#Warren zevon cause of death full#
(This fate was undeserved for the former and fairly justified for the latter, Zevon’s weakest career effort.) After signing to the small independent label Artemis, however, Zevon came back in full force with Life’ll Kill Ya just after the century had turned, producing some of his most gutsy and forward work yet. Bad Example and Mutineer - were not received warmly by critics or by fans, at least judging by the paltry sales of each. “For My Next Trick I’ll Need a Volunteer” (Life’ll Kill Ya, 2000) The songs below are but a few of many measures of this great man’s incredible way of wringing words out of inkwells.ġ0. Tricky though a task this is, in paying tribute to a wordsmith as great as Warren Zevon, all one can do is make marginal choices of lyrics that reflect the musician’s caustically genuine view of life. To include him amongst the likes of Dylan, Mitchell, and Browne isn’t an exaggeration if anything, it’s the cold, hard truth. From the jilted, hilarious Hawaiian romance of “The Hula Hula Boys” to the paranoid spy thriller “You’re a Whole Different Person When You’re Scared”, from the embrace of second place in “Looking for the Next Best Thing” to the touching plea for forgiveness in “Reconsider Me” - Warren left his fans, friends, and family with a bevy of lyrics that span the inspired and the crass.
Narrowing down Zevon’s literate oeuvre into a ten-best list is a feat impossible too much genius has to be left off. Ten years have passed since Warren’s demise, but his songs have yet to lose any of their acerbic vitality.
Much like the rebels of “Frank and Jesse James”, he died too young. His death at 56, while perhaps fitting given his career-long banter with death, was undeniably tragic. To use the words of one of The Envoy‘s best tracks, much of his life “ain’t that pretty at all”.īut for all the wrongs Zevon etched into the world, he gave back an incredible amount of humor, wisdom, and grace. Following 1982’s The Envoy, he publicly fell off the wagon, resulting in a five-year creative hiatus. During his peak of popularity, following the “Werewolves of London”-backed LP Excitable Boy, he was frequently angry, reckless, and consumed by alcohol. Those who counted Zevon as a close friend - Jackson Browne, Jorge Calderon, and Carl Hiaasen, amongst others - are familiar with his weaknesses, as is anyone who has read the gripping, painful tales in I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead. Part of what makes his morbid tracks so powerful are all the times where he’s unflinchingly honest someone willing to face off with the bleakest aspects of humanity is bound to get a few tears sliced into his armor. Songs like “Empty-Handed Heart” and “Hasten Down the Wind” early in his career and “Don’t Let Us Get Sick” as his time came to a close gave the public a portrait of a man who, while uniquely able to handle the harsh realities of life, hadn’t become desensitized to the pains of living - the self-deprecating “Numb as a Statue” notwithstanding. While Zevon’s signature darkness is indeed one of the characteristics that makes him so distinctive a songwriter, there’s a tender heart a few inches below the skull wearing aviator sunglasses. If Zevon’s lyrics are any indication, he greeted Death as an old friend, one who knew all of his stories long before the scythe bore down. It wasn’t just that Zevon was spitting in Death’s face-he pulled up a barstool next to the hooded reaper, ordered whiskeys for the both of them, and challenged him to a conversation. At the end of his career-both before and following being diagnosed with mesothelioma, a terminal form of lung cancer-he put out albums with titles including Life’ll Kill Ya and My Ride’s Here. His tumultuously productive career as a songwriter only further demonstrates his unmitigated interest in the dark side of life, whether it be the Hyatt House S&M of “Poor Poor Pitiful Me” or the Uzi atop the ballerina shoes on the back of the sleeve art to his third LP, Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School. …Warren took his right hand and stretched it behind his back at the same time he looked over his right shoulder and said in his best JFK accent, “Jackie, I’ve got this real bad pain in my head.”
Kennedy being announced over the loudspeakers at his high school, Zevon turned to his friend Danny McFarland, who recalls his macabre candor: In the oral biography compiled by his first wife Crystal, I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead, it is written that upon hearing the death of John F.
#Warren zevon cause of death android#
Android Face by bluebudgie ( Pixabay License / Pixabay)įrom as early as his teenage years, it was plain that Warren Zevon was never going to be an ordinary person, or at the very least an ordinary writer.
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