(Credit: Alamy)
Mon 15 September 2025 21:45, UK
Warren Zevon was one of the more unsuspecting presences in the LA music scene. Linda Ronstadt even once described him as someone who “hardly lifted his eyes off the floor”. His shyness meant it was his music that did all the talking.
But this also meant that most of it was free to be interpreted however people pleased. People like Ronstadt loved his songs because there was also this mystery around them all. Like discovering a painting by an artist whose identity was mostly concealed. You knew how it made you feel, but you rarely knew the original intent behind it, which is also why songs like ‘Werewolves of London’ became so popular.
Bob Dylan once described Zevon as “a musician’s musician, a tortured one”. Coming from Dylan, the self-professed curator of so-called tortured poetry, that comment probably said more about Zevon’s dark wit than anything else. Which is also a mainstay of ‘Werewolves of London’. Now, it’s no secret that Zevon is funny in a different way than most of his peers. But his wit is also what makes people regard the opening line as one of the best in all of history: “I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand.”
The title itself – which naturally speaks to some kind of darker, London underbelly – came from Phil Everly, who drew inspiration from the 1935 film, Werewolf of London. Thus was borne a chic, suave werewolf character that destroys and mutilates, but looks good while doing it. A beautifully brutal fashionista whose movement catches on, spawning into some kind of dance craze centred around being dark, but cool.
Pair that with Jackson Browne, and you’ve got yourself one of the most sensually endearing hits in history. According to Browne himself, the whole idea was how hedonistic pleasures become dark, tragic, almost, but branch out into cultural moments. “It’s about a really well-dressed, ladies’ man, a werewolf preying on little old ladies,” he said.
Continuing, “In a way, it’s the Victorian nightmare, the gigolo thing. The idea behind all those references is the idea of the ne’er do-well who devotes his life to pleasure: the debauched Victorian gentleman in gambling clubs, consorting with prostitutes, the aristocrat who squanders the family fortune. All of that is secreted in that one line: ‘I’d like to meet his tailor.’”
The humour is what brings it to life – and also what brings its hidden meaning to the surface. And, whether it was intended or not, it comes from the way Zevon’s wit comments on how we, as a society, as music lovers, process the darker, more tragic sides of culture, especially when they relate to class and privilege. The “hairy-handed gent who ran amok in Kent”, walking around, “preying on little old ladies”, also has perfect hair and a charisma about him.
The focus on these parts trivialises the darker elements, but it’s also so lighthearted that the deeper meaning doesn’t actually mean anything sinister. As Zevon said whenever he’d introduce it, this is “a dumb song for smart people”. It’s meant to lead by feeling first; everything else is background. And in the process, the chorus of howls became more of a mantra of the simple pleasures of fun than anything broadly commenting on society at large.
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