#HASTEN DOWN THE WIND WARREN ZEVON PLUS#

I’ve always appreciated Ronstadt’s good-natured approach to her remakes of rock ‘n’ roll oldies.

And in a few instances it’s as good as anything Ronstadt has done. Worse still, one verse of an immaculately beautiful reggae song, “Rivers of Babylon,” is ruined by being used as a prelude to “Give One Heart.” No amount of sweetening can rescue lyrics as inane as “That’s the paradox of I love you” or “If your baby loves you right/You can have skyrockets any old night.” A rock & roll bridge has been punched up, which only makes things worse by forcing a scream from Ronstadt as she tries to move up the scale. Orleans couldn’t salvage it, nor can Ronstadt. And in the spare, heartbreaking ” El Amor de mi Vida,” Zevon leaves the listener with an unforgettable image: a man looking out at a world that, somewhere, holds the woman who used to love him: “I look outside, I know you’re there/ And you’ve found a brand new life somewhere/ I only wish it had been us/ But I’m happy for your happiness.” It’s a lovely sending-off, with forgiveness and an open heart-the way we’d all want to be sent off, to a new lover, a new place, or whatever fresh mysteries lie beyond the life we know.The album’s only other major mistake is John and Johanna Hall’s “Give One Heart,” one of the worst songs - reggae or otherwise - I’ve heard. ” Keep Me in Your Heart,” finished at his home studio in April after he was no longer able to travel, bids a cleareyed goodbye to an old love, and the language couldn’t be much homelier: “Sometimes when you’re doing simple things around the house/ Maybe you’ll think of me and smile/ You know I’m tied to you like the buttons on your blouse/ Keep me in your heart for awhile.” It’s the modesty of that qualifying “maybe,” and the shrugging “for awhile,” that make the sentiment hard to shake off. In two ballads co-written with Jorge Calderón, though, he found the voice for a songwriter’s farewell. Unfortunately, his prognosis is the same.” It doesn’t seem likely that Zevon will be appearing in public again. A PR person for Artemis says, “Some days are better than others for him. He lived to finish the record and to see his grandchildren born.

“July 2003: Warren is still alive,” the official bio says, and that’s that. It’d feel like a gimmick if the guest stars weren’t so well-used-Cooder’s plangent guitar on “Dirty Life & Times,” Henley and Schmit’s sympathetic vocal backing on “She’s Too Good for Me,” Walsh reprising the gutbucket pleasures of “Rocky Mountain Way” in “Rub Me Raw.”Įven Zevon’s record label seems to grasp that this is a moment to keep it simple. Schmit, Jackson Browne, T-Bone Burnett, Tom Petty, Joe Walsh, Emmylou Harris-a Murderer’s Row of singer-songwriter talent.

#HASTEN DOWN THE WIND WARREN ZEVON PLUS#

Other old friends and co-conspirators are in the mix: longtime collaborator Jorge Calderón, plus Ry Cooder, Don Henley, Timothy B. Even funny and very Zevonesque tropes like “I’m sprawled across the davenport of despair” are mounted in a setting of creeping decay (” Disorder in the House,” with a raging guitar lead by Bruce Springsteen). It’s a mantle the record wears gracefully, though, in ways both small (the keening crunch of David Lindley’s lap steel guitar, a sound so recognizable to anyone who was there in the ‘70s that it’s sure to induce a small shock of sense memory) and big: The familiar outlaw-on-the-run motif of ” Dirty Life & Times“ holds an unmistakable sense of the clock running down. It’s not surprising that this part of Zevon’s sensibility is front and center on The Wind (Artemis Records), or that the project carries with it a valedictory air.

Hasten down the wind warren zevon