“[I] make as broad a joke about [morality] as I can, ’cause it’s the best way I can balance the fear,” Warren Zevon told this writer in 1981. Hollywood’s dark prince, he was the odd man out in LA’s incestuous rock mafia; a literate cynic who alternated between bizarre ruckus-roll navigations of California’s underbelly and brutally honest love songs. He was also addicted to booze, drugs, guns and sex.
The son of a Russian immigrant gangster, Zevon had hung out with Stravinsky and dabbled in folk-pop for The Turtles’ label when he met Kim Fowley. A resultant album flopped, though Zevon bagged a gold record when his song She Quit Me appeared on Midnight Cowboy. Jackson Browne recalled him from an extended romp in Spain to record for Asylum. The rest is history.
This oral biography delivers, warts’n’all (Zevon asked his wife to include all the bad stuff). You expect the booze, pills, guns and general assholery, but the wifebeating, cruelty to offspring and general mean-spirited behaviour is a surprise. Addicts often dislike themselves, and Zevon apparently thought himself a fraud who would one day be exposed. He wasn’t, he was the real deal. If his friends and family can forgive him, those who loved his music should too.
