1976 Top Ten Songs: Desperados Under the Eaves (#1)

Tweet

Happy end of March! And happy end of the look back 50 years — WOW — to the music of 1976. What a great year for music in so many regards. And, to nobody’s surprise, the countdown closes out with my main man, and my favorite song by him. #1: Desperados Under the Eaves - Warren Zevon I won’t bore you again with that story about me riding my bicycle into a cool, stiff January wind in Daytona Beach to get Excitable Boy at my favorite record store in 1978. Or how I credit that album with completely changing my musical life. You know it. I just want to focus on this song for a moment. If you want to know why I esteem Warren Zevon’s songwriting above all others in rock and roll, just listen to this song. Humor, desperation, hopelessness, and a quirky optimism…all in one song. The thought that “if California slides into the ocean like the mystics and statistics say it will” not having enough power to knock the Hollywood Hawaiian Hotel down “until I pay my bill” is brilliant in every regard. Anything you’d want out of a literary lyric is right there. THEN the man had the audacity to turn the noise of the air conditioner into a beautifully orchestrated piece of music to close it out! There were four well-known songs from this album, thanks to Linda Ronstadt’s covers: “Poor Poor Pitiful Me,” which made the top 30 when she released her version as a single, “Mohammed’s Radio,” “Hasten Down the Wind” (the title track of one of her mega-selling albums), and “Carmelita” (which has been recorded by a hundred other people, including Dwight Yoakam!). There’s so much brilliance on that album, but this is heads and shoulders above it all. Yes, I cried when Zevon died. I had friends sending me e-mails of sympathy. I don’t know what my musical life would be without him. I’m glad I don’t have to know! Thanks for reading. Desperados Under the Eaves Written by Warren Zevon Recorded by Warren Zevon From Warren Zevon, 1976 Look away down Gower Avenue: