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Warren Zevon
Desperado of Los Angeles
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Publisher:
2016
Summary
Warren Zevon was one of the most original songwriters to emerge from the prolific 1970s Los Angeles music scene. Beyond his most familiar song—the rollicking 1978 hit “Werewolves of London”—Zevon’s smart, often satirical songbook is rich with cinematic, literary, and comic qualities; dark narratives; complex characters; popular culture references; and tender, romantic ballads of parting and longing.
Warren Zevon: Desperado of Los Angeles is the first book-length, critical exploration of one of popular music’s most talented and tormented antiheroes. George Plasketes provides a comprehensive chronicle of Zevon’s 40-year, 20-record career and his enduring cultural significance. Beginning with Zevon’s classical training and encounters as a youth with composers Robert Craft and Igor Stravinsky, Plasketes surveys Zevon’s initiation into the 1960s through the Everly Brothers, the Turtles, and the film Midnight Cowboy. Plasketes then follows Zevon from his debut album with Asylum Records in 1976, produced by mentor Jackson Browne, through his successes and struggles from a Top Ten album to record label limbo during the 1980s, through a variety of music projects in the 1990s, including soundtracks and scores, culminating with a striking trio of albums in the early 2000s. Despite his reckless lifestyle and personal demons, Zevon made friends and alliances with talk show host David Letterman and such literary figures as Hunter S. Thompson and Carl Hiaasen. It was only after his death in 2003 that Zevon received Grammy recognition for his work.
Throughout this book, Plasketes explores the musical, cinematic, and literary influences that shaped Zevon’s distinctive style and songwriting themes and continue to make Zevon’s work a telling portrait of Los Angeles and American culture.
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Bibliographic data
Copyright year
2016
ISBN-Print
978-1-4422-3456-7
ISBN-Online
978-1-4422-3457-4
Publisher
Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham
Language
English
Pages
251
Product type
Book Titles
Table of contents
ChapterPages
Contents No access
Series Editor’s Foreword No access
Timeline No access
Acknowledgments No access
Introduction No access
1 Join Me in L.A. No access Pages 1 - 18
2 The Asylum IconocL.A.st No access Pages 19 - 38
3 Knee Deep in Gore with Glee No access Pages 39 - 62
4 Rock Bottom: The Crack-up and Resurrection No access Pages 63 - 74
5 Swear to God I’ll Change No access Pages 75 - 94
6 Looking for the Next Best Thing No access Pages 95 - 120
7 Intruder in the Dirt No access Pages 121 - 152
8 That Amazing Grace Sort of Passed You By No access Pages 153 - 168
9 Die Another Day: A Desperado Deteriorata No access Pages 169 - 196
Posthumous Script No access Pages 197 - 212
Further Reading No access Pages 213 - 218
Further Listening No access Pages 219 - 224
Index No access Pages 225 - 250
About the Author No access Pages 251 - 251
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