good. She actually made them herself herself, Poor Poor Pitiful Me.
SPEAKER_01:Yep.
SPEAKER_05:I can be harsh on covers, I but I can love them too. But but I think her cover of that she owned that song. Yeah, without doubt. Yeah, yeah. Later in his career, once he sort of succeeded, he his um his career looked a little bit like one of those scientific wave measurements, you know, sort of up and down and up and down and up and down, like a like a big looping radio wave. Success, drinking, messed up, success, drinking, messed up, success. But during all of that, in the 90s, he um he befriended or l uh uh David Letterman befriended him. Now, for those who uh don't remember Letterman, he was the first of the major US uh talk show hosts at night.
SPEAKER_04:Much copied.
SPEAKER_05:Yes, absolutely, yes. Even by the Australian guy, Steve Visart, who not only copied the format of uh of late night TV, but even Letterman's movements, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:It was and you remember because Letterman used to always come out the top ten things of blah blah blah. Oh yeah. Exactly the same thing, exactly the same thing. Anyway. Yeah, it was Steve Letterman. So what I have found for you. Oh, yes, is this my surprise? It is your surprise. The first performance of Warren Zevon on Letterman. Play away.
SPEAKER_00:Welcome back to the show. My first guest is here tonight, surprisingly so after the dialet routines, but I'm glad he is. Uh, he is one of the most respected and controversial singers and songwriters in popular music. He has just released a brand new album, which by the way is getting excellent reviews entitled The Envoy. We're delighted he's here with us tonight. It's a real thrill for us now to introduce Warren Zivon.
SPEAKER_05:He's on the Letterman show to promote the Envoy and uh and does a song from an album six or seven years before. However great that song is. I know, I wonder why he didn't do the envoy or something like that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Anyway. So 1992.
SPEAKER_01:Yep.
SPEAKER_04:Amazing, eh?
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, so uh yeah, so from that they became very firm friends. Um in later in later in his career, uh, or in in the period between that appearance on uh on Letterman and uh and and the end. Um Zevon appeared regularly on the Letterman Show. And where uh where felt Paul Schaefer, the um the the band leader on Letterman Show, again another thing the same as uh as Steve Visard, that Steve Visard stole, was the the repartee between him and Paul Gravovsky, the um Paul Grabovsky. Grobowski, yes. The uh the band leader here. Anyway, that's by the by. Um so Zevon stood in as band leader on a re on the regular times when Paul Schaeffer wasn't available. He was so um in August 2002, Zevon got his uh got the diagnosis that he had mesothelioma, which is uh uh the nasty lung cancer. Um it's called plural, as in uh plural from the lungs. I don't know where else you'd have mesothelioma, but that's by the by. He revealed his pub his fate to the public in uh in the following month. And on October thirtieth, two thousand and two, Letterman devoted the entire episode to Warren Zevon. Interviewing him, having Warren Zevon play songs, talked about um how the cancer diagnosis has affected him, all of those things. So um Letterman opened that episode by noting that a couple of months ago we all learned that your life has changed radically. And Zevon responded, Oh, you heard that I got the flu. Um so what Zevon confessed during that interview was that he'd had some symptoms, but he thought he'd be right. Didn't go to the doctor, and he says, It's uh one of those phobias that didn't really pay off. So uh well, this is going to obviously affect your life. Um what what's it gonna mean to what's it gonna mean to you? What are you gonna do? And so Zeevon comes up with the immortal phrase, Hell, I'm gonna enjoy every sandwich.
SPEAKER_04:Fantastic.
SPEAKER_05:And we'll we'll we'll we'll come back to Letterman, how Letterman keeps bobbing up in uh in Zevon's career for the next ten years. Yeah uh in a very mates sort of way. Here in Australia we can appreciate that. Yeah, if you if you've got a mate, you you know you just get involved and and and you do things that are nice for each other.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:And uh and and they both did this. But um Zevon's career, eighty-seven he released an album called Sentimental Hygiene. And in 2003 he released an album called The Wind. So Sentimental Hygiene, probably my favorite Z Von album because it's an absolutely stunning album. Um great songs, great guest artists. And one of the things we talked about was Neil Young plays uh that's he's he's played later with Z-Von, but that's his first interaction with uh with Z Von. He plays a blistering solo on the on the title track, four minutes, seventeen seconds of this typical Neil Young, rip the hell out of your guitar type solo. They Neil Young was recording in the same studio as uh as Zevon was recording Sentimental Hygiene. So they were recording it and uh they said, We need something really good in here, something striking. So uh so Warren's manager wasn't he wasn't without cojones. He said, Well, Neil Young's up the street, uh up up the hall. Up the hall. Yeah. So he went up and asked Neil Young if he'd contribute to the album and says, Yeah, I suppose so. And uh so Young came in, had a listen to what they'd uh what they'd recorded so far, played for ten minutes, and then left saying, I think you can probably do something with that. And you can. So look, sadly the album, because Xevon's alcoholism had pissed off so many people, it didn't get the promotion that it should have. And its chart performance was a bit of a non-event. He sold lots of copies to fans, but it wasn't a breakthrough album. Certainly wasn't the breakthrough album that the quality of songs deserved. Yeah. He really bears his soul on tracks like Detox Detox Mansion, where he went to the Betty Forward Clinic. Um and he's there with you know, sort of the creme de la creme, and and one of his lyrics says, I've been raking leaves with Liza, me and Liz clean up the yard. So and that's the type of thing that he just throws into all of his songs. And I'm gonna really indulge myself uh this episode by citing some of uh Zevon's lyrics because he is just a fantastic lyricist, really, really good. Between uh Sentimental Hygiene was 87, so between 89 and 95, he released another three albums. None of them was terribly commercially successful. They sold enough to uh to keep him eating, but uh again, they w they weren't oh Warren's Yvonne's on top of the charts again.
SPEAKER_04:No.
SPEAKER_05:Transverse City, Mr. Bad Example, which the title track of which is fantastic. We love it as so far. And Mutineer. I like Mutineer, what a great song that is. It's his fact the whole album is very low key. Yeah. He recorded it at home. Oh yeah, in his home studio. But they did sell enough for them still to be in print to this day. Which is really something since there's so many albums get deleted, especially with streaming. On every album that he released, no matter what uh you just pick anyone out of his career, it's uh yeah, he's got a couple of at least a couple of dynamite songs.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, that's right.
SPEAKER_05:Each album.
SPEAKER_04:That's right.
SPEAKER_05:Uh highlights during this this period on these three albums, Splendid Isolation.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, fantastic.
SPEAKER_05:He sings and plays Neil Young adds harmonica. So Neil Young became uh became a a regular partner of of Z Von. Don't want to wake up with no one beside me. Don't want to take up with nobody new. Don't want nobody dropping by without calling first. Don't want nothing to do with you. Splendid isolation. I don't need no one. One of his strongest efforts. But again, it's it's about locking yourself away from the world and uh and the world's bad, so I'm not gonna in I'm not gonna interact with it. Yeah. Hard Ache Spoken Here. Very country sound uh on Hard Ache Spoken Here, but it's still very, very nice. It's that Californian country sound that uh that a lot of bands had. Um it's uh Dwight Joachim for for people who've heard of him sings with him on this album. Uh it's looks reminiscent of Johnny Cash's duets with Merle Haggard on uh on many of the uh the American series of albums. Yeah, Merle Haggard again, famous uh famous country singer who who was a good mate of uh of Young's. Yep and uh and and yeah and Ze uh Yes, yeah, Young and Zeeva Zevon and uh and Joachim managed to recreate that sort of sound on Heartache Spoken here. Searching for a heart.
SPEAKER_01:Great song.
SPEAKER_05:Oh tears. And I'm searching for a heart, searching everyone. They say love conquers all. You can't start it like a car, you can't stop it with a gun. Terrific.
SPEAKER_03:A great line. It is, I've always loved that.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, yeah. And the indifference of heaven. This is Warren's girlfriend at the time, he played her the song. She said, Warren, I'd hate to live inside your head. He had a different way of looking at the world, which which we love, and anyone who becomes a Zevon fan loves. I had a girl, now she's gone. She left town, town burned down. Nothing left but the sound of the front door closing forever. Bleak. Jesus Christ. Dear After this, he uh he had his next two albums, the titles of which seemed to predict his coming diagnosis and death. Yeah, but he didn't know anything about him. That was just luck because he was often he often had black humour in that in his songs and his lyrics. Life will kill you in 2000 and My Rides Here, 2002.
SPEAKER_04:I know, it's really uh anyway. That's right.
SPEAKER_05:There's no sense of prescience in either of these, uh in either of these album titles, just his black sense of humor. Life will kill you in 2000, probably his best collection of songs since Excitable Boy, including Sentimental Hygiene, and I love sentimental hygiene. It's I've seen it reviewed as a lighthearted look at aging, disease, decay, and ultimately death. Really? I don't know about lighthearted, but uh there's no lesser songs. You know, we talk about all all killer, no filler. This that describes this album perfectly. I Was in the House When the House Burned Down. I'll Slow You Down. Porcelain Monkey, about uh about Elvis's slide into irrelevancy and a cracker cover of Stevie Wynwood's Back in the High Life of Two. Tis good. T is good, I agree. A really nice version. Yeah. And he goes to uh My Rides Here in 2002. Then this is the one that was self-produced by Z Von at home.
SPEAKER_04:And see, I would have thought that he would have known about his diagnosis then, you know, because it just based on the title of the s of the album.
SPEAKER_05:You would think so, wouldn't you? But but no, this is this is well before. And this has got it the album wasn't well because he'd just done Life Will Kill You, yeah, which is a cracker of an album. And My Rides Here got some good songs on it, but it's also got some Well, duds by Zevon standards, just not great songs by anybody else's standards. Uh it's g it's got the song Hit Somebody, which uh features backing vocals from David Letterman. Going, Hit somebody. Hit somebody And bass by Tony Levin. Yeah, yeah. We've carried on about Tony Levin before. He is a great bass player, played with King Crimson, Peter Gabriel, Bowie.
SPEAKER_04:I think well he was playing with Peter Gabriel I don't know when Peter Gabriel's last concert effort was, but he was still there.
SPEAKER_05:Absolutely, yeah. And and he plays the stick too, which is like the neck of a bass without the whole body. It's uh it's very interesting. Very, very good use of electronic music musical technology.
SPEAKER_04:And he looks good.
SPEAKER_05:It does, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_04:And but he always has that big black jacket, big black coat on, and leather coat.
SPEAKER_05:And he's a tall bloke, skinny ass, and got a mustache of all things. Yeah. Very good. So so hit somebody's about a hockey player whose role was to take out opposing players. Very violent sport, very typical. Was it based on a real person? No, no, just a collection, because Zevon he liked hanging out with the boys and uh they'd have a few beers and a few more beers and a few more beers and watch the hockey.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_05:So Buddy's real talent was beating people up. His heart wasn't in it, but the crowd ate it up. But despite that, his one wish in a 20-year career was to score one goal. It's a chocker block full of words. We talked about Patty Smith the other week. And uh you look at the lyrics, the lyric sheet for this uh for this song hit somebody, yeah, and it's just full of words. It goes for a full page, and it's just each l each verse is it's like a bloody chapter.
SPEAKER_04:But it's quite a story, isn't it? Isn't it?
SPEAKER_05:It's great. Yeah, lots of detail too. Another song on the album is Basket Case, it's a collaboration with uh with Carl Hyerson, who's uh who's a noted uh crime fiction writer.
unknown:Oh.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, yeah. Uh top seller. And uh look, he's recently had his book Bad Monkey adapted for streaming, starring Vince Vaughan.
SPEAKER_04:I was at the um the private detective. Yes, yeah. Oh, really?
SPEAKER_05:Great Return to Form. Vince Vaughan's really good. He used to be good, then he went a bit dud. Yeah. What are you doing, Vince?
SPEAKER_04:I started watching it, then I stopped because I was watching something else. I should go back and watch that again. It's it's worth it. It's good fun.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, okay. Yeah. So those early 2000 albums, really, really worth listening to. And the playlist for this show is gonna be fantastic.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, you're gonna love it. Well, sorry. If you don't love Z Von, you're not gonna enjoy it.
SPEAKER_05:Oh, look, you will anyway. You're gonna be exposed to stuff that you haven't heard before, and you're gonna say, Now I see what the now I see what the boys are on about.
SPEAKER_04:Absolutely.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, well, that's right. It's been an introductory process for you, hasn't it, Jeffrey?
SPEAKER_04:That's right. Every day has been a new adventure.
SPEAKER_05:After he was diagnosed with mesothelioma, um because I just thought he had lung normal old-fashioned lung cancer. So did I. There you go. Yeah, this. So he started recording The Wind, because he had another bunch of songs, which were great, that he wanted to get down. And the album shows um Zevon's love of life in in his twisted way. Yeah. And his determination to leave behind a work that showed his talent. Because he didn't want to leave a dud album. He didn't want to leave an incomplete album and have somebody else finish it. So he pushed to finish the album before he died. And he like I said, his biggest fear was dying before he could finish. He finished recording it and and mixing, producing the whole box and dice a couple of days before he died. So it's a bit like Bowie in that sense. Uh Bowie did Black Star and and uh died a couple of days after finishing the album. All of his albums, right from the start, featured a photo of him on the cover. Yeah, and excitable boy, he's young and a bit dorky.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:This album uh is an interesting development of of how he looked. It's a simple, unvarnished image of Zevon showing the effects of his illness, yeah. Looking straight down the barrel of the camera.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I know.
SPEAKER_05:It certainly makes no uh no uh pretense that, hey, I'm Warren Zevon. This is a great great, I'm glad to be here.
SPEAKER_04:He's not looking that great.
SPEAKER_05:He's not looking well, not looking well at all. We've talked about him um writing songwriting in different languages. He does one here in Spanish, El amor de me vida, a song for his ex-wife Crystal.
SPEAKER_01:Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah. Crystal had divorced him when he was deep in his alcoholism, but he always loved her. And he asked her several times when he got when he got his act together again after he'd gone through rehab, asked her to uh to marry him again, and she says, Nah, we're great friends, I don't want to ruin that.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_05:Which which is nice.
SPEAKER_04:Okay.
SPEAKER_05:Fair enough to I look outside, I know you're there, and you found a brand new life somewhere. I only wish it had been us, but I'm happy for your happiness. That's nice. It's really nice. So Zon hadn't had a drink since uh since the late eighties and uh and he'd made all these albums and done all this work at Sober. But when he was diagnosed as terminal he fell off the wagon, funnily enough, because it ain't gonna kill you. But Springsteen was working on him working with him on that uh album The Wind, and Springsteen's a key player on the album, as you know. Uh Springsteen had never seen him drinking.
SPEAKER_01:Oh.
SPEAKER_05:So he you know and a bottle of vodka was a warm-up. Yeah, right, just keep you going. Yeah. So so so Zevon each day in the studio would get into full flight, and Springsteen was horrified. Oh really. He'd never seen him in full flight. So yeah. So the album The Wind got some really, really nice stuff. And when you consider, yeah I don't, and he wouldn't like us to look at it, oh Warren's Evon's dying, oh no, it's his dying album. It's just another album that he's finished. But uh, you know, he is, he is dying. He is, but but he puts a lot of power into into the voice that he's got left. He covered knocking on heaven's door because Dylan performed a few Z Von covers live over the over the preceding year or two.
SPEAKER_01:Yep.
SPEAKER_05:In one of life's most unfair ironies, it's the only album to get significant praise from the mainstream industry. It's all right. Yeah. I mean, you know, Harry was completely ignored up until this point. Yeah. And and you can see that in uh in his induction twenty-five years after he became eligible into the bloody rock and roll hall of fame. That year, The Wind, in 2003-4, five Grammy nominations, including Song of the Year for Keep Me in Your Heart. He lost out to Luther Vandross. Yeah, exactly. What did he do? Yeah, I don't know. Oh, the the song uh I forgot to write that down because I was just so horrified. What's the point? So not serious. Go Luther. Yeah. So he had two wins though. Two you took two Grammys after a lifetime of being completely ignored by the uh by the industry. Best rock vocal performance and group and best contemporary folk album. Contemporary folk. Maybe that's because he plays an acoustic on some of them. I don't know. Whatever.
SPEAKER_04:I don't know. I mean how you put people into these boxes is is beyond me to be fairly honest.
SPEAKER_05:It's to my for my money, the Grammys and things like that, particularly the American awards, it's a whole lot of self-congratulatory middle ground. Oh well, we can't have everything. At least he got recognized as great, yeah. He died in 2003. And a year later, a tribute album called Enjoy Every Sandwich was released. Thanks David Letterman. And um as I say, the title came from the interview with Letterman where he says, What are you gonna do now? Well, I'm gonna enjoy every sandwich. I'm gonna enjoy every single thing that I can do. I've got a list here of the songs, and he's got people like um Don Henley, Adam Sandler, who I don't regard either well as either a singer or an actor, but uh other than a couple of uh couple of movies, but he does a cracker version of Werewolves of London. He does indeed. It's a really great version. But really good people like Steve Earle, Jackson Brown, Springsteen, of course.
SPEAKER_04:The Sprintsting song is sensational. It is and it's live, yeah. And it's just after um uh he died. Yeah, and he se he he you know, he introduces the song and says, My good friend Warren Zevon died the other day. Yeah. And uh then he plays My Rides here, and it's just a just an awesome version.
SPEAKER_05:It is, yeah. And uh and and he goes on further with that introduction, he says, Warren Xevon, one of the great American songwriters.
SPEAKER_01:That's right.
SPEAKER_05:So uh so you know for Springsteen to say that it's a big rap indeed. Billy Bob Thornton. Now, anyone who's seen anything that Billy Bob Thornton is in would know that it's not unusual for him and Zevon to be mates.
SPEAKER_02:It would not be unusual.
SPEAKER_05:Billy Bob's got a bit of a black sense of humor as well. Was he Bad Santa?
SPEAKER_03:The movie in the movie.
SPEAKER_05:Yes, he was.
SPEAKER_03:Um you've seen that movie. He's just sitting there and he just pisses himself.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, yeah. Tasteful? No. Yeah. He's um what was the movie Five Seasons where he was a lawyer in uh in America for who drank? Um surprisingly for being a mate of Zevon's. Anyway, uh anything with Billy Bob Thornton in it, I'm automatically going to give a run to and watch it. Dylan, who also did a live version of um of uh Mutineer. Mutineer, yeah, which which as you say is a terrific I think it's better than Zevon's version. Yeah, because Zevon you know had the lyrics and and and it's a great song, but he was a bit offhand with it. Whereas Dylan took it and he Yeah, it's twenty odd years ago. So he's still in the period where he actually gave a shit about uh what people thought of his singing some of the time. And the Pixies.
SPEAKER_04:Yes, what a great version.
SPEAKER_05:It it is really good. They've adopted it to to Pixie style, so it's more uh it's more Nirvana than uh than than Warren's Evon. But it's true, it just works perfectly. So that'll be on the on the playlist. And David Lindley, so Nick from Victoria. If you don't know this version, it's gonna be there and you really should go looking that one up, mate. It's he's playing with Rycouda, who is uh who's a longtime collaborator for him. Um they do monkey wash donkey rinse, which uh you know people say, Well, what's this about? And uh and naturally Zevon's looked at it. A monkey washing. Yeah, monkeys generally just throw poo at things. And and the donkey's got cloven hoofs, so it can't really clean off anything at all. So it basically means that no one's going to uh no one's gonna do a good job here.
SPEAKER_04:Okay. I never knew that.
SPEAKER_05:Is that right? Is that what the song meant? Well, there you go. See, it takes takes Warren to well, it takes his death to help you. David Lindley died in 2023. So we've actually given quite a big coverage to David Lindley over the years.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, he's good.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, uh he died of complications of COVID. That's a bugger. Yeah, I mean, lucky that this whole COVID thing's a hoax, isn't it? Um and he on this song he played Sittern. Now you're talking about your Celestas. Sittern is a sixteenth century lute-like instrument, uh lute-like stringed instrument, and looks a bit like a lute. Big not really, no. Sitar. Not sit our sittern. Oh. Could be chiturn, C-I-T-T-E-R-N. Oh no, sorry, I thought you'd been about Sitten. Yeah, go and have a have a look at it. Okay, well. It looks very much like a loot.
SPEAKER_04:Okay. Because he was a uh I assume this is David. David Lindley, yeah, because he's a bit of a master of all bloody instruments.
SPEAKER_05:He he was quoted at one point saying, uh I don't know how many stringed instruments I can play. Yeah, because it he was one of those uh you know savants that someone would give him an instrument he'd never seen before, and five minutes later he's playing it like a like a uh a genius.
SPEAKER_04:A seasoned professional.
SPEAKER_05:Absolutely, like us. Look, Lindley, I know we've veered off a little bit, but how unusual. Lindley was had a lot of similarities with Warren Zevon. Um he was highly regarded by elite musicians, yeah, and and certainly I've never seen a quote that says uh David Lindley was an asshole and jerked off in the studio and just wanted to play his own stuff.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:Quite the opposite, really. Total professional, easy to work with, yeah, came in with lots of great ideas. But he was never never as famous as he should have been, uh, despite the people he's played with and the songs he's played on. And he had a great sense of humour in his songwriting. Uh you recall when we talked about um uh his album, The Name Escapes Me Right at the moment, where he talks about Mercury Blues. He's gonna get a Mercury his girlfriend likes the Mercury, so he's gonna get one and drive around up and down the main street.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, he's he's and and he'll always look good. He's had uh those sideburns that came down to his jaw. Ha Hawaiian shirts and shit like that.
SPEAKER_05:A lot of fun. And Jorge Calderon, which most people wouldn't have heard of him outside of the Warren Zevon orbit, but um he was X Von's longtime collaborator. And again, he played a lot of the stringed instruments on uh on Zevon's albums, uh and they did keep me in your heart for a while, which uh it's the last song on the wind, and it's probably one of Zevon's most poignant songs. It's one of my funeral songs. Oh, it's it?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's Oh, that's a good idea too.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, if just because I leave you doesn't mean I love you any less. Oh dear.
SPEAKER_03:Okay.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah. Just just an absolutely stunning song. That'll be on the playlist and have a listen to that. In fact, I'm gonna put both versions on it. I'm gonna put Jorge's version and Warren's version on it.
SPEAKER_04:Okay, fair enough.
SPEAKER_05:Look, I could go on and on and on and on and on. And do uh Warren's E Von and would, yeah. But you're giving me the wind up, thank you, Jeffrey. Yeah, I appreciate that. That's Warren's E Von. Hope you liked it and have a chance to listen to the playlist. Unless you're a Z-Von tragic like us, there's going to be some wonderful songs that I'm certain you haven't heard. Give it a listen and you'll see why we're such fans.
SPEAKER_04:See you next time. Thank you, Mick. Well, that's a wrap, and thanks for listening. Don't forget to subscribe, it's free. And if you like this, tell your friends about us. Also, contact us at Mick and the Fatman at gmail.com. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram. Thanks very much. See you next time.