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FOOTLOOSE AND FANCY-FREE

I just want a picture of me face.

—ROD STEWART

IN LATE NOVEMBER OF 1976, AS WADDY WACHTEL BUSIED HIMSELF with unpacking his suitcase and sorting through a pile of mail, he heard his phone ring. Having just returned that day from a tour of England with Linda Ronstadt in support of her recently released Hasten Down the Wind album, Wachtel not only had a case of jet lag but also a million things on his mind as he picked up the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Waddy?”

“Yeah?”

“Hey, it’s Jackson Browne.”

On the heels of such FM favorites as “Doctor My Eyes,” “Rock Me on the Water,” and “Fountain of Sorrow” during the early to mid-seventies, the folk-rock singing-and-playing Browne was a rising star in the music world. With his latest album, The Pretender, having just hit stores, Browne was about to go on tour in support of both it and its soon-to-be-released lead single, “Here Come Those Tears Again.”

But first things first. Browne wanted to help out a mutual friend, an unknown (outside of the music business) singer-songwriter by the name of Warren Zevon, and Browne figured Wachtel might be just the guy to assist him.

“Hey, man, what’s up?” a surprised Wachtel said, taking a seat. “I literally just walked in the door a few minutes ago from being on tour with Linda in Europe.”

“I know,” Browne replied. “That’s why I’m calling.”

Though Wachtel and Browne were acquainted, with Wachtel having played guitar on The Pretender and also on an earlier Browne-produced Warren Zevon album that went nowhere, they were hardly close friends.

“I read your interview,” Browne continued. “You know, the one where you said I had my hands full and didn’t really know what I was doing as the producer on Warren’s last record.”

Wachtel swallowed.

Oh, that interview, he thought—the one he had recently done with some British magazine where, as usual, he had spoken without a filter.

“Sorry about that, man,” Wachtel said, half-chuckling in embarrassment.

Browne stopped him in midapology.

“No—you were absolutely right,” he said. “That’s why you’re going to coproduce Warren’s next album with me.”

Wachtel wasn’t sure he had heard correctly.

“What? Wait a minute—you don’t even know me,” he blurted in his typically blunt Brooklyn-ese.

“Not only do I know you,” Browne countered, “but I know exactly where I stand with you.”

Browne then added the clincher.

“More important, I need you,” he said, sounding concerned. “Warren won’t listen to me anymore. But he’ll listen to you.”

AT THE SAME TIME WADDY WACHTEL AND JACKSON BROWNE were reacquainting themselves with one another in the fall of 1976, in a nearby part of Los Angeles a different set of musicians (and Browne’s good friends), the Eagles, were busy with the final stages of preparing the release of what would be their fifth studio album.

Having been graciously allowed by Linda Ronstadt to leave her touring band back in late 1971 to start one of their own, Don Henley and Glenn Frey quickly made it a foursome by recruiting Bernie Leadon (guitar, banjo) from the Flying Burrito Brothers and Randy Meisner (bass) from Poco. Vocalists all, the ability of the four to harmonize and even take turns doing leads fulfilled Frey’s vision of putting together a unique ensemble where each member could sing and play with more or less equal facility.

After signing a deal with the fledgling, David Geffen–owned Asylum Records through their connection with Jackson Browne (Frey and Browne had met early on at the Troubadour, ultimately becoming close friends), the Eagles immediately scored a platinum record in mid-1972 with their debut album, the Glyn Johns–produced Eagles. Containing three Top Forty singles, “Take It Easy,” “Witchy Woman,” and “Peaceful Easy Feeling,” it seemed to put the band on the fast track to stardom.

But after lackluster sales and up-and-down reviews of their second LP, 1973’s cowboys-and-outlaws-themed Desperado, Henley and, particularly, Frey were adamant about making some changes for album number three. Tired of the exclusively country-rock direction forced upon them by Johns, the pair jettisoned him partway through the recording of what would become On the Border and brought in a new producer named Bill Szymczyk. A genial, gregarious, giant of a man at six-foot-four (at least compared to the substantially sub-six-foot Eagles), the former Navy sonar operator and all-around electronics whiz brought with him instant rock and blues credibility. Producing career-defining singles for B. B. King (“The Thrill Is Gone”), the James Gang (“Walk Away”), and the Edgar Winter Group (“Frankenstein”), it was especially Szymczyk’s production work for Joe Walsh (whose manager, Irving Azoff, had just stepped in to also manage the Eagles) on “Rocky Mountain Way” that sealed the deal; the song rocked its ass off, just like Glenn Frey wanted his own band to do.

At the beginning of 1974, following a meeting between the Eagles and Bill Szymczyk at Chuck’s Steakhouse on Third Street in West L.A. near Hollywood, the band and their hoped-for producer agreed in principle to work together. But it came only after Szymczyk made it clear over dinner that he had no interest in doing a country-rock record, a stance that especially pleased Frey.

After agreeing to recut On the Border (only “Best of My Love” and “You Never Cry Like a Lover” were kept from the original Johns-produced London sessions), Szymczyk gathered again with the band a week later and a mere two doors down from Chuck’s at the red-hot Record Plant West. Opened in 1969 as the Southern California–based sister studio to its already-established New York City sibling, Record Plant East (and the soon-to-be-opened Record Plant Sausalito in the Bay Area), the Los Angeles location also became one of the first facilities on the West Coast to offer twenty-four-track recording capabilities, something that quickly made it a main competitor with Sound City, Sunset Sound, the Village Recorder, United/Western, American Recording, the Sound Factory, Crystal, and others. It was also no accident that the Record Plant West was Szymczyk’s favorite studio in town—he had already produced successful albums there for the James Gang (James Gang Rides Again), the J. Geils Band (The Morning After), and B. B. King (Indianola Mississippi Seeds).

Though Bill Szymczyk’s keen ear, strong studio skills, and rock-and-roll bent helped turn the rerecorded On the Border material into a less countrified presentation, Frey still wanted even more grit. In particular, he yearned for a third guitarist who could help give the Eagles a tougher sound. At the suggestion of Leadon, a call went out to an easygoing guitar virtuoso by the name of Don Felder. Having played in a mid-sixties high school band in Gainesville, Florida, with Leadon and also having informally jammed with the other Eagles (through Leadon) here and there backstage before their shows for over a year, the likable Felder was no stranger and an obvious choice.

After laying down some slide on “Good Day in Hell” and then adding a few lead and solo parts on “Already Gone,” Don Felder, with the rest of the band suitably impressed, officially became the fifth Eagle. Because of his uncanny abilities on any kind of stringed instrument placed in his hands, whether acoustic, electric, six-string or twelve, Szymczyk and Frey soon began referring to him as “Fingers.”

With On the Border successfully picking up where the first Eagles album left off in terms of chart position (seventeen) and more Top Forty singles (“Already Gone” and “Best of My Love”), the Eagles were back in business. But it was their next album, One of These Nights, that would turn them into superstars.

With three Top Five hits in 1975—“One of These Nights,” “Lyin’ Eyes,” and “Take It to the Limit”—One of These Nights was a runaway success from the day of its release. The Eagles first number-one album, it was also Don Felder’s debut as a contributing singer and songwriter, something he had very much hoped to do since the moment he joined.

“If you want to write for this band, create some instrumental beds [tracks] that are in a song structure,” Leadon told Felder, who had been asking about how to get in on the action. “Then make demos of the songs and give them to Don and Glenn.”

What Leadon meant was for Felder to take his guitar and lay down a melodic, compelling song that words could then be written for by Henley and Frey, who were the band’s principle lyricists. The tune would also need to be in the common pop-music songwriting format of intro/verse one/verse two/chorus/verse three/bridge/chorus/outro.

Taking Leadon’s advice to heart, Felder promptly fired up his home-based Teac four-track reel-to-reel tape recorder and got to work. Sometime after, with two of his compositions making the final cut for inclusion on the One of These Nights LP, including one, “Visions,” that he actually sang the lead vocal on, Felder thought it would always be just that easy. As long as he wrote the music—even if someone else wrote the lyrics—then Felder would likely have a good shot at singing the song on the record too. In his experience that’s the way bands worked—they were a democracy.

Further, from discussions with his bandmates it was Felder’s understanding that he would always get to sing lead on at least one song per album. That was very important to him and among the reasons he left his position as a sideman for David Crosby and Graham Nash to join the Eagles. Felder thought he would now get to be an equal partner, including on vocals.

But much to Felder’s chagrin, Don Henley and Glenn Frey would soon come to have a very different view regarding his level of participation in the band.

DURING THE LATE SUMMER OF 1977, AS THE WELL-KNOWN album-cover designer John Kosh stood with his arms folded, absently watching a man’s expensive black dress shoe float by in the pool of ankle-deep water, he knew something was wrong. He could feel it.

Having gone to great lengths and expense to craft a faithfully rendered replica of a standard-issue, Holiday Inn–style guest room inside of a giant waterproof tub—complete with suitably drab motel furniture, cheesy wall art, and a garish, custom-made flashing neon sign placed just outside a fake window—everything about the design and setup for the album cover photo shoot at hand had come off just as planned. No detail had been too small. No artful touch had been overlooked. Everything was perfectly in place for what Kosh felt just might end up being his grandest creative endeavor yet. Everything, that is, except for one crucial, all-too-obvious omission: the star attraction was nowhere in sight.

By the late seventies Rod Stewart had become one of the most popular rock-and-roll singers in the world. On the heels of hit singles such as “Maggie Mae,” “You Wear It Well,” and “Tonight’s the Night (Gonna Be Alright),” the spiky-haired crooner with the sandpapery voice had become both a sex symbol and a huge moneymaker. Women threw themselves (and their underwear) at him during shows. His albums routinely sold in the millions. He played only the largest arenas. As superstars went, Stewart was among the biggest—with a sizeable ego to match.

Born barely six months apart during the last full year of World War II, Stewart, like Kosh, grew up in North London. And once upon a time, in the early to mid-sixties, they also each held a particular fondness for the Mod lifestyle, a fashion-obsessed existence then popular among certain segments of British youth. Dandies both, Stewart and Kosh would have recoiled in horror at the mere notion of venturing out among the public in anything that might have been considered naff—local jargon for “in poor taste.” But all tailor-made, narrow-lapel Carnaby Street suits and pointed-toe, leather winkelpicker shoes aside, that is where the similarities between the two ended.

Stewart’s childhood in Highgate featured all the trappings of the upwardly mobile, with his middle-class parents spoiling him silly, and where he especially excelled in playing English football (soccer). Kosh, however, grew up a confirmed nonathlete in Friern Barnet, a rough-and-tumble, mostly working-class area better known for its endless rows of lookalike council housing and prominent Cockney accents. In lieu of organized sports, one of Kosh’s favorite early activities included playing with friends in old V-1 bomb craters left from the German air raids during the war while at the same time doing his precocious best to look up girls’ dresses.

By the mid-seventies, with Stewart’s well-known reputation preceding him in terms of doing whatever he wanted whenever he wanted, the ever-professional Kosh nonetheless decided to take on the task of helming the design for Stewart’s first album release on Warner Bros. Records. Titled Atlantic Crossing, the partially Los Angeles–recorded LP’s cover featured a colorful, stylized rendering of a glam-rock-like, jumpsuit-wearing Stewart taking a giant stride across the Atlantic Ocean from London to New York. The image slyly referenced both his recent defection from his old label, Europe-based PolyGram (the same company that put out Buckingham Nicks), to the Burbank-based Warner Bros., along with the fact that Stewart had also just moved to America, more specifically to Hollywood, just as Kosh had done the year before.

With Atlantic Crossing going platinum after making the Top Ten on the US album charts in 1975, Stewart wanted to use Kosh’s services again on his follow-up release in 1976, to be called A Night on the Town and to be cut at Cherokee Recording Studios in Hollywood. Once more Kosh designed an eye-catching cover, this time humorously inserting a sketched likeness of a jaunty-looking Stewart into a crowd scene in the middle of a famous Renoir painting (Le Moulin de la Galette). And just like the last time, Stewart scored a platinum record.

So it was little surprise to Kosh when “Rod the Mod,” as the fanzines dubbed him, turned to him for yet another album cover. As a couple of expat Brits in the middle of creating new lives for themselves far from their homeland, Stewart and Kosh by this time had become occasional lunch partners too. Of course, watching Stewart zoom up in his black Porsche 911 Turbo in front of Ye Olde King’s Head pub in Santa Monica (their favorite watering hole) usually meant that Stewart’s wallet would somehow mysteriously fail to materialize when it came time to pay the tab. Yet the two got on well, if perhaps occasionally fueled by more than their fair share of Bass Ale and Guinness Extra Stout.

Despite the commercial success and relatively pleasant working relationship that resulted from their first two vinyl collaborations, however, the third time was definitely not the charm for Rod Stewart and Kosh. On Atlantic Crossing and A Night on the Town, Stewart’s presence had not been required to create the cover art (both were drawings). For Foot Loose & Fancy Free, it was.

Stewart had agreed to be photographed in a (for him) stereotypically debauched, semicomatose pose while sprawled across an unmade motel room bed as an overflowing bathtub flooded the premises. The singer loved the concept when Kosh initially pitched it to him. Stewart got the humor of it all, plus it would give him a chance to poke a little fun at his well-publicized partying persona.

But by the end of the first day of the shoot there was no sign of the enigmatic singer inside of Kosh’s Hollywood production studio. Just plenty of water, a hell of a set, and at least one ownerless shoe.

As day number two rolled around, with Kosh bringing back all the well-paid hair, makeup, and lighting crews, still no Stewart. By day three Kosh was through. It wasn’t that he had never been forced to deal with the absences of a recording artist before—he had worked with the Stones and the notoriously tardy Keith Richards on several occasions. But at least good ol’ Keef always turned up soon enough, certainly never missing days at a stretch without bothering to report in. In the current situation the meter was running on the Stewart project, and Warner Bros. had already made it clear to Kosh that they were not happy about the hefty bill being run up.

Finally getting through to Stewart’s manager Billy Gaff on the phone, Kosh laid it on the line as straight as he could.

“Look, Warner is getting really upset about this,” he said, hoping to light some kind of fire. “They’re in so far for about sixty grand.”

Mere afterthoughts until Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles came along in 1967, the cardboard jackets surrounding vinyl albums suddenly began to matter. By the mid- to late seventies elaborate, expensive-to-produce LP covers and their associated inserts such as posters, stickers, and booklets had become commonplace. With recent releases by all sorts of front-line music acts—from Earth, Wind & Fire to Yes to Led Zeppelin—selling millions of copies with extraordinarily rendered artwork and sleeves, the better a record’s packaging looked, the thinking went, the better the chances were to increase sales.

Yet even by 1977’s fanciful, free-spending standards by the major record labels, the cost of creating Rod Stewart’s album art on his latest project was becoming a problem. By comparison, Kosh’s design work for the Eagles on the acclaimed Hotel California album package from the year before, which included an extravagant gatefold and poster, cost only $42,000 for the finished product.

“I’ll see what I can do,” came Gaff’s reply.

Just to be on the safe side, however, Kosh also placed a strategic call to Mo Ostin, the president of Warner Bros. Records, to keep him up to date on Stewart’s wayward tendencies. No need in having the boys at the record label pissed off for some reason at the man with the sketchpad—better to stay on their good side. Kosh knew that he undoubtedly would have further business with them down the road on other albums by other artists.

“You know, you’ve got a really difficult client here,” Kosh began, stating the painfully obvious.

Ostin let out a sigh. He needed no reminding.

“Why do you think we call him Rod the Sod?” he wryly responded. Sod, with its roots in the word “sodomite,” was British slang for a brat, among less flattering things.

“Well, are you going to cover my ass, then?” Kosh asked while laughing, the double entendre of his question hard to miss.

“Yes, son,” Ostin replied.

By day four, however, the powers-that-be had apparently done their jobs. Rod Stewart, however grudgingly, dutifully appeared at the photographic studio on Vine Street (directly across from Capitol Records and next door to the legendary Hollywood Canteen) where Kosh, crew, and a waterlogged set had been sitting idly by for the better part of a workweek. It was the defining moment everyone had been waiting for, the big payoff. Excitement filled the air. Validation for a job well done seemed imminent.

Yet after taking one look at all that had been so carefully, so painstakingly crafted on his behalf and at his behest, Stewart suddenly had other ideas.

“Nah, I don’t want to do this anymore,” he said with a wave of his hand. “I just want a picture of me face.”

Kosh couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Did the guy have any idea what went into creating something like this? Let alone that it would make a brilliant album cover?

But after an uncomfortable exchange, with a pouting Stewart ultimately turning away from Kosh like a little kid who knew he had done wrong but didn’t care, the short discussion between the two onetime North Londoners abruptly ended. The hugely expensive motel room set would be no more. Rod the Sod would indeed have his way. Several days later Kosh and photographer friend Jim Shea found themselves at the top of the Hollywood Hills on Mulholland Drive taking a picture of Stewart’s face, just as ordered—something that originally could have been done for a fraction of the cost. But for Kosh, the client—even one as stubborn and self-absorbed as Rod Stewart—was always right.

Most of the time anyway.

WHILE JOHN KOSH BUSIED HIMSELF WITH ROD STEWART’S album-cover antics, Waddy Wachtel had problems of his own to deal with just a few blocks down the street from Kosh’s Sunset Boulevard office.

Having agreed to coproduce Warren Zevon’s next album with Jackson Browne at the Sound Factory, the project had gone relatively smoothly most of the way. The hard-drinking, fast-living, often-abrasive Zevon, who was usually too much for most people to handle, actually listened to Wachtel, just as Browne had predicted. Zevon liked and respected Wachtel not only for his premier musicianship but also because of his no-nonsense attitude. The guitarist would readily call bullshit whenever he saw or heard it, no matter how famous or cantankerous his employer might be. He had serious guts in a music business where fear usually governed the tongue. There was nothing artificial or contrived about Waddy Wachtel—what you saw is what you got. He was loyal too. And funny, often inadvertently. All of which had endeared him to the mercurial, temperamental Zevon ever since their days playing together for the Everly Brothers.

But the current issue for Wachtel as coproducer had nothing to do with Zevon; instead, it had everything to do with one of the tracks on Zevon’s new album, Excitable Boy. After many different combinations of session drummers and bass players had given it a shot—including local L.A. stalwarts such as Russ Kunkel, Jeff Porcaro, Michael Botts, and Gary Mallaber on drums, along with Bob Glaub and Lee Sklar on bass—Wachtel and Zevon had thrown up their hands. Though not planned as anything other than an album cut, the rhythm portion of “Werewolves of London” still needed to be right.

Written a couple of years prior with nonsensical lyrics by Wachtel and Zevon about a swarm of suave-yet-lethal werewolves out on the town in London dining at places such as a Chinese restaurant and Trader Vic’s—even walking with the Queen—the song was purely a romp. There were no hidden meanings or agendas or ironic characterizations. But it also had an undeniably catchy riff that Wachtel’s friend Leroy Marinell had come up with. The tune materialized one day when Wachtel stopped by Zevon’s house for a few minutes while out running errands. When Zevon happened to mention to Wachtel that Phil Everly had encouraged him to write a song with the odd title of “Werewolves of London,” Wachtel asked quizzically, “You mean like, ahh-ooo?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Zevon replied, laughing at Wachtel’s attempt at howling.

“That’s easy, man,” Wachtel said, a bolt of creativity zapping through him. “Roy, play that guitar figure you’ve been fooling around with for the past year.”

As Marinell did so, picking out a simple-yet-mesmerizing eight-note pattern over and over on his acoustic guitar—dut-duh dut-duh dut-dut-dut-duh—Wachtel began making up words.

“I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand,” Wachtel sang off the top of his head, “walking through the streets of Soho in the rain.”

Before anyone knew what was happening, Wachtel suddenly had the entire first verse of the song done.

“He was lookin’ for a place called Lee Ho Fooks. Gonna get a big dish of beef chow mein.”

As they all jumped in on singing a big round of ahh-ooo’s and then the words “werewolves of London,” the three collapsed in hysterics. Zevon, for one, loved it.

“That’s great,” he exclaimed.

“Really?” a surprised Wachtel said, who thought it was all just a big goof. “Okay, well, there’s your first verse. I gotta go to town.”

And with that, Wachtel was gone, forgetting the song within minutes.

But after Wachtel’s visit, Zevon continued to work on the rest of the lyrics, finally completing them sometime later. But rather than putting it on the first solo album that Zevon had done with Browne as his producer, Browne wanted to save “Werewolves of London” for another time, perhaps on Zevon’s next album.

“We need room right now for your more important stuff like ‘Hasten Down the Wind,’ ‘Carmelita,’ and ‘Mohammed’s Radio,’” he explained.

Unfortunately for all concerned, the album, titled simply Warren Zevon, promptly vanished at retail in 1976. But it did lead directly to Zevon’s reputation as a tunesmith to contend with among those in the know in the music business, leaving Linda Ronstadt and others clamoring to record his work.

In the fall of 1977, when it came time to cut Zevon’s next LP, Excitable Boy, there was “Werewolves of London,” still waiting for its turn on vinyl. But, as before, it needed the right bass and drum feel. Though Zevon, Browne, and Wachtel had gotten plenty of decent versions of the song out of the various session musician combos they kept bringing in, to Wachtel at least, the song continued to come up short. It needed to be played straight up.

“I think it’s really good like it is,” Browne offered.

“No, man, it’s too cute. It’s got to be heavy,” Wachtel said.

After the studio cleared out one afternoon following another failed attempt, Wachtel sat in a back office by himself looking depressed. As he wracked his brain about whom he could find to come in and do “Werewolves” the right way, Wachtel heard a voice coming from behind him. It was Jorge Calderón, his old pal from the early days with Keith Olsen over at Sound City. Calderón—perhaps Zevon’s best friend ever since he had helped a drunk, keyless Zevon get back inside his apartment by jokingly saying, “Don’t worry, I’m Puerto Rican. I can get into anybody’s house”—had stopped by to check on the album’s progress and to cheer Zevon on.

“Hey, Waddy, how’re you doing?” Calderón said brightly, extending his hand.

“Oh, man, Jorge,” Wachtel replied, shaking his head, “you know, we’ve gone through six or seven different rhythm sections on “Werewolves of London,” and we can’t get a fucking track. A song so simple, and they all play too much.”

Calderón nodded. A quiet, astute, musician’s musician, perhaps his best attribute was being a good listener, whether it be to a friend in need or to the nuances of the music itself. Having played many a song with many a band, he knew exactly what Wachtel meant. Simple songs are sometimes the hardest for rhythm sections to play because they instinctively want to spice things up. The trick is to find a drummer and bassist combo who is into laying it all down old-school style, with a hard beat, a big groove, and little or no extraneous fills or runs. To Calderón it obviously needed to be a pair who had played together for a long time and had a natural, almost organic approach.

And then it dawned on him.

“How about Mick and John?” Calderón suggested, referring to the rock-solid, joined-at-the-hip pairing of Mick Fleetwood and John McVie. Through Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks during the Buckingham Nicks era and beyond, Wachtel already knew both Fleetwood and McVie, as did Jorge Calderón.

For their part, Fleetwood and McVie were as unadorned and groove-heavy as any rock-and-roll rhythm battery in the business, which had especially pleased Keith Olsen when recording the Fleetwood Mac LP at Sound City several years earlier. Just like on that record’s first hit, “Over My Head,” Fleetwood and McVie knew precisely how to provide a song with a simple-yet-powerful foundation that allowed the instrumentation and voices to stand out. That ability was the duo’s trademark. Of course, given that by the fall of 1977 they were also now in one of the biggest bands in the world because of the success of Rumours, their interest in playing on a cartoonish album cut for Warren Zevon—hardly a household name—could well be nada.

“That’s a great idea,” Wachtel said, his eyes opening wide. “But would they even be available?”

Having just returned from hanging out with Mick and the rest of Fleetwood Mac in Miami at one of the band’s huge outdoor concerts, Calderón was now one of Fleetwood’s best friends too. So Calderón called Fleetwood and passed along the info about Zevon and Wachtel’s song predicament. With Fleetwood surprisingly expressing interest and, more so, actually knowing all about Zevon, Wachtel then gave the drummer a call to nail down the details of the session.

“You want us to come there and play with you guys? Oh, Waddy, that’s a real honor,” Fleetwood said gushingly. “John and I would love to.”

With Mick Fleetwood being one of the most famous drummers on the planet by this point, to Wachtel the over-the-top compliment didn’t quite make sense.

“What? Uh, yeah, well just get down here, would ya?” he replied with his characteristic bluntness.

Once Fleetwood and McVie set up their instruments and started playing around seven o’clock at night along with Wachtel (lead guitar), Zevon (piano), and Wachtel and Browne’s friend Danny Kortchmar on rhythm guitar (whom Wachtel had fought for on the Carole King tour), they all knew within seconds that it was the right combination. Finally. The corny monster tune now had a hook and a groove that just wouldn’t quit.

But, then, neither would Mick Fleetwood.

At the end of the second take Wachtel walked over to the control room and mentioned to coproducer Jackson Browne that he thought maybe they had what they needed. But Browne felt they should do a few more takes, just to have some solid choices to pick from. Except that a few takes then turned into dozens, and the next thing everyone knew, it was five o’clock in the morning.

An exhausted Wachtel approached Fleetwood, who was sitting behind his drum kit, looking game for even more.

“I think we’re done,” Wachtel said, hoping Fleetwood and everyone else would go home so he could record his guitar solo for the song.

“We’re never done, Waddy,” a wild-eyed, sweat-soaked Fleetwood said in his growling British accent.

By seven o’clock that morning, however, they really were done. Wachtel and Browne could take no more and agreed that, after a monstrous twelve-hour recording session and out of almost sixty takes, take number two really was the best of the bunch. And after Wachtel laid down his nasty Les Paul guitar solo, that was that—until the suits at Warner Bros. Records got ahold of the song.

With stellar compositions such as “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner,” “Accidentally Like a Martyr,” “Nighttime in the Switching Yard,” and “Lawyers, Guns and Money,” the Excitable Boy album was filled with examples of Zevon’s unique and exquisitely sophisticated songwriting talent. No one could come up with an offbeat musical idea or phrase like he could and make it both funny and poignant at the same time. But none of that mattered to the execs; instead, the one and only cut they thought could be a hit was “Werewolves of London,” something that enraged both Wachtel and Zevon. It was just a joke song, not even close to Zevon’s best work—didn’t anyone understand that?

Yet “Werewolves of London” did indeed become Zevon’s first Top Forty hit, blasting out of radios everywhere during the spring of 1978. It was also his only song to ever make the Top Forty, leaving most of the general public forever unaware of Zevon’s true brilliance.