Another example: After Zevon heard one of his true idols, Bob Dylan, sprinkle his Los Angeles concerts with Zevon songs, the dying man cracked a smile. Zevon has made a habit of deflating the melodrama with his one-liners. “What he brought emotionally into the room, the way he handled himself and gave of himself - well, to me he is a national treasure.” Calderon laughed and added that Zevon, after Springsteen played, shook his head and said, “So you are him.” “I’ve never heard Bruce play like that in my life,” Calderon said.
For him, Springsteen’s visit was especially memorable. He produced the album, played or sang on all 11 tracks, co-wrote seven of them, and often laid down dummy lead vocals on songs when Zevon was too ill to show up.
Standing closest to Zevon on “The Wind” is Jorge Calderon, his longtime friend and collaborator. The context of the album’s recording, as well as the presence of VH1 cameras for a documentary that airs on that channel a week from today, makes it a strange hybrid between a tribute album and an Irish wake (although a mellow wake, especially considering Zevon was known in the 1970s and part of the 1980s for hellacious excesses).
26 and has the feel of a tribute done while it still matters, when the honoree is still here. Zevon is much beloved by many of his fellow artists (for his talent, to be sure, but also in equal measure for his uncompromising career path and wry charm) and the result of their collective efforts, “The Wind,” is due Aug. So when the call went out, many answered: Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne, Don Henley, Tom Petty, Emmylou Harris, Ry Cooder and many others, some contributing from afar, others coming to see the stricken Zevon, who had gone public with the diagnosis of his terminal cancer. This was exactly the sort of thing you would expect from the singer-songwriter, whose grim and funny music always seemed like a margarita stand in a mausoleum - sure, the songs all seemed say, have some fun, just don’t forget where this big party is going to end. The ones who know Zevon best probably allowed themselves a sad smile. It was a jolting and macabre message to be sure, and that propelled it only faster through the wiring of famous friends, managers, agents and labels that links rock musicians to one another. were just a few of the people who worked with him.Warren Zevon is dying and he wants to make a record. His magnetic personality attracted an astonishing array of collaborators over the years: Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, David Gilmour and R.E.M. But he was also charismatic, funny and more often than not the smartest guy in the room. He was vain and combustible, egotistical and petty. The 80s and 90s were equally erratic, commercially and personally, and although in the early 00s he underwent a mini-renaissance, it was soon cut terminally short.īy all accounts, Zevon wasn’t an easy man to be around. The 1978 single Werewolves Of London propelled him to fame, but it remained his sole hit – something that proved a source of frustration and amusement to the man behind it. His underwhelming 1969 debut album, Wanted Dead Or Alive, proved to be a false start, and it would be another seven years before he released a follow-up. Zevon’s career was anything but predictable. “But I don’t get depressed and I don’t get bored.” I have problems,” he told one interviewer. He gravitated towards life’s losers, underdogs and addicts, maybe because he saw something of himself in them. Born in Chicago but coming of age in 60s Los Angeles, he could easily have carved out a successful career as a straight-down-the-line piano man like Elton John or Billy Joel, were it not for his caustic wit, chemical-induced instability and general contempt for the world. But then Zevon was never your typical singer-songwriter.
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