Pop / Singer-songwriter pop · 1978
Excitable Boy
Warren Zevon
Why listen
An inviting tune can make you laugh at an uncomfortable story, then leave you exposed to a more ordinary hurt.
Listen and read
Tracks · previews
English editorial edition
Album story
The compact piano figure in “Werewolves of London” settles into the ear almost immediately. Stay for “Accidentally Like a Martyr,” though, and the same singer sounds much closer to an unprotected feeling. Excitable Boy contains more than a collection of grotesque characters. Its pleasure lies in the distance between an easy musical welcome and words that make that welcome uncertain.
Zevon’s third studio album appeared in 1978, produced by Jackson Browne and Waddy Wachtel. Piano and guitar help give these songs a familiar frame, while changing players supply different kinds of movement. On “Werewolves,” John McVie and Mick Fleetwood provide bass and drums. The useful question is not how many famous names appear, but how assured playing allows a strange story to proceed without announcing that anything is wrong.
A welcome that becomes less comfortable
“Johnny Strikes Up the Band” begins like an invitation. The journey through “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner” and the title song soon makes this a less reassuring gathering. Breezy melody and violent narrative do not necessarily endorse one another. Listen for an unreliable voice, an evasive attitude or a gap between what is happening and how calmly it is described. Characters need not be read as statements of the songwriter’s personal beliefs.
More than one emotional register
The move from “Werewolves” into “Accidentally Like a Martyr” changes the listener’s distance as well as the pace. Looking at a bizarre figure gives way to hearing someone hurt. Later, “Nighttime in the Switching Yard,” “Veracruz” and “Tenderness on the Block” keep altering the album’s bearing. The label “dark humour” is useful only if it leaves room for those differences, especially the moments when comedy offers little protection.
Follow the original sequence
The album reached number eight on the US Billboard album chart, a commercial achievement highlighted in Rhino’s 2022 retrospective. That is not a survey of critical reception everywhere. The original nine songs finish with “Lawyers, Guns and Money.” Compare its predicament with the opener’s welcoming manner. The short programme repeatedly tests how much reassurance an attractive song can provide when its narrator has reason to feel otherwise.
The album through its tracks
Hear Werewolves of London and Accidentally Like a Martyr together, following the change in piano phrasing and vocal distance.
Werewolves of London
Let the repeated piano shape establish its ease, then shift attention to the bass and drums holding the track in place. Against that relaxed foundation, Zevon presents a strange figure with the composure of everyday observation. The humour comes partly from the accompaniment’s apparent refusal to panic. On another hearing, concentrate on the ends of the vocal sentences rather than the familiar hook. A monster need not bring a soundtrack of horror effects with it. The mismatch between a comfortable sound and an uncomfortable subject is enough. Continue straight into the following ballad and notice how this track’s ease changes your response to the loneliness that follows.
Reference · Warren Zevon official: Excitable Boy original sequence, credits and artist notesAccidentally Like a Martyr
Listen for what the voice leaves behind at the end of a phrase. After the preceding joke, the piano seems to support a longer breath rather than simply provide a figure to enjoy returning. Turn towards the backing voices and consider how a solitary feeling becomes surrounded by other sound. The official credits name Karla Bonoff with the Gentlemen Boys. There is no need to identify a definitive real-life lover behind the song: Zevon’s own note observes that several people thought it was about them. Treat that as a reason to leave interpretation open. An intimate song can sound personally familiar without being a factual account of the listener’s, or any one person’s, life.
Reference · Warren Zevon official: Excitable Boy original sequence, credits and artist notes
Listen next
Compare Billy Joel’s The Stranger for another way that piano-based songs accommodate different characters and speaking positions.
The Stranger ↗References & editorial note
Written for English readers. Album facts are referenced below; listening suggestions are editorial interpretations. AI-assisted editorial review; not independently human-reviewed.