Nice comment Gordon. Very kind.
To make a short story long, one of my oldest/dearest friends is named Johnny and he reminded me of something when I shared this track with him. Back in the old days when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I was into cars, I did some front end body work on his Dad’s '57 Chevy. Ha! You gotta roll with the punches… Dig it!
Thanks! Yeah, all due credit to Warren Zevon. Great songwriter.
My ears are so far from not sufficiently schooled that I can’t pass comment on melody. I think the copyright check must be based on melody since chord progressions are common.
Do you aim to sing the original melody or to be guided by your memory of the original and sing the notes that come natural which may be in key and on pitch but not identical to the original.
I know in my case comments have been made about how I ‘adapted’ the melody, which of is quite by accident rather than design.
Enjoyed that Mr T. To quote your good self no nits from me. Playing and singing spot on.
A good resurrection of the song as well, not heard it in ages ! Cool.
Thanks! Much appreciated.
Thanks for the cool comment! The challenge or goal is to avoid always playing every note in a chord to add some nuance, movement and dynamics to a song. It doesn’t always work out that way though… 
I appreciate the super cool comment, sir!
Thanks Adi! Yeah, I almost went multi-track on this one. Would have been big fun to bang out a lead section. I’m just not digging DAW work these days, especially when my playing needs to get better – at least that needs to be my focus. I did think about isolating the drum track and playing over that with an electric guitar, but I liked the idea of a stripped down version a little better.
Thanks! Yeah, I have a few other WZ “off the beaten path” cover ideas floating around. A very rich catalog of songs to draw from.
It’s hard to say really. With limited vocal range and being slight of wind I just try to keep things musical. Also, as Justin mentions the playing has to sort of go on auto-pilot mode. There isn’t a whole lot of thought going into it.
The song starts off with a D major chord but has a G major feel to it to me. The chords on ultimate-guitar has a C chord as the landing chord after the chorus – which didn’t seem right to me. I changed that to a G major and there were a few other chord changes as well. I also never fretted the high E string on any chord, it was either muted or played open. This changed E min to E min7, etc.
So maybe that’s the secret sauce, change the chords a little bit to better suit your singing and to add a better/different flow/tone to the song.
Thanks TJ! There are a few stray notes in there. If the calms are happy ones, then it’s all good!