I'LL SLEEP WHEN I'M DEAD
The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon
By Crystal Zevon
Ecco, 452 pages, $33.95
I met a girl at the Rainbow Bar,
She was a credit to her gender,
She put me through some changes, Lord,
Sort of like a Waring blender.
Poor, Pitiful Me
The pure products of America go crazy, said William Carlos Williams. There was never a truer, more wittily demented product of the American melting pot than the late, great singer-songwriter, Warren Zevon, a Mormon Jew.
In her oral biography, a labour of love-hate, the singer's ex-wife, Crystal Zevon, recounts the rocker's curious provenance. His father, Willie (Stumpy) Zevon, né Zivotovsky, was a minor wiseguy from Brooklyn, a close friend and associate of the notorious Mickey Cohen. Zevon's pretty blonde mother, Beverly Simmons, was a Wonder Bread Mormon from Fresno, Calif.
After a short interval of marital blitzkrieg, young Warren, a blazing musical prodigy, was shuffled back and forth between Mom and Dad, after having racked up the highest IQ ever recorded in Fresno. In Beverly Hills, he read complex, modernistic scores with Igor Stravinsky. In Fresno, Mom had moved in with Elmer, a roofer, who didn't mind slapping Warren around.
Said Stumpy, "These folks are telling you that you're the Pope of Rome. You're a Jew, son, you hear me? Never forget you're a Jew."
Small wonder the kid turned out a tormented genius.
Stumpy had a connection in the biz and soon Warren, who could notate music like others wrote grocery lists, was dropping out of Fairfax High in Los Angeles to live the life of rock 'n' roll.
After churning out surfer tunes for a music publisher and playing piano with the Everly Brothers, Zevon was soon composing his own literate, cleverly constructed songs. His subject matter was the poignant lives of small fry on the fringes of Hollywood. As his friend Jackson Browne put it, Zevon was the King of Song Noir.
Lawyers, Guns, and Money, Excitable Boy and Werewolves of London were just a few of the memorable tunes he recorded. Zevon's songs had insightful lyrics and hilarious turns of phrase, not to mention catchy pop hooks. He performed them with a virile magnetism for raucous crowds. Zevon was the only rocker who wrote orchestral charts that sounded like Aaron Copland and lyrics as droll as Randy Newman's, only with balls.
His Jewish uncles and cousins, dentists and accountants to a man, turned out to cheer him on. The Mormons stayed in Fresno.
Only sporadically embraced by the mainstream, Zevon became a cult figure in the mid-seventies. Fortunately for him, the cult included Keith Richards, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Billy Bob Thornton and David Letterman. The singer himself enjoyed the company of writers, especially those who wrote hard-boiled crime novels, and they were grateful for a rock star's attentions. Hunter Thompson, Carl Hiaasen, Ross Macdonald, Tom McGuane and Stephen King all became his friends. After all, Zevon could discuss Proust and Shostakovich, as well as Mickey Spillane.
As McGuane says, Zevon idealized all the grimmer aspects of rock 'n' roll. A dedicated follower of the cult of bad behaviour, the brilliant young performer of Beethoven piano sonatas consciously invented an outlaw persona for himself; inevitable disaster followed.
By the mid-eighties, Zevon's bad-boy shtick was obsolete. Drink, drugs, foolery with guns, feuds with key collaborators, a talent for making powerful enemies, poor sales and a punishing parade of skirts all contributed to his downfall.
Nor was Zevon an exemplary family man when he came home. Often a couple hours late and sloppy drunk when picking up their two kids, he used Crystal as a convenient punching bag and her furniture for target practice. She put up with it all much longer than she should have. But it's hard to tell somebody who's famous and talented and successful what to do.
Bookish and shy when sober, Zevon had to pour a lot of vodka down his throat to become the excitable boy he thought his fans wanted him to be. When Hunter S. Thompson is teaching you lessons in maturity, you're in big trouble. Said a friend, "When someone who is an alcoholic plays at being a sociopath it's hard to know when playtime is over."
This is, arguably, the routine stuff of rock bios.
What makes Crystal's print documentary compelling is her accumulation of testimony about what happened after the cheering stopped. As the disappointments mounted, Zevon's compulsions and eccentricities grew apace. He could only wear one colour, grey. A more enthusiastic shopper than any heterosexual alive, he would buy dozens of grey socks, shorts and underpants, then throw most of them out because they were probably bad luck.
Playing club tours throughout tank-town America, he was recording for smaller and smaller labels, which did little to promote him. Travelling, he often got a break on the speeding tickets he accumulated in his grey Corvette. The dudes on the highway patrol were big fans of Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner.
Back in L.A., Zevon began to resemble one of the characters in his own songs. He lived in a small apartment off Sunset he named "Cat Piss Manor." The singer became a kind of showbiz Everyman, seldom venturing out except to eat at Hugo's on Santa Monica with the Hollywood troops, the sitcom writers, minor agents and recording studio assistants. Bitter at the wealth of old friends like Jackson Browne and Don Henley, he still shopped at Prada, even though he was struggling with finances.
Leaving the long-suffering Crystal to her own demons, he romanced a series of attractive, intelligent women: journalists, academics and the sort of actress who reads. As one of his song lyrics has it, he was looking for somebody with low self-esteem. Each one of these smart ladies was convinced she would be the one to turn Zevon into a well-behaved, civic-minded celebrity, the kind that longs to help starving children in Africa. All were disappointed; he changed girlfriends as often as he switched labels - every couple of years.
Zevon was never going have a quiet, normal life. When he was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, he was such a pro that he turned onrushing death into a clever career move. After all, the "hammerheads," as Zevon dubbed the great mainstream public, love a repentant sinner. The doomed rocker appeared on his pal Letterman's show, facing extinction with stoic humour. He reconciled with ex-wife and ex-kids. He quickly made a final, touching CD that won several Grammys. Said Zevon, "It's a hard way to make a living, having to
die to get 'em to know you're alive."
Because many of Zevon's friends and lovers are such intelligent, insightful people, Crystal Zevon has stitched together from their reminiscences an exceptionally penetrating account of a time and a place. Songs as droll and touching as Carmelita and Desperadoes Under the Eaves will be around forever.
As for Zevon, even though he hung on past his mid-fifties, he clearly belongs in the Bad Boy Hall of Fame in the Lived Fast, Died Young category, somewhere between Buddy Holly and Nathanael West.
Norman Snider's collection of non-fiction, The Roaring Eighties and Other Good Times, will appear shortly.
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