Jeannie Needs A Shooter

A great song, genius vocals, great lyrics, somewhat ambiguous meaning-wise, but unflinchingly cool.

Zevon had heard of this Bruce Springsteen song title from his manager, Jon Landau. Warren once said he asked Springsteen about it "many times" until Springsteen said, "You like it so much, why don't you write it?" Zevon wrote a few lines and cut a track and then showed up to Springsteen's house in the middle of the night. Springsteen was asleep on the sofa. Warren played what he had. Springsteen then said "It's nice, but where are all the other verses?" Warren explained he just looked and smiled at that point.

http://warrenzevon.wikia.com/wiki/Jeannie_Needs_A_Shooter

The fact that Jeannie rode off by her dad's side while the narrator was lying mortally injured points to this being a case of the 'Unreliable Narrator' trope. Jeannie wasn't into the narrator, and quite likely the sum total of their intimacy was that she'd allowed him to kiss her once.

Note the narrator says "I knew she'd be mine" and "I wanted Jeannie and I'd have her like I said." This comes in the song before he kisses Jeannie for the first time (or at least the first time without her turning away). These are not a good signs of a healthy relationship! If this is the way the narrator usually went about things, Jeannie's dad (being a lawman) would have known of the narrator's reputation already.

I'll take the narrator at his word that he was shot from behind rather than in the front. It does reinforce the idea that Jeannie's dad was lying in wait for the narrator, no doubt because Jeannie had told her dad the narrator was on his way. Jeannie's dad shot the narrator in the back because if he had ridden out from behind a bush or rocky outcrop at Jeannie's side to confront the narrator, Jeannie would have run the risk of being caught in crossfire, or even deliberately killed by the narrator.

It does smack of irresponsibility to use your own daughter as bait for a dangerous criminal. However, Jeannie herself is something of a hard girl and the plan may have even been her idea. Although in the wrong time period to be a cop herself, she would still have something of a cop mentality due to both inherited personality traits and socialising with her dad's buddies when they dropped by after work while she was growing up.

Another western tale, a little like Dylan and Levy's "Romance in Durango" but much less detailed (actually, like Dylan's own "Drifter's Escape" in that way, getting you to mentally fill in a vivid story with just a couple short, verses).

Narrator wants Jeannie, but her protective father has other ideas. One meaning of the title is him saying she needs him to shoot her dad, and then they'll escape together (the other is straightforwardly sexual).

In any case, she double-crosses him (probably intending to from the beginning) and her father shoots the narrator, presumably fatally. It's an economical lyric even by Warren's standards, with the twist of the shooter literally being the girl's father.

I think this song is about heroin use.