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Warren Zevon had toured for quite some time as a songwriter in the rock scene, released a few singles and landed a flop with his debut LP in 1969 before the tide finally turned. Roughly ten years later, his live album - put together from a five-day residency at the Roxy Theater in West Hollywood - entered the annals of vinyl history as one of the best live albums of all time and was awarded four stars by the magazine Rolling Stone. Ambiguously entitled by the comprehensively educated Zevon, who had been confronted with the tough side of show business, 'Stand In The Fire' delivers genial simple pure and straightforward rock right from the start, which hit the public with a vengeance. Full of vim and elation, the band pours out the significant, biting verses with fire ('Jeannie Needs A Shooter') and fuels the emotional inferno with high-speed bursts of rock ('Excitable Boy'). Zevon proves his skills as a singer and songwriter in the ballad-like yet powerful 'Mohammed's Radio'. In a direct comparison to this number we have the forthright, no-nonsense hit 'Werewolves Of London' with it's close harmonies. Just how Zevon manages to succeed in getting his delicate voice and lyrics over to the public is shown in the powerful mix of heavy and honky-tonk ('I'll Sleep When I'm Dead') and finally in the thunderous final number - 'Bo Didley's A Gunslinger' - with it's percussive and metrically complicated antiphony. This Speakers Corner LP was remastered using pure analogue components only, from the master tapes through to the cutting head. More information under www. Pure-analogue. #com. All royalties and mechanical rights have been paid. Recording: August 1980 live at The Roxy Theatre in West Hollywood, CA. , by Billy Youdelman and Greg LadanyiProduction: Greg Ladanyi & Warren Zevon
Time again, Dave Letterman would tell Warren that this was his favorite album, and ask why it was never released on CD. Zevon usually said he didn't remember this album. For years after the LP was out of press, an enterprising fan could track down two full-price cassettes, each containing half of the music. It was obvious that until Zevon's death, he (or someone) didn't want something this rough, raw and ripping to be available. He damn well remembered this album, though who's to say whether he suffered any blackouts after the nights it was recorded.This album got me through a bar exam in 1981 the way Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas got me through exam weeks: vicarious over the top insanity has to substitute when life won't allow cutting loose yourself. I've always looked on this album as the ultimate Warren Zevon album precisely for its abandon. Zevon's studio music may have the words of irony, scorn and rage, but the production was always too slick. Here, Mohammad's Radio turns into the hymn for the doomed it was meant to be, and "I'll sleep when I'm Dead" is rightfully the foot-stuck-in-a-posthole rage it doubtless represents. Every suffered injustice feeds this fire, and Zevon indeed stands in the middle of it. "I might pitch a fit, but I won't put on my brakes"--Zevon has no brakes left, and he's rolling at full speed in this remarkable slice of his time.This is Warren Zevon as the perfect soundtrack to Hunter Thompson, wasted on his lips, pissed off, and letting it all hang out with a band that will take him anywhere he wants to go. Does he mock Jackson Browne "walking down the avenue, and his heart was perfect!" in Werewolves because of JB's offense years ago when Zevon said he was an entertainer and not a tortured poet bard like Browne? Whatever--that werewolf also went looking for James Taylor. Folk music as dinner.This album is raw, ragged and bleeding. It may have come to symbolize to Zevon the time he got so far beside himself with self-abuse, to become nothing he wanted to be in the public's regard. Now that it was released following his death, we again can see the demons and pitchforks, smell the spilled bourbon and brimstone, and listen to Zevon wail like the werewolf he was. This is Zevon's soul getting out as it did in the late 70's.
