The Warren Zevon catalog is rich with songs poignant and pointed, heartbreaking and hilarious, profound and profane. His was a unique songwriting gift, and he saved the best for last on many of his studio albums.
It was very difficult narrowing this list of his finest album-closing songs down to five. Consider that we had to leave out the darn-near perfect My Ride’s Here from the 2002 album of the same name because there just wasn’t enough room. Here are the songs that did make the list.
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5. “Mutineer” from Mutineer (1995)
The 1995 album named after this song was a bit of an up-and-down affair, but what a lovely way for the album to close out. Zevon manages to touch on both sides of his artistic persona here under a soothing bed of synths. On the one hand, he makes reference to his rabble-rousing reputation. I was born to rock the boat, he sings. Yet he makes a good case that there’s a place in a relationship for a troublemaker. He sings to his companion, You’re my witness / I’m your mutineer. It all comes packaged with one of the tenderest melodies he ever penned.
4. “Don’t Let Us Get Sick” from Life’ll Kill Ya (2000)
Knowing what befell Zevon just a few years after this song was recorded, it can be an almost overwhelmingly emotional listen. But the message is a wise and worthwhile one, and it’s rendered in the most quietly potent way imaginable. Zevon subtly slips in a plea for putting aside past differences, even if they might seem substantial: And make us play nice. The verses ooze with gratitude instead of regret: I‘m lucky to be here / With someone I like / Who maketh my spirit to shine. We think of Zevon more as a keyboardist than guitarist, but his gentle acoustic picking is just the right backdrop for his words here.
3. “Lawyers, Guns and Money” from Excitable Boy (1978)
Four of the five songs on this list are ballads, which is the standard kind of classic rock way to finish an album. But Excitable Boy was an album filled with unsavory characters doing unconscionable things. It wouldn’t have felt right to end it any other way than with this song about a bad actor trying to avoid consequences at all costs. What’s fascinating is how Zevon somehow both castigates and identifies with this antihero all at once. The searing rock arrangement benefits from the chemistry of the West Coast session aces, and Zevon’s vocals drip with malice and mischief.
2. “Keep Me in Your Heart” from The Wind (2003)
Try putting yourself in Zevon’s shoes to write a song that’s not only going to send off an album, but also act as a farewell message to every one of his fans. How he managed to control the emotion of that task and come up with something so stirring and true to everything he’d always represented as an artist is one of his greatest accomplishments. For most of The Wind, Zevon has us teetering on the verge of tears; that is when he’s not tugging laughter out of us. He opened up all our flood banks with “Keep Me in Your Heart” as only he could do, and it was just the right way for him to say goodbye.
1. “Desperadoes Under the Eaves” from Warren Zevon (1976)
Put this one on the very short list of the finest closing songs of any rock artist. Zevon accomplishes so much with “Desperadoes Under the Eaves.” He solidifies the persona that would stick with him throughout his entire career, that of a ne’er-do-well with a self-awareness about the damage left in his wake. He also sums up the decadence and destructiveness of hard living on the West Coast as completely as entire albums by other artists. And he does it in relatively few words, as every line counts and so does every twist in the melody, right down to the elegiac singalong that’s like a “Hey Jude” for stoned barflies.
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