{"id":805879,"date":"2020-03-31T10:01:15","date_gmt":"2020-03-31T16:01:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=975771"},"modified":"2020-03-31T10:01:15","modified_gmt":"2020-03-31T16:01:15","slug":"flashback-warren-zevon-teams-with-carl-wilson-on-desperados-under-the-eaves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/music-news\/flashback-warren-zevon-teams-with-carl-wilson-on-desperados-under-the-eaves\/","title":{"rendered":"Flashback: Warren Zevon Teams With Carl Wilson on \u2018Desperados Under the Eaves\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Bob Dylan<\/a>\u2019s incredible new song \u201cMurder Most Foul\u201d<\/a> centers around the assassination of John F. Kennedy<\/a>, but it\u2019s also a \u201cWe Didn\u2019t Start the Fire\u201d\u2013style journey through American history that touches on everything from the hanging death of Tom Dula in 1868 to the notorious murderer known as the Birdman of Alcatraz. By the end, Dylan is pleading with disc jockey Wolfman Jack to play music to distract him from the agony of it all, calling out everything from Billy Joel\u2019s \u201cOnly the Good Die Young\u201d to the Who\u2019s \u201cThe Acid Queen\u201d and the Eagles\u2019 \u201cTake It to the Limit.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the more intriguing song requests comes in the fifth verse. \u201cPlay it for Carl Wilson<\/a>, too,\u201d he sings. \u201cLooking far, far away down Gower Avenue.\u201d He\u2019s referring to Warren Zevon<\/a>\u2019s song \u201cDesperados Under the Eaves\u201d from his 1976 self-titled LP, which features Beach Boy Carl Wilson on background vocals. Wilson\u2019s parts are particularly audible on the closing refrain: \u201cLook away down Gower Avenue, look away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even by the standard of Warren Zevon, this is a sad song. It\u2019s an autobiographical tale of his life in the late Sixties when he was a hopeless alcoholic living in a series of seedy motels around Los Angeles. When one place threw him out for being unable to pay the bill, he\u2019d move onto the next one. \u201cI was sitting in the Hollywood Hawaiian Hotel,\u201d he sings. \u201cI was staring in my empty coffee cup\/I was thinking that the gypsy wasn\u2019t lyin\u2019\/All the salty margaritas in Los Angeles I\u2019m gonna drink \u2019em up.\u201d<\/p>\n

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According to Crystal Zevon, his former wife, Warren climbed out of a bathroom window to avoid paying the motel bill. Original Beach Boy David Marks was waiting there in a station wagon to help him with the escape. As a teenager in the early Sixties, Marks helped craft a fantasy version of Los Angeles where life was nothing but chilling on the beach, drag racing, and spending long nights with beautiful surfer girls. None of their songs referenced helping a drunken friend escape from a fleabag motel without paying the bill, but he was far from the only member of the band to prove that real life was nothing like a Beach Boys tune.<\/p>\n

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Popular on Rolling Stone <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Zevon\u2019s life was in much better shape by the time he recorded Warren Zevon<\/em> in 1975. It was his first effort for Asylum Records, Jackson Browne signed on to produce it, and everyone from Lindsey Buckingham to Glenn Frey, Phil Everly, Stevie Nicks, and Bonnie Raitt helped out. \u201cDesperados Under the Eaves\u201d is the last track, and the final sounds you hear are Zevon and Carl Wilson locking voices. That means that one Beach Boy helped him live the song and another helped him turn the moment into art.<\/p>\n

The passage clearly struck a chord with Bob Dylan since he\u2019s singing about that beautifully sad moment in the song 44 years later. But this isn\u2019t the first time he\u2019s expressed a fondness for Zevon. In 2002, shortly after the world learned that Zevon had terminal cancer, Dylan began playing his songs in concert. Amazingly, at some shows he\u2019d play three of them a night, including \u201cMutineer,\u201d \u201cLawyers, Guns and Money,\u201d \u201cAccidentally Like a Martyr,\u201d and \u201cBoom Boom Mancini.\u201d He never got around to \u201cDesperados Under the Eaves,\u201d but it\u2019s a true masterpiece that deserves the attention he\u2019s now giving it.<\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bob Dylan\u2019s incredible new song \u201cMurder Most Foul\u201d centers around the assassination of John F. Kennedy, but it\u2019s also a \u201cWe Didn\u2019t Start the Fire\u201d\u2013style journey through American history that touches on everything from the hanging death of Tom Dula in 1868 to the notorious murderer known as the Birdman of Alcatraz. By the end, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-805879","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-17 17:21:53","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=805879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805879\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=805879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=805879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=805879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}