Return To L.A. and Major-label Debut
By September 1975, Zevon had returned to Los Angeles, where he roomed with then-unknown Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. There, he collaborated with Jackson Browne, who in 1976 produced and promoted Zevon's self-titled major-label debut. Contributors to this album included Nicks, Buckingham, Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, members of the Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, and Bonnie Raitt. Ronstadt elected to record many of his songs, including "Hasten Down the Wind", "Carmelita", "Poor Poor Pitiful Me", and "Mohammed's Radio". Zevon's first tour in 1977 included guest appearances in the middle of Jackson Browne concerts, one of which is documented on a widely circulated bootleg recording of a Dutch radio program under the title The Offender meets the Pretender.
Though a much darker and more ironic songwriter than Browne and other leading figures of the era's L.A.-based singer-songwriter movement, Zevon shared with his 1970s L.A. peers a grounding in earlier folk and country influences and a commitment to a writerly style of songcraft with roots in the work of artists like Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell. Though only a modest commercial success, the Browne-produced Warren Zevon (1976) would later be termed a masterpiece in the first edition of the Rolling Stone Record Guide and is cited in the book's most recently revised (November 2004) edition as Zevon's most realized work. Representative tracks include the junkie's lament "Carmelita", the Copland-esque outlaw ballad "Frank and Jesse James", "The French Inhaler", a scathing insider's look at life and lust in the L.A. music business (which was, in fact, about his long-time girlfriend and mother to his son Jordan) and "Desperados Under the Eaves", a chronicle of Zevon's increasing alcoholism.
Read more about this topic: Warren Zevon
Famous quotes containing the words return to, return and/or debut:
“I find very reasonable the Celtic belief that the souls of our dearly departed are trapped in some inferior being, in an animal, a plant, an inanimate object, indeed lost to us until the day, which for some never arrives, when we find that we pass near the tree, or come to possess the object which is their prison. Then they quiver, call us, and as soon as we have recognized them, the spell is broken. Freed by us, they have vanquished death and return to live with us.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“I got my first clear view of Ktaadn, on this excursion, from a hill about two miles northwest of Bangor, whither I went for this purpose. After this I was ready to return to Massachusetts.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Had I been less resolved to work, I would perhaps had made an effort to begin immediately. But since my resolution was formal and before twenty four hours, in the empty slots of the next day where everything fit so nicely because I was not yet there, it was better not to choose a night at which I was not well-disposed for a debut to which the following days proved, alas, no more propitious.... Unfortunately, the following day was not the exterior and vast day which I had feverishly awaited.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)