Warren Zevon
The Wind
(Artemis, 2003)

“I was in the house when the house burned down.” – Warren Zevon

On paper, September 2002-2003 looked like a banner year for Warren Zevon—a full-length documentary on VH-1, an entire hour on Letterman, and a Billboard-friendly album that would eventually earn him a pair of Grammys.

Yep, I’d say it was a banner year, alright.

Only Zevon didn’t stick around long enough to enjoy it.

And perhaps that’s the way the rock gods wanted it. Perhaps it was a fitting end for a guy who always seemed to wear his celebrity like a noose, a guy whose career was often as tragic as it was brilliant, a guy who was sort of like the Sisyphus of rock ‘n’ roll stars.

Guys like Zevon aren’t really built for celebrity. They’re far too talented for it.

And maybe, on some level, that’s what kept Zevon in a constant cycle of self-sabotage all those years—the idea that if he ever achieved the kind of success he was capable of, it might dull the cynic within, that if he became a multi-zillionaire with friends and trends to match, longtime fans would no longer accept him as the poor, poor pitiful pop star they’d come to embrace.   

Zevon struggled to achieve balance in life. And that struggle came to define him as both an artist and a human being. He thrived on consequence, on having something to lose if for no better reason than to prove he could win it all back again. He was a tragic hero, a tortured genius, a cat with nine lives who somehow managed to squander every one.

That is until the fall of 2002, when he was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a very rare (and often fatal) form of lung cancer. Doctors gave him two, maybe three months to live.

Only Zevon didn’t see it that way.

He took those three months and stretched them into 12. He survived long enough to see another Christmas. Then he survived long enough to see the birth of twin grandchildren. And somehow, some way—with his voice and strength fading—Zevon survived long enough to write and record what will undoubtedly go down as the most compelling album of his career.

The Wind was Zevon’s final opportunity to write about a subject that forever dangled like the Sword of Damocles over everything he did. Only this time the threat was real, and that lent an unprecedented urgency to the proceedings.

But it also meant Zevon was a guy with nothing left to lose again. There was no long-term record contract at stake, no pressure from the boys upstairs to write something all the hip kids could swing to, nothing to distract him from making the record he wanted to make.

Zevon was focused. He was prolific. And more often than not, he was dick-deep in scotch. But with the help of some old friends (and long-time collaborator Jorge Calderón) the record he had in mind began to take shape.  

Bruce Springsteen dropped by to lend a hand, as did Jackson Browne, Tom Petty, Dwight Yoakam, Don Henley, Emmylou Harris, Joe Walsh, and Billy Bob Thornton. Zevon was able to incorporate each of them without turning the record into a slack, self-indulgent mess.  

Ballads like “Keep Me in Your Heart” and “Prison Grove” played off of rockers like “Disorder in the House” and “The Rest of the Night.” The tempo rose, the tempo fell. There was laughter and there were tears.

And when the work was finally done, it was obvious that Zevon had created his pièce de résistance, his John Henry moment, his final shot from the top of the key with 5.2 seconds left. 

The Wind debuted at #16 on the Billboard charts in August of 2003.  

Two weeks later—on the morning of September 7th—Warren Zevon was gone.

There was no dramatic exit, no bullet to the brain, no giant cannon erected out back to scatter his ashes all over the valley below—just another California sunrise, with Zevon lying down alone in the dark to dream.

And perhaps that’s the way the rock gods wanted it.  

Watch: “Keep Me in Your Heart“  [at youtube.com]

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