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Jordan Zevon, the son of the late Warren Zevon, mere days after his father's death, is shuffling slowly through the upstairs of their L.A. home. Sadness hangs heavy on his shoulders. He's missing his dad terribly but he has yet to cry. No matter how badly he needs the release, he just cannot. Memories, both good and bad, are clouding his thoughts as he passes by an old storage closet. Suddenly, he hears his father's voice singing softly:
Today's the day
You're going all the way
You better make up your heart
You're going to make a new start
Today
Reluctantly, he opens the closet door and finds an old suitcase, rough and battered from many days on the road. He sets himself down before the case and opens it. Inside he finds reels of music, some of it recorded before he was born; all of it recorded before 1976. As he listens to the first takes, alternate mixes, and unreleased songs, the tears finally begin to flow. These are tears of revelation. He decides that his father's legacy deserves another album and these recordings should be the content.
Okay, so I embellished it a bit, but that is the story of the album Preludes. I want to get one thing out in the open now: I am not a fan of legacy albums, filler albums, contractual obligation albums, whatever you want to call them. More often than not, they sully the memory of an artist by releasing work that was never finished or was not deemed worthy by the artist himself. But sometimes, as fans, we can catch glimpses of vulnerability and the stark beauty of a pure emotion captured as an idea. This may allow us a look into the musician's train of thought and bring us closer to them spiritually, as only art can.
Preludes has a few of these moments. As a whole, its mood is dark and introspective, and there is only a bit of Zevon's trademark acerbic wit on display. The album begins strongly with the gorgeous “Empty Hearted Town;” a song that we can only hope he overlooked while he was alive. His turn of phrase piano-man songwriting style is on full display here; it is a joy to behold. And it ends with “Rosalita Beach Café,” a sing-along country song that would have been at home on an early Eagles album. In between are songs of various import and quality. Pieces like “Hasten Down the Wind” and “Going All the Way” are but sketches of some other larger work that were never fully realized. The early working of “Werewolves of London” is an interesting look into the instrumentation and compositional techniques that Zevon employed. The stomping of “Poor Poor Pitiful Me” sounds like it was ready for release, while the enigmatic “The French Inhaler” was just a few tweaks away from being a radio hit. His skill as a lyricist is beautifully displayed here:
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Loneliness and frustration
We both came down with an acute case
And when the lights came up at two
I caught a glimpse of you
And your face looked like something
Death brought with him in his suitcase
A pointed and angry recording of “Accidentally Like a Martyr” could be the most quintessentially “Zevon” song of the album. Zevon recorded it for his 1978 album, Excitable Boy , with abbreviated lyrics. Jerry Garcia has a version of it on his 1977 album, All Good Things. The Preludes version is lyrically superior; Zevon packed contempt, disdain, and raw pain into the lyrics as only he could. I consider it the most powerful song of the album and a treasure I am thrilled to have had discovered.
There are some gems here amidst the filler and they are not very hard to find, but still I would not recommend this collection to anyone but a hardcore fan. To anyone else, I would point out his truly poetic and musically solid swan song, The Wind. That was a genuine love note Zevon wrote to his family and his life; he intended for it to be released. The Wind stands as one of the best albums of the last decade. As far as getting the last word is concerned, with apologies to the grieving Jordan Zevon, I'm pretty sure his dad would be appalled by this collection. And he would tell us in his own inimitable way to fuck off and let him rest in peace. |
