Warron Zevon, 'Excitable Boy' (6 March, 1978)

When I heard Johnny Rotten had left the Sex Pistols, my first thought was that Warren Zevon should replace him. The idea confused me. Zevon is a California boy, an L.A. singer-songwriter; his rent is paid by Linda Ronstadt’s covers of his tunes. On paper, he’s a protégé of Jackson Browne, who produced Warren Zevon, along with Graham Parker’s Heat Treatment the strongest rock and roll album of 1976; working with guitarist Waddy Wachtel, Browne also produced Zevon’s new Excitable Boy. Both records are on Asylum, a famous home for self-pitying narcissists; they include contributions by most of Fleetwood Mac, Don Henley and Glenn Frey of the Eagles, Ronstadt, and other L.A. studio mavens—no creampuffs, but no troublemakers, either. The people who inhabit the commercial context in which Zevon makes his music aren’t merely integrated into the system the Sex Pistols were out to fuck up, they are the system.