(KRT) - Warren Zevon, the singer-songwriter known for his sardonic L.A.
noir humor and classic-rock radio staples including "Werewolves of
London," "Lawyers, Guns and Money," and "Excitable
Boy," died Sunday at his Los Angeles-area home. He was 56.
Zevon was diagnosed in August 2002 with mesothelioma, an inoperable form
of lung cancer. At the time, the formerly hard-living pianist and guitarist
joked to an interviewer that he hoped to be alive to see the James Bond
movie "Die Another Day" when it opened in November.
Instead, he lived long enough to write and record a final album, "The
Wind," with the assistance of friends including Bruce Springsteen,
Tom Petty, Jackson Browne, Billy Bob Thornton, Dwight Yoakam, Emmylou
Harris and Ry Cooder. The collection, which includes a version of Bob
Dylan's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," was released
Aug. 26 on Artemis Records.
Zevon was born on Jan. 24, 1947, in Chicago, the son of a Mormon mother
and a Russian-Jewish immigrant father who earned a living as a prizefighter,
gambler and, according to his son, a mobster. The family settled in Los
Angeles, where Zevon was trained as a classical pianist and studied briefly
under Igor Stravinsky.
He turned to pop music as a teenager, writing "Like the Seasons"
and "Outside Chance" for the Turtles and playing guitar on Phil
Ochs' "Pleasures of the Harbor" album in 1967. His first
solo album, "Wanted: Dead or Alive, was released in 1969 "to
the sound of one hand clapping," Zevon later said.
Zevon spent the early 1970s leading Don and Phil Everly's touring band.
"Frank and Jesse James," the first song on 1976's "Warren
Zevon," which Browne produced, was a tribute to the Everlys, and
established his penchant for outlaw narratives that examined America's
culture of violence.
Songs such as "Desperados Under the Eaves," "Carmelita"
and "Poor, Poor Pitiful Me" - a hit for Linda Ronstadt in 1977,
and for country singer Terri Clark in 1996 - also forged "my richly
deserved, if long-forgotten, reputation as the foremost chronicler of
Hollywood life in the 1970s," Zevon wrote with tongue-in-cheek bravado
in the notes to his 1996 retrospective CD, "I'll Sleep When I'm
Dead." Frequently working with the same musicians who shaped the
laid-back sounds of Southern California cronies Ronstadt and Browne, Zevon
- like fellow L.A. musical satirist Randy Newman - wrote mordant, cliche-busting
songs shot through with unease.
His 1978 album, "Excitable Boy," produced hits in the droll title
cut, the rambunctious "Lawyers, Guns and Money," and "Werewolves
of London," a piano-pumped celebration of transgression that became
Zevon's signature song.
The hell-raising in Zevon's songs was partly inspired by (and won the
appreciation of) scribes such as Hunter S. Thompson and crime writer Ross
Macdonald, but it also mirrored the alcohol- and drug-fueled chaos of his life.
"The road, booze and I became an inseparable team," said Zevon,
who in the late 1970s and early 1980s was in and out of rehab facilities.
"Down on my knees in pain. Swear to God I'll change," he
bellowed in a chesty baritone on the 1980 song "Bad Luck Streak in
Dancing School."
A 1981 Rolling Stone cover story described Mr. Zevon using a .44 Magnum
and a cardboard cutout of himself to take target practice inside his Los
Angeles home. He mocked the celebrity-rehab culture in 1987's "Detox
Mansion," but bluntly admitted in the song that it was "tough
to be somebody, and it's hard to keep from falling apart."
In his mid-30s, Zevon, who was twice divorced, settled into sobriety and
cult status.
His 1987 album, "Sentimental Hygiene," was recorded with the
members of R.E.M. (minus Michael Stipe) as his backup band. Their association
also led to the 1990 side project "Hindu Love Gods, in which Zevon
roared though Prince's "Raspberry Beret."
He toured frequently in the 1990s and composed music for the TV shows "Tales
From the Crypt" and "Route 66," in addition to appearing
regularly on "Late Show" with his friend David Letterman. While
touring in 1995 behind "Mutineer," an album that featured two
collaborations with novelist Carl Hiaasen, he told The Philadelphia Inquirer
that his taste for hardboiled narrators and geopolitical subjects was
"the impact of Graham Greene on one's youthful and not-so-youthful
reading. ... I've never been much for the vague, planetary, philosophic
school of songwriting. I'm from the start-with-the-detail school."
The last albums Zevon released in his lifetime, "Life'll Kill
Ya" (2000) and "My Ride's Here" (2002), were preoccupied
with mortality. The latter's title song referred to a hearse, and
ended with the line: "Man, I'd like to stay, but I'm bound
for glory. I'm on my way."
Zevon - who quit smoking in 1994 but, until his illness, hadn't seen
a doctor in two decades - could not explain his diagnosis of mesothelioma,
a form of cancer associated with asbestos exposure. In his last year,
he was thrust into the role of "travel agent for death," he
told an interviewer this year. He spent his time with his son Jordan,
a musician, and daughter Ariel, who gave birth to Zevon's first grandchildren,
twins Augustus Warren and Maximus Patrick Zevon-Powell, in June. And he
was paid tribute by admirers including Dylan, who performed several of
Zevon's songs on his fall 2002 tour.
He also worked steadily on "The Wind." The album, Zevon's
strongest in years, confronts death and sorrow in alternately somber and
raucous songs with titles such as "Numb as a Statue" and "Dirty
Life and Times."
In October, he was the sole guest on Letterman's program. When the
host asked what Zevon's diagnosis had taught him, the famously caustic
songwriter spoke from the heart: "How much you're supposed to
enjoy every sandwich."
*** POSTED SEPTEMBER 10, 2003 ***