Seven Years On...

Seven years ago this week, Warren Zevon left us.  I wrote this modest tribute at the time and came across it while searching for a script I'd written around the same time.  Thought I'd share it.  There's nothing new here for Zevonites, but hopefully those who know Warren's work will enjoy this and those who don't will get busy seeking it out.   

His Ride Is Here:  A Tribute to Warren Zevon

Well, it’s been inevitable for a year now, and yet, when the unsurprising news came this morning, I still found myself teary-eyed. Warren Zevon has hastened down the wind.  

In September 2002, Warren Zevon announced that he had terminal lung cancer and wouldn’t be with us much longer.  His doctors gave him three months.  He saw their three months, raised them another nine, put together a star-studded farewell CD, and got to hold his newborn twin sons all summer long.  That’s Warren…he’ll sleep when he’s dead, and not a minute before.

I don’t want to write an obit, however.  I want to celebrate a life: a musical life that has gone greatly unappreciated by the fickle pop/rock charts, but hardly unnoticed by musicians, critics, writers, and fans of literate, sardonic rock and roll.

Warren Zevon has penned some of the most tender love songs I’ve ever had the pleasure of crying through.  He’s also come up with some of the most self-deprecating and caustic tunes in rock history.  To top it all off, he’s populated many songs with characters so three-dimensional and eccentric, novels could be etched out of his 

4-minute elegies.  When it comes to this particular kind of songwriting, only Randy Newman gets same breath recognition.  As Jackson Browne put it, he’s the foremost proponent of “song noir”.  

If you think you’ve heard the name, but can’t place Zevon, you probably at least know “Werewolves of London” and “Poor Poor Pitiful Me”, his only legitimate ‘hits’ by industry standards.  He was also a favorite of David Letterman, who hired him as the permanent fill-in bandleader for Paul Shaffer a few years ago.  But if you think that’s where the music ends, read on…

To give you some idea of the adoration fellow artists have for Warren, here’s a partial list of those who have performed alongside him, either as vocalists or musicians, on his albums:  Linda Ronstadt, Don Henley, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, REM, Bruce Hornsby, Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham, Mick Fleetwood, Graham Nash, Glenn Frey, members of The Beach Boys and Pink Floyd, Jerry Garcia, Dwight Yoakam, The Everly Brothers, and Chick Corea.  Jackson Browne was his mentor and first record producer.  He’s co-written a tune with Springsteen.  Musicians love Warren.

He has also taken to co-writing songs with novelist/writer pals, including Carl Hiaasen, Paul Muldoon, and longtime friend Hunter S. Thompson.  He hangs out with Dave Barry.  He quotes Graham Greene and Rilke like a preacher quotes The Bible.  That’s no surprise, as his songs are populated with cultural references both classical and comical.  His Spring 2002 release (the unwittingly fittingly titled “My Ride’s Here”) manages to roll call Lord Byron, Shelley, Milton, and Keats, alongside Charlton Heston, Jesus, and John Wayne, and that’s just in the title track.  

Zevon has had his dark side, both onstage and off.  In the 70’s, when he was exalted as a Wunderkind who might be the ‘next big thing’, he was riding high on a heroin addiction and a love affair with half-filled bottles of Stoli.  Clint Eastwood once said, “He did everything but drink vodka from a silver boot then”, to which Richard Gere retorted, “I saw him drink vodka from a silver boot!”.  

He kicked his drug habit, then went sober from alcohol in the early 80’s, but never really reclaimed his mantle as an almost-superstar. Still, every album was a treat to his cult following – an oasis of wit and warmth in the sea of mediocrity that is popular music.

Musically, Zevon’s dark side is edgy and endearing.  His musical protagonists include a disembodied wartime poltergeist (Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner), a murderous lad (Excitable Boy), an aristocratic monster (Werewolves of London), and the misanthropic, hedonistic rampage of “Mr. Bad Example”, a character, ‘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…”’

That Zevon can then turn around and pen stirring ballads like “Reconsider Me”, “Hasten Down the Wind”, and “Searching for a Heart” only strengthens the case for his rightful place alongside Newman and Bob Dylan as a songwriting sage.  

The best gift I could give Warren is to perhaps turn a few folks onto his music that otherwise might not have explored his satiric and sensitive canon.  Here, then, is a tally of a handful of CD’s that I encourage you to run out and purchase post haste:

• Genius:  The Best of Warren Zevon - This is a 22-track anthology released by Rhino Records that manages to hit upon tunes from almost every Zevon album.  While not all-inclusive, it’s a fine representation of the many sides of Warren, and a great place to start…

• Excitable Boy  - Warren’s breakthrough LP from 1978, produced by Jackson Browne and featuring an array of great tunes, including the well known “Werewolves of London”, “Tenderness on the Block” (later covered by Shawn Colvin), and “Lawyers, Guns, and Money”.  Warren manages to deftly (and simultaneously) lampoon and embrace the popular “California” sound that the Eagles and Browne were riding high on at the time.

• Sentimental Hygiene - Warren’s ‘comeback’ album from the late 80’s features a stellar list of guests, including ¾ of REM as his session band.  It also features his best collection of songs – there’s not a filler in the bunch – including the self-mocking “Trouble Waiting to Happen” and “Bad Karma”, as well as the bull’s-eye commentary of “Detox Mansion”, which places our narrator at a Rehab clinic for the rich and famous, ‘raking leaves with Liza, me and Liz clean up the yard’.  Priceless.  

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• Life’ll Kill Ya – Warren’s always had an unwitting preoccupation with the macabre, but this CD is eerily prophetic – released just two years before his fatal diagnosis.  Zevon, however, never looks at anything, not even death, without his rapier wit intact.  Thus, such tunes as “I Was In the House When The House Burned Down”, “Life’ll Kill Ya”, and the hilariously morose “My Shit’s F**ked Up”, a dirge about a dreadful diagnosis from the doctor.  I’ve vowed this CD to be my soundtrack as I head into middle age.

• The Wind -  Warren found out he had cancer in August 2002.  They gave him three months.  He devoted the days he had left to family and music.  The end result was getting to meet his twin grandsons in June 2003, and creating a first – a singer who gets to write his own eulogy.  The Wind is packed with cameos from friends:  Springsteen, Tom Petty, Jackson Browne, Emmylou Harris, Dwight Yoakam, Ry Cooder, Billy Bob Thornton, the Eagles.  But they are just along for the ride.  It’s Warren’s goodbye, and it’s filled with tenderness and tenacity – a mix of rollicking wit and bittersweet farewells.  Stop reading this now.  Go get it.  

As for Warren the man, he’ll be sorely missed.  There’s no one in line to fill his quirky shoes, and as the music biz grows more mundane, jesters with big hearts such as Mr. Zevon are diamonds buried deeply in the rough.  He is also, by all accounts, a really good guy, and one I’d certainly loved to have known.  That he is a fiercely loyal friend comes through in the accolades his high profile pals have showered upon him.  

The last song on Warren’s final album asks, simply:

Hold me in your thoughts, take me to your dreams,

Touch me as I fall into view

When the winter comes, keep the fires lit

And I will be right next to you.

Keep me in your heart for a while…

For me, that’s where he’ll be.