She's so many women
He can't find the one who was his friend
He's hanging on to half a heart
But he can't have the restless part
So he tells her to hasten down the wind
Sooooo…. Warren Zevon. He has been dead 10 years as of September 7th. That… is a day that will live in infamy. I never really knew what to do with him. I knew he was west coast and was buddies with Jackson Brown and Waddy Wachtel and the Eagles and Linda Ronstadt and… everyone.
I knew “Werewolves of London” in all of its ubiquitousness. It was...everywhere and it was funny… and annpying… and brilliant… and everywhere. I was aware that he had a lof interesting songs. In college I would blast “Lawyers, Guns and Money” and “I’ll Sleep When I am Dead”. He was biting and ironic and could really pound a phrase and he made me smile but other than “Excitable Boy” I did not feel the need tp buy a lot of his music.
My eyes are stapled open wide,
As I lay down on my side.
I am bouncing off these walls.
As I focus on the clock,
Time stands still, but I cannot.
I should strap myself in bed.
I guess I'll sleep when I am dead.
But over the years he crept into my consciousness.
I found out he wrote “Hasten Down The Wind”. I truly became obsessed with the song “French Inhaler”
How're you going to make your way in the world
When you weren't cut out for working?
When your fingers are slender and frail
How're you going to get around in this sleazy bedroom town
If you don't put yourself up for sale?
but “Bad Luck Streak In Dancing School” though a clever title with some awesome people on it (Springsteen and T-Bone Burnett) it did not impress.. other than the haunting “Play It All Night Long”,
I'm going down to the Dew Drop Inn
See if I can drink enough
There ain't much to country living
Sweat, piss, jizz and blood
"Sweet home Alabama"
Play that dead band's song
Turn those speakers up full blast
Play it all night long
“The Envoy” released in 1982… lost me completely. It was only later I found he was losing himself as well. In 1987 he comes back and with some help from REM releases “Sentimental Hygene” for my law school graduation containing the unstoppable…”Boom Boom Mancini”. one of the best boxing songs….ever.
Hurry home early hurry on home
Boom Boom Mancini's fighting Bobby Chacon
Hurry home early hurry on home
Boom Boom Mancini's fighting Bobby Chacon
Lyrics from eLyrics.net
“Transverse City” in 89 woul have allowed him to be forgotten by me again, but for the song “Splendid Isolation”. “Mr. Bad Example” in in 1991 allowed me to forget him...again. In 2009 he came back with “Mutineer” and it was all good, rollicking and smart but crowned by “The Indifference of Heaven”.
Time marches on
Time stands still
Time on my hands, time to kill
Blood on my hands
And my hands in the till
Down at the 7-11
Gentle rain falls on me
And all life folds back into the sea
We contemplate eternity
Beneath the vast indifference of Heaven
The frightiningly named “Life Will Kill You” gave us nothing but “My Shits Fucked Up”. He finished his studio albums with “The WInd” which was uneven and brilliant and heartbeaking as he was dying.
But when you go back and read the lyrics. The lyrics were always tight and brilliant. Perfect and brilliant. Brilliant and brilliant. Everyone admired the guys brilliance. So I read the lyrics. His son came out with a book of them shortly after his death and I was wowed all over again, and again. So I went out and bought his first wife’s biography of him, “I’ll Sleep When I Am Dead (The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon). And it was great and depressing. If you love the west coast music scene of the last 30 years it is classic. His ex wife Crystal did not write the book so much as just put together paragraphs by other people ranging from… everyone who ever knew him. Relatives, girlfriends, musicians, singers, songwriters, agents, producers… all vaguley chronological. And it is worth reading.
It is amazing as you read this… what a scared, arrogant, unhappy, brilliant, admired, insecure bastard he was. When concerned about music he abused his women, serially. He was a hopeless alcoholic, until he straightened himself out and had several years of revered sobriety before diving back in. Devestating to read. Painful but true and realistically he could not live through it. Happy for his friends success. Bitter that he never got rich from his talent and always suspicious that he was a fake. More than anything else reading the book as he struggled with people and music and alcohol and drugs to find pleasure that his life was the portrait of a godless life and the emptiness he found in that life ate him up, and those around him. But God he could write.
Now, at this point in my life, his albums are a soundtrack for my life and perhaps all of ours. Not always a happy sound track but a portrait of searching and sadness which resonates with anyone who is lucky enough to remain living. He was a beautiful, unhappy, sad mess. I hope that he sleep peacefully now that his dead, but I suspect whether in heaven or hell he is making some righteous noise.
I miss him or even more I miss the idea of him. Sometimes the world needs reckless, self destructive beauty.
But don't it make you want to rock and roll
All night long
Mohammed's Radio
I heard somebody singing sweet and soulful
On the radio, Mohammed's Radio
Shadows are fallin' and I'm runnin' out of breath
Keep me in your heart for a while
If I leave you it doesn't mean I love you any less
Keep me in your heart for a while
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