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  GLENN CROCKER, piano player in Warren’s first band: When I met Warren in ’62, I was working in a Chevron station all night. Somebody talked to me about this Warren person who was going to get together a band and needed a piano player. Right after we met, I actually helped him move out of his mother’s house. His mother was there but I don’t think either one of us even talked to her. I don’t know how a mother could do that, but it was clear that the new guy in her life was more important than her child. It takes a certain mentality to think that way, so she wasn’t friendly to me then. I don’t even remember what she looked like. I just remember we got in and out as fast as we could.

  KIT CRAWFORD: Warren wasn’t an egghead. He was hardboiled like the noir detectives he loved to read so keenly. We were sarcastic beyond belief, cynical beyond our experience, believing in nothing except the hilarity of bitterness. Putting people down was one of our few great joys, and we both went at it with enormous delight. For me it was for kicks, a way to vent my anger. For Warren, it was an exercise to keep the hounds of despair at bay. Maybe that’s why he drank far more than anyone else I knew.

  Warren’s father, Willie “Stumpy” Zevon, put Warren in touch with an acquaintance in San Francisco, Ben Shapiro, who was eager to get into the music business.

  GLENN CROCKER: Warren talked to me about this benefactor who wanted to put together a band that would make records and make a lot of money. So, I auditioned. I’d been playing since I was six and loved music, and I was also a writer. Warren said, “Yeah, that’s it. Let’s go.”

  We went up to San Francisco. Remember these were early rock and roll days, and we barely had any hair, but we were still being abused by people on the streets. It wasn’t funny. It was scary. If you look back at the hair then, it’s nothing. Absolutely nothing. But, boy, we were called fags, and we had to watch out for rednecks.

  The benefactor was a guy named Ben Shapiro. He was a big fat Jewish guy who smoked big cigars. This woman was doing this with him. She was the musical side, and he was the promoter. He wanted us to make records and he was going to pay for it all. Whatever it took. He bought us all our instruments. He put us up in a flat that had four or five bedrooms up on Thirty-fifth Avenue in San Francisco, and we just got to practice, play, and record.

  It was me on keyboards, Warren on guitar, John Cates played bass, and a guy named David Cardosa was the drummer. We were all from Fresno. We wrote some nice songs, recorded some good demos, but I guess they took them around and didn’t get a deal right away, so they just dropped the idea of spending all this cash, and that was that.

  DANNY MCFARLAND: I drove Warren down to L.A. in my Woodie with this friend of mine, Barry Crocker. I dropped Warren off at his father’s, at Stumpy’s place. I met his father then but it was very brief. He was a gangster who was supposedly on the list of the top 20 gangsters in California. I don’t know if he made this up or not, but I really never got to talk to him. Warren kind of looked up to his dad.

  SANDY ZEVON: I remember one visit to Willie at his house in Los Angeles. We were sitting there, talking, and on the radio was a news report about Stumpy Zevon being involved in some kind of mix-up—some illegal, gangster-related thing. I don’t remember the details, but it was surprising to be sitting there and have this come on the radio.

  GLENN CROCKER: When the San Francisco thing failed, I got a call from Warren saying he was living with his dad down in Culver City. He wanted me to come down and stay with them and we could keep doing music. Warren was kind of getting to know his dad for the first time. Stumpy Zevon was actually on the FBI’s list of gangsters. My dad’s a federal judge, and he pointed that out to me.

  My folks weren’t too happy with that, but I stayed with them for a while. It was a very interesting time because Warren’s dad tried to make up for not really knowing him by buying gifts. He bought him a brand-new yellow XKE Jaguar. If Warren needed money, Stumpy just whipped out a roll and handed him a bunch.

  Stumpy was a grumpy little guy. He had these carpet stores, but nobody ever came in and bought carpet. I couldn’t figure that out.

  SANDY ZEVON: Willie’s legitimate business was a carpet business in California—whether or not the carpets they sold were legitimate or off a boat or off a truck, I’m not sure, but they had a store, and I remember being at the store and seeing it. I remember he bought Warren a car. It was a prototype. It didn’t have doors. You had to climb over the front. It was a convertible. He was very, very proud of Warren. He loved him. I think he gave him anything he wanted.

  GLENN CROCKER: Stumpy was very nice to me. He was very nice to Warren. They were not what I would call buddies. They didn’t develop much of a relationship. It was “I need money.” And, “Here’s money.” They didn’t spend a lot of time trying to get to know each other.

  Warren bought lots and lots and lots and lots of clothes. He was shopping all the time. He took me along. I was the poor kid, struggling to get any money at the time. He was getting all this money, and he took me along everywhere to tell him how he looked. He never bought me anything.

  KIT CRAWFORD: I got a phone call. Warren sounded great, very confident. He was sending me a plane ticket to fly down…I knew something big was happening, but little did I know that my life was changing, too. Warren met me at LAX looking very spiffy in expensive new clothes and sporting a genuine Jay Sebring razor cut, Steve McQueen–style. We walked to the parking lot and there it was—his new car, a pristine white ’62 Corvette, the one with the dovetail. He just smiled wryly and said, “My father’s a gangster.”

  TWO

  POOR POOR PITIFUL ME

  I met a girl from the Vieux Carré

  Down in Yokohama

  She picked me up and she throwed me down

  I said, “Please don’t hurt me, Mama”

  Warren enrolled in L.A.’s Fairfax High School in January of 1964.

  VIOLET SANTANGELO, Warren’s partner in the folk duo lyme and cybelle: It was spring, and Kennedy had been shot a few months before. I was sixteen and very removed from everyone, having been a smart street girl from Chi-Town. I remember sitting on the grass by myself on lunch break, and a few feet away from me was this kid with a guitar. He wasn’t playing it because that would have brought people around. He was strumming it. Quietly.

  He was withdrawn from the others but without the incredible shyness I was strapped with. It was easy for him to be who he was. He had a quiet command. I responded to him. I said something or he called me over. Later, he asked me to go with him in his car to his apartment. He didn’t live in a house, but an apartment, which I found very interesting. The car was a yellow Stingray. I had never been in a car with a boy before. I put the radio on and found a station playing classical music. I asked him if he liked it. He said, “I hate that shit.”

  VIOLET SANTANGELO: We were together, but I wouldn’t kiss him, and he said, “What are you? A lesbian?” He couldn’t have crushed me more. To me, when he came on to me, it was a betrayal. I was thinking, “I have a friend.” It was really his insecurity. I knew that, even then.

  Warren traveled with his father to San Francisco, where Warren played in every Haight-Ashbury folk club that would have him. It was in San Francisco that he met Marilyn Livingston (later known as “Tule”), who would become the first real love of Warren’s life and the mother of his son.

  JORDAN ZEVON: My mom told me she met Dad at a party in San Francisco. Dad was like the turtleneck intellectual guy and was quoting all these authors and poets and my mom just completely fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

  KIT CRAWFORD: Warren met Tule in San Francisco when we were out parading through the streets acting like rock stars. She was a thin, freckle-faced blond with a very cute upturned nose. She was nineteen going on thirty-five and wanted to be a model. She had a mouth on her, man, never cutting any slack to the guys who approached her. Very film-noir. Very retro. Warren admired that.

  Warren and Stumpy returned to L.A., where Warren continued his education at Fairfax Hi
gh.

  WARREN ZEVON: I was indoctrinated with the idea that I was smart when I was a kid. I broke I.Q. records all over the place. Oh shit, I can remember thinking, I believe you do this act with a cross. They kept accelerating me through Gatorade High in Fresno and Motorcycle High in San Pedro, and then I suddenly found myself in Fairfax High in L.A.

  It was an excellent school, but I was out of my wire. In chemistry class, I was confronted with the inevitability of flunking, which was weird. The only thing I did well in was English. And it’s funny, because my English grade depended on a long essay I had to write. Afterward, the teacher took me aside and said: “Here’s your composition and here’s your A. Who really wrote it?” I did, I said. And she said, “You’re lying.”

  VIOLET SANTANGELO: When Warren introduced me to his father, he wouldn’t look at me and he said nothing. He once told me, “You are a snake and you should crawl into the ground and stay there.” Warren thought that was funny. He spoke of it often. The laughter actually made me feel better because it was us against him.

  I thought Warren’s mother was dead. There was no reference to her, ever.

  We would go into his bedroom, which was a total mess; he would play and sing, and I would join in. Standards…the Beatles. We had a blend. He would tell me what to do or I would jump in and harmonize. He liked that.

  I asked Warren to come over and meet my family. He had a lot to offer and we (my family) were also cynics and laughter was mandatory. He became part of our family. So now, we would go into my bedroom and sing.

  We had to name our duo. Warren knew he was lyme; that came with the package. And, the e.e. cummings lowercase was mandatory. We were thinking about me—throwing names around. Sundays and Cybelle was my favorite film. I loved art films and vintage clothing—I came with my own poetry. So, that’s how we picked cybelle. Warren liked the y’s and the e’s. So, we were lyme and cybelle.

  My sister was dating Michael Burns, the young boy on the TV series Wagon Train. His mother worked for Lee Lasseff at White Whale Records. When Warren and I sang for the group that was gathered in my living room, Michael was there. We sang our Beatles songs and everyone really dug it. We learned more for the next time, and Michael told us he had mentioned us to his mother.

  BONES HOWE, executive producer of Warren’s first two albums: Warren and I met first in 1965 in the White Whale Office on Sunset and La Cienega. I had been producing the Turtles, and I was also producing the Association and the Fifth Dimension. So, I already had a lot going on, but they wanted me to meet this new guy, Warren Zevon…actually, he was calling himself lyme at the time…In any case, I met him and was interested right away. He was very different from the other groups I was working with, but I could see in that first meeting that he had something.

  A few days after his meeting with Bones Howe, Warren signed a contract as a songwriter with Ishmael Music.

  BONES HOWE: I met him again at his apartment on Orchid Street in Hollywood. He sat at the piano and played me a number of pieces, blues things he was working on and some classical pieces. We talked at length about music.

  Warren was a very prophetic guy. The first time I ever heard the word ecology used in a popular sense came out of Warren’s mouth. He said, “You know what ecology is? It’s going to be the next big thing.” And he was absolutely right. So, I nicknamed him the “Orchid Street Oracle.”

  We talked about different things and different approaches, but “Follow Me” seemed like the best shot at a pop recording—not a bubble gum pop, but I always said it was the first psychedelic rock record. The psychedelic rock records that came after that were so guitar laden and so powerful sounding, and Warren’s early stuff doesn’t sound like that, but lyrically it certainly was psychedelic.

  We managed to get on the chart with that first record—halfway up the chart or better, and White Whale decided it was worth making more records, so we did.

  VIOLET SANTANGELO: When we were recording, Bones used the jawbone of the ass…you hear the PSHEW in the song…Warren thought that was like the hippest thing he had ever heard. He fell in love with that. To him, it was somebody saying “you’re home.” Bones was saying to Warren, “There are others like you.”

  lyme and cybelle released three singles on White Whale. “Follow Me” and “Like the Seasons” were written by Warren and Violet. The duo’s third single, “If You Got to Go, Go Now,” was sixteen-year-old Warren’s earliest tribute to Bob Dylan.

  VIOLET SANTANGELO: We did do The Lloyd Thaxton Show, live. I had somebody make our clothes. I had knickers out of a camel color cashmere, and Warren liked that. He had the suit, and I had the knickers. He was into clothes. He had this hat, and a long leather coat. Kind of a signature thing. His eccentricities were early and fabulous.

  DAVID MARKS, original member of the Beach Boys: I was doing a lot of cruising around, going to clubs, nothing too meaningful, and I heard Warren’s record on the radio. The person I was with said, “Do you want to go see lyme?” He knew Warren a bit. His name was stephen lyme then. His apartment on Orchid was all green, and he wore green clothes, and he had green tinted glasses. He wore Lyme cologne. He was like seventeen years old, and his record was on the radio.

  HOWARD KAYLAN, a founding member of the Turtles: We were called into the White Whale office by Lee Lasseff and Ted Feigin, who were very, very scary dudes, I might add. They had backgrounds in record distribution, which was—and is—a very shady area of the record business. These guys were pros at getting stuff played and distributed, and so they started their own record company. They were also signing singer/songwriters, and they introduced us one afternoon to Warren as half of the song-styling team of lyme and cybelle.

  They played us Warren’s record, “Follow Me,” and we were very impressed. That was a great record. He sounded like an incredible songwriter. They asked us if we wanted to meet him, and we said, “Oh, absolutely.” We met Warren, and he seemed like the nicest guy.

  Warren wrote a bio for for lyme and cybelle on his Smith Corona typewriter.

  BONES HOWE: I got us some free studio time and we went in and recorded some of the songs he was writing. I was playing drums on the Grass Roots records and doing some demos for Sloan and Barri, so I used the studio we were working in. Warren and I made some demos together, just the two of us, with me banging on the drums and playing percussion and him playing guitar and bass guitar and singing. We had a nice rapport.

  Warren, aka lyme.

  We wrote two commercials together. The songs he wrote during that period were kind of soft, sweet things compared to where he was going—songs like “Going All the Way” and “Warm Rain.” But most of the stuff he wrote was good musically. I also got him that gig writing that song “She Quit Me” for Midnight Cowboy.

  HOWARD KAYLAN: One of the first things we heard from Warren was “Outside Chance”—an amazing Beatles[-like] song. We thought, my God, this is going to take us right out of that lighter-than-Spoonful, frothy, good-time stuff we were doing and put us into an arena where we could compete Beatle-wise with stronger groups.

  I still love the record. It’s one of my favorite Turtles records of all time.

  GLENN CROCKER: We wrote “Outside Chance” together. I wrote all the lyrics, and he wrote all the music. But when it came time to put it on the label and on the contract, I got paid, but I didn’t get credit because Warren cut my name out.

  When I got the first royalty check, I hadn’t eaten in a week. I went out and bought all my friends dinner. We ate really well for a while. But when other people were around, Warren pushed me to the side. He had that quality back then.

  DAVID MARKS: It was 1967. I had moved into that little green apartment with him. We slept on the floor, and we’d play guitars day and night. He had the most interesting people dropping by. Warren was the first true bohemian that I met.

  I was heavily into the English blues and the traditional blues, like Muddy Waters, and he turned me on to the cultural side of music with the classical
stuff. I’d pick up a book off the floor—and there were many books all over the floor—and it would be, say, on music notation, and he’d explain it all to me.

  KIT CRAWFORD: Warren was always working on some kind of twelve-tone or serial music inspired by Stockhausen or Bartók. He could notate music as rapidly as I could write cursive with a pen. It was all very impressive. He boasted that he could play every instrument in a philharmonic orchestra.

  HOWARD KAYLAN: Warren had this song that he was going to record with lyme and cybelle, “Like the Seasons.” It was gorgeous, and I needed to sing that song. We didn’t need anybody in the band to perform on it except myself because the tracks had been done by Warren on guitar and with a string quartet. So, I went in and sang “Like the Seasons” and it became the B-side of a Turtles release called “Can I Get to Know You Better.”

  KIT CRAWFORD: At the time, the Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, and the Surfaris ruled. So, we tried to write surfer songs, which meant car songs. I think the first song was called “My Cherry Chevelle.” It was crude, probably crap. Yet I do remember an early rhyme that might have been a precursor of Warren’s cagey lyric style—“He was much too ethereal when it came to things venereal.”