Werewolves Of London Ukulele Chords – Warren Zevon. This song uses the chords: D, C, G. You can change the key for free, as needed.
Werewolves Of London Ukulele Chords – Warren Zevon
INTRO:
D C G x4
VERSE 1:
DI saw a wereCwolf with a Chinese Gmenu in his hand
DWalking through Cthe streets of SoHo Gin the rain
D He was Clooking for the place called GLee Ho Fook’s
D Gonna Cget a big dish of Gbeef chow mein
D Ah-ChooGo
VERSE 2:
D Ah-ChooGo
D Ah-ChooGo
“Werewolves Of London” History:
9
1. The song and its origins
Artist: Warren Zevon
Released: 1978
Album: Excitable Boy
Songwriters: Warren Zevon, Waddy Wachtel, and LeRoy Marinell
Producers: Jackson Browne and Waddy Wachtel
Chart peak: No. 21 on the US Billboard Hot 100
Here’s the delightful part: the song began as a joke.
Around 1975, Phil Everly of the Everly Brothers had seen the 1935 horror film Werewolf of London. He suggested to Zevon that the title could make a good song, perhaps even a dance craze.
Zevon got together with guitarist Waddy Wachtel and songwriter LeRoy Marinell. Marinell already had a guitar figure lying around, Wachtel started improvising lyrics, and the three reportedly put the song together in about 15 minutes.
They didn’t initially take it very seriously. Fortunately, Zevon’s friend Jackson Browne recognized its potential, and the song eventually found its way onto Excitable Boy in 1978.
2. The musicians behind that unmistakable sound
- Warren Zevon — piano and vocals. His piano drives the song with that repetitive, instantly recognizable figure.
- Waddy Wachtel — electric guitar. A highly accomplished Los Angeles session guitarist, Wachtel contributes the concise, biting guitar solo.
- Mick Fleetwood — drums. Yes, that Mick Fleetwood!
- John McVie — bass. The other half of Fleetwood Mac’s celebrated rhythm section.
The combination of Fleetwood’s drumming and McVie’s bass gives the song a wonderfully heavy, slightly lumbering groove. The production team tried numerous rhythm-section combinations before settling on Fleetwood and McVie. Amazingly, although the musicians reportedly recorded around 59 takes, Zevon and Browne ultimately chose take two! Wachtel’s guitar solo was also completed in a single take.
That’s a terrific recording lesson: sometimes the magic is already there before everyone has a chance to overthink it.
3. What’s the song actually about?
The humor comes from the contrast between a terrifying supernatural creature and an utterly ordinary, fashionable London gentleman.
Our werewolf wanders through Soho, looks for Chinese food, and seems perfectly at home in London’s social scene. He isn’t presented as a tragic monster or a figure of genuine horror. He’s a well-dressed, slightly ridiculous character who happens to be capable of extraordinary violence.
The song’s most revealing joke is its emphasis on the werewolf’s immaculate appearance. The final image of him enjoying a piña colada at Trader Vic’s, with his hair looking perfect, is pure Zevon.
It’s a kind of comic noir: a dangerous character presented with the casualness of someone you’d encounter in a detective novel. Zevon frequently wrote about unsavory characters, violence, and the darker corners of society, but here he approaches that territory through absurdity rather than menace.
And there’s another clever detail: Lee Ho Fook’s was a real Chinese restaurant in London’s Chinatown. That specific place name makes the story feel like a bizarre little travelogue rather than a generic monster song.
4. A little musical detective work
The piano riff
The repeating piano figure is the song’s musical identity. It originated as a guitar idea from LeRoy Marinell, which Zevon adapted for piano. The figure is commonly described as a V–IV–I progression: in a major-key example, that would be chords built on the fifth, fourth, and first scale degrees.
That descending harmonic movement gives the riff its bluesy, rolling character.
The guitar solo
Listen to how short and direct it is. Wachtel doesn’t need a long display of technique to make his mark. The solo fits the song’s personality, adds a flash of rock-and-roll attitude, and gets out of the way.
As a guitarist, you might enjoy paying attention to the phrasing and placement of each note, rather than just the notes themselves.
The rhythm section
The drums and bass aren’t simply keeping time. They establish the song’s physical character: a loping, almost strutting pulse. The track has enough weight to rock, but enough bounce to feel playful.
That’s a big reason the song works as both a rock track and a singalong novelty.
5. From joke to classic rock staple
The song became Zevon’s best-known recording and reached No. 21 on the Billboard Hot 100 in May 1978. It also helped propel Excitable Boy to No. 8 on the Billboard album chart.
Then, in 1986, the song received another burst of exposure when it appeared in Martin Scorsese’s film The Color of Money, in the memorable scene featuring Tom Cruise dancing with a pool cue. It subsequently became a familiar fixture on Halloween playlists.
There’s a funny irony here: Zevon and Wachtel were reportedly unhappy when the record company chose it as the lead single. They preferred other songs from the album. Yet the song they initially regarded as a bit of a joke became the recording most closely associated with Zevon’s name.
6. One last thing about Warren Zevon
Zevon was much more than the man who wrote a song about a werewolf ordering Chinese food. He was a pianist and songwriter with a dark, literary sensibility, a sharp sense of humor, and a knack for writing characters who could be both disturbing and strangely human.
If you’d like to explore further, the album Excitable Boy is worth hearing in its entirety. Songs such as “Lawyers, Guns and Money” and “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner” reveal another side of his writing: cinematic stories filled with desperate people, violence, and sardonic humor.
And here’s a favorite little takeaway : “Werewolves of London” is a wonderful example of how a great musical performance doesn’t have to be complicated. A memorable riff, a groove with personality, a few perfectly chosen guitar notes, and a singer who understands the character he’s playing can be enough to make a song last for generations.
Sometimes, the music doesn’t need to push. It just needs to have character.
