Metro Pulse/Gamut/Warren Zevon & George Harrison

Where, by reviewing the final recordings of George Harrison and Warren Zevon, the author seeks redemption for prior sins

by Scott McNutt

There once was a boy who idolized Elvis Presley. So obsessed with the King was he that, from ages 6 to 8, he insisted on wearing "sideburns"—twin shafts of hair stubbornly jutting down in front of each ear, anomalies in his typical, late-'60s bowl-head haircut.

By the time Elvis died in 1977, the boy had cast his hero off like a T-shirt outgrown. He mocked the masses weeping on TV, wailing for their fallen idol. Sure, the heartless little snot said, they cry now that he's gone. Where were all of them yesterday, when Elvis was still just a fat has-been who hadn't charted in years? Hypocrites, every last one of them, he thought.

He didn't pause to reflect upon his one-time devotion to Presley, didn't care that he didn't even know what the artist's final release was. He was above it.

In 1980, this cynical punk didn't claim John Lennon as an idol. The Beatles he cherished, but of their solo work he preferred McCartney's pop confections to Lennon's political rants and dreamy utopian visions.

Still, he appreciated the ex-Beatles' energy, his irony, his caustic wit. So, when the first single from Lennon's first album in five years was played for the first time on a local radio station, the boy sat in his bedroom listening intently to his stereo.

Only to be appalled: To the callow youth, "(Just Like) Starting Over," Lennon's new song, was a draggy piece of '50s doo-wop nostalgia. Where were the famed venom, vitality and sardonic humor? Appalled? Hell, the young ingrate was outraged.

But when John Lennon was murdered, the mean-spirited kid was plunged into a profound malaise. Why would anybody kill the guy who wrote "Imagine"? His youthful worldview couldn't fathom it.

Of course, the self-absorbed boy never gave a thought to how savagely disappointed he had been in Lennon only weeks before. He didn't remember that a few years earlier he had mocked thousands—hundreds of thousands—of people grieving, just like him, for a treasured voice forever lost.

And he never gave the final music of either of those icons a fair listen.

Twenty-odd years later, two other pop icons, dying from incurable lung cancer, put out farewell albums with full knowledge of their impending demises. George Harrison died Thursday, Nov. 29, 2001. His album, Brainwashed, was released Nov. 18, 2002. Warren Zevon died Sunday, Sept 7, 2003. His album, The Wind was released August 26, 2003.

Twenty-three years later, the boy hopes he's ready to hear the music.

On these last hurrahs, both men, coming face-to-skeletal-face with death, rely on their considerable artistic strengths—Harrison, his superb slide guitar, his oft-overlooked sense of humor, and his craftsmanship in song construction; Zevon, his well-known fatalistic humor, his penchant for devilishly perverse wordplay, and a talent for pleasing melodies. Both men also suffer from their usual artistic shortcomings on these albums—Harrison's reedy voice can't carry tunes as he wishes it would, and he is sometimes overly solemn and lugubrious in hymns to his religion. Zevon leans too often toward middle-of-the-road, humdrum song pacing, and sometimes relies too much on wit alone to carry a song. Each album also suffers questionable choices in the instrumentation mix by its principal producer (Jeff Lynne of ELO and Traveling Wilbury fame on Brainwashed, and Jorge Calderon, Zevon's oldest collaborator, on The Wind).

They're still good albums, worthy of more attention than either is ever likely to receive.

Brainwashed

Brainwashed starts out in fine fashion with "Any Road," Harrison's thin voice excellently balanced between his jangly banjulele and whining slide guitar, his son Dhani occasionally taking the spotlight on electric guitar and Lynne mostly keeping respectfully in the background on bass and piano. Lyrically, "Any Road" is a delight, with the wry Zen-koan-like refrain: "If you don't know where you're going/ any road'll take you there."

Harrison's sense of humor serves him well on the next song, the faux-bluesy "P.2. Vatican Blues," a send-up of the Catholic Church by the "claustrophobic" ex-Catholic, who only wishes to confess and get out of his "concrete tuxedo." But it's the next song, "Pisces Fish" that confirms the artist's Hindu faith, without (overly) sermonizing about it, something Harrison never could have done 30 years before. Drawn from meditations during a riverside bike ride, Harrison notes, amid many signs of everyday life, that "sometimes my life seems like fiction/ some of the days it's really quite serene/ I'm a living proof of life's contradictions."

The next number, "Looking for My Life," though burdened by Lynne's bombastic, echoey production, truly evokes a man coming to terms with mortality. When he sings, "I never knew that life was loaded...I only found out when I was down upon my knees/ looking for my life, looking for my life" Harrison indeed sounds like he has been driven to his knees between hope and despair.

Lyrically and instrumentally, "Rising Sun," could be an outtake from an ELO album, circa 1974. Though Harrison's slide guitar is pretty, it's mostly overpowered by the production. But "Marwa Blues" is as enchantingly ethereal as any instrumental Harrison has ever done, with some first-rate slide work from Harrison and more over-production from Lynne.

The following track, "Stuck Inside a Cloud", lyrically is as close as Harrison gets to a direct description of dealing with his disease: "Never slept so little/ never smoked so much...Only I can hear me/ stuck inside a cloud." A mid-tempo song, the production is stately without becoming somber.

"(Can Only) Run So Far" is mostly interesting for its similarity to many of Harrison's old Beatles tunes, in that its construction has the vocal line at counterpoint to the supporting melody. Or something like that.

Sadly, the next song, "Never Get Over You," which Harrison no doubt intended as a tribute to his wife, is plodding when it should be slinking, and is unoriginal lyrically.

With the following selections, though, Harrison's good humor barrels back. On the chestnut "Devil and the Deep Blue Sea," strumming on a ukulele and warbling (as much as Harrison can warble), "I don't want you/ but I hate to lose you...I forgive you/ 'cause I can't forget you," Harrison jokingly makes peace with this mortal coil. And on "Rocking Chair in Hawaii," a rewrite of an old blues tune, Harrison's voice is oddly and pleasingly distorted. The song works as a fun blues workout, an admonition to enjoy life while you've got it, and a loving, leering farewell to "his woman," whoever she may be.

"Brainwashed," the album closer, is an unfortunate return to Harrison's pedantic lectures on the evils of the material world, complete with chants of "god, god, god," between stanzas, just in case you failed to take the point. But perhaps the most telling point is that Lynne's overblown production meshes perfectly with the overwrought sentiments. It's funny in places, though.

Overall, the best tracks on this album ("Any Road," "Pisces Fish," "Rocking Chair in Hawaii") stand up to any of Harrison's previous solo material. And as a testament to the man and the artist, Brainwashed is as complete a statement as any other album he made.

The Wind

"Dirty Life and Times" kicks off The Wind, an unmistakable signal that Zevon intends to leave his artistic life the same way he conducted it for 30-plus years. With Billy Bob Thornton on backing vocals, the song is intended to evoke the recent Americana movement, but it suffers from a dragging beat, murky production and the singer's cancer-weakened voice (a recurrent problem throughout the album, which Calederon's consistently high mixing of the instrumentation aggravates even more). Happily, Zevon's blood-drawing jibes at his anonymous narrator carry the song. It may sound like a last testament, but this could be any ne'er-do-well's story: "Gets a little lonely folks, you know what I mean/ I'm looking for a girl with low self-esteem."

The second song, "Disorder in the House," on which Bruce Springsteen shares vocals, is a raucous, rocking extended metaphor on the woes of being house-bound with illness. Zevon was already zombified by morphine when this was recorded, so it might have made more sense to allow Springsteen to take the lead vocal line and have Zevon's weakened one bounce in and out as it suited him, but the reverse was done. It's still fun. Play it loud.

The next song is a by-the-numbers remake of Dylan's "Knocking on Heaven's Door." Maybe this was as ironic as it gets.

"Numb as a Statue," might be drawn from Zevon's long-ago fight with alcoholism, or perhaps "I'm gonna beg, borrow, or steal some feelings from you/ so I can have some feelings too" is a reference to the pain- and brain-numbing cancer medications. A straightforward rocker, the song features some meaty work from Jackson Browne's lapsteel guitarist David Lindley.

Next is the prettiest song on the CD. "She's Too Good For Me" is about as sincerely self-deprecating as a pop star can get. Zevon's faltering voice on this one should put a lump in your throat.

The hauntingly beautiful "Prison Grove" follows. When Zevon sings "Dug in, hunkered down/hours race without a sound," and Ry Cooder's murky slide guitar growls under the vocals, if a shiver doesn't skitter down your spine, you better get a doctor to check your own pulse.

"El Amor De Mi Vida," the next song, doesn't work. Zevon's falsetto is too weak to carry the tune, and frankly, the lyrics are unconvincing.

Zevon's wonderful sense of irony infuses the next number, "The Rest of the Night." Zevon the vocalist, aping any number of previous party-all-night-long-songs, mindlessly wails "You wanna go home? Why honey? When?/ We may never get this chance again." But we know what the dying lyricist Zevon really means by "the rest of the night." Tom Petty amuses himself shouting the back-up vocals.

Another slow number follows. "Please Stay," is appropriately aching vocally (though Zevon's failing falsetto sometimes grates), but the instrumentation drags rather than marches and the effect is tiring.

On the penultimate song of the album, "Rub Me Raw," Joe Walsh's characteristic slide guitar is somewhat uninspired. But when Zevon howls "Oh no, these blues are gonna rub me raw/ every single cure is against the law," it gets down in your bones.

On the final song, "Keep Me in Your Heart for a While," the instrumentation is sparse, suiting the simplicity of the lyrics. It's an affecting farewell.

There are no true standout tracks, no magnificent ballads like "Carmelita," no macabre laughers like "Werewolves of London," on The Wind. But the songs that are on it, from start to finish, are sturdy representations of Zevon's talents as a songwriter. Somebody else will probably make a hit out of one or two. Which is testament enough to Zevon.