Songfacts®:

• Warren Zevon's songs often center around characters that contain kernels of his personality, but grossly exaggerated. "Excitable Boy" is about a kid with an extreme case of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder who murders his prom date. He's institutionalized, but when he gets out 10 years later, he digs up her grave and makes a cage from her bones. The whole time, folks pass off this behavior as mere rambunctiousness, saying he's just an excitable boy.
• Zevon described this song a joke set to music. "Why not strum the guitar along with the joke?" he told Newsday. "That's how 'Excitable Boy' got written."
• Zevon wrote this song with his friend LeRoy Marinell, a fellow musician. According to Zevon, the title came about after they had dinner at Marinell's house. Warren was asking why nobody let him play lead guitar, and Marinell responded, "You get good ideas, Warren, but then you get too excited." Zevon's retort: "I'm just an excitable boy."
• "Excitable Boy" is the title track to Warren Zevon's third album. Jackson Browne, who produced Zevon's previous album (Warren Zevon, 1976), returned as producer, this time sharing the production duties with Zevon's main guitarist, Waddy Wachtel. In the Southern California music scene, Zevon was highly regarded among stars like Browne, Don Henley and Linda Ronstadt, but songs about homicidal young men aren't for the masses, so Zevon never became a pop star. He did have a hit though: "Werewolves Of London," also from the Excitable Boy album.
• The female backing singers on "Excitable Boy" are Linda Ronstadt and Jennifer Warnes. Ronstadt gave Zevon a big boost by covering three songs from his self-titled 1976 album: "Hasten Down The Wind," "Carmelita," and "Poor Poor Pitiful Me."