Zevon Song of the Week #16
haro...@yahoo.ca
Category: Cover
In the '90s, Warren did a fair bit of TV and film work. He had a
history. She Quit Me from Wanted Dead Or Alive was used in the 1969
movie Midnight Cowboy, although the title was changed to He Quit Me and
sung by female singer Lesley Miller (on the credits, Warren as
songwriter was listed as W.W. Zevon). In 1986, the Scorsese movie The
Color of Money used Werewolves of London to excellent effect, with Tom
Cruise primping in perfect timing to the "his hair was perfect"
line.
You Don't Know What Love Is is a jazzy number written by Don Raye and
Gene DePaul way back in 1941. Robert Altman disciple Alan Rudolph
decided to feature the song in his 1990 detective noir spoof Love at
Large. The film starred Tom Berenger, Anne Archer, and Elizabeth
McGovern. Warren, accompanied by Mark Isham on trumpet, contributed a
very soulful, albeit brief, version of the song. (The film also used
Searching For A Heart in the soundtrack, but a different, earlier, and
jazzier version of the song than the one that ended up on the MBE album
the following year. Warren wrote SFAH at Rudolph's request for Love
at Large, but rocked it up a little more for MBE.)
The original lyric for You Don't Know What Love Is contained three or
four verses, but the film lyric that Warren sang was a simple,
two-stanza story of love gone wrong that he was only too qualified to
sing:
You don't know what love is
Until you've learned the meaning of the blues
Until you've loved a love you had to lose
You don't know what love is
You don't know how lips hurt
Until you've kissed and had to pay the cost
Until you've flipped your heart and you have lost
You don't know what love is
Unfortunately for both the film and the song, Rudolph decided to have
Anne Archer sing it as well. Here's a review of the soundtrack from
the New York Times that mentions her, Warren, and Mark Isham:
Mark Isham: 'Love at Large' Soundtrack
Virgin 2-91359; all three formats.
The soundtrack album for Alan Rudolph's newest romantic fantasy is a
typically moody affair in which Don Raye and Gene De Paul's 1941 torch
song, ''You Don't Know What Love Is,'' serves as a leitmotif. It is
sung tremblingly by Anne Archer, growled darkly by Warren Zevon and
heard in solo harp and acoustic-guitar arrangements. The musical glue
holding it all together is Mark Isham's electronic score played by a
sextet, the Raincity Industrial Art Ensemble, with Mr. Isham's solo
trumpet the featured instrument. Like Mr. Isham's other scores for
Rudolph films, this one evokes neon lights reflected on empty
rain-soaked streets in an urban twilight zone where the permanent
emotional condition is loneliness. - Stephen Holden
If you've heard Warren's rendition either on the soundtrack album
or on the ISWID compilation (disc 2, track 9), you'll probably agree
with me that Mr. Holden's characterization of his singing as
"growled darkly" is overstated. I think he does a fine job,
certainly much better than the amateurish Ms. Archer, of capturing the
song's theme of love as pain, one expressed so memorably by Warren
himself in so many of his own songs both prior to and following 1990.
It was a lyrical construct he returned to time and time again.
He had a history.
In his wonderfully, and often hilariously, concise liner notes to the
ISWID set, Warren had this to say about the song:
"I met Mark Isham through (engineer/co-producer) Duncan Aldrich. Mark
wanted me to sing this jazz standard for an Alan Rudolph movie. "Who
wrote it?" I asked him. "I don't know," he said. "Bird did
it; Trane did it.""
Zevon did it.
Categories to date
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Addiction and Recovery: 1
Cover: 1
Family: 1
Geopolitical: 1
Law and Order: 1
Love-Gone-Wrong: 3
Mortality: 1
Satire: 2
Social Commentary: 4
Sports: 1
Peter Huish
I was expecting "Outside Chance" ...
Howard Roseman
> I was expecting "Outside Chance" ...
>
That's exactly what you had!