Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / "Accidentally Like a Martyr: The Tortured Art of Warren Zevon"/James Campion [Episode 155]

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"Accidentally Like a Martyr: The Tortured Art of Warren Zevon"/James Campion [Episode 155] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

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We're totally brock and ROLLO. I think I'll leave you. You're reading Little
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Hands is It's time to rock and roll row. We are totally booked.
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Welcome to Booked on Rock, the podcast for those about to read and rock
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online. It booked on rock dot com. You could find every episode of
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Booked on Rock there, along with links to your favorite listening platforms, exclusive
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videos, blogs, links to all of the social media sites, and the
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latest rock book releases. James Campion is a returning guest. He's here to
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talk about the life and career of the late Grape Warren Zevon and his twenty
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eighteen book Accidentally Like a Martyr, The Tortured Art of Warren Zevon. It's
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hard to believe, but it's been twenty years since Evon passed away. For
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nearly four decades, spanning twelve studio albums and thirty two singles, no artists
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expressed the duality of life, the light and the dark, the ugliness the
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beauty better than Warren Zevon. As his ex wife told James in his book
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quote, if you're looking at the themes through his songs and what influenced them,
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at the heart of everything, is that Warren was an artist. First,
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we'll explore that music in the often turbulent life of Warren Zevon with author
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James Campion. To hear a playlist of Warren Zevon, make sure he head
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over to the show notes page. James, I think I can now call
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you a friend of the podcast. This is now second or third appearance,
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but we're in touch so often, and you've been so supportive of this podcast,
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So you're a friend of the podcast. Thank you man. Yes,
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and a big fan and listener. And yes, this is my third appearance.
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And I think I threw you some authors, which is great, and
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I plug you all the time when I go to book events or I speak
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with other colleagues, and people are really picking up on it, and we're
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all in the author community very grateful of the work you do to promote music
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books, not just rock books, but all kinds of music books, biographies
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and everything, and we really appreciate it. Honestly, it comes from everybody,
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Buddy. That's half the reason I do it. Because you could do
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podcasts and you're just basically talking about whatever you want and that's cool, but
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I wanted to do something kind of gives back because I can only imagine the
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work and the time that goes into writing these books, right, I mean
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you must be exhausted when it's done. Sometimes they take several years, right,
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Yes, yeah, sometimes I've had a book five years, but then
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you know, my last book, because it was only sixty thousand words and
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we were in a pandemic, took me a year. But yes, I
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mean I am always very impressed when an author comes out with a new work.
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I'm excited for them. We all support each other, and this podcast
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is sort of a great salon, a meeting place where people can promote their
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work, and we really appreciate that. Yeah, that's cool, man.
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Well, I know how big a fan of Warren's Evon you are. This
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is one we've been talking about. I think we're coming up on a year
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ago that we discussed having you on, and we wanted a time it with
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something that's relevant in Warren Zevon's life, and sadly this is this month would
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mark the anniversary of his passing and I think it was exactly twenty years ago
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this month that he passed away. And through our past discussions we've talked a
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lot about your book. I know, you've got a great book from twenty
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eighteen which I read. Love it accidentally, like a Martyred the Tortured Art
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of Warren Zevon. That had to have been a thrill because I know how
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much of a fan you are, so I'm curious as to when you became
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a fan of Warren Zevon. I first heard Werels London, like all everybody
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from my generation in high school in seventy eight. It was just on the
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radio. But it didn't really connect to me until I ended up in summer
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school that year. Sophomore year, I just failed biology, I can't believe
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it. And we were all sitting there and it was just kind of sad.
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Everyone's outside and of sons. You know, you have to go to
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school for six weeks or whatever it is. And but the teacher was really
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cool allow us to bring in records, and you know, we'd have it
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forty five minute lunch break and everybody who played music, and somebody brought in
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Excitable boy, and I had never this was an error where everybody had to
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sing like you know, you know, and here comes warm with this baritone
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and the piano and the you know, and if you wanted to do these
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softer songs like he did, or these more folky ones you sang with,
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like a James Taylor or Jackson Brown or Joni Mitchell. So it wasn't any
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of those things, you know. And he's singing about murder and werewolves and
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headless you know, people, ghosts coming back from war and just gorgeous stuff
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and intriguing and provocative stuff. So that's the first time I heard Warren.
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And as I've got older and I started to write professionally, and I saw
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how many writers came to him, the Stephen Kings and the Hunter Thompson's and
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so many Karl Hyacinth that I understood it because he told these little short stories.
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And I grew with him, and as I got older, I went
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to see him play live, and I saw him play with a band,
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I saw him play acoustically in a club, and I turned my wife onto
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him. So he became a big part of my maturation as a as a
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writer. And he you know, I always used to champion him because not
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enough people knew, you know, when I was working on this book,
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it's like Warren Zevon, who's that guy? Oh? You know where it
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was? London? Oh, yeah, you know. And then I thought,
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well, that's the point, Like you do the podcast to get people
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interested in stuff they don't know. Well, a lot of people didn't know
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Warren Zevon, and I was so blessed when I went on the book tour
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in twenty eighteen. I went with my buddy Barry Geller as a guitar player,
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and instead of just doing readings and signings, I played the songs.
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We brought acoustic guitars and did sing alongs, and people of the audience were
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weeping and hugging me, thank you for doing this singing the songs. It
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was like this, this this therapy group of people who just grew up a
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Warren, and we're like, no one else has a warranty, but oh
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my god, this guy wrote a book. I'm going to show up to
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the book signing. It was really really cool. And and of course he
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passed, as you mentioned in two thousand and three, and that lent even
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more you know, sort of solemnity to the proceedings. But yeah, it
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was a It was a great growing process from that first experience of hearing him
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when I was what fifteen sixteen, to see the man who was sitting there
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telling David Letterman about how he how he was facing death and when he found
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out who was going to die. He's just so he was so at peace
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with it. He was just he faced all of his demons. And that's
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part of the recovery too. You have to you have to face up to
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what you've done, you have to face up to those who you've wronged.
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So he really seemed like a guy who was at peace. He just had
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that sense of humor about him too. He's like, he's he was laughing
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about how you know, he found out from his dentist. Dentist, He's
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like, you better get that checked out. Yeah. Well, there's a
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couple of things unpacked there. First of all, Taylor Coldsmith from DAWs,
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who's a huge fan and I interviewed for the book, he pointed out just
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what you said, which is, don't forget the humor. Don't forget that.
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He goes a lot of songwriters from my generation, they're constantly serious,
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man serious, and Warren kept that humor in there. He Warren quotes in
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my book from an earlier interview. Certainly because he had passed by the time
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I started working on this book, you know, how and Kurt Vonneguet in
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I believe the book slapstick, he always says at the end of each chapter,
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so I had to laugh, you know, I had to laugh,
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you know, another way of dealing with Paine. Secondly, about his many
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recoveries, probably the most compelling and favorite thing. And I say this favorite
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thing to write not as a positive in a sense, but as an artistic
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endeavor, as a creative endeavor. One of my favorite things to write about
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in the book was the famous, famous in his life story intervention that they
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had with Warren in nineteen eighty two, which the great music journalist Paul Nelson
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wrote about the crack up of Warren z V which was on the cover of
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Rolling Stone magazine, which is a whole other story. And Nelson's piece was
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so voluminous, it was like twenty thousand words. It could have been a
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book in itself. That Rolling Stone wouldn't print all of it. So years
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later Paul Nelson's biographer ended up which who I interviewed for the book, ended
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up putting the full story in his collected works. But in that magazine story,
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he tells of this intervention that his wife, I don't believe his daughter
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was there, but his his mom, Uh Jackson Brown Wadi Wachtell wouldn't go,
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but he was invited. I believe his brother though went. Several people
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at everybody that went or was supposed to go. I interviewed for the book,
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and they pieced together for me what it was like to face Warrant at
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that point, his facial expression as he's listening to them saying telling him all
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these things, his original anger at it, his original fear of it,
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and what they felt coming at and how they were conflicted too. They were
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like, oh my god, what Like Waddy told me, I didn't want
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to go because I thought he would laugh in my face, like what the
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hell are you doing here? You did as many drugs as and drinking as
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I did. I love that about Waddy. He was really honest with me.
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So it was seminal, but it didn't take. And you know,
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a lot of his a lot of the close people. George Gruel, his
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best friend during the time, and his stage manager, traveled with him for
9:24
during those those tough years seventy nine eighty eighty one where he was coming in
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and out and you know, uh, trying to get clean and couldn't he
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said, you know when when Andy Levewitz, who the famous photographers, took
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the picture for the cover Rolling Stone, they're doing drugs while he's doing it.
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While they're doing that, He's like it could he couldn't escape himself,
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and so it was tough. But by the time the ironic thing is,
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by the time he cleaned up, it's when he realized that he was dying
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from inoperable lung cancer mesthemioma, and he he faced it. Everything was so
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ironic about his life, just when he was clean. You know, he
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gets bad news the art, and that's why I called the tortured art.
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It never occurred to me that the whole idea of the tortured artist, right,
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it seems like a trope, but it's exactly true. He was tortured
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when he wrote it took him months to write a line, or he'd paint
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over stuff and trash a song. So it was part of that. But
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also he was constantly fuddling all this stuff happening in his life into his work,
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which all great artists do, and I think he did it so amazing.
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Everybody told me this, all of his colleagues, all his friends,
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his family. He was so painfully honest, it was hard for them to
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listen to the songs because they knew what those songs were about. He was
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only fifty six when he died, and he said to let him in.
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Let him in, asked him, do you think the life that you lived
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has led to this day? And he said I think. He said something
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like, well, I wouldn't be surprised, right, right, yeah,
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he said. One of the phobias that didn't pan out for him was the
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fear of doctors. Fear of doctors. Ye never went to the doctor,
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and they could have helped him earlier. Was his dentist, as you mentioned,
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that said, you know, you having a hard time breathing, you
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should probably see cardiologist or something. And he was up in Canada and what
11:07
would turn out to be his last tour, and he was having a hard
11:09
time breathing. He thought it was maybe the elevation. And then he collapsed
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in the parking lot of like a seven to eleven or a liquor store or
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something. And he was still sober, but he was getting like cigarettes or
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whatever he was doing, and and then he, you know, he went
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to get checked and it was dark and interviewing everybody about how they dealt with
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that. Because there's a guy, as you mentioned my Rides Here or all
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the songs he wrote about death. He wrote a song called my Shit's Fucked
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Up. And in that song he talks about a guy who goes in and
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finds out you're you're in trouble, buddy, and he says, from the
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highest rock star or the lonely or the highest king to the lowliest rock star,
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eventually the bell rings, the tolls for you, and so again war
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irony he has that actually happened to him and everybody, even I. I
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had an interview planned with Warren for My Rides Here, and they called me.
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I had never gotten a call from a PR person before an interview.
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Usually they send you an email and they're like, Okay, this person's going
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to be here at this time at this number. Nowadays we do stuff on
12:20
zoom and everything, but back then it was phones or and or you'd go
12:22
to a hotel room. And they called and they said, Warren's not going
12:24
to be making his interview because he has a personal problem. So I thought
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he fell off the wagon, he crashed his car into something, he wrecked
12:35
another hotel room. What did he do? Who did he piss off this
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time? And then about three weeks later, the La Times reported that he
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was dying. And yeah, so I never got this chance to interview him.
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Man, So let's go back to the beginning, just briefly. Where's
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he from? What was life like as a child to Warren Zevon? What
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an interesting story this is. I'll try to make it brief. It's tough
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from me though, especially talking about Warren. It's born in Chicago. He
13:00
had to leave Chicago, supposedly because his dad, Stumpy, was a gangster.
13:05
It's part of the Jewish mob there, and he had to leave Chicago
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and they ended up he married his mom, who was a Mormon, and
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Warren writes a lot of songs about a messed up, dangerous man meeting a
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very very devout woman and how that's supposed to work and very interesting dynamic there.
13:33
They moved to southern California, to San Diego area, and he ends
13:37
up going to high school there and he becomes a bit of a prodigy.
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He always said he wasn't a prodigy that he just picked up. He said,
13:43
if I was a prodigy, I would have practiced more. But he
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was very, very astute on the piano, and the story goes, and
13:50
it's true. He ended up through his music teacher in high school, he
13:54
ended up finding the great Igor Stravinsky, who was in his late eighties at
13:58
that time, one of the last great classical composers, certainly of the twentieth
14:03
century or ever. And he would spend time with Strmitsky, but mostly he
14:09
claims he just drank with him, and he didn't he but he would listen
14:13
to the music and and and Strmisky would show him how to read the music,
14:18
and from that point on, in my estimation, he became obsessed with
14:22
one day writing a great symphony. He always considered himself sort of an atavistic
14:26
character, sort of somebody from a throwback who would have loved to grow up
14:31
in the nineteenth century in front of an orchestra with his hair wild, you
14:35
know, swinging the baton and writing great symphonies. And and I believe did
14:43
so in certain ways with his string arrangements and things like that. But also
14:48
he conflated that kind of need with his alcoholism. That's where he starts to
14:54
get the taste of alcohol and get that bravado, get that confidence from the
14:58
drink. So, you know, his father gives him a piano, wins
15:03
him a piano in a gambling thing. But of course his mother's furious because
15:09
he's winning this piano through ill gotten gains and wants to throw him out.
15:13
And they have this huge fight. And this is like right around Christmas time,
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so his mother wants to celebrate a Christian holiday, and his father's saying,
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you're Jewish, and there's this conflict, and then he wants him to
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have this piano, but his mother's like, this piano's evil. It's come
15:26
from evil. And you know there's violence in the house. It's just this
15:30
cauldron, you know. So you have the alcohol, you have the piano.
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You have this constant conflict between his parents. Spiritually, philosophically. Oh
15:41
my god, it's all right there. And and then he becomes sort of
15:45
a working musician. He writes for the movies. He gets a song on
15:48
the soundtrack to to Midnight Cowboy, which ends up winning a Oscar for Best
15:54
Picture. He gets a song like a Season's on the b side of the
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Turtle's biggest hit, Happy Together. He writes commercials for wine and cars.
16:07
So he's a working guy. People know who he is. He ends up
16:10
being a musical director for the last tour that the Everly Brothers ever go on,
16:15
and and he's writing these dark, weird songs and people are loving him.
16:18
The Joni Mitchell's, the Neil Young's, the Eagles, and most famously
16:23
Jackson Brown, who says to him, you gotta write these you gotta get
16:26
these songs published. And he does this album Wanted Dead or Alive with Kim
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Fowley, who's a bit of an eccentric. I interviewed Kim for My kiss
16:36
book. Sort of a gad about town. He seems to be it.
16:38
He's like Forrest Gump. He seems to be everyone's lives. But this goes
16:41
nowhere and he ends up escaping to to Spain, to this little town on
16:48
the coast of Spain called Stiges. What his wife, who just marries in
16:51
seventy four, Crystal, and they go off and he plays Irish folk songs
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in this little Spanish bar and he's he's they're happy. Crystal says, we're
17:00
gonna have children, We're gonna we're gonna build a small house, we're gonna
17:03
live on the beach. We're gonna grow together. And they get a telegram
17:07
from Jackson Brown, come back. I found somebody who's gonna publish her work.
17:11
David Geffen from Asylon. I talked him into it. He loves these
17:14
songs. Let's make the first record. And one of the things that I
17:18
left out was the woman that Warren lived with in Topeka Canyon, in Beachwood
17:23
Canyon, Tule, which I mentioned earlier, which is Jordan's mom. And
17:27
while he was there he met Randy Newman and so many great singer songwriters of
17:33
the time. Uh JD. Salder who wrote a lot of songs with the
17:37
Eagles, and so again, he was a well known guy in that in
17:41
the Hollywood area, and in the profession, in the movie profession, in
17:45
the pop profession, the Turtles and everything. So some of the Beach boys
17:48
knew who he was. I think one of the Beach Boys plays on sings
17:52
on his first record. So Zebon comes back to America and he records one
17:56
of the finest records I think of the nineteen seventies, and I'm not the
18:00
only one the ponymously titled Warren Zevon and the rest is uh. And then
18:06
of course the biggest thing there, Eric is that that Linda Ronstadt discovers him
18:11
and records and makes bigger hits out of Poor, Poor Pitiful Me. She
18:15
names one of her first albums Hastened down the Wind after one of his songs,
18:19
sings it beautifully, sings a gorgeous version of Mohammed's Radio on one of
18:26
her bigger albums, and then she also does Karmalita, which has a lot
18:30
of that Spanish feel that she does so well because she has that in her
18:33
DNA. So uh yeah, So, Linda, that's the first time I
18:37
heard Warren songs besides Werewolf was Carmelita and Poor, Poor, Poor Pitiful Maybe
18:44
because all of us young boys in the seventies we loved Linda, you know.
18:47
And uh and so that's kind of the story of how Warren became.
18:49
Warren got his feet wet and got into the into the business mid twenties.
18:55
It was not until his mid twenties that he signs with Asylum and things start
19:00
to take off for him. That self titled album you mentioned nineteen seventy six,
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and that sets things up for the seventy eight album Excitable Boy. Now.
19:11
Jackson Brown, he talked about the importance that he has on Warren's career.
19:15
They had instant chemistry, right, I mean they teamed up. They
19:19
were both they were Jackson told me they were both invited by this producer in
19:23
LA to play for publishers music publishing, you know, to give to bands
19:29
like the Turtles or later Jackson with the Eagles. But and it was,
19:36
like Warren describes it as two gunslingers at the noon. You know, Jackson
19:42
played a song and then Warren played a song, and then they were sort
19:45
of competitive, and Jackson ended up getting the gig, and this music publisher
19:49
introduced him to manager. Because Jackson was a very handsome guy, very charismatic,
19:53
had very poppy tunes, very sweet voice. Warren Zevon was a gruff
19:59
looking guy with long hair, heavy drinker, pop face, short stout,
20:03
very very intellectual, not interested in chumming up everybody. So Warren goes his
20:11
way, Jackson goes his way. But they never stopped that connection. They
20:15
used to have this drink together when they used to meet to talk about music
20:18
called Waco Bloody Mary's. Jackson told me, and I think I'll put it
20:22
in the book. What's in a Waco Bloody Mary? It's it's a couple
20:25
of those things. I'll put you to sleep. But Jackson tells this wonderful
20:29
story to me. I put it in the book, in which they're at
20:32
one of those classic Laurel Canyon parties and everybody's there, Janie's there, Crosby
20:37
Stills a Nash. I think David Geffen might have been at that. I'm
20:42
at Artagon from Atlantic Records, the Moms and the Papas. It's one of
20:47
those, right, and everybody's singing and dancing and doing drugs and drinking,
20:51
and out of nowhere, Warren kind of stumbles over, sits at the piano
20:55
and plays Desperadoes under the Ease and it just, according to Jackson, it
21:00
just shuts the room down and they're all at awe and they all, to
21:06
a person say this guy needs to be heard. And yes, Desperados under
21:11
These, which was the first essay I wrote for the book, and I
21:14
sent it to my editor at the time at Backbeat, and she's like,
21:18
do another one, That's all she said. So I knew that she liked
21:21
it, but she wouldn't give it up. But I worked really hard on
21:22
and I wanted to do one essay about Desperados under These because it always moved
21:26
me has so much metaphor and symbolism, and one of the greatest stanzas in
21:32
the history of popular music. If California slides into the ocean, as the
21:37
mystic, mystics and statistics say it will, I predict this motel will be
21:42
standing until I pay my bill, which is just gorgeous. It's so desperate,
21:48
and you know, he's this alcoholic at this crappy Hollywood Hawaiian hotel,
21:55
listening to the air conditional home. And then the song opens up and into
21:59
this most western motif. You could picture horses riding across this grand vista.
22:04
It's like this poor, broken, damaged soul is stuck in this hotel camp
22:11
pay his bill, can't get sober, but he's imagining being free. That
22:15
great American almost f Scott Fitzgerald, you know, idea of the green light,
22:23
that thing, that that unattainable thing that we need as Americans, that
22:29
thing that we yearn for. It's just beautiful. And once I got going
22:33
with that, it really informed the rest of the books. So when Jackson
22:36
told me that story, I'm Mike, well, there you go. I
22:37
mean, that's the one that turned the heads of some of the most important
22:41
music people of the nineteen sixties and seventies. It's Excitable Boy that becomes the
22:45
commercial breakthrough. Now, if I'm not mistaken, it was Werewolves of London
22:49
or maybe Excitable Boy, one of those songs Jackson Brown could have put on
22:56
the self titled album held off use it on Excitable Boy because he was a
23:00
little bummed out the fact that commercially this album didn't do as well as he
23:03
thought. Right, was it Werewolves or was it Excitable Boy? Well,
23:07
he had written Werewolves first, and a few bands, I know T Bone
23:11
Burnett had covered it. The Grateful Dead were playing at Jackson was playing it,
23:17
Warren was playing it in clubs and in small places. It was making
23:19
its way bounding around and people were singing the aou and the rabbiting and blast.
23:23
Warren wanted to put it on the first record, but Jackson smartly told
23:27
him not. Now. The interesting thing is when I wrote this book,
23:30
everybody that I interviewed had some conflicting story. Just the interviews alone. The
23:37
people around Warren were crazy, you know, they were so. One person
23:41
said blue, the other person said black, the other person said up,
23:45
the other person said down. It was amazing I had to call people back,
23:48
and then they were arguing and get mad at me because I started it.
23:52
And it was so Waddy who was around for the first record and tells
23:56
this great story that I include in the book where Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks,
24:00
who had not yet been asked to be in Fleetwood Mac, were asked
24:04
during those sessions because those sessions were just this wide open fun party time and
24:10
Mick Fleetwood and Christy mcviee excuse me, John mcviege play drums and bass on
24:15
Werewolves of London in the next record. But when they were compiling it,
24:18
everybody was swirling around that La studio and Lindsey gets the call and they're like,
24:25
we want you to join, and he says, no, I'm going
24:26
to do this this duo with my girlfriend Stevie, and Watty goes, what
24:33
the hell's wrong with you? Man brings Stevie. They want you, They
24:36
love Stevie and Fleetwood Mack becomes the biggest band in the decade by far,
24:41
and it happens there. Warren was like that, he was like this great
24:42
alchemist, this great beacon. But so Watt He's around and Jackson's being driven
24:48
nuts. Warren is drinking, he's not showing up, he's causing mayhem,
24:52
he's doing many takes, he's arguing with him on everything. So Jackson just
24:56
says, I can't do another one of these records, but I want to
25:00
do the Werewolves and the Excitable Boy and the stuff that we couldn't put on
25:03
this one because it wouldn't have fit. There's something very introspective, dark and
25:08
introductively about the first Warren Zevon album, whereas the second one's a lot more
25:12
lively and fluid and fun. And so Werewolves, of course, an Excitable
25:17
Boy, even though it's a terrible subject, it's very bouncy with the piano
25:21
and the ouao's, And so Watty goes, I will help you produce this.
25:25
So Watty's job for the second record was just to keep Warren from driving
25:29
checks and crazy. And so the two of them, Watty and Jackson are
25:32
telling me these different conflicting stories how they got him through the thing. So
25:37
Jackson tells this wonderful story about how when they did rolling the Headless Thompson Gunner,
25:41
it this four or five changes and a key change in there, and
25:44
this weird time signature and it's just a beautifully structured song. When Warren shows
25:49
up, he's three sheets, but the band is ready to go, and
25:53
so he's just does this song and he's trying to keep up and sweats pouring
25:56
off of his brow and he they finished the tap and no one's breathing,
26:00
and Warren turns and he goes, Wow, you paid these guys a lot
26:03
of mine. It was like he knew that these guys had to put up
26:07
with this shit. You know, they're real pros. And then of course
26:11
Waddy was the one that told him go back and write two more songs.
26:14
You don't have enough stuff, and he went and wrote Lawyers Guns of Money,
26:17
which is arguably the best song on the record, and Tenderness on the
26:19
Block, which Jackson wrote with him, which ended up being a huge point
26:25
of contention which I won't get into for The Purpoise's interview that Jackson and I
26:29
did not end this project. Well, I love Jackson, but we had
26:33
our issues. But but that's all about Warren. You know, there has
26:36
to be conflict without conflict, there's no drama without drama, there's no story
26:40
without a story. We have no interests, so it's all I tried to
26:44
put that same kind of swirling thing in my essays, and I hope they
26:48
do come through in the world. They do. And speaking of conflicts,
26:52
why do you tell reading the book, you would think that maybe he meets
26:56
Warren Zevon and never talks to the guy again, because there's a great there's
27:00
a story the first time they met. Yeah, Warren had very very deep,
27:04
as I mentioned, I'll use that work again a word again, deep
27:07
relationships. He didn't just kind of befriend you. He engulfed you. He
27:11
brought you into his DNA. And that's what happened with Waddy. Waddy shows
27:15
up from Queens, New York, Forest Hills or something and comes out to
27:22
LA from I think he was up in Vermont playing and that's where he met
27:26
Crystal, who is his girlfriend at the time, brings her to or first
27:30
goes to LA to make his fortune and his writing her back and says,
27:33
he met this guy, Warren Zevon is a nut but a great songwriter.
27:37
How he met him was he auditioned for the Everly Brothers band in seventy one
27:42
seventy two, and in the audition he shows up classic Waddy hair in his
27:48
face, wild, you know, stumbling around different color shoes, opens up,
27:55
the case, plays the song and Warren's like, none of nolse.
27:57
Song goes like this, and he's like nope, it goes like this.
28:00
And he plays it and he's like, no, no, it goes like
28:03
this. They're having to fight. Finally, Warren's like, I'm not gonna
28:04
hire You're an asshole, and I'm throwing you out of here, and what
28:07
He's like, okay, and he's cold. And then as he's turning his
28:11
back, something must have clicked in Warren's head because he said, if you're
28:15
such a wise ass, why don't you tell me what's this song is?
28:19
And he played this Beethoven piece and watt he said he only knew one classical
28:25
piece and that was the one and he says, whatever, he said,
28:29
that's Beethoven Sonata and G flat and then he goes, so there you go.
28:33
And Warren hired him on the spot, and that was their relationship from
28:37
day one, and they said they fell in love during that tour. They
28:40
played songs together, their own songs, stone songs, al green songs.
28:44
They laughed. They got the Everly brothers to hang out with them in their
28:48
hotel room. Theseel guys were hating each other for like a decade. Yeah,
28:53
and Watty says to him, that's Beethoven's fourth and Gela, asshole,
29:00
thank you, thank you. I was And with that a beautiful relationship begins
29:07
with well, I tell yeah, because he's so influential to Warren's life professionally
29:12
and personally, because he introduces him to his personal wife. Yea, yeah,
29:18
wow, it's crazy. It's it's everybody in his life. Burt Stein,
29:25
who his only job was to keep Warren's he run from killing himself.
29:29
I find that a lot of people who I met were there to keep Warren
29:32
from killing himself or driving other people insane. Uh. Burt Stein was hired
29:37
to take Warren, get Warren to radio stations to play songs and do interviews
29:42
and and try to keep him off the bottle, keep him away from the
29:45
flask. He loved his Stoli's vodka, loved it. There's no keeping him
29:51
from drinking on stage because, according to Wadia for the Excitable Board Tour,
29:56
it was sponsored by Stoles. You can't make that up anyway. I don't
30:00
mean to laugh about this. It's terrible at kids don't drink, so anyway,
30:04
the at least to that extent. So yeah, so bert Stein is
30:11
hired to keep Warren, and so they want to get Warren out of la
30:18
because there's a lot of demons and a lot of temptations there. So he
30:21
leaves with him and they go to Hawaii and bert tells this wonderful story about
30:25
how they end up staying in this hotel it's half flooded. They're like,
30:29
they rent this car, but they get the wrong paperwork, so in essence,
30:33
they steal the car they're driving, and then they pick up these waitresses
30:37
who claim they know a really cool friend who has a beach front cabin.
30:45
They get in this car and they're driving, and as they're driving, as
30:48
the women are telling them about this beach front cabin, it sounds like they're
30:52
going to break into this beach front cabin and stay in someone else's house that
30:56
they don't even know. So they turn. As they're turning the car around,
31:00
Warren's like, maybe we should return these girls to where we found them,
31:03
and Bert goes, unless we can have some lawyers guns and then and
31:07
then Warren goes, and we're gonna need some cash. So that's where lawyers.
31:11
Guns of Money starts. Warren writes the whole song out on a cocktail
31:15
napkin, and he gave Bert the napkin. He has it hanging today and
31:18
he showed it to me. He sent me the pictures. I was gonna
31:22
put it in the book, but they were just so faded you couldn't see
31:26
it. But I got to see though, the actual written in like this
31:30
red pen all like shaky because Warren was drinking and they were in the car
31:33
and it was just those stories and all those stories are the song. They're
31:40
not just they're not just some guy imagining that he's living this stuff. So
31:44
that's why I said when I wrote the book, it wasn't a biography,
31:48
but the man's life starts to appear as his wife and his daughter and a
31:52
lot of his closest friends told me they're in the songs. Yeah, we're
31:56
all in there. Man. He's telling you the ship has hit the fans.
32:01
Indeed hit the fan. Wow. Yeah. An addiction would be a
32:07
huge hurdle for him to get over. But not just drugs and alcohol.
32:10
In the book you talk about he had a sex addiction as well. This
32:15
is what Crystal told you. Yeah, I think he told one of his
32:19
girlfriends that sex for him was like just basically defecation was like taking a dump.
32:23
It's like a daily He had to do it. You don't just you
32:27
can't just not do it. So and he believed he was sex addicted.
32:30
But if he loved a woman, it was an intense love. It was
32:34
if it's a one night stand. Yeah, and they were very There were
32:37
many strange, strange dj that he dated in the early eighties when he was
32:44
in a really bad spot and his label dropped him and excuse me, it
32:50
wasn't good. He was losing touch with his daughter and his wife. Uh
32:53
you know, he had divorced. They had divorced, and now they weren't
32:57
speaking at all. He wasn't seeing his daughter. It's it's it. There's
33:00
many peaks and valleys in Warren's life and they all do a revolver. A
33:05
lot of women who save him and resurrect him. And I talk about Andy
33:09
Slater, who ended up running later on running Capitol Records, but was a
33:13
young PR guy for a record company who stood up in a meeting one day
33:17
and this management company was going to drop Warren and they were like, he's
33:22
drunk, he's in debt, he can't get signed. Everyone hates him,
33:25
no one will work with him. And Andy said, I will, I'll
33:29
work with him. I can do this. And he went and found Warren,
33:31
dragged him out of that holler you know that squalor in Philadelphia, and
33:37
drove him down to Atlanta, hooked him up with Rim, a band that
33:42
Andy was working with at the time, and Rim ended up being his backup
33:45
band, And according to Andy, he was completely sobered during the making of
33:50
I think one of his greatest records, Sentimental Hygiene, and that brought him
33:54
back as well. That record brought him back into the public eye. But
33:58
each time he finds this place where it looks like he's not gonna make it,
34:00
somebody comes along, a woman mostly, but some guys come out of
34:05
the woodwork and they Waddy did it too for him. Waddy came back years
34:07
later in the early nineties and pulled him out of what looked like he was
34:12
going nowhere. So he was very busted in that way. He really was
34:16
one of those guys who when he did get those relationships, they were so
34:20
strong that people found him so compelling and so they were so connected to him
34:24
psychologically and spiritually that they would give anything for him, and that saved his
34:30
life more than once. The book done. Rock Podcasts. We'll be back
34:34
after this. Werewolves of Lundon we should just mention because it really it's so
34:39
many people know the songs. So what it took just ten minutes to compose.
34:43
That's it his last name like him that his normal writing process so much
34:47
longer. So in some cases, yeah, sure, yeah, ten minutes.
34:53
It's that crazy classic one three you know, one five one, that's
34:57
that's gc D kind of thing which everybody always conflates now thanks to kid rock
35:01
with Sweethelme Alabama, or like at the Hop, he'd a bump down,
35:07
bump down, bump bump, bump bump, you know, like that Steve
35:12
Steve Miller's song, Uh the Joker. All of those songs are basically in
35:16
that structure. And so he was fooling around with that and then a couple
35:22
of his buddies around there's playing it and yelling out versus yelling out versus.
35:27
Waddy walks in the room and he's like, what the hell are you guys
35:30
doing, and he's like, we're writing a song about a werewolf, and
35:34
he goes, you mean, like all woo, and he's like yes,
35:36
and they add aoo. It's it's fantastics, like five or six voices coming
35:39
at him and from all angles. It originally came out, it came apart,
35:45
came into his psyche because Phil Everley had said to him, you should
35:51
write a song about werewolves of London of a famous nineteen thirties film. You
35:57
should write a song about that, like a dance like in the Werewolf.
36:00
And he thought, okay, yeah, I'm gonna do that. It's a
36:02
little challenge. So that's when they were screwing around with that, and they
36:05
were very high and very drunk, and very just didn't care. They weren't
36:08
He wasn't in pain trying to get the perfect structure because Jad Southerer, who
36:14
considers himself a fellow classicist, as he told me, both those guys understood
36:19
classical music, studied it when they were younger, he and Warren, so
36:22
he a lot Jad most of all, but Jackson mentions it waddy these extra
36:27
chords, these special ninths and suspended course, these things that Warren would put
36:31
in his songs. He really pained to do that, not with werewolves Werewolves
36:37
is like whoopee. And the next day he forgot the whole thing. He
36:40
comes in the studio to do something for the first album and Jackson's in there
36:45
at the at the board and Waddy says, play that song that that thing
36:50
you played last night? What song? You know? The Werewolves song.
36:53
Warren's like, what hell? What are you talking about? He forgot.
36:57
Crystal taped it. She ran a little tape by the set and she played
37:00
it and then he was like, holy crap, that's pretty good. And
37:02
that's how Werewolves in London was born. They ended up recording it so they
37:08
record the structure of the song easily. But I mentioned John McVie and Mick
37:15
Fleetwood playing drums and bass. I think they did something like seventy five to
37:19
one hundred takes of that. Both of them did not want to let go.
37:22
Now there's a lot of cocaine involved in this, but neither one of
37:27
them would let go. But if you listen to that bass and drums,
37:31
it's just spectacular. It's simple, but it's just drives that song. And
37:37
Waddi's solo is just it's two solos. Waddy told me he ended up just
37:43
doing one and then coming out and then say run tape, and he did
37:45
another one. It's a It's funny because years later Randy Newman had said that
37:51
Waddy Wachtel played the lead on Short People. So you have two intellectual,
37:55
satirical songwriters at the height of their powers in the seventies, and they're two
38:00
most famous songs of these goofy little songs Werewols of London and Short People,
38:05
and in both cases Wady walk Tael plays the solo. Isn't that weird?
38:08
That's la weird man. It is it is, it really is. It's
38:13
interesting. The Warren never got tempted to try that formula again. I don't
38:16
think he was interested in writing a hit single to begin with no again.
38:21
He always wanted to write a symphony or a small u you know, sort
38:24
of something for a string quartet. He wanted to write deeper songs about love
38:30
and longing, alcoholism, death, a lot of with the death. So
38:37
yeah, he was really like he was like Jim Morrison, like just fascinated
38:40
or obsessed with death. Maybe yeah, And he actually made that joke.
38:45
He's like, you know, I he said, you know, I'm like
38:47
Jim Morrison. I just lasted longer. I just lasted longer. Yep,
38:51
yep. Yeah. Let's talk about some of the albums in the eighties he
38:54
did. He released four of them in the eighties, Bad Luck Streak in
39:00
Dancing School nineteen eighty, nineteen eighty two, is The Envoy nineteen eighty seven,
39:05
Sentimental Hygiene nineteen eighty nine, Transverse City. But quite a bit happens
39:09
during this decade personally musically and from reading the book. His drinking and pill
39:15
popping was quote the epitome of rock and roll lore in the late seventies.
39:19
But around nineteen eighty, I believe, is when he flew into a rage
39:22
with Crystal. This is in Spain, and she told you about this incident.
39:27
What happened? Yeah, so well he hit her, is what happened.
39:32
And I think you're talking about the one where he rips the banister out
39:36
of the wall and then Jackson comes there. That incident did change completely.
39:40
Well, there's one particular incident that really shook both he and Crystal up.
39:45
After Excitable Boy blew up in seventy eight and he realized that he was on
39:52
the edge of pop start him much. He didn't really want it first,
39:54
he did want people to love him, but he wanted it on his own
39:57
terms. So she tells the story that she comes home, it's quiet in
40:00
the house and she hears these guns shots, because he always had guns on
40:04
him. He was obsessed with guns. And she goes out to this shed
40:08
or this area in the back of their house where he play music, right,
40:14
and she's sure he's killed himself. And she walks in and he's quietly
40:19
standing there. The gun is still smoking, it's by his side, and
40:22
there's huge holes in a giant poster that I've seen the cover of Excitable Boy.
40:29
It's a very airbrushed close up of his face because he again, he
40:31
had very bad skin and it was almost like they were trying to make him
40:36
boyish and pop Starry and Werewolves of London is what makes him famous. And
40:40
he's standing there and clearly and heviated, and he says to her, I
40:47
shot myself, and very symbolically, you know, he's destroying that. And
40:54
he spends the next decade, really, in my estimation, trying to destroy
41:00
even though he never ever shunned playing Warriworlds London always played. He he always
41:06
referred to his fans as the as the bosses or the paying customers or whatever.
41:10
He knew what it was what it was, but deep down he wanted
41:14
to be considered because right after that album blew up, he did many interviews
41:19
which I quote in the book where he's saying, well, you know,
41:21
I'm working on this and I do this, and the songs really have this
41:22
kind of base. He tried to bring the audience with him, but it
41:27
was tough, you know. And then Jackson wouldn't work with him anymore on
41:30
Bad Luck Streak, and then there was more trouble with the envoy, trying
41:36
to get musicians pay, trying to get producers that would work with him.
41:38
He finds out that Asylum drops him by reading a note in Rolling Stone magazine
41:44
that he picks up on the street. It's very weird, man. It's
41:46
it's a really dark time again. He can't see his daughter. He's trying
41:51
to get her back. Crystal thinks he's trying to kidnap her. He's just
41:54
he's not in his right mind. His uncle and some of his his cousins
42:00
told me that around that time he found his way to their place, which
42:06
was a suburb I believe, either Chicago, wherever he I can't remember again,
42:09
it's been in a few years. But he gets off the train and
42:13
they see him and he's pale and he's gaunt, and he's just he's wearing
42:17
this bratty old, you know, coat, and he just falls into their
42:23
arms and says, save me. And again, these are people that were
42:27
there that that got him, you know, dried him out and got him
42:30
back on his feet. And the songs never abandoned him, Eric, they
42:35
never did. He always found a way to express himself in those songs,
42:39
and he did, and he came back with Sentimental Hygiene, and he came
42:44
back again even with Transverse City, which was controversial. But Transfer City's a
42:47
very interesting album because in the on that album, you know, he's got
42:52
Jerry Garcia playing with him. Neil Young is on that record, I think
42:57
David David Gilmour at Rim Guys are back and it's really a record about today.
43:01
And in that record he predicts the Internet, social media, this idea
43:07
of being outside humanity, just using machines, just using technology that's robbing us.
43:14
Now. He's basing a lot of that on science fiction that he loved,
43:17
like Johnny Numanic and that kind of stuff. So he was reading and
43:22
all these science fiction writers that was predicting what is happening today. But he
43:27
was the first guy to do it in pop music. When does he finally
43:30
get sober late eighties he does, Yeah, So, according to Andy Slayter
43:36
I mentioned earlier, who who in essence produced or managed Warren out of that
43:40
dark time with r EM playing on that record when he did the Hindu Love
43:45
Gods, which was a side project he did with the guys in r EM
43:47
and Sentimental Hygiene. Everybody claims he was sobered. Then there were times when
43:52
he would slip back a little bit. It's tough because people meet you at
43:57
a bar, or they meet you on the street in a hotel. Hey
43:58
it's Warren Zevon on a snort. You want this pill, you want this
44:01
drink, you know, And it's hard for him, you know. So
44:05
there's always a little slide. But he was never worse than he was in
44:08
the late seventies early eighties. Ever again, even and throughout the nineties,
44:13
he was sober. He just was down on his luck. The business had
44:17
ostracized him, and for good reason, because, as you know, Jackson
44:23
said, there's only so many punch bowls you can piss in. And it
44:28
wasn't until he got his diagnosis that he started to drink again because and as
44:31
in his mind, this is it, and this is what I know to
44:36
comfort me, and I'm taking all these drugs anyway. And Jorge Calderonne,
44:40
who was his best friend for so many years, wrote eighteen nineteen songs with
44:45
him, was living with him in Crystal when they had no money, that
44:50
played in some of his first bands. He got him through that. And
44:53
I'll never forget that. It was a September afternoon too that year when I
44:57
was working on the book, right around the time when Warren died. But
45:00
it was and that Jorge and I had this long conversation, and he kept
45:05
having to take breaks, and I could hear him walk away from the phone
45:08
and and I kind of get it together and come back. And I ended
45:12
up doing a book signing at Book Soup on Sunset Strip, which was Warren's
45:15
favorite bookstore. His son showed up, quite a few people, Phil Cody,
45:19
people who toured with him, and Jorge came and we gave each other
45:23
the biggest hug because he said, thank you for letting me get that off
45:27
my chest. The whole story of the Wind when he recorded that record when
45:30
he knew he was dying, and he said to Jorge, I want to
45:32
do a record like we used to do. I want to sit down,
45:35
I want to forget that I'm dying, but I want to face it and
45:37
I want to put it in the songs. And everybody came back, just
45:43
as they always did. Tom Petty and Ry Cooder and Bruce Springsteen and Neil
45:49
Young, and they all came back to bid him goodbye and play on the
45:52
record and thank him for being the troll. I call him the troll under
45:58
the bridge, you know, that guy who always had to You know,
46:02
I tell a story all the time, and it's so true. No one
46:05
ever picked up on it. If you listen to death Baros under the Eaves,
46:07
it's a symbolic song about a guy trapped in a hotel, but he's
46:13
trapped in his own life. He's trapped in his own demons. And Don
46:17
Henley and Glenn Fries sing on that song. They sing background vocals. Then
46:22
they walk out of that studio and they write Hotel California and record it a
46:25
few months later, and it's a it's a song about a generation trapped in
46:32
a hotel, the hotel being their own devices and their own demons, their
46:39
own piccadillos or whatever you want to call them. And everybody was inspired by
46:44
Warren and they all thanked him for them. Yeah, so many musicians inspired
46:47
by him. Yeah, yeah, I want to get all the albums out
46:51
there too. Those who are listening too, they haven't listened to all of
46:54
his music. Yeah, please do those last ones. They're great for bad
47:00
example nineteen ninety five, his mutineer two thousand, Life will Kill You,
47:07
which, by the way, there's a lyric in the title track Lawren sings
47:09
the doctor is in and he'll see you now. He don't care who you
47:13
are. Eerie two years later diagnosed with cancer. Yeah, yeah, we
47:19
have. And by the way too, it's it's hard not to shed a
47:22
tear listening to my rides here, I mean, yeah, yeah, and
47:27
that's two thousand and two my rides. Yeah. Yeah, the Win two
47:30
thousand and three. I think that covers them all quite about it work.
47:34
Yeah. There's a great, a postumous record called Preludes that Jordan put together,
47:38
which has like all of his demos and early early takes of some of
47:43
the stuff. You really get to see his process and a lot of unreleased
47:46
stuff that's very well done and gorgeous, which I quote in the book.
47:52
I was. I was very fortunate. I need to tell your listeners,
47:54
and I want to thank again because I haven't done an interview about this book
47:58
in a few years. Certainly you know the Zevon estate, Jordan, I
48:01
love your brother, Bruce Springsteen, Karl Hyacin, people that wrote songs all
48:13
the way down the line, gave me full autonomy to quote them. You
48:17
know, I paid very little. I usually it costs a lot of money,
48:21
but I got everybody once again, just like when I did that book
48:24
tour, people just get excited when you say warn't Zevon. And I felt
48:30
like it was a labor of love. It was something I was holding up
48:31
a flag. I was shining a light. I call it the Zevon corner
48:36
and a lot of it. And I think I think I came up in
48:39
this book with the terms ZeVA nights, zeven knights, and now I see
48:44
that everywhere, so I think it was me who came up with that.
48:46
There was a moment a few weeks before his death. Do you recall this,
48:50
He put it in the book, very special moment. So he lived.
48:53
He wanted to live to see his grandsons. Ariel had twins, twin
48:58
boys. He goes, I think this is what you're talking about. He
49:00
goes to the hospital. The two of them, Warren and Crystal go to
49:06
a little chapel and they have these chapels in the in the hospitals when people
49:09
were you know, dying or you know, I mean to comfort them and
49:14
it's it's it's quiet. And they sit there and Warren was not a religious
49:17
man, either was Crystal, but they were in this very quiet, spiritual
49:21
place that Warren just takes her hand and says, we did it, We
49:25
made it, we made it. And I that was after Crystal had told
49:30
me earlier in our discussion, and I put it earlier in the book that
49:34
she said, you know, Warren always said to me, we should have
49:36
stayed in Spain. There was some part of Warren that wanted to be to
49:40
live as one of his greatest hits was a quiet, normal life, but
49:45
he just didn't have it in him. Like John Lynn used to say,
49:46
I wish I could be a fisherman, but I can't. I have this
49:49
terrible pull to create tell stories, and I did want to say one cool
49:53
story that Paul Modoon told me. The great poet Laureate, a man who
49:59
has been decor rated and one of the great writers, wrote a song,
50:02
wrote my Rides here with Warren because Warren did that record where he wrote with
50:06
other writers, So he did a song with Hunter Thompson on that record.
50:09
He did a song with quite a few writers. But so Muldoon meets me
50:15
in New York Upper Broadway, right by Tom's Diner, which is the diner
50:19
that they used for Seinfeld the outside, which suzam Vegas word about. And
50:23
we're sitting not in Tom's dide over two box down and we're chatting and he's
50:29
having tea and I'm interviewing. I'm running tape. And he says to me,
50:31
come on, I'm going to take a walk with you that I did
50:35
with Warren when I met him, when I met him in the city.
50:38
Came to visit me, and he asked me to write this song. And
50:40
the two of us went for a walk, and I'm gonna tell you everything
50:43
he said and the two of us. I didn't even run tape. I
50:46
just wanted to experience it. He was so excited to show me that this
50:51
man is a decorated, lauded writer in his own right. But he couldn't
50:58
wait to share with me the moment he had with his friend Warren Zevon.
51:01
It's great. So many stories like that in the book people really need.
51:06
We'll plug the book right after we get to this, though, because he's
51:08
not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And I think we know
51:12
why. I mean, he did burn bridges along the way, and he
51:15
wouldn't argue with that, but one bridge he burned, I think is what's
51:20
prevented him from being in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And that's
51:22
with Yon Winner. So Yon Winner now is he is no longer on the
51:28
board. He was removed from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation's board
51:32
a lot of criticism for comments that he made in a New York Times interview
51:37
published Friday. It's about female and black musicians. He just put a book
51:40
out, right, Yon Winner. Yeah, something about like his ten favorite
51:44
artists or something or best I think it's called Legends or you know, something
51:47
to that effect. That's the problem that everybody has. If he said these
51:51
are my ten favorite then there is ten favorite whether white, male, female.
51:53
But but then in this New York Times interview, he did say that
51:58
white rock musicians are more articulate than than black or women Black women some insane
52:06
it's here, I have it here. Yeah. In the interview, he
52:09
spoke about his decision to not include interviews with women and black artists, and
52:15
his remarks on the topic were widely criticized. He said, quote, the
52:17
people had to meet a couple of criteria, but it was just kind of
52:21
my personal interest and love of them insofar as the women, just none of
52:25
them were as articulate enough on this intellectual level. He continued, Stevie wonder
52:30
genius, right. I suppose when you use a word as broad as masters,
52:34
the fault is using that word. Yeah, maybe Marvin Gay or Curtis
52:39
Mayfield. I mean, they just didn't articulate at that level. And then
52:45
he adds, for public relations sake, maybe I should have gone and found
52:47
one black and one woman artist to include here that didn't measure up to that
52:51
same historical standard. Just to avert this kind of criticism, I would wonder
52:55
maybe a little fashion and I don't give a shit or whatever I wish and
52:59
rehet respect I could have interviewed Marvin Gay. Maybe he had. Maybe he'd
53:04
have been the guy. Maybe Otis Redding, had he lived, would have
53:07
been the guy. Well that got him in hot water, and it should
53:13
have, because first of all, it's just stupid and it's wrong. And
53:16
it's interesting that Rolling Stone in the last four years put out lists, which
53:21
I hate lists. But the number one album on that list was What's going
53:24
On by Marvin Gay. And the number one singer in the history of rock
53:30
music is Aretha Franklin, So there you go there. But he did have
53:34
everything to do with the Rock and Hall of Fame, and he absolutely kept
53:37
Warren Zevon out of there. And speaking of Bruce Springsteen, Bruce and Warren
53:42
very tight. Anytime Warren was in town, Springsteen al, He's left h
53:45
a ticket, vice versa. Springsteen saw Warren play lots of times. Vice
53:49
versa. He left him a ticket in the press area. I forget what
53:52
town was in. It might have been during that dark Philadelphia time, so
53:55
it might have been in Philly. Warren was clearly drunk. Winner was there
54:00
with his wife and some other people. He was trying. Now, Hunter
54:02
Thompson always accused Jean Winner of being like a jetsetter kind of a guy that
54:07
was always trying to step up with the rich and the famous. And I
54:12
read Winner's interviews in the Sticky Fingers book, he admits that he was he
54:17
was trying to work his way up the ladder as far as like status.
54:22
He was a publisher. He wanted to be in with all these yacht guys
54:24
and all these big wigs, and he had a few of them there,
54:28
and Warren just embarrassed him. He whatever the hell Warren was doing, he
54:31
was destructing the situation. And jan Winner said that night he'll never be in
54:37
Rolling Stone again. Now, Paul Nelson did talk him into putting him on
54:40
the cover for the crack Up, But I think the reason why Joan Winner
54:45
acquiesced is because it made Zevon look weak and like an alcoholic and a screw
54:51
up, and that's exactly how Winner saw him. That's my personal opinion.
54:54
I don't know. I didn't never asked John, but absolutely had a black
55:00
list against Warren. Now it's absurd that he wasn't even on the ballot until
55:02
this year. Jordan, his son, and a bunch of us got together
55:06
and we plugged the hell out of him the fan voting, and he came
55:10
in. He became he was in third place behind George Michael, I believe
55:15
got in and Cindy Lapper, who should be and my friend Cindy, I
55:19
know Cindy, and uh so I guarantee you that he's getting in the next
55:25
time. Now, I mean the second that happened, I went right to
55:29
Twitter and I said, and with that, I thought, than the first
55:35
person that popped into my head. Yeah, so I don't know. We
55:38
had this interview set up and is so good. But Springstein got a huge
55:45
kick out of it, and Springsteen, for all reports, was not a
55:47
drinker. And but they ended up spending the evening together. And David Landau,
55:52
who was John Landau's brother, was the guitar player in Warren's band and
55:57
ended up John Landau, of course, the famous music who was also for
56:00
decades the closest person to Bruce Springsteen besides his family and his manager. David
56:06
Landau, Bruce Springsteen and Warren Zylon in a limo driving around New York City
56:12
and David said, you never saw two people speaking English, But I didn't
56:17
understand the thing they were saying, but they did. They were in their
56:22
own world until dawn, and from that point forward there were huge confidence and
56:27
fans of each other. And then fast forward it Bruce hears that Warren is
56:31
dying and he's doing this last record, and he calls up Jorge and says,
56:37
I'm playing on it. I'm leaving my tour during my Christmas break.
56:42
I'm not going home and I'm gonna drive and I'm gonna spend it with Warren
56:45
and We're gonna do these songs together. And that's what he did. They
56:49
loved each other deeply and when he died. When Warren died, Bruce played
56:54
a version of My Rides Here, which ended up on the posthumous record Enjoy
57:00
Every Sandwich, based on that famous quote that he told David Letterman when Letterman
57:05
asked him, what do you know sitting in the spot that you're in right
57:07
now that those of us are not in that spot yet? No, and
57:10
he says, well, just enjoy every sandwich. I remember seeing that live
57:15
because I knew he was going to be on there, and yeah, not
57:19
a dry eye in the house. It's It's one of the great performances by
57:23
any human being doing anything. He could barely walk and prop up on the
57:30
piano, and he was brilliant that night at funny, insightful and played his
57:36
heart out accidentally like a martyr. The Tortured Art of Warren Zevon. It's
57:39
been out since twenty eighteen. You could get wherever books are sold. Eye,
57:43
I got the Kindle version, but you can go to Amazon and get
57:46
it there, and then people can find you online where James, you got
57:50
your website? And what about social media? You could buy all my books.
57:53
I'll sign them and send them to free shipping if you live in the
57:55
Continental USA as always, but you can find the books every where and also
58:00
yeah at fear No Art on what I Guess the Calling x now and at
58:07
James Campion on Instagram and Facebook, James Campion the usual stuff on your website,
58:12
Yeah, James Campion dot com. That's where you could buy, you
58:14
know, any of my books and I'll mail Like I said, I'll sign
58:16
them to you and mail them to you for free. And hopefully I get
58:21
to be on the show again when my new book comes out in twenty twenty
58:23
five, can we talk about what it is? Because you put it on
58:27
social media, right, we could say, yes, it's on I'm writing
58:30
a book on Prince and the Revolution from nineteen seventy eight to nineteen eighty six,
58:36
all forms of the Revolution, the very early bands, and then when
58:38
he finally ended up calling them the Revolution, I'm calling it Revolution. Prince,
58:43
the band, the era. It's quite a ride. I went in
58:47
thinking, man, this guy was on fire for those years. I'm getting
58:52
accused on social media as being one of those classic old school rock and roll
58:57
white guys who liked that era Prince the best. But it's hard to argue.
59:00
I loved Prince all the way to the end, and I listened to
59:04
a lot of his nineties stuff. I think his third or fourth best record
59:07
ever his Rainbow Children, which came out in the Outs, I think,
59:08
or maybe even the tenth. But you cannot argue that that run from nineteen
59:15
eighty from Dirty Mind to Sign of the Times is when he was the center
59:22
of the universe, and he was writing songs for the Bangals and the Time
59:27
and Shaka Khan and Sheila E and he had all these angineus, and he
59:31
had double albums and triple albums, and he was writing and his shows were
59:36
incredible. What an era, And it's been a load of fun diving in
59:40
and I hope people will enjoy it all right man, thanks so much,
59:44
James Campion. It's a pleasure. Thank you, buddy. That's it.
59:55
It's in the books.