A Literary Answer to Lyricist’s Block

Warren Zevon’s got no complaints. Three decades after making his debut album, and 24 years since his only Top 10 album, “Excitable Boy,” the singer-songwriter still gets to make records when the mood strikes, and perform live for a clutch of die-hard loyalists in cities all over the country. What’s not to like?

“I’ve got the greatest job in the world,” says Zevon, 55. “Even if I’m scratching out a living, I know I can play this music on a guitar in a bar for the rest of my life.”

This is not the disingenuous, faux-humble jive of a fat and content rock star. Zevon, who emerged in the mid-’70s as the most literate and subversive songwriter of the peaceful, easy L.A. cabal that included Linda Ronstadt and Jackson Browne, has fallen from grace so many times that it’s like some bad cosmic joke. In 1981, he appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone. Now he operates well under Carson Daly’s radar and just does what strikes his fancy.

Lately, that’s involved collaborating on songs with writers as disparate as crime novelist Carl Hiaasen, Irish poet Paul Muldoon, bassist-producer Larry Klein and the great gonzo Hunter S. Thompson. All contributed songs to Zevon’s new album, “My Ride’s Here,” a record that manages to be ebullient and barbed at the same time--a familiar balancing act for Zevon. The key difference this time is that most of the words aren’t his.

“A lot of the time it’s an awful, unnatural struggle for me to write lyrics,” says Zevon. “I think of it as a necessary evil. If it gets business-like, I’m unhappy with the results. I have to wait for some kind of inspiration, and that means a lot of extreme frustration, because I’m not being useful.”

Instead, Zevon turned to writers such as Hiaasen, the author of “Strip Tease” and “Native Tongue” who also co-wrote songs for Zevon’s 1995 album “Mutineer.”

“[R.E.M. guitarist] Peter Buck told me to read him,” says Zevon. “By the time I got to ‘Native Tongue,’ I was such a fan I bribed the guy at the bookstore to sell me an advance copy. Then I looked in it and I saw my name on the copyright page.”

Hiaasen, as it turned out, was a Zevon fan. Now, the two go fishing in the Florida Keys and write songs like “Basket Case,” a track on “My Ride’s Here” that shares its title with Hiaasen’s latest book and a fictional record featured in the novel. “The song is supposed to be the song of the rock band in the book,” says Zevon. “The lyrics are actually printed in the novel.”

The acclaimed Muldoon, who is the director of the creative writing program at Princeton University, is another author who has bled his ardor for Zevon into the pages of his work. In one poem featured in a series called “Sleeve Notes,” Muldoon professed his love for “Excitable Boy.” Zevon read it and contacted Muldoon about writing with him. “We had lunch and I prevailed upon him to write some songs,” says Zevon. “He sent me his books, all of which I already had.”

Zevon is the kind of voracious reader who will scour the city for that perfect hardback edition of Conrad’s “Nostromo,” so the opportunity to work with writers that he loves has been a fan’s dream. “Part of this rather savage criticism I’ve seen about the album is that people think there is something deeply lazy about collaborating with all these writers,” says Zevon. “But the simple answer is that I love singing their words.”

Not all of Zevon’s authorial collaborations have been so Tin Pan Alley-smooth. Working with old friend Hunter Thompson, a man with a legendary disdain for deadlines, has been an exercise in forbearance for Zevon. “He will be utterly responsible if you need him to be,” says Zevon. “If you show up at his place in Aspen at 2 a.m. with a guitar, ready to write the lyrics, that might not be the night you’ll write the song. But by golly, he’ll call you on the phone at 9 in the morning six weeks later and start reciting lyrics.”

Zevon also wangled David Letterman into contributing some lusty cheering to “Hit Somebody (The Hockey Song)”--a selection that was co-written with “Tuesdays With Morrie” author Mitch Albom.

“He had a lot of questions,” says Zevon. “Like, ‘What am I supposed to be? A coach? A disgruntled fan?’ But he did a bunch of takes, and I asked him to do them a bit slower, and he says, ‘Oh, now it starts!’”