Well, we’ve come to the last 24 hours or so of voting in the 2023 Rock And Roll Hall of Fame “fan vote,” and I thought I’d start expanding my territory, so to speak, into talking more often about things other than politics, by taking a look at this year’s Rock Hall vote – in part because it’s a pretty fascinating class and the decision-making was definitely not easy.
Here we come to the first of my five nominees, and the one that genuinely surprised me the most when I ended up going with him over George Michael, Iron Maiden, The Spinners, etc. The reason why is simply this: Zevon’s music but also the personality that informed it and the circle of musicians he was primarily part of – the Rolling Stone darlings of southern California in the 70’s, Linda Ronstadt and The Eagles and Jackson Browne and that whole circle of people – was a profound influence on all of those acts and hundreds more of similar type, and in being so holds primary responsibility for about a third of the music business in the 70s with resonating cascades still being felt today.
Zevon is my “dark horse” pick for the year, as much for his own work as for the work he inspired among friends and fans from Glenn Frey and Don Henley to REM, his collaborations and songs written for others, and also for his status as a “musician’s musician” or “songwriter’s songwriter” along the lines of Leonard Cohen perhaps, or John Prine, or Randy Newman; an artist you recognize almost more for their influence than for their own work, one who turns up on the lips of the people in your music collection far more often than it does in your actual music collection. His style, too, falls in line with those artists and other contemporaries and colleagues like Prine, Newman, Neil Young, and Bruce Springsteen – the storyteller and troubadour and slightly-off-average-joe, particularly the way he can pull powerful and poignant moments out of the chaotic banality of day to day life with just a few words and the right chord.
Zevon had and still has a ton of respect from some of the heaviest hitters in the game both musically and “politically” within the business (RS has always been in the tank for him), and of all this year’s nominees I’d expect Zevon to have the best shot if Jann Wenner decides to exercise some kind of power and override the fan vote. No disrespect to Zevon – the mainstream has always sucked – but without a straight nomination I don’t see him getting in on a popular wave. There likely aren’t two hundred thousand people on this planet who could name a Warren Zevon song that isn’t “Werewolves of London,” and there probably aren’t half that many who could bring the tune of one to mind on demand. Not to say he didn’t deserve more mainstream accolades, but it is a popular vote after all.
Still so conflicted about this vote that I started writing this entry arguing against including Zevon before remembering I actually voted for him.
