Warren Zevon – Lawyers, Guns and Money

I went home with a waitress the way I always doHow was I to know she was with the Russians, too?

This song is for Song Lyric Sunday for Jim Adams’s blog. This week’s prompt is (drum roll please…) A song with a great opening line suggested by Max of PowerPop. 

By the time Zevon was recording Excitable Boy in late 1977, he’d already built up a reputation in Los Angeles as a brilliant but different character. He’d been Linda Ronstadt’s piano player, he was pals with Jackson Browne, and he was that rare songwriter who could write a melody that would stick, but it would have a line that would make you laugh nervously. The sessions were stacked with heavy hitters—Danny Kortchmar on guitar, Waddy Wachtel as the sonic glue, Russ Kunkel on drums, and Leland Sklar on the bass. Basically, the best of the 1970s L.A. session scene.

Zevon wanted grit, menace, and the feeling that the whole thing could go off the rails at any second. That’s exactly why this song ended up as the closer; it wasn’t made for a radio single, but it was played quite a bit. The track closes the record with a bang after the short story songs of Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner and Werewolves of London. Where those songs work like short stories, Lawyers, Guns, and Money plays like a situation in escalating panic.

Zevon once stated in an interview that this was based on a true story. Zevon and his manager were partying in Mexico when the party decided to take to the road, and it looked like it was “about to hit the fan.” Zevon’s manager feigned a phone call: “Send lawyers.” Zevon jumped in: “And guns… and money.”

I’ve always liked Zevon’s dark songs with a sense of humor. His universe contains a lot of colorful characters. Zevon would go on to write subtler, more introspective songs, but this one, like Werewolves of London, made sure no one could ever mistake him for another singer-songwriter. 

This song is on the great album Excitable Boy, released in 1978. The album peaked at #8 on the Billboard Album Charts and #12 in New Zealand. It was Zevon’s highest-ranking album.

Lawyers, Guns, and Money

I went home with a waitress the way I always doHow was I to know she was with the russians, too?

I was gambling in havana, I took a little riskSend lawyers, guns, and moneyDad, get me out of this, hiyah!

An innocent bystanderSomehow I got stuck between a rock and a hard placeAnd I’m down on my luckYes, I’m down on my luckWell, I’m down on my luck

I’m hiding in Honduras, I’m a desperate manSend lawyers, guns, and moneyThe shit has hit the fan

Send lawyers, guns, and moneySend lawyers, guns, and money

Send lawyers, guns, and money, hiyah!Send lawyers, guns, and money, ow!

…

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

61 thoughts on “Warren Zevon – Lawyers, Guns and Money”

    1. Great lyrics! There is no mistaking him for anyone else period. The title cut to Exitable Boy is probably one of the darkest pop songs I’ve ever heard.

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      2. Oh I never heard that one before! We had them as well. I do have a secret like of them at times I’m ashamed to say.

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      4. You know…I laugh out loud (just like I did when you had that in your comment) and then I think…oh I shouldn’t laugh at that…and then I do it all over again.

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      6. Clive mentioned that today…I always say he was dark…but sometimes I forget the humor he placed in a lot of his songs.

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    2. OKaaaay, now I’ve seen that linked Muppet skit I know why Kermit sings ‘It’s not easy being green.’ Or is that ‘its all too queasy becoming green?’ Kids weren’t smotheringly overly protected in those days were they? I know the dusty battered very Olde Worlde Grimm Tales book my Ma read stories out of were more Del Toro than Disney. In those pages the ugly stepsisters put up/off with more than cramped toes trying to slip/slap/slop into the Prince’s slipper. Thank god the book wasn’t illustrated!

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      1. Totally. Did you see him on the Letterman Show discussing his cancer? What a great guy …. funny, self-deprecating, and accepting of his situation. When Letterman asked him if he knew more about life and death as a result of his cancer, he answered with this line that cracked everyone up, including Zevon himself: “I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years.”

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      2. Yes I saw that…it was so sad but he made it more comfortable. That was a great line though and his advice to “Enjoy Every Sandwich”
        I can’t not listen to “Keep Me In Your Heart” without tearing up a little.

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  5. His song titles and lyrics were unique for sure. They’ve always kept me wondering what they were really about, and how deeply to try and interpret them, or if they were mere random phrases. I had a friend who was a serious Zevon fan, and I didn’t totally understand him either. 🙂

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  6. When I go on vacation, I will not be going to Honduras. Great choice, Max and Warren Zevon was really someone special. Thanks for your suggestion of the theme today as this prompted a lot of good songs.

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  8. Pingback: Warren Zevon – Lawyers, Guns and Money – MobsterTiger

  9. A great choice for a great theme you suggested. Warren was probably the only person who could live up to writing a song titled Genius and that becoming the title of a ‘best of’ album. That’s exactly what he was.

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    1. Thank you Clive! It was either this one or Werewolves of London but I covered that one a few months back… but I like these lyrics as well. I just told someone…I never heard a darker pop song than Excitable Boy….and yes he was a songwriting genius.
      Oh…yours will be going Friday!

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      1. You could probably have mined his catalogue for loads more! He had a dark side to his writing but added his wit and humour to it, which is why I liked him so much.

        Thank you for the heads up – looking forward to Friday 😊

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      2. You brought up a good point that I forget at times. He did have a lot of humor in his songs.

        No problem! It would have been now but I forgot about the SLS…I toyed with using their opening…that would have got me some attention!

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      4. As you see my posts…for the most part…I like obscure, I don’t trust the charts Clive. After growing up in the 1980s…no…I stuck with more alternative.

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      6. Oh a different animal in the 50s through 1980… yea I never was a disco or punk guy either. I like a few songs by each but not the genre. The closest thing to punk I like is The Ramones and The Buzzcocks…but they were more pop/punk.

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      8. Oh I like the Clash Clive…but I never considered them really as “punk” because they could actually play their instruments and didn’t just do bar chords all the way through a song.
        Oh thats right! I forgot about that.

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  10. He was really different, very talented, could write really catchy tunes but I guess was too ‘out there’ for most despite his ability and friends in high places. Besides the obvious ‘Werewolves of London’ ( still a classic) my favorite by him is ‘Muhhamed’s Radio’. But I really haven’t looked deeply into his discography

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    1. My favorite would be the title cut to Excitable Boy….I love that song and a song called Play It All Night Long. He was one of the kings of dark.

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    1. Man he wrote like no other…he wrote like he was talking to you in a regular conversation. Love that line as well. The opening line has a special place in my heart!

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    1. Well Werewolves of London is what got me into him… because that is what the radio played. He has a great catalog like Poor Poor Pitiful Me…yes I like Linda’s version but I love Warren’s version more. Yea I love his lyrics…like I told CB…he writes like he is talking to you like a normal person.

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  20. the late great Warren Zevon, had a great first name…and yeah this was an album of it’s time and has held up…night time in the switching yard is another fave…but, later on in his life I found his keep me in your heart to be my fave Zevon tune…simple and compelling

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    1. LOL… yes he did Warren!
      Warren….I love that song as well and I do get emotional at times when I hear it or see the video.

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  21. I’m still a Werewolves of London man myself..Ahhhh whoooo. My late, late cousin, Cookie, dated Zevon for a brief time when she was living in L.A. back in those times. She hung around the clubs on Sunset and knew some musical folks who lived up in Laurel Canyon and all that craziness. She didn’t talk too much about him, except that he was a weird cat. She was an old Beatnik, so the two probably fitted well together. She got into hard drugs while out there, so she might, or might not have been the gal in the song, Carmalita, but I have no way of proving it, since she’s been gone for many years now, and didn’t give up any secrets. As a matter of fact, her whole life was one big secret, so I’m amazed I know so much about her. She bore a striking resemblance to Carolyn Jones, who played Morticia on the Addams Family TV show; likely, that’s what attracted him to her, or maybe she was the last gal at closing time.

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    1. I remember you talking about her… too bad she didn’t let more secrets slip out. I can only imagine what she saw.
      Oh yes…I had a crush on Carolyn Jones when I was a kid.

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      1. I was skeptical of her adventurous recounts, only because she spent 20 years in LA with minimal contact with her family. She returned in 1978 to Plano with no fanfare: just showed up at her parents and never left. We were not close when young, but she did open up to me about her exploits in California. I didn’t know who Zevon was in 1978, and she brought up the recount of her dating him and some other musicians that hung around the Sunset Strip. She was always way over the top on the wild side of life, even as an old woman. I know a bit about her days in Laurel, or maybe it was Copango Canyon and may include them in a story at a later date.

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      2. Yea I was going to say….it sounds like she had a book worth of adventures…just too bad it evidently took a big toll on her.

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