#WARREN ZEVON YOUNG TV#

Though Zevon initially had no luck putting his own music over, Linda Ronstadt made his “Hasten Down the Wind” the title track of her 1976 album. He threw himself into musical odd jobs, including writing jingles (for Ernest and Julio Gallo wines, to name one) as well as songs for the Turtles (“Outside Chance”) and serving as pianist and bandleader for the Everly Brothers. In 1969, Zevon recorded his debut album, Wanted: Dead or Alive, which generated almost no interest. After meeting composer Igor Stravinsky, he began to study music in junior high and started a few local bands in high school. Zevon was born in January 1947 in Chicago, the son of Russian immigrants, and grew up in Arizona and California. “I wake up in the morning thinking, oh my god, he was still here, and we were doing stuff… I miss him every day.A year after learning he had an inoperable form of lung cancer - and more than twenty-five years after he began obsessing over death in song - Warren Zevon passed away in his Los Angeles home on Sunday he was fifty-six. Once heard, its unflinching songs of life, death and the places in between are hard to shake off, like all its creator’s works. Reaching number 12 on the album charts the same month, in February 2004 The Wind won two Grammys.

#WARREN ZEVON YOUNG TV#

Jordan recalls them watching TV quiz show Jeopardy, enjoying laughs, and his father’s Jamaican nurses reading to him from The Bible: “He told me he was scared and we both cried a little.” Warren’s old road pal Jill Sobule has spoken fondly about “filthy” emails she received from him before he died on September 7, aged 56. His children and Calderón speak of a quiet retreat and loving last words. On June 11, Zevon’s grandsons Maximus Patrick and Augustus Warren were born. “The image of him touching my stomach was on the same day… Once the album was recorded, honestly, he declined rapidly.”

“I was there for the vocal recording of Keep Me In Your Heart,” says Zevon’s daughter Ariel, who was pregnant with twins at the time. Earlier, Zevon had suggested Calderón sing it (“I said, ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’”). Calderón and engineer Noah Scot Snyder went to Zevon’s Los Angeles apartment, where they recorded vocals for songs including the album’s final, poignant entreaty Keep Me In Your Heart. On April 12, having accepted medication, he was well enough to continue. “He told me he was scared and we both cried a little.” There were laughs, and a defining Zevon maxim when asked what his illness had taught him: “you’re meant to enjoy every sandwich.” The host later expressed regret at the interview’s playful tone. On October 30 2002, he made his public farewell – he called it, “playing his own wake” - as the sole guest on his loyal friend David Letterman’s CBS TV show, performing and talking about his predicament with mordant wit. He said, I want to leave my last message to all the fans, and for it to be successful, for my kids, so I can leave them something.” So there was really not a plan of, oh, we’re gonna write all these songs about mortality. “It was important to him to make the record. “He said, I wanna do what we talked about doing,” says Calderón, who co-produced with Zevon. Rather than go gentle, Zevon had decided to forego treatment and press on with an already-planned album with close creative partner and co-writer Jorge Calderón, who’d appeared on all but one of Zevon’s LPs since 1976. An A-list guest-packed affair, it was recorded after he’d been given a terminal cancer diagnosis, and three months to live, on August 28, 2002. But on this day, his final goodbye The Wind was released. His calling cards included I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead, Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead and 1978 US hit Werewolves Of London two recent albums were even called Life’ll Kill Ya and My Ride’s Here. Intimations of death were frequent in the work of complicated, brilliant Warren Zevon.

Warren zevon young