31 Days of Halloween Hits: "Excitable Boy" by Warren Zevon

by Julian Spivey
As we welcome October with its cool breezes, and - now socially distanced - festivities, we often think of scary movies, pumpkin patches and killers in masks. Rarely, if ever, do you hear anyone say what they’re looking forward to most about the season, is the music. Granted, Halloween music has nowhere near the mega-market that Christmas music has, but it seems that quality trumps quantity in this particular situation. With songs like Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” Halloween season is a heavy hitter when it comes to music! 
 
That’s why we’re celebrating 31 Days of Halloween Hits here at The Word for the entire month of October. Every day we’re going to bring you a great song that fits right in on your Halloween playlist. Some are songs specifically written for the holiday, but others are great selections you can listen to year-around but have a great theme for the spookiest of all holidays. Some of these songs you’ve certainly heard and some are lesser known that we hope to familiarize you with. 

---

Photo: Asylum Records

So, “Werewolves of London” is a riotous good time and “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner” is spooky and ghostly, but “Excitable Boy,” the title track off Warren Zevon’s 1978 album, is the creepiest tale of the trio – because unlike werewolves eating little old ladies or headless mercenaries seeking revenge it’s something that could actually happen in the real world.
​
“Excitable Boy,” written by Zevon and LeRoy Marinell, tells the tale of a young man, possibly suffering from mental issues, who can’t control his urges. The titular character rapes and murders his prom date and then takes the body home, in a Norman Bates-esque way.

The young man is captured but instead of prison is placed in an insane asylum – because as the song sarcastically exclaims, “he’s just an excitable boy!”

The song turns even more ghastly when the man is let out of the asylum after 10 years, digs up the girl’s body and builds a cage out of her bones.

Well, he’s just an excitable boy. 

---