I'll Sleep When I'm Dead Read online

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  “Nothing’s bad luck, is it?”

  “No.”

  “Nothing’s bad luck, is it?”

  “No.”

  He told me he was getting tired. “You can go if you have to.”

  “I’m not going to leave you, Warren.”

  He nodded and said, “Ry-Ry, you’re not afraid, are you?”

  That’s when I knew he knew.

  “I’m not afraid, Warren. I love you.”

  He smiled and took my hand. “Please stay.”

  I lay with him for a few moments; he fell asleep almost immediately. I moved into the living room to read, thinking I’d be staying awhile. Maybe ten minutes later the molecular energy of the room changed, and my heart fell. I had a sickening feeling before I entered his bedroom. He wasn’t breathing. He had a very faint pulse at his neck. There was no chest movement. It seemed like every movement was thick, slow, like moving in water.

  I pulled him down and got on top and started CPR and mouth-to-mouth. I was on his lips when his last breath escaped and that was the most intense moment. I felt his spirit. I felt his presence leave his body, enter mine, and pass through it. The room was potent yet still.

  You know, in the book we signed at the memorial service, I wrote, “Warren, nothing’s bad luck anymore.”

  CRYSTAL ZEVON, Warren’s ex-wife, Ariel’s mother, Max and Gus’ grandmother: I was at home in Vermont when my son-in-law Ben Powell’s voice on the phone told me that Ariel had gotten the call—Warren wasn’t breathing well. They had called 911 and Ariel was on her way to Warren’s apartment. Ben was at home with their three-month-old twins. He sounded scared. I searched for that part in me that secretly believed Warren’s illness was nothing more than the best-ever publicity stunt—that this was all a big joke on us, Warren’s gallows humor gone berserk. Jordan and I had even joked about the possibility once or twice. This time, though, my denial refused to kick-start.

  ARIEL ZEVON, Warren’s daughter: I left the babies with Ben and I drove over to Dad’s. When I got there, he was already dead. The paramedics were there, but by then they were just waiting for the police to arrive. Ryan and I had to figure stuff out. We were looking through his phone book, trying to call the doctor so he could verify that Dad had died of natural causes. Nobody told us what we were supposed to do after the paramedics and the police left. We didn’t know if he had specific instructions about who should take care of…things. We couldn’t reach people, but we thought he’d probably told somebody about, you know, his wishes. We wanted to do what he wanted…but neither of us really knew what that was.

  CRYSTAL ZEVON: Minutes after I hung up, my phone rang again. It was Ariel. “He’s gone.” Her voice sounded like a back road on a foggy night. We gave it a few moments. “Do you know what he wanted us to do with the body?” she asked. “He wanted to be cremated,” I answered. My reply irritated her. Ariel and her father had always shared a very particular impatient tone when people weren’t keeping up with them—when I stated the obvious rather than what they were looking for. “We know that. Do you know where he wanted his body taken?” I didn’t.

  ARIEL ZEVON: It was strange. You could see life leaving. Fast. It was like the body started decomposing before our eyes. We just sat there, together, and watched. I think he would have liked that. Laughed at it. Made a song about it.

  JORGE CALDERON, Warren’s co-writer, co-producer, and trusted friend: I had just gotten back from a tour. I mean, I had literally walked in my apartment and put my bags on the floor when the phone rang. I was shocked, but I knew that four days before a doctor had seen him and said the cancer had spread to his stomach. I figured I had to go there for Ariel, especially because they couldn’t find Jordan.

  This part is kind of unbelievable. I’d been going to Warren’s place for years. Practically every day, for months at a time, that last year. But, that day I got lost going there. I was so nervous. I kept driving around blocks and I didn’t know where I was. I was starting to panic, but finally, I got my bearings. Just Ariel and Ryan were there when I came in. Warren was on the floor. It was kind of shocking to see him there. I can’t figure out why the paramedics didn’t put him back in bed. But he looked very peaceful. He looked like he was sleeping.

  Faith came [Warren’s nurse]. After awhile, we sat around his body and just talked and held on to him. It wasn’t scary or awful. It was kind of wonderful. We touched him. I kissed him. Faith got a sheet and put it over him, but we didn’t cover his head, and we all just talked to him. We were there with him. We were there together. It was beautiful. We were telling stories. Going from being sad to laughing—being there with him. All we did was wait, and keep trying to call Jordan. We waited until the Forest Lawn guys came.

  JORDAN ZEVON, Warren’s son: Driving over, I remember thinking, Dad always knew what was coming. He planned his life, he planned his career, and he was prepared for the end. I mean, I don’t think he ever expected to be an old man. He would have hated that.

  JORGE CALDERON: Then they took him away. That was the hardest thing. The silence after he left. Finally, we all went our separate ways. I got in my car and went over the hill to the Valley.

  JORDAN ZEVON: After everyone left, I got to clean out the porn. That was my job. That’s what we discussed, Dad and me…If he passed away, I was supposed to go in there and get out the porn. The thing was, I thought it was going to be, you know, X-rated videos that you rented or bought in one of those sex shops on Melrose. But they were videos—it was porn of him. And women. He made them himself.

  JORGE CALDERON: I was at the top of the hill, and that silence was still with me, so I thought, let me just put on KCRW and hear some soothing music. You know, they play classical or Indian music and that kind of stuff. I thought, sitar music would be good right now.

  So, I turned the radio on and it was, I swear to God, the intro to “My Dirty Life and Times.” The album had been released about two weeks earlier but this was the first time I’d heard anything from it on the radio. It was really strange…I mean I just turn on the radio and right then, “My Dirty Life and Times” starts playing…but it was like, whoa, Warren, he was right there with me.

  PART ONE

  Piano Fighter

  ONE

  WILD AGE

  You’ve seen him leaning on the streetlight

  Listening to some song inside

  You’ve seen him standing by the highway

  Trying to hitch a ride

  Well, they tried so hard to hold him

  Heaven knows how hard they tried

  But he’s made up his mind

  He’s the restless kind

  He’s the wild age

  Warren’s father, William Rubin Zivotofsky, was born in Kiev, Ukraine, in 1903. His father, Rubin, left for New York in 1905, and the Zivotofskys of Ukraine became the Zevons of Brooklyn.

  Of his childhood, there was only one story Willie Zevon told when asked:

  WILLIAM “STUMPY” ZEVON: Life was shit. We were poor, and it was either too hot or too cold. There was never enough room to move around in, and never enough food to eat. My best memory is one birthday. I was around ten, and my father came home with a cucumber. We never tasted a cucumber, and he took out his knife and divided it up. We each got a slice. It was cool and it tasted like candy to us. What did we know? We never had candy. That was the best birthday I remember. What I knew was I had to get out of that shithole. And, I did.

  The Zevon men—front row (L to R): the five brothers—Hymie, Murray, Willie (Stumpy), Al, Lou with Paul Zevon on his lap. Back row (L to R): Sandy Zevon (Warren’s cousin), Dick Wachtel, Buddy Berk, Jerry Berk, Peter Berk, Warren Zevon, Eddie Zevon, Bob Zevon, Sidney Rubenstein, Don Berling, Abe Karlin.

  SANDY ZEVON, Warren’s first cousin: Willie and the youngest brother, Hymie, left New York and headed West. Willie was in his mid-teens. Their first stop was Chicago. They got into some gambling business. Sam Giancana, the famous mobster, put him into some shady business…It was like a Damon
Runyon story.

  In 1946, when Willie was forty-two, he met an innocent twenty-one-year-old beauty, Beverly Simmons, in Fresno, California. Although she had been born with a congenital heart condition and had always lived under the protective wing of her overbearing Mormon mother, Beverly believed she had found a “diamond in the rough.”

  Warren Zevon was born on January 24, 1947, in Chicago. His parents had a rocky marriage from the start. Beverly was after a family life that would prove impossible for Stumpy to handle. Throughout his childhood, Warren was passed back and forth between his parents as they fought bitterly, separated, got back together, then split again.

  When Warren was nine years old, his father made a rare visit to

  Fresno, where Warren and his mother were living next door to Beverly’s parents. On Christmas Eve, Stumpy disappeared for a night of gambling. He returned on Christmas morning, with a Chickering piano he had won in a poker game. Beverly was furious and ordered his “headache machine” removed from her house.

  Warren wanted that piano. He silently cheered on Stumpy as he grabbed a carving knife meant for the turkey that wasn’t even in the oven yet. It was the chilling image of Stumpy’s poker face as he hurled the knife at Beverly’s head that made a lasting impression on Warren. Time stood still as he watched the lethal blade miss his mother’s head by no more than an inch. Without a word, Beverly stalked out the door and went to her parents’ house down the block.

  Warren, age three.

  After his mother left, Warren’s father sat him down on the piano bench, and they had their first ever father-to-son talk. He said, “Son, you know I gotta go. She’s your mother, so I guess you gotta stay. But, there’s something you better know. Your mother and your grandmother have been telling you you’re the pope of Rome, right? Well, you ain’t never going to be no pope, you know why? Because you’re a Jew. You hear me, son? You’re a Jew. Don’t ever forget that.”

  Warren, age seven.

  By the time Warren was ready to enter junior high school, his father had charmed his mother into leaving Fresno to try living together again—this time in a lavish home with an ocean view in San Pedro, California.

  CRYSTAL ZEVON: Warren began studying music with the Dana Junior High School band teacher, who also worked as a classical session player—a trumpet player. His teacher believed that Warren had a quality that set him apart, so he took Warren to a Robert Craft/Igor Stravinsky recording session—a day that left an indelible stamp on Warren’s life and music.

  Warren (age twelve) and Madeline Zevon (cousin Sandy’s wife) in San Pedro.

  FROM WARREN’S NOTES: I went [to Stravinsky’s home] several times. Five or six times. So, I met Stravinsky, and talked to him, and sat on the couch with him. We read scores and he and Robert Craft inspired me to study conductors and conducting. But in no way was I an intimate friend of his. I was thirteen years old. In the latest definitive biography about Stravinsky, written by Robert Craft, there is a reference to me and my visits. Craft’s description is pretty accurate. He, in fact, commends me for not claiming to have had a close relationship with Stravinsky. Although, I must admit, I haven’t always dissuaded the press if they chose to make a little more of it than there actually was. He was very gracious to me, and the experience is one of my most treasured and inspirational memories.

  ROBERT CRAFT, excerpted from his original typescript entitled “My Recollections of Warren Zevon”:…I remember him [Warren Zevon] very clearly as he arrived late one afternoon at the Stravinsky Hollywood home, 1260 North Wetherly Drive. Though he seemed much younger than I had anticipated, he was self-possessed and articulate far beyond his years. After some conversation, I played recordings of contemporary pieces, not available commercially and unknown to him. He was keenly attentive and his responses were unambiguous; very young people are always judgmental, of course, but he supported his judgments with acute arguments. We followed scores of Stockhausen’s Gruppen and Carree as we listened to air-checks of German radio performances.

  After an hour or so, Stravinsky came into the room—his living room—and I made introductions. As always, Stravinsky was warm and hospitable, and Mr. Zevon, whatever he felt and thought, was in perfect control. Part of Stravinsky’s late-afternoon post-work ritual was to drink scotch and eat a piece of gruyere and some smoked salmon on small squares of black bread. I might be conflating this first of Mr. Zevon’s visits with a later one, but I think that Stravinsky invited his young guest to join him in the nourishment. Mr. Zevon betrayed no effects from the liquid and we chose a time to meet again the following week. Our “lessons,” repeated several times, were confined to analyzing scores; I think that at that time Mr. Zevon was not interested in much music before, or of a lesser quality than, Webern…Let me add that Stravinsky was always interested in the opinions and reactions of the young, and I believe that that was his interest in me when I first met him. Mr. Zevon on that first visit reminded me of my own first meeting with Stravinsky, though I was ten years older [the last four words are handwritten] and much less intelligent.

  Warren’s visits with Robert Craft and Igor Stravinsky ended when their departure on a concert tour coincided with his mother’s decision to return to Fresno with her son. Warren grudgingly enrolled in McLane High School.

  KIT (CHRIS) CRAWFORD, Warren’s high school friend and one-time band manager: Warren Zevon lived a couple blocks away from me. He just knocked on my door one blistering hot summer afternoon between our junior and senior years in high school, introduced himself saying that we knew some of the same people and it was about time we met. The people we knew in common were mostly would-be intellectuals and self-styled bohemian types—not really the in-crowd, more like the out-crowd.

  I thought of myself as the only “real beatnik” at this godforsaken high school in this godforsaken hellhole. Violence and stupidity seemed to rule the place, and here I was stuck and certain that I was the only authentic beat mind within two hundred miles. So, here at my front door stood this pocked-faced blond guy, his head cocked belligerently to the side, in an oversized white T-shirt, sand-colored Levi’s, and Clarke’s Desert Boots, someone who seemed just as out of place as me.

  I was watching a rerun of Have Gun, Will Travel, a show I never missed and invited him to finish watching. There we sat gazing intently with a kind of reverence, making offhand and wry comments, both of us in awe of Richard Boone as Paladin and his superior, theatrical style and charismatic ugliness. After the theme music ended, Warren wondered if a man could be so ugly that he was good-looking. I said, “Yeah, Richard Burton.”

  Warren was never sure exactly when his parents’ marriage ended because they never told him about it. But he more or less figured it out when Elmer, the guy who had been fixing their roof, moved in.

  DANNY MCFARLAND, a high school friend who remained in Warren’s life and wrote “I Have to Leave” on My Ride’s Here: Elmer was just plain mean. We mostly stayed away from Warren’s house because nobody wanted to deal with Elmer. He hated the fact that Warren was around, and Warren knew it. We all knew it.

  KIT CRAWFORD: Warren held more than a little hatred for his new stepfather, and Elmer let him know he felt the same. In fact, whenever we were cruising and Warren would cut loose with a loud fart, he would touch the roof liner, lift his feet, and sneer, “Elmer.” Soon, it caught on everywhere, and anytime we were in a car and anybody farted, everyone shouted “Elmer” until eventually, I swear it, young people up and down the state were saying “Elmer” every time they farted.

  After Elmer moved in, there was one positive change in the household, at least in Warren’s view. For the first time ever, the house was stocked with alcoholic beverages.

  KIT CRAWFORD: One night we were out drinking near a railroad crossing. We would watch the big engines rolling by, usually pulling more than a hundred boxcars behind, and count the boxcars, noting the names printed across them: Atlantic Pacific, Texas Central, Baltimore & Ohio, Northern Railroad, Choctaw Oklahoma & Gulf…I us
ed to get a little crazy when I drank and started howling at the moon. Warren joined in.

  DANNY MCFARLAND: One reason he wanted to get into the music business—with the folk, then the surfing music, then he was going to be like the Beatles—is he wanted to be a star. When he got drunk back then, he’d let loose and tell everybody how he was going to be a star. He wanted people to like him, or look up to him, maybe. Sometimes his humor could alienate him. Like after the Kennedy assassination. It was during a break between classes and we heard the bad news over the school’s loudspeaker. JFK was shot dead. Everyone was very solemn and saddened. Then Warren took his right hand and stretched it behind his back; at the same time he looked over his right shoulder and said in his best JFK accent, “Jackie, I’ve got this real bad pain in my head.” I laughed but not too many others did.

  KIT CRAWFORD: Elmer and stepchild Warren were constantly at war, and more than a few times Elmer would knock him around. Warren would leave and sleep in cars or on couches of friends when their parents were out of town. Sometimes, very late at night, he would rap at the bedroom windows of girls he knew. Sometimes they would let him in for a little consolation. I have to admit he was really good at talking these girls into letting him in.