The 1978 single, with its irresistible "ah-ooo" refrain, is trademark Zevon. Laugh-out-loud one-liners stand next to raw and horrific images, and are sometimes even embodied together in a lyric. Take for example the deliciously funny but oddly disturbing piece of alliteration: "Little old lady got mutilated late last night".
This wry, off-kilter slant on things is what set Zevon apart from other singer-songwriters of the era - the Jackson Brownes, Bruce Springsteens and Linda Ronstadts who mentored and admired him through peaks and troughs of moderate fame and relative obscurity.
Excitable Boy, the album from which Werewolves is lifted, marks both Zevon's commercial high point and his most wickedly playful set.
The follow-up to 1976's excellent self-titled LP, it wraps some fairly prickly messages in the comfortable clothing of '70s radio sound, seldom asking too much of a listener more accustomed to standard heartbreakers and road songs.
Zevon's narratives see a Norwegian mercenary of the Congo crisis have his head blown off at the direction of the CIA (Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner), a murdering rapist dig up the bones of his prom-night victim (Excitable Boy), a Mexican family fear for its life in the face of US aggression (Veracruz) and a romance scuttled by cold-war deception (Lawyers, Guns And Money). It's as if he sees no limit to where he might place himself in his quest for inspiration.
And while Johnny Strikes Up The Band and the funky Nighttime In The Switching Yard can been seen as less substantial by comparison, both show another side to Zevon one more frivolous and celebratory than the one that sees nefarious creatures in dark corners.
Well, not just dark corners. He saw a werewolf drinking a pina colada at Trader Vic's!
