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I was sitting in the Hollywood Hawaiian Hotel
I was staring in my empty coffee cup
I was thinking that the gypsy wasn't lyin'
All the salty margaritas in Los Angeles
I'm gonna drink 'em up
And if California slides into the ocean
Like the mystics and statistics say it will
I predict this motel will be standing until I pay my bill
Don't the sun look angry through the trees
Don't the trees look like crucified thieves
Don't you feel like Desperados under the eaves
Heaven help the one who leaves
Still waking up in the mornings with shaking hands
And I'm trying to find a girl who understands me
But except in dreams you're never really free
Don't the sun look angry at me
I was sitting in the Hollywood Hawaiian Hotel
I was listening to the air conditioner hum
It went mmm...
Look away
(Look away down Gower Avenue, look away)
I was staring in my empty coffee cup
I was thinking that the gypsy wasn't lyin'
All the salty margaritas in Los Angeles
I'm gonna drink 'em up
And if California slides into the ocean
Like the mystics and statistics say it will
I predict this motel will be standing until I pay my bill
Don't the sun look angry through the trees
Don't the trees look like crucified thieves
Don't you feel like Desperados under the eaves
Heaven help the one who leaves
Still waking up in the mornings with shaking hands
And I'm trying to find a girl who understands me
But except in dreams you're never really free
Don't the sun look angry at me
I was sitting in the Hollywood Hawaiian Hotel
I was listening to the air conditioner hum
It went mmm...
Look away
(Look away down Gower Avenue, look away)
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I wonder if "the gypsy wasn't lyin'" is a reference to a rehab counselor, because a gypsy is very dubious, as is often the case with rehab counselors who tend have personal experience with addiction. In 12-step programs, a counselor would tell you that if you're an alcoholic, you're gonna keep drinking compulsively ("All the salty margaritas.. gonna drink um up") unless you keep working your 12-step program for life.
" ...sun look angry through the trees... crucified thieves, and Heaven help..." are all spiritual references. Sun represents all-powerful, always present, unassailable god/higher power; the crucified thieves are reminiscent of Jesus on the cross (per the Bible, Jesus was crucified along with two thieves) "Desperado under the eaves" seems to refer to the fact that he's sneaking away from creditors, but in the larger, poetic sense, it means guilty in the eyes of the higher power. Especially in the sense that alcoholism is often a form of escape from matters of conscience.
So he's left listening to the AC hum, but guilty before God (angry sun), awaiting his fate as a mortal.
"Look away down Gower Avenue" is interesting because at one end is Paramount Studios (on Melrose) which could represent fame and the world's stage, and at the other end is the towering church Hollywood Presbyterian which could represent spiritual transition (baptism or funeral)... which way is he looking?
Under the Eaves refers to a shopping center on Sunset Bl. and Gower St. that is called Gower Gulch and is set up with a western theme with boardwalks and eaves!
It is true that Gower St. ends at Melrose where the studio is, but it also goes past a very large cemetery (The Hollywood Forever Cemetery). This can also be a reference to heavenly powers you allude to in paragraph three,
Warren was such a great talent and the line about how California sliding into the ocean but not until he pays his bill at the hotel reminds me of how the always had a clink in his armor or a tweaked wheel. I reference the title of one of his albums "Bad Luck in Dancing School) LOL.
Lastly, he has that haunting lyric similar to "Dixie".
"I wish I was in Dixie in Dixieland I'll make my stand, look away, look away."
Perhaps Warren was going to make his stand there in Hollywood, look away, look away.
Dizzoh notes that Gower is synonymous with "drugstore cowboy" and it seems like WZ feels this tongue in cheek sense of desperado in running out on his hotel bill, so he's contrasting his misdemeanors with the Jame's brother's legendary and heroic efforts to fight a corrupt/opportunistic authority.
I also wonder if Warren's referring to the Double E in "Poor, poor, pitiful me" was also a nod to Dylan.
Don't the moon look good, mama,
Shinin' through the trees?
Don't the brakeman look good, mama,
Flagging down the "Double E"?
Don't the sun look good
Goin' down over the sea?
Don't my gal look fine
When she's comin' after me?
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"And if California slides into the ocean..." This may refer to the pressure he's feeling to pay his bills because even if the world ends, that damn motel will be there, standing strong and on his ass until he pays the bill.
"Don't the sun look angry through the trees..." Perhaps this is referring to him still coming up with nothing as the time is quickly passing him by and the sun is coming up to ensure this. The trees then appear to him as crucified thieves, kind of a sign that if he just up and left without paying the damn bill, he would soon suffer the consequences of stealing.
Then the famous title line might refer to him feeling like a desperado, trapped and wanting to run away from the motel and all of his problems. In the case he does, heaven help him because he will suffer major consequences just as the outlawed desperados did.
Perhaps the next verse is just him feeling down and just going over his problems that are pestering him like not being able to find a good girl and just getting older and possible alcoholism with the shaking hands and earlier the margaritas. And with all these problems, just as anyone else, you are only really free from them when your dreaming.
Then the famous air-conditioner part makes me think that with all these struggles trying to write this song, he just sits there and eventually starts listening to the air conditioner. As he begins listening, the song all comes together as it begins humming out the melody in his mind.
Don't know if that's what Zevon meant, but it sounds pretty legit to me. Heaven only knows what this beautiful song means.
This song is quite obvious to me, and it is indeed perhaps one of Zevon's most touching and beautiful songs and along with Frozen Notes maybe one of his saddest. From my perspective its a fatalistic ode to modern society, and leaving with that fatalism and just enjoy life. A message of hope from the cynic, filled with Zevon's usual dark sarcasm, lines such as:
"And if California slides into the ocean
Like the mystics and statistics say it will
I predict this motel will be standing until I pay my bill"
You find the essence of everything Zevon did in that line "Except in Dreams you're never really free." We are all trapped in this flawed reality, the song is an ode to that, that doomed and imperfect reality we exist in, and as others have noted, you have to listen to the humming fade and evolve into the the string accompaniment to believe it.
I just find that line so literate, so verbose, I can't describe it. Hearing excellent songwriting from People like Warren and Ellis Paul just makes some of the crap that actually gets people famous even more disappointing.
The part about the Hollywood Hawaiian Hotel is reminiscent of his story "THE EIGHT-STORY KISS"
Which is a sort of ode to the Don CeSar Hotel in St. Pete Beach Florida.
Also the line "like the mystics and statistics say it will" sounds like the kind of intentionally fun but meaningful line
Tom Robbins would write. All in all an incredible song. Just read a biography of Warren Zevon and about
his relationship with the author Hunter S. Thompson, who knew Tom Robbins, so...
Either way, Zevon is a god among mortals in the history of rock.