WCSX Classic Cuts
Warren Zevon: “Werewolves of London”
The Hook: Ah-oooooooh
Year Released: 1978
Album: Excitable Boy
Writers: LeRoy Marinell, Waddy Wachtel, and Warren Zevon
Stats: Peaked at number-21 on the Billboard Hot 100.
The Background: As Zevon told it, his former employer, Phil Everly of The Everly Brothers asked Warren to write a dance song for him, and suggested the title. Zevon and guitarists LeRoy Marinell and Waddy Wachtel took care of the rest in one 10-minute session, after Wachtel had blurted out the song’s famous “Ah-Oooooh” chorus.
The late Warren Zevon on why and how “Werewolves of London” was written. OC:…ten minutes. :29
“Phil Everly once suggested that we write a dance song for him — that we write a dance song called ‘The Werewolves of London.’ The non sequiter kind of thing began there, and I was in Venice, California with LeRoy Marinell and he was playing that riff, which is all there is to the song, on his guitar. And Waddy Wachtel walked in and said, ‘What are you guys doing?’ And we said, ‘We’re doing the Werewolves of London.’ And Waddy said, ‘You mean, ah-ooooh, those Werewolves of London?’ We said, ‘Yeah, sit down.’ And we were done in ten minutes.”
