![]() Call it an exercise, an exorcism - decadence via proxy. I see other possibilities.Īm I a masochist for reading rock bio after rock bio after rock bio, subjecting myself to what might have been but never will be? Maybe. But - better or worse - the volume’s turned down. But it also ends with a flourish of creative energy, a last gasp of exposition (or explanation).Īm I a tortured artist? Maybe just a little bit. And ends as sloppily as it began, in an apartment strewn with empty liquor bottles or closets full of pornography (self-produced, natch). ![]() He was too weak, too needy, to sensitive. With Zevon, though, one gets the sense he couldn’t move through it. I may have passed through some of it, but it’s there. I’m not sure there was any way out for him he was hooked on turmoil to fuel his art.Īnd I’m not sure that some of those more base behaviors - the addictive personality, the womanizing, the morose, obsessive compulsive - are not just below the surface of many of us. He gobbled pills, snorted coke, polished off bottles of vodka before noon, alienated his kids, obsessed over minutia (he purchased thousands of gray Calvin Klein t-shirts in his 56 years, many of which were still in their original packaging when he died), and collected and disposed of lovers like dirty laundry.Īnd yet, throughout the books 431 page arc, I found myself drawn to the man if not just sympathetically, then maybe even empathically. Steak and strippers - a few lapdances (one felt obliged)… went to Annette’s and made love. Good fuck afterwards… then she left so I could pack… total class act that girl. Made high priced ($300) call girl after passing on two… she left 5ish. Springsteen I would rarely see Warren that he hadn’t written something that I wished in another lifetime I’d written.” Jackson Browne said, he “said the things I wish I could say.” Gore Vidal said, “There was simply no one else writing like him at the time.”įar more often then not, though, he was a complete jerk.Ĭhecked out of Cedars early afternoon. Ends up, he was wrestling with all that, and a whole lot more.īy all accounts, Warren Zevon was a musical genius held in high regard by many. He’s clearly wrestling some demons here: malaise, success, integrity. ![]() Whether he’s writing about himself here or not, an author is always implicated by his text. How’re you going to make your way in the world Moreover, though, it was clear that his sensibilities were a bit off-center. It was tough for me to work out the melody, and even more difficult to figure out the chords. In fact, I think it all added up to just a handful of songs: “Werewolves Of London” (of course), “Lawyers, Guns & Money,” “Tenderness On the Block” and one I covered a few summers ago, “The French Inhaler.”įrom covering “The French Inhaler” alone, it was apparent that the guy had a gift for both musical and lyrical composition. Unlike U2 or Luna (or even Semisonic, whose drummer, Jacob Slichter wrote the great “So You Want To Be A Rock & Roll Star?”), I knew very little about Zevon when I began the book. The result is a painful, compelling read. In addition to 300+ pages of chronologically ordered remembrances from family, friends like Jackson Brown and peers like Bruce Springsteen, the book excerpts Zevon’s own journals. Yesterday, I reluctantly finished “The Dirty Life And Times Of Warren Zevon,” an oral history compiled by the late singer/songwriter’s ex-wife. ![]() Last year, I devoured “U2: At the End of the World” by Bill Flanagan (a CBS Sunday Morning contributor and MTV SVP over whom I emphatically and somewhat embarrassingly gushed when I bumped into him in an elevator recently).Ī few weeks ago, I tore through Dean Wareham’s “Black Postcards: A Rock & Roll Romance.” Nothing wrong with that I enjoy a blockbuster page-turner like the guy in the next seat on the plane. Most readers flock to best sellers, pap like Joseph Hellerman, Dean Koontz, or Scott Turow. I’m pretty sure I’m not a tortured artist, though I may be a masochist.
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