Warren Zevon was a talented musician and songwriter who had a lot of friends in the business, but didn't have the commercial success that his contemporaries had.

One day in 1975 he, along with guitarists Waddy Wachtell and LeRoy Marinell, are just goofing around with their guitars when someone asks them what they're playing. Zevon, referring back to a joke he'd recently heard, told that person that they were writing "Werewolves of London". The joke actually started to take shape, but was quickly abandoned.

That is, until other artists picked it up. According to Wachtel, it was one of the toughest recordings he'd ever done, but the appeal of the finished product—to practically everyone but Zevon—was undeniable. It became Zevon's highest-charting single, and even at that, it wasn't the monster (heh) hit people remember it being.

Click here for a transcript of this episode.