Warren Zevon was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame recently.
He was a fine songwriter and wrote of what he knew. You might remember Werewolves of London, Send Lawyers, Guns and Money, or Carmelita, one of the best songs written about heroin.
He was well able for his subject matter, his Ukrainian-born father was a gangster in Chicago, and Warren had done his own share of walking on the wild side. Oddly enough, he had taken piano lessons from master modernist, Igor Stravinsky in LA where he also hob-knobbed with the likes of Linda Ronstadt and Stevie Nicks.
All of this, and his many influences, were detailed in various media upon his popular ascension to Rock and Roll immortality.
One major influence – of a Celtic nature – was overlooked.
It had to be some summer in the late 1970’s, hot as hell, and definitely a Sunday night because the Bells of Hell was near deserted. Barry Murphy was behind the stick and I had dropped by to pick up my guitar.
Murph bought me a Heineken and I was sitting close to the door when Warren Zevon strolled in.
He was tall, lean and handsome, if a little weathered, and he stood out in his cowboy hat and LA threads. The two other customers paid him no pass, while Murph continued reading Nabokov or whatever barmen intellectuals read in those distant days.
I recognized him instantly, but being a cool New Yorker, I merely nodded.
“Are the Clancy Brothers here?” Zevon inquired in an excitable drawl.
Though taken aback, how was one to answer? Was he having me on, and would I end up a fall guy in one of his cosmic songs?
Murph finally deigned to look up from Pale Fire or whatever, and cast a wary eye down the length of the bar in case Tom, Pat and Liam might have snuck in.
“What would they be doing here?” The barman pondered his own existential question.
“They drink here.” Zevon shot back.
“Yeah, about once a year, if they’re in town.”
“Oh.” The trainee rock god conceded, but shaking off another of life’s disappointments he said, “Give me a Tequila.”
Murph laid aside his tome and began to pour a shot of top-shelf Jose Gold.
“I meant a bottle.”
“We don’t sell liquor by the bottle.”
“For the right price you will.”
Sensing Murph’s hesitance, the two other customers offered their advice on an equitable price.
Shrugging his toil-worn shoulders Murph settled on a round $30, at which Zevon asked for 4 glasses and invited the clientele to join him at a table, adding that the only worthwhile advice his father ever gave him was never to drink at a bar, especially with one’s back to the door.
Tossing down shots of Gold like John Wayne, I ventured, “What’s with the Clancy Brothers?”
“They saved my life.” Zevon replied, “In Spain of all places.”
Then he was off in a gallop. “I hit rock bottom in Sitges, near Barcelona. Woke up, no money, no prospects, nothing left but my guitar. I chanced upon a hole-in-the-wall called The Dubliner.
When I asked the owner if I could play, he told me to knock myself out – which I did. He said I wasn’t bad but they only hired Irish ballad singers – whereupon he took pity on me and gave me three Clancy Brothers LPs, said come back when I’d learned all the tracks.
“The chords were a breeze, and I figured that if you got the lyrics of the first verse right, you could fake the others.
So, I came back 2 days later with the first verse of 30 Clancy songs and blew them Spaniards away.
Best summer of my life. I should have stayed there. Instead I came back to this madness,” he cast a deprecating glance at his drinking companions and at Murph murdering Nabakov behind the bar. “But I owe a debt to the Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem. They changed my life - made my music what it is today.”
With that, he took a long slug from the bottle, stood up, belched, straightened his hat, and strode out the door into the long hot summer’s night, another pit stop behind him on his way to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
