I'll Sleep When I'm Dead Read online

  HOWARD KAYLAN: Ritualistically, I would drive over to Warren’s place. He had it all decked out. We would literally sit and see how stoned we could get. We would do pot and a lot of acid. Warren’s place was conveniently located within walking distance of many, many Hollywood landmarks.

  At the time, I was about to be married, so my whole life was in permanent flux and my only stability came from hanging out with Warren. That ought to tell you something! I wasn’t stable at all, and neither was he. We would drink red wine in the afternoon, we would take acid, we would smoke bongs, and then we would start walking down to Sunset Boulevard.

  We wound up using as a hangout Pioneer Chicken on Sunset Boulevard, which was a notorious bad fast food place that caters pretty much to twenty-four-hour biker, hooker, and dealer servicing. But either we didn’t care, or we were just too high to notice.

  DAVID MARKS: The apartment turned into a band house. We got Glenn Crocker back from Boston, and we had a trio. We played every day and took a lot of LSD and smoked a lot of pot. Warren was playing guitar. Glenn was playing bass. We played at a place called Bido Lido’s on Gower Street.

  We discovered our roots together. I was focused on what Brian Wilson was doing, and Warren was just coming out of that classical stuff, so we kind of discovered our little separate styles. Glenn was into jazz. For me, being around those two guys was really an education because they were turning me on to all this good stuff that I wasn’t aware existed.

  KIT CRAWFORD: The blond kid with the bad skin and bad attitude opened my eyes to modern twentieth-century composers. He introduced me to the more obscure Stravinsky pieces, like “Agon,” and to the twelve-tone stuff the maestro was writing at the time. When we listened to Webern or Schoenberg, he would punctuate the music by jabbing the air with his hands. “Listen to this part. Hear it? The oboes. The oboes.”

  VIOLET SANTANGELO: There was a lot of arrogance with that little group there. They thought they were like something special. Maybe they were. When Warren was with me, he wasn’t seeing other people, he wasn’t drinking. I never thought of him as a person who was always drinking. But, he got with those guys living on Orchid Street and it was all about drugs and drinking.

  GLENN CROCKER: I lived with him on and off for a long time. We played together, we wrote together. But, Warren had a part of his personality that when we were together, he loved me like I was his brother. He would tell me, “I’d like to be more like you—more of a normal guy. You’re a good person. You treat people well.” But, the minute somebody would come over, he’d use me as a scapegoat. He’d put me down and make jokes at my expense.

  He made me feel really terrible, for instance, when Howard and Mark from the Turtles would come over. We were around some pretty successful people, and he would shove me aside, make fun of me. When people left, a couple of times he even cried, and he’d say he didn’t know why he did that. He’d say, “You’re my best friend and I don’t know why I did that.” But he couldn’t stop doing it.

  Glenn Crocker and Warren, 1967.

  DAVID MARKS: We’d ride up and down Sunset aimlessly. I would see Brian Wilson’s car at Western Studios, so I’d say, “Let’s stop and see Brian.” I introduced Warren to Brian Wilson and we ended up going there several times when Brian was working on “Good Vibrations.”

  GLENN CROCKER: I will never forget our New Year’s Eves for several years in a row. Acid and hash and pot. I don’t know how we lived through those days. Warren and I were lying on the floor of the Orchid house, flat on our backs, after we took some Owsley’s blue acid. Every once in a while, one of us would ask, “Are you still there?” That went on all night. Side by side, lying on the floor.

  This was the era of Vietnam. When Warren received his draft notification, “1-A: Registrant available for military service,” his father sent him to a psychiatrist who wrote a letter stating that he was homosexual. As double insurance, he took a triple dose of LSD, a few bi-amphetamines, and smoked a lot of pot before he went in for his induction physical. He was soon sent home with a “4-F: Unfit for military service” classification.

  CRYSTAL ZEVON: Warren felt guilty about avoiding the draft. Not that he would ever have gone to Vietnam, but that lying to get out of going created a permanent “bad luck” stain. One of his earliest obsessive-compulsive behaviors had to do with not being able to look at an image of Uncle Sam. Once we were driving down Sunset and passed an “Uncle Sam Wants You” billboard, and he made me turn the car around and drive away from it; then we had to go back on another street, because passing in front of it would mean not only that we would have bad luck, maybe even an accident, but soldiers would also suffer and be killed because of his negligence in showing respect to Uncle Sam.

  HOWARD KAYLAN: We eventually found, in a pile of demo records, a song that had been passed over by every single group and person that had heard it. We found this scratchy, awful demo of these two guys singing a falsetto version of this song called “Happy Together.” It took an awful lot of imagination to even understand what these clowns were trying to do, but we figured out that “Happy Together” was going to work for us, and we literally took it out on the road and perfected it and arranged it. It took us eight months.

  When we went into the studio at the beginning of 1967, we absolutely knew it was going to be a #1 record. The owners of the record company said, “This is going to be a #1 record, so think carefully about what you want to put on the B-side because it’s all gravy money.” We were so naïve, and we were so decent, that we said, “Let’s put Warren’s song on the B-side of this one, too.” “What? You’ve already used it as a B-side.” “I know, but that wasn’t a hit. We want to give this guy every break that we can…”

  I don’t think I have higher praise for anybody that I’ve ever met or encountered in this field than to say, “I realize this is money that could be going into my pocket. I would rather it go into his.” Believe me, we were not always that selfless. I don’t remember doing that again, even with an ex-wife. But, in Warren’s case, he was a very, very special person. We wanted him to share our good fortune. So, “Happy Together” wound up with Warren’s song “Like the Seasons” as the B-side internationally, and of course it sold millions and millions and millions of records.

  One of the first purchases Warren made with his royalty payments was a white Jaguar. On the sunny Southern California day when Warren pulled the Jag over for a hitchhiker looking for a lift to the other side of Laurel Canyon, the last person he expected to find was the feisty girl he’d fallen for in San Francisco.

  DAVID MARKS: He knew Marilyn (Tule) before I met him. They had been going out before, but when I started hanging out at Orchid Street, Marilyn came over with her mom a few times. I didn’t get any indication that she was his girlfriend. I guess it developed into something. It was a mystery to me. He dragged us to one of her shows in some little theater off Melrose, and that was the first time I knew she was an actor.

  GLENN CROCKER: Warren ran into Marilyn and they moved in together in Hollywood. Around that time my relationship with Warren ended. It ended really badly. We had a communal living thing going on, and it was working well, but we were all poor—struggling to keep food on the table. Warren had written songs for a couple of commercials, and money was bulging in his pockets, plus he had his dad.

  So one day he came over—and he had done this several times—he opened the refrigerator, and there was hardly any food in there, but he made himself a big, thick sandwich with what was left. He was called on it by several people living in the house. They wanted to know why he would eat our food when we didn’t have enough to eat ourselves.

  He got mad, and there was a shouting match. He looked at me straight in the face and he says, “You’re not going to back me up on this?” I said, “I can’t. I agree with them. You should be buying us dinner instead of coming over and eating our food.” He hit me. I didn’t see it coming. He hit me in the jaw and knocked me down. I actually saw blood.

  It w
as a real sucker punch. I turned my back and said, “Hey, just leave. Please.” He was very angry that I wasn’t on his side on that, and that’s the last contact he and I had.

  VIOLET SANTANGELO: The end of my partnership with Warren was mainly because of his relationship with his buddies that he moved in with. It was the drinking and the drugs. Those were guys I never bonded with and they are why I walked away from Warren finally.

  BONES HOWE: White Whale Records decided to drop him. They let him go from the publishing company and so he stopped getting that weekly advance or monthly advance he had been getting.

  DAVID MARKS: After lyme and cybelle broke up, she got another guy to be lyme. Warren got rid of everything green and changed his name to Sandy because he thought it made him sound like a surfer. So, Sandy Zevon liked blue, and green was unlucky.

  KIM FOWLEY, the self-appointed “original” mayor of Sunset Strip: I met Warren in ’68. I was sitting around in Bones Howe’s office—it was where all the Sunset Strip bums hung out and shot the shit. Bones’ office was like a bar without the bar. Sooner or later, everyone ended up there.

  One day Bones asks if I want to do something really nice for someone. I wasn’t known for doing nice things, but for Bones, I said, “Maybe.” He told me I should help him get a deal for this genius named Warren Zevon who was driving him crazy. He knew Warren had talent, and he thought, since I represented the L.A. underground and he represented more of the mainstream, that I would get Warren and be able to deal with him better than he could. Bones was too mainstream for Warren, and he knew it.

  I called Warren up and asked very simply, “Are you prepared to wear black leather and chains, fuck a lot of teenage girls, and get rich?”

  BONES HOWE: I finally got a deal for him on Imperial Records. He had made friends with Kim Fowley, who also had a relationship at Imperial. Between the two of us we convinced them that Warren ought to make a record, and that is how that first record got made.

  Another version…

  DAVID MARKS: My mother was working at Liberty Records, and I don’t know if she got him together with Kim Fowley, but somehow, through my mother, Warren got a record deal on Imperial. Warren went in to see Dave Pell—my mother worked for him and he was running the show at Liberty Records, and Warren was playing his stuff from Wanted Dead or Alive, and the phone rang. This is one of those typically famous stories that you hear all the time: Warren got up. He was pissed and he said, “If you’re going to fool around on the phone, I’m taking my shit and I’m leaving. Either hang up or I’m leaving.” So, Dave Pell unplugged the phone and listened to him and signed him. And Kim Fowley helped him with the production.

  RICHARD EDLUND, photographer and founder of Cinenet, Oscar winner: Kim Fowley was the master of hype and grease. He invented those terms.

  The night I met Kim, Warren and I were standing outside the Troubadour, and here he comes. It’s “How you doing?” and all. Then, this unbelievably beautiful blond chick walks by, and Kim stops her in her tracks with some remark, and then started working her. Within five minutes…within two-and-a-half minutes, he had her in tears. I mean she was bawling. And then two minutes later, she’s all over him, and they’re splitting together. I’d never seen an operator like this.

  KIM FOWLEY: I made Warren who he was. I allowed him to adopt my swagger. I’d tell him to practice walking across the room, and I’d tell him if he wanted to convince people he was an artist, the way he walked had to make a statement about misunderstanding and adulation at the same time.

  He never gave me credit, or maybe he did, I don’t know, but I gave him his image. Here’s what I told him. I said, “Be a prick, but be a literate one.” Now, isn’t that how you would describe Warren Zevon? A literary fucking prick?

  RICHARD EDLUND: I think Kim may have made Warren aware of what an image will do for you, but Warren was pretty capable of coming up with his own idiosyncrasies.

  The label hired Richard Edlund to photograph the album cover for Wanted Dead or Alive and publicity shots.

  RICHARD EDLUND: We started working on the production. Of course, Warren was very obsessive, and to come up with a photograph that would satisfy him was…I mean, everything had connotation and depth with Warren. If it didn’t, he wasn’t interested.

  Warren was comfortable with me—he trusted me. We took acid together and listened to Stravinsky and Jimi Hendrix into the wee hours of the morning. He dubbed me “Dark Room Dick.” He even named his publishing company Dark Room Music. He liked that sinister tone. I was “Dark” for short.

  I have a really good feeling about that time. I know Warren was always pushing himself intellectually, pushing himself psychologically, in order to extrude another song from his brain. Warren was like Poe in his writing, and occasionally there would be some mixed metaphor that would come out of conversation, and then four days later he would have some song. Like “Hobo Bold,” you know, which is the name of a typeface. Or “Carmelita.” Carmelita is a street, it’s like a shortcut through Beverly Hills. I used to live in Echo Park, and they had the Pioneer Market down there, and they had this chicken stand where all these drug deals went down…where he met his man, right?

  WARREN ZEVON: We started work on Wanted Dead or Alive for Imperial. While we were making the record, I had a sudden attack of taste and told Kim that I wanted to finish the album myself. And he very graciously waltzed out of the project. Wanted Dead or Alive was released in 1970 to the sound of one hand clapping.

  BONES HOWE: By the end of the record Kim had walked away. I have a piece of paper where he signed away some of his rights just to get off. I don’t know what happened. The record didn’t really do very much.

  KIM FOWLEY: Here’s what happened. Warren was being an asshole. He wanted to play all the instruments himself. He wouldn’t listen to anybody. I wasn’t trying to produce him because you couldn’t really produce Warren, at least not in those days, but I was trying to help him make a record that might sell more than ten copies, all purchased by his friends. But, he didn’t listen to anyone about anything, and one day I just walked in thinking I’d had enough.

  Warren had this clean thing, and what scared him more than anything was the thought of getting the clap. So, I walked in and said, “Hey, man, I just found out I’ve got the clap.” I don’t remember if he told me to get out. He probably did, but in any case, I walked out and never went back.

  On the homefront, Warren and Tule (Marilyn Livingston) had moved in together. Before long, the young couple discovered that they were going to have a baby. Thankfully, while Warren was occupied with making his album, Tule’s mother, Mary Livingston, was close at hand to help out. Tule went into labor on August 7, 1969.

  JORDAN ZEVON: My parents were never actually married. My mom didn’t feel it was necessary to get a piece of paper from Ronald Reagan to tell them they were in love. Mom reassured me many, many times that I wasn’t an accident.

  WARREN ZEVON: When Jordan was born, it didn’t even occur to me that I should be there. At the hospital, I mean. I don’t know how much anybody was into that then, but it just didn’t occur to me. I had a recording session booked, and all I knew was that it cost money not to go to the studio. So, when Tule went into labor, we got in my blue VW bug and rushed to the hospital.

  Jordan’s mother, Tule (Marilyn Livingston).

  It was Good Samaritan, downtown, and there are about a million steps leading up to the hospital, so my idea of being noble was to carry her up the stairs into the hospital. It nearly killed me, but I figured it’d be bad luck if I let her walk up all those stairs on her own.

  Besides, it was very romantic—me carrying my pregnant wife up all those stairs. When we got to the top, I kissed her, and she went inside the hospital and I went to the studio. Her mother called after it was all over and told me I had a son.

  JORDAN ZEVON: It was a very hippie-esque birth, very hippie-esque up-bringing. What I remember about my childhood in general, and if you see these home movies my mom left me it co
nfirms my memory, I’m just frighteningly hyper and incredibly happy. Just this big, goofy, happy little kid.

  WARREN ZEVON: At the studio, when I got the news about the baby, we took a break. Someone produced a bottle of Boone’s Farm wine, and I went out and got cigars for everybody. We had a toast; then we went back to recording. I guess it was appropriate that the baby’s name came out of that session, too. My contribution to the birth experience.

  Warren and baby Jordan.

  I had this Jordan amplifier I loved because it had a great sound. I looked over at the amp, liked the name, so that was it. Jordan. Fortunately, Tule liked it, too. But, I’ve always felt guilty that I wasn’t more present for my son’s birth.

  JORDAN ZEVON: I still have the Jordan amplifier I was named for. My mom tried to tell me I was named after the river, but that was soon quelled. But, I mean, it’s very exciting because I found it in Dad’s storage space, and he let me take it…the Jordan amplifier I was named after thirty-eight years ago. I’m planning to get the thing refurbished to just a pristine state and hang on to it for as long as I’m around.

  Knowing that Warren had a new family and needed some kind of income, Bones Howe managed to place one of Warren’s songs, “She Quit Me,” on the soundtrack to 1969’s Oscar-winning movie Midnight Cowboy.

  The soundtrack album eventually earned Warren his first gold record, which he proudly presented to his father. The gold record hung on the wall of every crummy apartment Warren’s father inhabited until the day he was found dead, broke and alone, in a bachelor apartment in Gardena in 1991.