Zevon dead at 56.

[Dmitry]

l.a. times obit:

September 8, 2003

OBITUARIES

Warren Zevon, 56; Singer Had a Sense of Grim Theater

By Geoff Boucher, Times Staff Writer

Warren Zevon, a restless, sardonic bard who embodied the dark edge and excess of the famed singer-songwriter scene in 1970s Southern California, died after a battle with lung cancer. He was 56.

Zevon died Sunday afternoon at his home in Los Angeles, according to his manager Irving Azoff, who said that the singer had been "very upbeat" in the past week due to the success of his new album and the recent birth of twin grandchildren. "He was in a good place."

While casual pop fans might recognize only his 1978 horror-show hit "Werewolves of London," Zevon for years enjoyed a cult following and the acclaim of his peers for songs that were often about fractured world politics and the disloyal human heart.

In a macabre songbook that includes "Excitable Boy," "Lawyers, Guns and Money" and "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner," Zevon presented a world of the undead and the unethical on the rampage in a mercenary world. In "Mr. Bad Example," an altar boy grows up to be a vagabond con man: "I'm very well acquainted with the seven deadly sins/I keep a busy schedule trying to fit them in/I'm proud to be a glutton and I don't have time for sloth/I'm greedy and I'm angry and I don't care who I cross."

Death and dying were among Zevon's favorite topics (the cover of his 2002 album "My Ride's Here" showed him in a hearse, while another collection was titled "Life'll Kill Ya"), and when confronted with his own mortality, he continued the exploration with aplomb. The singer, a longtime smoker, learned in August 2002 that he was suffering from inoperable lung cancer and a month later he went public with his condition in an interview with The Times.

"I feel the opposite of regret," he said then. "I was the hardest-living rocker on my block for a while. I was a malfunctioning rummy for a while and running away for a while. Then for 18 years I was a sober dad of some amazing kids. Hey, I feel like I've lived a couple of lives ? and now when people listen to the music, they'll say, 'Hey, maybe the guy wasn't being so morbid after all.' "

Zevon spent much of his time during his illness doting on family and working in a home studio on a new album, "The Wind." His popularity among his peers was underscored by a parade of contributors to the record, including longtime friends Bruce Springsteen, Don Henley and Jackson Browne. The Artemis Records disc debuted last week in the Top 20 of the nation's pop charts, an unprecedented showing for the singer.

Jim Keltner, the veteran session drummer who worked on the album, said it was an emotionally charged project for all involved, especially the work on the final song, "Keep Me in Your Heart." "Warren had a bad day, and he couldn't make it in, so we laid down the music without the vocals, and I'll tell you, we were all choked up," he said. "It's a beautiful song."

The tracks also include some wry, unsentimental songs, in Zevon's familiar mode, and a version of the Bob Dylan classic "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," a selection that speaks to Zevon's candor and sense of grim theater. Zevon's candor about his condition also extended to allowing VH1 to film the sessions for "The Wind," for a poignant documentary that aired near the album's release date.

Dylan himself has recently paid tribute to Zevon by singing several of his songs, including "Accidentally Like a Martyr," in his concert sets, one at the Wiltern attended by Zevon in October. That same month, David Letterman devoted an entire episode of his show to his old friend, an unprecedented time commitment by the long-running program.

Warren William Zevon was born Jan. 24, 1947, in Chicago and spent much of his youth shuttling between different cities in California, among them Los Angeles and San Francisco. His father, William, was a Russian Jewish immigrant who was a boxer in his early days in America, then settled into a career as a professional gambler and "a mobster, generally," as his son described him. The singer's mother, Beverly, was of Scottish heritage and a Mormon. The singer told Rolling Stone magazine in 1981 that his mother was "extraordinarily withdrawn ? you can barely hear her speaking voice. She did encourage my interest in art, though."

Zevon was a precocious child with high scores in IQ tests but inconsistent grades in the classroom. His parents divorced when he was 16, and the classically trained young pianist quit school as a junior at Fairfax High School and traveled to New York to become a folk singer. That bohemian dream fizzled, and Zevon bounced around the country, eventually returning to Southern California by the late 1960s. He made a living composing commercial jingles and playing on recording sessions. He also wrote songs for the Turtles ("Like the Seasons" and "Outside Chance"), and by the early 1970s was a keyboard player and music director for the Everly Brothers.

By that point, he would later tell Rolling Stone, "The road, booze and I became an inseparable team."

In 1969, he had put out his first album, "Wanted: Dead or Alive," on One Way Records, but it was largely ignored. It was, however, reissued in March on Virgin Records. After some more false starts, Zevon and his then-wife, Crystal Zevon, became embittered about L.A. life and moved to Spain in 1975, but a short time later they returned. Browne, Zevon's close friend, had championed his cause to music mogul David Geffen and the result would be "Warren Zevon," a 1976 release from Asylum Records that would make the singer a darling of the critics. Browne produced the album, which included "Poor, Poor Pitiful Me," a major hit a year later for Linda Ronstadt.

The album boasted an impressive crowd of contributors, among them Henley, Glenn Frey, Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham, Carl Wilson, Bonnie Raitt and J.D. Souther. The assembly showed that Zevon was part of the loose circle of Southern California musicians that forged a defining sound in 1970s rock. But while the Eagles and others were minting platinum albums, Zevon was making far more ominous music that failed to click in a big way with the wide public. That would form the pattern of his career, and it both haunted and inspired him ? he longed for the audience but also reveled in the role of intellectual and uncompromising maverick.

He did have one song cut through in a big way ? "Werewolves of London" from 1978 became an ominous novelty with its lyrics about a werewolf who enjoyed socializing but also mutilated little old ladies. "I saw a werewolf drinking a pina colada at Trader Vic's," the song memorably offered. "His hair was perfect."

By the early 1980s, Zevon's notoriously wild ways had wrecked much of his personal life, and he went into a rehab program, which he would later memorably mock in "Detox Mansion." He went public with his addiction problem and his plan to seek help, an announcement that foreshadowed his similar decision last year to announce that he had a short time to live.

His 1982 album, "The Envoy," was a product of his cleaner living and was hailed as a return to his early form. "Sentimental Hygiene" from 1987 and the 1991 collection "Mr. Bad Example" again won him effusive reviews. Still, major commercial success eluded him. By last year, after learning of his health issues, he was sanguine about his flirtations with major stardom.

"It was a little more interesting this way, maybe," he said. "Maybe more aggravating, too. At least I've had one foot in a very normal kind of life. Nobody does my chores so I can go upstairs and jam with Branford, you know?"

[J.A.W.]

Another sad loss

[Dmitry]

tobacco kills!

[DrJ]

This is sad indeed, although certainly not unexpected. I've heard at least two features on the making of this album recently, both on NPR, and they were quite moving. I defy anyone to listen, with knowledge of the full context, to the fine cover of "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" on this new album and not be profoundly moved. To be honest, I always hated that song, primarily because of the legion of crappy, arena-rock mentality covers, but boy does this rendition get to the heart of the matter. In lesser hands it could have sounded like a sick joke.

I'll miss Zevon's wit (that last one-liner in the obit above, about nobody doing his chores so he can go upstairs and jam with Branford, is just priceless) and off-center perspective, rock needed it.

Edited September 8, 2003 by DrJ

[Rooster_Ties]

VH1 will surely rebroadcast the "Diary" special (or whatever it was called) that they first broadcast I think it was last Sunday night (or the Sunday before), all about the making of Zevon's last album, and his battle with his health issues.

Very moving stuff. Watch it if you can, it was good to see - even for someone like myself who really hadn't heard all that much of his music before.

[vajerzy]

Indeed sad- I had the pleasure to see him numerous times, starting in 1979 up to 1992 or so....saw him with the band that appeared on "Stand In The Fire", at my college with about 100 people on the outside lawn, with a band called "The Odds" as a backup band, and a solo outing accompanied only bu Timothy Schmidt (of Eagles fame) and other times......he was a unique individual.

The show with David Letterman last October was great- I hope they replay it again sometime-

[The Mule]

This has hit me even harder than I expected. I have been a huge fan of Zevon and had seen him perform live more times than any other musician. He'd come through Chicago once a year or so and play the Park West--usually solo--and his shows were always energetic, funny, and intimate.

At his most inspired, his songwriting skills were unparalleled. Moving, ironic, biting, witty, unexpected...his best songs feel like great short stories or movies. I never really appreciated just how great his songs about Los Angeles were until I moved here. He captured the beauty and insanity of this place perfectly.

The Letterman appearance last October was one of the most compelling and powerful hours of television I had ever seen. Two close friends on national television discussing the fact that one of them was about to die.

The VH1 special was even more moving. Speaking of his friend Bruce Springsteen, Zevon says, "The great thing about Springsteen is that he's exactly who you'd hope he'd be." I thought the same thing about Zevon since he announced his illness. He handled his impending demise just as you'd hope Warren Zevon would--with integrity, grit, humor, irony, bravery.

The only trace of bitterness was in a brief scene in the VH1 special. After the appearance on Letterman he gets into the limo with his publicist. She's going down a list of items and tells him that "The New Yorker wants an interview." Zevon looks out the window at the Manhattan he's seeing for the last time and quietly says, "Too late." I think the comment was not just about how he wasn't up for giving an interview, but that he resented The New Yorker's interest in him NOW. Ghoulish to ask now that's he's dying. Such an interview might have helped his career 20 years ago. Asking for one now..."too late."

The special also shows a moment with Zevon and his adult daughter--pregnant with twin boys. She tells him one of the the boys' middle names will be Warren which seemed to please him immensely. He tells the camera that he's determined to hang on to meet the babies...and he did. He got to hold his grandsons.

I would urge anyone unfamiliar with Zevon's music to pick up his album "Warren Zevon" which contains one masterpiece after another. The new album is also very fine with the aformentioned cover of "Knocking On Heaven's Door" and the incredibly moving "Keep Me In Your Heart."

Sleep well, Warren.

Edited September 8, 2003 by The Mule

[Soul Stream]

I saw the VH1 special a couple of days ago. It was a great special that showed the true power of music. Here he was living out his last days, and he spent them not on a beach, in the sun, with his family....but making music in a windowless studio.

He seemed very, very couragious.

[Guest ariceffron]

I saw WZ probably about 2 yrs ago at this small theater on the miracle mile and it was a most excellent show. His new stuff was equal if not better than his old stuff. Origially i was not aware of his music beyond 'werewolves' but then my sophmore year of college this hot chick Claire hipped me to how he is one of the great singer/songwriters of the generation between our parents, and our own. Very very true.

[jacman]

because of him i learned to appreciate sandwiches.

FWIW-i was made to understand that he developed Mesothelioma. if that is indeed true, it wasn't smoking that killed him, it was repeated exposure to asbestos 20+years ago.

[Rooster_Ties]

VH1 played the Zevon "Diary" special again last night, and FYI: it looks like they're playing it again TONIGHT. (I seem to remember the plug saying 9pm Eastern, 8pm Central.)

Well worth watching, or tapinga and watching later - if you haven't yet seen it.

[The Mule]

From The Village Voice:

The Poet of Gower Avenue Winds Down His Dirty Life and Times

Warren Zevon, 1947–2003

by Joshua Clover

September 10 - 16, 2003

Finally, he'll sleep.

(Photo: Pater Palladino)

In 1977, when Linda Ronstadt was taking her last shot at being the queen of California, she covered "Poor, Poor Pitiful Me"—a song from Warren Zevon's self-titled, not-really-first album. Zevon had written for the Turtles, played piano for the Everly Brothers, and earned a rep as a songsmith. Ronstadt changed only the third verse: A guy in Yokohama picks her up and throws her down, pleading, "Please don't hurt me mama."

It makes you wonder about the original. What would a young gun write in 1973, a professional with an amateur face devising his own rock of the westies in the cross fire of Hollywood decadence and Hollywood liberalism, cf. über-progressive Jackson Browne, who in fact produced Warren Zevon and was presumably at the board when Zevon recorded his own third verse: "I met a girl at the Rainbow Bar, she asked me if I'd beat her. She took me back to the Hyatt House . . . "—and here his voice paused down to a mutter—"I don't want to talk about it." It's brutal, and funny, and not OK. Warren Zevon was Jackson Browne's bad conscience.

Careless of the scene's niceties, Warren Zevon wouldn't get released until 1976—all stained romance and bad dope, burnished chord changes and exposed nerve. The songs, when they weren't about itinerant gamblers (his dad's calling, as it happened) or Frank and Jesse James, recalled L.A. hard-boiled pulp novels, where desiccated burnouts are the only shadows in the sun-bleached promised land. The baroquely precise "French Inhaler" pairs a would-be starlet and her bottom-feeding beau: never-wases drinking in the dive behind the dream factory, pathetic and melancholy unto death. Only an ambiguous reference in the song's last second hints, and then only to hardcore consumers of biographical porn, that the song might have been about Marilyn Monroe all along—a ghost version of her life, as if David Lynch had been a piano man in his early days. Murmuring "So long Norman," she's the one who couldn't leave. But so is everyone else on the record, the most delicate, impure document of LaLaLand in the years between Joni's Ladies of the Canyon and Jello's "California Über Alles."

The poet of Gower Avenue became a stateless pop star behind the single from the follow-up Excitable Boy, the mini-surrealist "Werewolves of London." As novelty smashes often do, it seemed to come from nowhere, or everywhere. On that record and the next two, Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School and The Envoy, Zevon removed his seamy scenes of betrayal and secret combat to an atlas of international hot spots, filled with spies, drunks, mercenaries, and the women who didn't love them. On the side, he wrote tender, caustic ballads ("Accidentally Like a Martyr" was recently covered by Dylan) and domestic tales of very creepy guys that sometimes sounded indecently enthusiastic. He even cut in at dances where he wasn't invited: "Sweet home Alabama," he sang in his faux-anthemic rebuke to Skynyrd's rebuke of Mr. Young, "play that dead band's song." The chorus continues, strangely forbearing amid verses of mocking savagery, "Turn those speakers up full blast, play it all night long."

Not one to burn out or fade away, Zevon drowned. Traditional narrative follows: five-year creative drought, ignominy, rehab, comeback album. Sentimental Hygiene is rich with the usual suspects, but here the bloodied losers and lowlifes were often the singer. "It's tough to be somebody; and it's hard to keep from falling apart," he testifies in "Detox Mansion." "Here on Rehab Mountain we all learn these things by heart." Comeback albums are expected to serve up redemption; this one offered redemption as just another grift and sounded like someone coming up for the second time, just long enough to spew a last round of vitriol.

Astonishingly enough, there was one act left—the one where real tragedy teaches the self-inflicted kind a lesson. After a couple of records where the songwriting went flaky and unfocused, and another half-decade hiatus, Zevon rallied his talent on little Artemis Records, composing a series of serrated, rollicking wounds, collaborating with folks from Springsteen to Carl Hiaasen. It wasn't a comeback so much as a persistence of vision. A rare few are born to be stars, fewer live to write.

At the time of the first Artemis release, Zevon was diagnosed with mesothelioma, an inoperable lung cancer. The epic from his mortality trio is "I Was in the House When the House Burned Down," and one is tempted to listen allegorically: the house the mortal body, and no way out. Racing the fire, Zevon made two more records, the last one—The Wind, released August 26—when he was supposed to be dead already. They're moving and jocularly messy, three feet deep and rising.

Zevon, who died Sunday, was a writer of terrific particularity, the kind novelists are jealous of. He would likely compose his own obit in specific and self-lacerating terms, leave the allegories to others. Or perhaps he would concede that the death he stood off to do just a little more writing was something so dark even he couldn't make an account of it, and offer the phrase suggesting it was better left obscure, the better to fill with our own worst imaginings. I don't want to talk about it.

[BERIGAN]

Sad news indeed....I am glad he showed up the doctors,(His son made an excellent point about doctors having no right to say how long someone is going to live) who gave him 3-6 months to live, and made it much longer than that.....

[Bright Moments]

i have been listening to WZ lately. i never really appreciated him or his music when he was "popular".

now i do.

better late than never.

[ATR]

Stand in the Fire, the live album, is a keeper. I saw him tell Letterman that he didn't remember doing it.

[vajerzy]

Glad I saw him a few times in the 80s and early 90s.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Never heard of him. and I saw that he was born in 1947 and died at 56 and thought, "how the hell coud he have been 56?"

Then I notice that this thread is years old!!

MG

[jlhoots]

Still one of my favorites.

Lawyers, Guns & Money; Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner, etc., etc.

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

saw him in Los Angeles at the El Rey Theatre, July 2001: amazing concert, and i noted from the front row on how well zevon now looked-- his arms were very muscular and he looked like he was in great shape- much better than in "the day", i remember thinking. the san diego show the day prior was strictly 21+ and i couldnt get in but i hung out all afternoon and one of the kind band members brought some records back for warren to autograph

Edited October 16, 2009 by chewy

[Bright Moments]

Stand in the Fire, the live album, is a keeper. I saw him tell Letterman that he didn't remember doing it.

great cd - just spun it again!

[six string]

I was very impressed with the way he left the planet. Those shows on David Letterman were very memorable and Dave's stock went way up in my mind after that. I was listening to a live recording of Jackson Brown and David Lindley recently from 1975 where Jackson performs a couple of Zevon's songs. This was before his eponymous album was released on Asylum. Before one of the songs he says to the audience "Warren Zevon, remember that name." He was right too. His personal life might have been a mess and it might have been difficult living with him but he sure wrote some great songs.

I only saw him once, solo at a small club in Houston in 1983 and he was great. I was sitting in the front hoping he would do Lawyers, Guns and Money before the night was through and much to my surprise he came out on stage banging that song out on a twelve string guitar for his opening number.

[greenthumb25]

When I was in Youtube looking for another artist, the two names Letterman and Zevon popped up in the sidebar and I thought why not?

Expecting it to open with a song of Warren Zevon's and then the interview, he didn't seem to be around but the band leader and Letterman were eulogizing. Then I noticed that the whole show was about Zevon and a sinking feeling came over that this was an obituary.

_________________

los angeles limo company

[BruceH]

I remember being depressed by his passing, but I'm startled that it was SIX damn years ago! They sure went fast.