Song of the Day 9/11: Warren Zevon, “Accidentally Like a Martyr”
Yesterday he was a provocateur. Today he’s a martyr.
I’m talking about the guy who said, “I can’t stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that – it does a lot of damage.” The English word actually dates from 1908. You’d think a college student, which is what he was when he started his propaganda outfit, would have known how to look that up.
“Accidentally Like a Martyr” appeared on Warren Zevon’s most popular LP, “Excitable Boy,” released in 1978. Rock critic Robert Christgau praised the album but said, “No one has yet been able to explain to me what ‘accidentally like a martyr’ might mean – answers dependent on the term ‘Dylanesque’ are not acceptable – and I have no doubt that that’s the image Linda [Ronstadt] will home in on.”
The phrase might be inscrutable, but Christgau was wrong on the other counts. Ronstadt, whose covers did a lot to introduce Zevon to mainstream audiences, never recorded the tune, and later voiced regrets about it. Dylan, meanwhile, took the title of his 1997 album “Time Out of Mind” from the lyrics, and played the song in concert 22 times in 2002, after Zevon revealed the terminal case of mesothelioma that killed him the next year. Jerry Garcia covered it, too, as did the Philly band the War on Drugs.
Yep. ‘Inscrutable’ about sums it up for me.
Did Zevon ever discuss the song? Oh, wait, I’ll surf the intertubes for an answer…
Here’s what I found:
“Like many of Zevon’s songs about love and relationships, this song is a mournful ballad about romantic loss. The song mostly consists of the singer lamenting about opportunities lost and times long gone.”
Well, yes, that was obvious. Still have no clue what ‘accidentally like a martyr’ means.
I never understood why Mohammad had a radio, either.