With his eponymous 1976 album, Warren Zevon had established himself as one of the distinctive singer-songwriters of the era. Fueled by a lurid intelligence and gonzo sense of humor, as well a growing drinking problem, Zevon was about to enter the most successful and turbulent period of his life and career. While he’d had years of material stockpiled for his Asylum debut, his second effort for the label found him dusting off old songs and writing new ones in the middle of the recording, which was again produced by his friend and champion Jackson Browne—who enlisted the help of guitarist Waddy Wachtel to wrangle Zevon during what provided to be a series of chaotic sessions at Hollywood’s Sound Factory. The album’s centerpiece, “Accidently Like a Martyr,” was a pop tune Zevon had reworked over the years, slowing it into a magisterial ballad. But six of the nine songs on Excitable Boy would be Zevon co-writes—with Browne, with Wachtel, and with old pals like LeRoy Marinell (the gleefully ghoulish title track), David Lindell (the surrealist soldier of fortune narrative “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner”), and Jorge Calderón (the anti-imperialist tale “Veracruz” and the disco groover “Nighttime in the Switching Yard”). The album’s smash, “Werewolves of London,” was born out of a suggestion made by Zevon’s old boss, Phil Everly of The Everly Brothers, that he write a dance number, offering up the title of an old 1930’s English horror movie as a starting point. Zevon, Marinell, and Wachtel would finish off the song, with Fleetwood Mac’s rhythm section of Mick Fleetwood and John McVie coming in to give the track its signature bounce, nailing the song in just a couple passes (though they would, famously, record almost 60 takes). Excitable Boy would capture the extreme poles of Zevon’s songwriting persona, with the title track, a shock number about rape and murder, contrasted by the sweet sentiments of “Tenderness on the Block,” inspired by Zevon’s newborn daughter. At Wachtel’s insistence, a couple vintage numbers Zevon had recut were jettisoned from the LP’s sequence at the last minute. Zevon would instead pen two new songs, the musical call-to-arms “Johnny Strikes Up the Band” and the cloak-and-dagger drama “Lawyers, Guns and Money,” which would serve as bookends to the album. Released in January 1978, Excitable Boy was the success that Zevon—who was more than a decade into his career—had long hoped for. The record hit #8 on the Billboard charts on its way to going gold, spurred by a Top 40 hit in “Werewolves of London,” which peaked at #21 that summer—commercial heights Zevon would never again reach in his lifetime.