Tuesday Poem: "Detox Mansion" a song by Warren Zevon

Well, I'm gone to Detox Mansion
Way down on Last Breath Farm
I've been rakin' leaves with Liza
Me and Liz clean up the yard

Left my home in Music City
In the back of a limousine
Now I'm doin' my own laundry
And I'm gettin' those clothes clean

Growin' fond of Detox Mansion
And this quiet life I lead
But I'm dying to tell my story
For all my friends to read
Well, it's tough to be somebody
And it's hard to keep from fallin' apart
Up here on Rehab Mountain
We gonna learn these things by heart

Well, I'm gone to Detox Mansion
Way down on Last Breath Farm
I've been rakin' leaves with Liza
Me and Liz clean up the yard

What goes on in Detox Mansion
Outside the rubber room
We get therapy and lectures
We play golf in the afternoon

Well, it's tough to be somebody
And it's hard not to fall apart
Way up on Rehab Mountain
We gonna learn these things by heart

by Jorge Calderón & Warren Zevon

 

NOTE: Warren Zevon was an outlier on the California rock music scene in the early to mid-70s when the scene was dominated by radio-friendly soft rock by singer-songwriters like Jackson Browne. Zevon brought a literacy to his songs that very few were attempting in an era when acts like The Eagles were in the ascendancy.

Zevon struggled with alcoholism and drugs like many other artists and he may have been a lot more commercially successful had he been able to rein in his demons. But the flip side may have been that those demons that plagued him also made him stand out as one of America's great, and to some degree unsung, songwriters.

He was no stranger to self-mockery as he demonstrates with great aplomb in this song. I often wonder if Liz Taylor and Liza Minnelli knew that they were name-checked in this song.

For more information about songwriter, Warren Zevon, see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Zevon

Photo Credit: Elias Stein/Getty Images