Warren Zevon humor to wed geopolitical subtexts to hard-boiled narratives. Tracks from this album received heavy FM airplay, and the single release "Werewolves of London", which featured Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, was a relatively lighthearted version of Zevon's signature macabre outlook and a No. 21 success. The critic Dave Marsh, in "The Rolling Stone Record Guide" (1979), called Zevon "one of the toughest rockers ever to come out of Southern California". "Rolling Stone" record reviews editor Paul Nelson called the album one of the most significant releases of the 1970s and placed him alongside Neil Young, Jackson Browne, and Bruce Springsteen
The Wallflowers the band decided to record in Atlanta, Georgia, which is where their producer for this album, Brendan O'Brien, is based. O'Brien also contributed on guitar. Fred Eltringham joined the Wallflowers as their new drummer. Jakob Dylan wrote the songs, of which keyboardist Rami Jaffee has said: "What I did notice is that kind of upbeat song with some pretty scary lyrics." Dylan painted the album's cover art himself. On October 14, 2004, the Warren Zevon tribute album "" was released, on which the Wallflowers covered Zevon's 1978 song "Lawyers, Guns and Money." In promotion of the album, the Wallflowers performed