Songfacts®:

• This very poetic song is seeded with heartache. The girl is leaving, and he knows he just has to let her go. All he ever had was half his heart; the restless half will never be his.
  
  Most of Zevon's songs tell stories and aren't autobiographical, but this one is different. "This song was so personal, I had to write it in the third person," he explained in his I'll Sleep When I'm Dead compilation.
• "Hasten Down The Wind" was released as the first single from Warren Zevon's eponymous second album, which came six years after his first. In the years between, he took musical odd jobs like writing jingles, but he also performed and caught the attention of Jackson Browne, who helped him land a record deal. Browne also produced the Warren Zevon album.
• Linda Ronstadt covered "Hasten Down The Wind" and made it the title track to her 1976 album. Her version features Don Henley on harmony vocals.
  
  The royalties from the cover helped Zevon a lot. "This is the song that intervened between me and starvation," he told the crowd before performing it at a 1980 concert.
  
  On her next album, Ronstadt covered two more Zevon songs: "Carmelita" and "Poor Poor Pitiful Me."
• There are a lot of big names on the Warren Zevon album; Stevie Nicks, Bonnie Raitt, Lindsey Buckingham, Don Henley and Glenn Frey all participated. Most of these special guests were Jackson Browne's contacts, but on "Hasten Down The Wind," one of Zevon's old friends, Phil Everly, sings backup. Zevon had worked with the Everly Brothers as their bandleader.