Zevon Song of the Week #35
haro...@yahoo.ca
Category: Mortality
Watching James McMurty last night on Austin City Limits, hearing the
network mute his two carefully placed profanities in We Can't Make It
Here, without which the song would certainly be deprived of much of its
power, made this week's Zevon song an obvious choice for me.
In May of 2000, Warren travelled to England and appeared on the Jools
Holland late night show. He performed both WWOL and MSFU, and also had
the following illuminating conversation with the host:
JH: (Pointing to the LKY CD) It says, kind of unusual, "Parental
guidance-Explicit lyrics" on this record.
WZ: I know, it doesn't say that in the United States.
JH: Does it not?
WZ: I don't think so.
JH: But why does it say that? I wouldn't have expected ...
WZ: Well, there's some language, you want kind of ... I don't know.
JH: Will we look forward to hearing that next when you do the song?
WZ: If I may tell your audience, you asked me to sing this song.
JH: The producer ... it wasn't me. The producer insisted that he sing
this song. It's got swearing in it.
WZ: Yeah. All these years, I thought I was fighting the good fight for
freedom of speech and doing the Lenny thing, you know, and fighting
oppression and repression and mainstream culture in America and
everything. And I come to London, the BBC, this citadel of culture ...
JH: And what do they do-"Could you swear please?"
WZ: (Laughs) Yeah. And I resent it, kind of, I feel like the dirty John
Denver. Maybe that could be like a career for me now.
JH: It could be. You could be a star.
WZ: Finally.
That's a whole interview in itself, that "finally". Perhaps it's
connected to "I had a dream, ah shucks, oh well."
It's interesting that Warren never mentioned that the song title was
considered so threatening by the folks at Artemis that they simply
omitted it from the back cover of the CD. The effect of seeing track 9
followed by track 11 is as startling, and ludicrous, and embarrassing
really, as being in an elevator that jumps from floor 12 to floor 14.
Different reasons, same cause-ignorance and fear, whether it be fear
of an unlucky number or fear of certain "dirty" words, both fears
unfortunate psychological remnants handed down by our puritannical
ancestors to our equally puritannical fellow citizens.
The irony (and theres always an irony) is that nowhere in My Shit's
Fucked Up is either of the offending words used in its original
meaning. That doesn't really matter to the censors. The word is the
problem, not the actuality that it represents.
Regardless, Warren must have chuckled to himself when he saw the back
cover of LKY. He probably thought, "I've written about mutilated old
ladies, raped and murdered young girls, headless Thompson gunners ...
and NOW I'm being censored?"
Back in 2000, my wife Ellen heard LKY before I did. I was leaving town
for a few days when I bought it, so I gave it to her to play in her
car. When I got back, I asked her how she liked it. She said,
"Fantastic. And there's this hilarious track where Warren swears a lot.
I couldn't stop laughing."
For me, that's the healthy reaction to MSFU: laughter rather than
outrage. It really is funny. Warren was a fine deadpan comedian. He's
poking fun at a very serious issue, one that all baby boomers are
having to come to terms with right now, namely, aging and decline, but
he does it in such a humorous way that you're almost forced to laugh.
And, as we all know (at least I hope we all do), laughter is a gift,
because it causes relaxation, raises endorphin levels, and all that
other good stuff.
I said, "My shit's fucked up?"
Well, I don't see how--"
He said, "The shit that used to work--
It won't work now."
That's some funny shit there. I hope you can see it. If you can't, that
amazing grace, it sort of passed you by.
On the BBC, Warren was alone with his acoustic guitar. It was Zevon
unplugged. Strangely, the producers decided to block out all audience
noise, which gave the proceedings a weirdly serious vibe. Perhaps they
were worried about titters and chuckles. Warren just sang the song,
uncensored, and even threw in some nifty guitar riffs at the end.
In the studio for LKY, it wasn't much different, except Warren was
joined by Jorge on bass. One thing the lyrics may disguise is the raw
beauty of the melody. It's simply gorgeous. In fact, it might make you
cry if you weren't laughing. Have another listen if you don't agree.
BBC America acted all too predictably when it aired the episode. Not
only did they omit Warren's performance of MSFU, they also cut out the
entire interview segment. Never mind that Warren and Jools discussed a
lot of things, including the Zevon-Springsteen collaboration on Play It
All Night Long-the interview previewed the song with the bad words,
so it had to be cut out as well. The American audience got to see
Warren singing Werewolves, that's it. That was a once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity, all right.
MSFU isn't all fun. The closing lines, written at least a couple of
years before Warren received his terminal diagnosis, are heart-rending
when seen in the rearview mirror:
You wake up every day
And you start to cry
Yeah, you want to die
But you just can't quit
Let me break it on down:
It's the fucked up shit
Amen, brother.
Categories to date
---------------------
Addiction and Recovery: 3
Cover: 4
Family: 2
Geopolitical: 1
History: 1
Law and Order: 1
Love-Gone-Wrong: 6
Mortality: 3
Party: 1
Satire: 3
Social Commentary: 8
Sports: 1
Unreleased: 1
Lucy Pfeffa
>
> It's interesting that Warren never mentioned that the song title was
> considered so threatening by the folks at Artemis that they simply
> omitted it from the back cover of the CD. The effect of seeing track 9
> followed by track 11 is as startling, and ludicrous, and embarrassing
> really, as being in an elevator that jumps from floor 12 to floor 14.
> Different reasons, same cause-ignorance and fear, whether it be fear
> of an unlucky number or fear of certain "dirty" words, both fears
> unfortunate psychological remnants handed down by our puritannical
> ancestors to our equally puritannical fellow citizens.
From an interview with Brian Wise, July 2002 for ABC-DIG/Australia:
BW: On a different subject I noticed the song 'My Shit's Fucked Up'
isn't actually listed on the back cover of the album.
WZ: No, that was my idea.
BW: Really?
WZ: Yeah. That was my brilliant idea - they're [the record company] not
responsible for it. They asked me what they should do, if anything, and
I said just take it off and that way people will think I'm stupider than
they already think until they open it up and they maybe figure out it's
a little gag.
BW: Well, naturally everyone will assume it was the record company's
decision not yours.
-- Lucy
haro...@yahoo.ca
appears that both he and Artemis were concerned about the possible
repercussions from the song's lyrics. Their solution (and I say "their"
because Warren admits that Artemis broached the topic) was a proactive
mute of the title on the back cover, which at least kept the Tipper
Gores at bay.
Howard Roseman
not PIANL.
Guess MS was FU when I wrote that.