Warren zevon who is

Though he frequently worked with luminaries of the Los Angeles soft rock scene, Zevon was always the odd man out, someone who shared their exacting musical standards but not their smugly satisfied view of the world around them, and he remained a cheerful pessimist right up to the moment he met a fate that could have visited one of his own characters. Warren William Zevon was born in Chicago on January 24, , and the facts of his early life read like a picaresque novel.

When Zevon was young, his family moved to Fresno, California, and as he developed a precocious interest in music in his early teens and learned to play the piano and the guitar, young Warren became acquainted with the author and orchestra director Robert Craft.

Craft in turn introduced the youngster to the noted composer Igor Stravinsky , who befriended Zevon and welcomed him into his home several times. However, after a second 45, Zevon quit the duo to move to Los Angeles, and over the next few years, he struggled to support himself as a contract songwriter two of his compositions, "Outside Chance" and "Like the Seasons," were recorded by White Whale's best-known act, the Turtles , composing commercial jingles, and as a session musician.

In , noted producer, talent scout, and eccentric Kim Fowley , impressed by Zevon 's songwriting, offered to produce an album for him; the record, Wanted Dead or Alive , was a critical and commercial flop. After the failure of his first album, Zevon joined the Everly Brothers ' touring band as pianist, and following the duo's acrimonious split in , he would work with both Don and Phil as solo artists. However, an attempt to complete a second album failed to get off the ground, and in frustration, Zevon left the United States for Spain, where he spent a summer playing in a small tavern and writing songs.

By the fall of , he had returned to Los Angeles, and after sharing a home for a while with a pair of struggling pop performers, Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks , Zevon had already struck up a friendship with Jackson Browne , who was on the cusp of major stardom and one of the most well-respected songwriters on the West Coast.

While Zevon 's and Browne 's styles were very different, Browne greatly admired his new friend's talent, and not only helped Zevon land a deal with Asylum Records but also produced his first album for the label. Simply titled Warren Zevon , the set which featured Zevon 's former roommates Buckingham and Nicks , who had since found stardom in Fleetwood Mac , as well as Bonnie Raitt and several members of the Eagles didn't sell especially well but won rave reviews, and Linda Ronstadt would give Zevon her seal of approval by covering three tunes from the album.

Browne took Zevon on tour to support the album, and in , they returned to the studio to cut Zevon 's second long-player. Excitable Boy became an unexpected success after the song "Werewolves of London" stormed the singles charts, and Zevon finally became a rock star.

Flashes of Zevon's later writing preoccupations of romantic loss and noir-ish violence are present in songs like " Tule's Blues ", " A Bullet for Ramona ", and the album's title track. Zevon's second effort, Leaf in the Wind , was scrapped though a belated release was contemplated just prior to his death.

He later toured and recorded with Don Everly and Phil Everly , separately, as they tried to launch solo careers following their break-up. His dissatisfaction with his career led him to move to Spain in the summer of , where he played in a small bar in Sitges near Barcelona owned by David Lindell , a former mercenary. In the mids, Zevon returned to Los Angeles , where he roomed with then-unknown Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham and became associated with the then-burgeoning West Coast music scene.

There, he collaborated with Jackson Browne , who in would produce and promote Zevon's self-titled major-label debut. Zevon's first tour in included guest appearances in the middle of Jackson Browne concerts, one of which is documented on a widely circulated bootleg recording of a Dutch radio program under the title The Offender Meets the Pretender.

Though a much darker and more ironic songwriter than Browne and other leading figures of the era's L. Though only a modest commercial success, the Browne-produced Warren Zevon would later be labelled a masterpiece in the first edition of the Rolling Stone Record Guide and is cited in the book's most recently revised November edition as Zevon's most realized work. Representative tracks include the junkie's lament " Carmelita ", the Copland -esque outlaw ballad " Frank and Jesse James ", " The French Inhaler ", a scathing insider's look at life and lust on the L.

It was during this period that Zevon's excessive vodka intake earned him the nickname "F. Scott Fitzevon," a reference to the American novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald , whose early, alcohol-fueled death Zevon seemed bent on repeating. In , Zevon released his breakthrough album, Excitable Boy , to critical acclaim and popular success.

The title tune about a juvenile sociopath's murderous prom night name-checked "Little Susie", the heroine of former employers the Everly Brothers ' signature tune " Wake Up Little Susie ", while songs such as " Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner " and " Lawyers, Guns and Money " used deadpan humour to wed geopolitical subtexts to hard-boiled narratives. Tracks from this album received heavy FM airplay and the single release " Werewolves of London ", which featured Mick Fleetwood and John McVie , was a relatively lighthearted version of Zevon's signature macabre outlook and a Top 30 hit.

Rolling Stone called the album one of the most significant releases of the s and placed Zevon alongside Neil Young , Jackson Browne , and Bruce Springsteen as one of the four most important new artists to emerge in the decade. This album was dedicated to Ken Millar, better known under his nom-de-plume as detective novelist Ross Macdonald.

Millar was a literary hero of Zevon's who met the singer for the first time while participating in an intervention organized by Rolling Stone journalist Paul Nelson that helped Zevon temporarily kick his substance addictions. It contained a collaboration with Bruce Springsteen called " Jeannie Needs A Shooter ", and the ballad " Empty-Handed Heart " dealing with Zevon's divorce from wife Crystal Marilyn "Tule" Livingston -- the mother of Jordan Zevon -- and Zevon were in long-term relationship but never married: Crystal Zevon is the only woman he legally married although she is often erroneously listed as his "second wife" and featuring a descant sung by Linda Ronstadt.

Zevon's release The Envoy is perhaps the least known of his major label studio albums, an erratic but characteristic set that included such compositions as " Charlie's Medicine " and " Jesus Mentioned ", the first of Zevon's two musical reactions to the death of Elvis Presley the other is the song " Porcelain Monkey " on Life'll Kill Ya in Thompson 's book, The Curse of Lono.

The Envoy was the first Zevon album to feature his son Jordan Zevon. After the disappointing reception for The Envoy , Zevon was dropped by his label Asylum Records , which Zevon discovered only when he read about it in the "Random Notes" gossip column of The Rolling Stone.

The trauma caused him to relapse into serious alcoholism, and he voluntarily checked himself into an unnamed rehab clinic somewhere in Minnesota.

Zevon retreated from the music business for several years, during which he finally overcame severe alcohol and drug addictions. To learn more or opt-out, read our Cookie Policy. But for most of the time, the assembled musicians hung out, drank, and watched the hometown Anaheim Angels finish off the San Francisco Giants in the World Series.

Eventually, they would stumble into the Snakepit each night for a session that lasted until dawn. I went from super excited to really sad. Two months earlier, Zevon announced to the world that he had been diagnosed with pleural mesothelioma, a form of cancer that affects the membrane surrounding the lungs and chest.

Doctors gave him just three months to live. Almost immediately, he began assembling the songs that composed his elegiac swan song, The Wind , one of the most commercially successful and lauded releases of his year recording career, released just two weeks before his death at age 56 on September 7, In his personal life, Zevon was a womanizer who raved maniacally and sometimes violently through alcoholic blackouts, terrorizing his wife, Crystal, and scarring his two children, Jordan and Ariel.

Spitting in the face of adversity had long been a recurring theme in his work. Nevertheless, Zevon in the moment appreciated the marketing potential of his predicament. But in terms of the commercial mainstream, Zevon was a nonentity. The gambit, for lack of a better term, worked: When word got out that Zevon was dying, doors that were closed to him for decades suddenly opened again.

His label gave him a real recording budget. Magazines rushed to profile him, and VH1 sent a camera crew to follow him around. After nearly 17 years of sobriety, Zevon fell off the wagon hard when he was diagnosed. But Zevon was otherwise in good spirits. From his drum stool, Gorman could see Zevon in the vocal booth, struggling for breath as the song opened. But he pulled it together when it was time to sing, throwing his whole body behind a quivering vocal.

That quartet had played a few concerts together in under the name Hindu Love Gods, and even released a single in While recording Sentimental Hygiene , they spent one late night in an informal jam session, recording some of their favorite songs, mostly blues standards. In the early s, Zevon took on a new job as the musical coordinator and sometime guitarist for the Rock Bottom Remainders.

In , Zevon was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a form of cancer usually caused by exposure to asbestos. He won two posthumous Grammy Awards for the album, the only Grammys he ever received.