Warren Zevon has enlisted the aid of authors Hunter S. Thompson, Carl Hiaasen, Paul Muldoon and Mitch Albom in writing lyrics for his new album, My Ride's Here, scheduled for release May 7th.

"It's ideal because I'm not very interested in writing lyrics, and I never have been," says Zevon. "Some authors are just like spigots you turn on and out come words, lots and lots of words. All you have to do is edit a little bit. I'm fundamentally lazy, so it works out really well."

The song "Basket Case" shares a title with a Hiaasen novel and is one of the hit singles performed by the book's fictional washed-up band, Jimmy Stoma and the Slut Puppies. "We were just trying to come up with some lyrics that would have been appropriately offensive in the Eighties and, in [Zevon's] case, with some music that an Eighties band would have done," says Hiaasen. "It was funny because in the novel, a running joke is that the lead singer of the band always had two bass players, because he believed you could never have enough bass. And so Warren very dutifully put two bass parts on the song, which you can hear. I was pretty tickled by the whole thing."

In partnering with the authors, Zevon adopted a case-by-case approach to the collaborations, allowing the process to proceed naturally. "It's different with everybody I work with," he says. "With Carl, we talk on the phone about an idea. We never talk in person about songwriting, only about bonefish. We talk on the phone a little about it -- he'll fax or email some lyrics I'll make some suggestions or I'll just make a musical demo right away and send it back and that gives him a better idea of what we're going for. It also works that way for Paul Muldoon. It's generally an editing process. What Hunter Thompson remarked when we were working, he said, 'I see it's like headline writing. Every word counts like headline writing.' I said, 'That's it!'"

Written with Albom prior to starting the album, "The Hockey Song" features The Late Show With David Letterman's Paul Shaffer on keyboards and Letterman on backing vocals. The song celebrates that sport's "goons" -- players whose primary objective on ice is to "hit somebody." "They're mad at me," says Zevon of the National Hockey League. "They say it's celebrating a violent aspect of the NHL that doesn't even exist. And Mitch is the guy who wrote Tuesdays With Morrie . . . Hello, you don't come with a much bigger heart than that."

The track listing for My Ride's Here:

Sacrificial Lambs
Basket Case (with Carl Hiaasen)
Lord Byron's Luggage
Macgillicuddy's Reeks (with Paul Muldoon)
You're A Whole Different Person When You're Scared (with Hunter S. Thompson)
The Hockey Song (with Mitch Albom)
Genius
Laissez Moi Tranquille
I Have to Leave
My Ride's Here

COLIN DEVENISH
(April 23, 2002)