When I was a junior in high school, I made a campus visit to Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, which must have made a good impression on me because Northwestern became my alma mater. However, one of the things I remember from that campus visit was buying Warren Zevon’s Sentimental Hygiene (1987) from the clearance cassette rack at the campus bookstore. I knew Zevon by reputation from reading Rolling Stone, but I knew very little of his music, save “Werewolves in London.”
As my family continued our college tour, driving east through Gary, Indiana’s smokestack-refinery-gray landscape, my ears were plugged with headphones and Zevon singing his gritty, country rock-styled, working class hero stories that immediately seemed more in line with the reality of Gary, Indiana, than the similar sounds I knew from Bruce Springsteen’s testosterone-pumped love of the blue collar world.
With the double-disc, bonus edition, reissue of Zevon’s self-titled album (originally released in 1976), it was finally time to go back and get more of an education about Zevon’s pivotal, influential, and classic work. Writer Bob Mehr’s extensive liner notes really open up the story of Zevon, the album, and producer Jackson Browne’s incredibly prescient dedication to getting Zevon in the studio.
However, as the album vacillates between folk country rock and more syrupy 70’s washed-out rock (“Hasten the Wind,” “The French Inhaler”), I find that I’m aching for the days of Sentimental Hygiene. I know it’s not the most quintessential Zevon album, but it’s tough when you’re introduced to an artist by one album—not knowing how that album’s sound compares with their entire body of work. It locks you into a certain idea, especially if that experience is coupled with such a distinct memory as mine with Zevon and Gary, Indiana.
That said, tracks like “Mama Couldn’t Be Persuaded,” “Backs Turned Looking Down the Path,” and “Poor Poor Pitiful Me” really do stand out with their lyrics and country soul groove (think Van Morrison’s Moondance album era). Plus, the classic “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” rock two-steps with a punk-like growl and outlook. It’s a song even more haunting now since Zevon’s death in 2003. Those tracks are well-worth the price of admission here, plus having alternate takes on the bonus disc gives a sense of historical depth to those songs.
The album opens with “Frank and Jesse James,” a story of the famed outlaws—although Mehr’s liner notes mention it could’ve been Zevon’s way of telling the tale of Phil and Don Everly, in whose band Zevon played. While Mehr says the song also shows Zevon dedication to Andrew Copeland’s Rodeo, the opening piano strains echo the Irish hymn, “Be Thou My Vision,” which makes the song all the more epic, sweeping, and soul-searching (and makes another comparison with Van Morrison who sings a beautiful version of the hymn on his Hymns to the Silence album).
