The chorus lays out his dilemma: “There were Swedes to the left of him, Russians to the right/ A Czech at the blue line looking for a fight/ Brains over brawn that might work for you/ But what’s a Canadian farm boy to do?”īuddy’s career progresses, full of “blood on the ice” and many minutes in the penalty box. “There’s always room on our team for a goon,” a scout tells him. Ironically, Buddy’s only way to reach the big-time is to embrace his pugnacious side. But he does prove useful on the ice: “Buddy’s real talent was beating people up.” The song tells the story of Buddy, a would-be hockey star who, unfortunately, isn’t able to master the glamorous aspects of the game. Nor could Albom have imagined who would end up helping Zevon with the song: most of David Letterman’s Late Show band, including Paul Shaffer on organ, with Dave himself belting out the refrain of “Hit somebody!” throughout the proceedings.
“He said, ‘You know, I’d like to do a sports song that nobody has done before.’ And I said, ‘Hockey’ And he said, ‘What?’ And I said, ‘I can’t think of a single hockey song.’ And he said, ‘Great! You should write me one!’” Albom began the process and the two later got together to complete it, with Albom never thinking the song would end up on Zevon’s 2002 album My Ride’s Here. “This song came about when my friend Warren Zevon and I were talking one day,” Albom writes. The song tells the story of a player named Buddy who wanted to play hockey but could only make it as a “Goon” (the enforcers of the game who hit the other players and get into fights while protecting the star players of his team).On his website, Albom explains the origins of the song. “Well, yeah,” he replied, with that deep smirking laugh. He said he was in the recording studio with Paul Shaffer and some guys from David Letterman’s band, and Letterman was there, too, and would it be all right if they changed one of the words in our song? And I loved that Warren loved it.Ī few months later, I was on vacation on a faraway island, and the phone rang in the hotel. He was always asking me to write him a sports song - “Make it hockey,” he’d say, “nobody sings about hockey” - and so one night we sat in the basement with a guitar and a piano and a case of Mountain Dew (Warren’s favorite) and in three hours, we put music to lyrics I had written about a misunderstood hockey goon. His references were Kafka or Vonnegut or Carl Hiaasen. Warren and I became friends in the mid-’90s, when he came to play with a novelty band of writers that I belong to. One of the songs, “ Hit Somebody! (The Hockey Song)” was co-written by the newspaper columnist Mitch Albom. In any event, a few months before Zevon received his fatal diagnosis, he released the album My Ride’s Here. The great Don Giller shared Zevon’s various Letterman appearances, including the now-iconic final appearance where Letterman devoted a whole episode in 2002 to Zevon discussing his then-recent fatal diagnosis of cancer.
Zevon even filled in as the musical director of the show when Paul Shaffer was away a few times. Letterman was a big fan of Zevon and actually intended on the singer to be the first musical guest on his late night series, Late Night With David Letterman (Zevon missed the show for unexplained reasons). So not stuff like appearing on The Simpsons or on Sesame Street, where celebrities regularly make appearances, but cameos that are, well, surprising.Īs you may or may not know, Warren Zevon and David Letterman had a special relationship.
Warren zevon hockey song tv#
This is “Took Me By Surprise,” about surprising cameos in TV shows, movies and songs and we try to figure out why the famous people made the cameos in question. Today, we look at David Letterman’s guest appearance on the Warren Zevon song, “Hit Somebody.”
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