Blunderov
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RE: virus: Eccentric Rocker Warren Zevon Dies of Cancer
« on: 2003-11-28 14:46:26 » |
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[Blunderov]
I just discovered to my great regret that Warren Zevon is dead. The
author of the incomparable 'Werewolves of London' and many of rock's
wryest lyrics is no more. Sadly.
(Smokers may take note here: his logo was a skull with sunglasses and a
cigarette holder complete with lighted cigarette.)
<q>
Eccentric Rocker Warren Zevon Dies of Cancer
By City News Service
LOS ANGELES , September 8, 2003 -- Warren Zevon, the hard-living
singer-songwriter who wrote about his impending death in recent years,
died at his Los Angeles home after losing a battle with lung cancer. He
was 56.
Zevon, whose hits included "Laywers, Guns and Money" and "Werewolves of
London," died yesterday afternoon, his manager Irving Azoff told the Los
Angeles Times.
"He was in a good place," Azoff said, adding that Zevon was pleased with
sales of his new album The Wind and the recent birth of twin
grandchildren.
The longtime smoker learned in August 2002 that he was suffering from
inoperable lung cancer.
The Chicago native, who later attended Los Angeles' Fairfax High School
only to drop out as a junior to become a musician, was known for his
macabre sense of humor. His 2002 album cover for My Ride's Here shows
him riding in a hearse.
Death and dying were among Zevon's favorite topics and, when confronted
with his own mortality, he continued the exploration with aplomb.
"I feel the opposite of regret," Zevon told The Times in an interview
after learning his lung cancer was inoperable.
"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.'"
In his song "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."
Zevon spent much of his time during his illness doting on family and
working in a home studio on his latest album. His popularity among peers
was underscored by contributors to the record, including 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.
Acclaimed rock drummer Jim Keltner, 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," Keltner told The Times.
The album 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.
Dylan, in recent live shows, has paid tribute to Zevon by singing
several of his songs, including "Mutineer" and "Accidentally Like a
Martyr.
Zevon, born Jan. 24, 1947, spent much of his youth shuttling between
different cities in California, among them Los Angeles and San
Francisco, The Times reported.
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."
Though Zevon was a precocious child, a classically trained pianist with
high IQ scores, he dropped out of Fairfax High as a junior--about the
same time his parents divorced--and moved to New York City to become a
folk singer. Those dreams fizzled, and Zevon moved around the country,
eventually returning to Southern California in the late 1960s.
At first, he wrote commercial jingles and played on recording sessions.
He penned songs for the Turtles, including "Like the Seasons" and
"Outside Chance."
In 1969, he released his first album, Wanted: Dead or Alive, but it did
not sell well and he became a keyboard player and music director for the
Everly Brothers in the early '70s.
Reminiscing about those days, he told Rolling Stone: "The road, booze
and I became an inseparable team."
After some more false starts, Zevon and his then-wife, Crystal Zevon,
became embittered about L.A. life and moved to Spain in 1975, The Times
reported. That adventure was short-lived.
Back in Los Angeles, Browne championed Zevon to budding music mogul
David Geffen and the result was 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 hit a year
later for Linda Ronstadt.
The album included Henley, Glenn Frey, Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham,
Carl Wilson, Bonnie Raitt and J.D. Souther--an loose assembly of
Southern California rockers that largely defined the '70s sound.
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, The Times reported.
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, according to The Times.
By the early 1980s, Zevon's wild ways had wrecked much of his personal
life, and he went into a rehab program, which he would later mock in
"Detox Mansion."
His 1982 album, The Envoy, was a product of his cleaner living and was
hailed as a return to his early form. Sentimental Hygiene (1987) and the
1991 collection Mr. Bad Example again won him rave reviews. Still, major
commercial success eluded him.
"It was a little more interesting this way, maybe," he told The Times
last year. "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?"
</q>
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