Sometimes all it takes is an off the cuff joke to change an artist’s life — and the course of musical history.

Warren Zevon had been kicking around the crowded Los Angeles music scene since the mid-60’s. He scored a (very) minor hit as part of a folk-poppy duo called Lyme & Cybelle before embarking on a solo career. Success proved elusive for the first ten years or so, but he started gaining a little fame as a songwriter around town and, in order to earn a decent living, worked extensively with Phil “Wake Up, Little Susie” Everly as a backing musician on tour and in the studio in the early 70’s.

One evening in 1975, Everly watched a B-movie horror flick called Werewolves Of London and joked to Zevon that he should write a song with that title. Challenge accepted! Trading lines with a couple of musician friends while his wife transcribed the lyrics, Zevon and company took about fifteen minutes to complete a song with that very title about a suave and hip gentleman with one fatal (to you) flaw. And there he left it. After all, to him it was just a joke.

In 1976, when Zevon finally got the chance to record his first album in six years, he briefly considered “Werewolves Of London” before dismissing it. Jackson Browne and T-Bone Burnette, however, embraced the silly song about a hirsute killer, occasionally performing it in concert, but it remained unrecorded by anyone. For his 1978 album, Excitable Boy, either because he finally grew to like it or simply because he needed another song to fill up the album, Zevon finally attempted to record “Werewolves Of London.”

It didn’t go well.

After days and weeks and countless attempts with dozens of musicians in a variety of combinations, Zevon finally nailed a take with Mick Fleetwood and John McVie from Fleetwood Mac on drums and bass, respectively. It was fun, it had a nice groove, but he still thought of it as kind of a dumb novelty song.

Released as a single in the spring of 1978 (over Zevon’s strenuous objections — but the record company overruled him), “Werewolves Of London” became his only US Top 40 hit, and also established itself as a classic rock radio staple over the ensuing decades. Gen Xers who were too young to have heard its original run discovered the song when it featured prominently in Martin Scorsese’s 1986 pool hall classic The Color Of Money. It’s been sampled, and covered, and shows up every Halloween.

When Phil Everly first joked about the title, it was like dropping a pebble in the water — the ripples should have faded in minutes. But instead they went on forever.

So get a big dish of beef chow mein … with Warren Zevon.