History of Sorts

The song with the best opening line in Music history.

“I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand”

“Werewolves of London” began as a joke by Phil Everly of The Everly Brothers, who suggested the idea to Warren Zevon in 1975—more than two years before the recording sessions for Excitable Boy. After watching the 1935 film Werewolf of London, Everly proposed that Zevon turn the title into a song, even imagining it as a novelty dance craze.

Zevon developed the concept with collaborators LeRoy P. Marinell and Waddy Wachtel. The trio wrote the song in roughly 15 minutes, each contributing lyrics that were transcribed by Zevon’s wife, Crystal Zevon. Despite the speed of its creation, none of them initially took the song seriously.

That changed when Zevon’s friend Jackson Browne saw the lyrics and recognized their potential. Browne began performing “Werewolves of London” live, helping to build early interest. Around the same time, T Bone Burnett also performed the song during the first leg of Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue tour in autumn 1975. Burnett’s version featured improvised lyrics referencing figures from classical Hollywood, as well as personalities such as Jimmy Hoffa, Marilyn Chambers, and Linda Lovelace. Although both “Werewolves of London” and “Excitable Boy” were considered for Zevon’s 1976 album Warren Zevon, neither track was included.

Recording the song proved unusually difficult. Wachtel later described it as “the hardest song to get down in the studio” he had ever worked on, though he completed his guitar solo in a single take. The team experimented with at least seven different musician lineups before settling on contributions from Christine McVie and Mick Fleetwood of Fleetwood Mac. Musicians including Bob Glaub and Russ Kunkel auditioned, but Zevon rejected them, feeling their playing was “too cute.” Although 59 takes were recorded, Zevon and Browne ultimately chose the second take for the final mix. The session stretched overnight, and the extended studio time and personnel costs consumed most of the album’s budget.

The song’s lyrics also reference a real location: “He was looking for the place called Lee Ho Fook’s / Gonna get a big dish of beef chow mein” points to Lee Ho Fook, formerly located on Gerrard Street in London’s Chinatown. The restaurant, known for its Cantonese cuisine, closed in 2008. In live performances, Zevon often altered the lyric “You better stay away from him, he’ll rip your lungs out, Jim / I’d like to meet his tailor” to “And he’s looking for James Taylor.”

Despite Zevon’s objections—he preferred “Johnny Strikes Up the Band” or “Tenderness on the Block”—Elektra Records selected “Werewolves of London” as the lead single. The decision paid off: the track became a hit, spending over a month on the Billboard Top 40.