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
Warren Zevon title of an anthology of Zevon's recordings, in 2002), with a string section that attests to the lasting influence of Stravinsky on Zevon's work. At about this time, he and the actor Billy Bob Thornton formed a close friendship, catalyzed by their common experiences with obsessive-compulsive disorder and the fact they lived in the same apartment building. One of Zevon's compulsions was buying and hoarding identical gray Calvin Klein T-shirts. In interviews, Zevon described a lifelong phobia of doctors and said he seldom consulted one. He had started working out, and looked physically fit. Shortly before playing at the Edmonton