His writing had a noir edge sharpened by years of turbulent upbringing, travels, abandoned schoolwork, encounters with Stravinsky during his childhood piano studies, an early folk phase and a string of failed bands. He stood apart in the mid seventies as a writer whose characters seemed drawn from a world of late nights, odd back alleys and private tragedies. The fact that such an artist would end up best known for a grimly comic tale about a London werewolf is one of the many contradictions in his story.
The idea began in 1975, three years before recording. Phil Everly of the Everly Brothers had watched the 1935 film Werewolf of London and jokingly suggested that Zevon turn the title into a song or dance craze. Zevon met up with two close collaborators, guitarist Waddy Wachtel and writer LeRoy Marinell, and the trio threw ideas around in a matter of minutes. Marinell had long been carrying a simple guitar figure that never quite found a use, and Wachtel joked about the lyrics, improvising the first verse on the spot.
Zevon copied the words down, his wife Crystal typing them neatly afterwards, though none of the three considered the song remotely serious. It sat among Zevon’s scraps until Jackson Browne came across it. Browne recognised something in the odd humour and began performing it during his own concerts. T Bone Burnett then picked it up and sang it during Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue, sometimes adding improvised lines about Hollywood stars, union leaders and adult film actors. Even so, the song was rejected for Zevon’s 1976 album and was still seen as a novelty by the time Excitable Boy went into production.
Recording the track soon became a story of its own. Zevon and Wachtel wanted a rhythm section that would give the song a heavy, almost cartoonish stomp, but they struggled to find the right feel. Early attempts were made with first-call Los Angeles players, including Bob Glaub, Lee Sklar, Russ Kunkel, Jeff Porcaro, Michael Botts and Gary Mallaber. Many of those takes were solid, but Zevon dismissed them for being too neat and too clever, saying he wanted something rougher and more instinctive. Session after session passed, each version feeling slightly off. By that stage, a large portion of the Excitable Boy budget had already been burned. It was only when Wachtel suggested borrowing Mick Fleetwood and John McVie from Fleetwood Mac that things changed. Their muscular, relentless groove was exactly what the track needed.
The two arrived at Sound Factory in Los Angeles, where recording was underway with engineer Greg Ladanyi. The studio was renowned for its equipment and its acoustics. It ran an API console with Fairchild compressors, LA-2As, 1176s and Phase Linears powering the speakers. The tape machines were 3M 24-tracks, and the space held four EMT 140 plates and a remarkable collection of microphones from the David Hassinger years, including Telefunken 251s, Neumann U47s, M 49s, M50s and the rare Neumann 54. The atmosphere of that room is stamped all over the Excitable Boy album and especially the rhythm sound of Werewolves of London.
Fleetwood and McVie set up in the studio and started working through takes. What followed became almost mythic. The session stretched from evening into morning as they ran through take after take, building towards a performance that caught the strange swagger of the song. A total of fifty nine takes were attempted, though the second take ended up capturing the essence of what they needed. Browne, Zevon and Wachtel listened back and agreed that the early attempt had the raw, slightly unhinged quality the song required. Wachtel recalled that they pushed on for hours anyway, partly out of determination and partly due to Fleetwood’s relentless energy, but nothing surpassed the second take. That version became the foundation of the final mix.
Instrumentally, the remaining parts were recorded with a mixture of precision and spontaneity. The famous piano riff was based on Marinell’s unused lick, played with a dry, rhythmic tone that cut clearly through the track. Zevon’s vocal was captured with a Neumann U67, placed close to a pop screen to harness the sheer intensity of his delivery. Wachtel’s guitar solo, often singled out for its punch and brevity, was done in a single take. He asked for the room to be cleared, set up his sound, played it once, then added a harmony line and declared it finished. The rest of the record, including additional vocals and backing parts, was handled through the Sound Factory workflow, which involved continual rough mixing throughout the process so that the final stage would not require drastic reshaping.
Lyrically, the song wandered between absurdity and dark humour. References to Lee Ho Fook, the Chinese restaurant on Gerrard Street in London’s Chinatown, added a surreal but real geographical anchor. The restaurant served Cantonese cuisine until its closure in 2008. Onstage, Zevon often swapped the line about ripping lungs out for a quip about James Taylor, playing off his association with the Los Angeles singer-songwriter circle. Despite this playful nature, Zevon himself was initially unconvinced that the song belonged on the record, and he strongly disagreed when Elektra chose it as the lead single. He had preferred either Johnny Strikes Up the Band or Tenderness on the Block, both of which felt truer to his style. The label, however, insisted on Werewolves of London and released it in March 1978.
The single climbed to number twenty one on the Billboard Hot 100, remaining in the Top 40 for over a month. It became Zevon’s only mainstream chart success. Critics noted the combination of heavy rhythm, laconic humour and razor-sharp musicality. BBC Radio 2 listeners later voted its opening line as the finest in pop music. The track found new life in 1986 when it appeared in The Color of Money, in a scene where Tom Cruise playfully lip-syncs along while showing off his pool-playing bravado. The song continued to generate fascination long after Zevon’s death in 2003. Jackson Browne later suggested that the song could be read as a portrait of a predatory, well dressed Englishman, while Zevon himself simply saw it as a novelty with a charm he could not fully explain. In his own words, it was strange but never a burden.
Excitable Boy went on to become Zevon’s most commercially successful album, peaking at number eight in the United States. Werewolves of London became its unlikely centrepiece, shaped by an unusual mix of last-minute inspiration, a vast array of discarded session takes, one perfectly captured rhythm performance from Fleetwood and McVie, a one-take guitar solo and a studio full of classic equipment. Even now, the song remains instantly recognisable from its opening piano vamp, its stomping groove and Zevon’s booming vocal. It stands as a testament to how an offhand idea can become a defining moment in an artist’s catalogue when the right musicians, the right room and the right sense of mischief all collide.