I agree one hundred percent on both points, but especially “Keep Me In your Heart.” One of the most poignant songs ever. That’s even if you don’t know the real-life story behind it.
As for “Werewolves of London,” it remains a sentimental favorite because it introduced me to a singer/songwriter named Warren Zevon. Not his best work, but why many people discovered him.
As far as my personal favorites, I can’t narrow it down to one. Tied are “Jeannie Needs a Shooter,” “Lawyers, Guns, and Money,” “Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner,” and “Keep Me In Your Heart.”
What? No votes for The French Inhaler?
“Your faced looked like something Death brought with him in his suitcase”
“So long Norman She said so long Norman”
Breaks my heart
You said you were an actress
Yes, I believe you are I thought you’d be a star
So I drank up all the money, yes I drank up all the money
With these phonies in this Hollywood bar
These friends of mine in this Hollywood bar
Goddamn but I love his first album so. The French Inhaler, Carmelita, Mohammed’s Radio… Hasten Down the Wind makes me cry every time.
Did you know he studied with Stravinsky as a youth? For reals.
Desperados Under the Eaves is so interesting, the structure of the song is not your usual pop ABAB verse chorus thingie. My buddy who left his heart in LA sez Desperados is the quinna LA elegy.
Is it just me or is the last line of the chorus - “Heaven help the one who leaves” - a bit of a call out to Stevie Wonder’s “Heaven Help Us All?”
Regardless of the answer to that, I’m going with this song as my favorite. Any song that has most of the bridge sung from the point of view of an air conditioner gets my vote.
She’s so many women
He can’t find the one who was his friend
So he’s hanging on to half her heart
He can’t have the restless part
So he tells her to hasten down the wind
