Facing Mortality With Mischief Rather Than Tears

The dying cancer patient with a dark, dry wit met one of his doctors for breakfast last week and handed over his two most recent CDs, one titled "Life'll Kill Ya" and the other "My Ride's Here." In his familiar baritone, Warren Zevon explained the gifts to the physician: "These are my last two albums. Maybe now you'll understand that eerie acceptance of death you keep asking me about."

Zevon chuckled at the account and then paused to catch his breath. Last month, doctors told the 55-year-old musician that he has inoperable cancer in both lungs. The prognosis is bleak, with his time measured in weeks or perhaps months. Zevon is the rocker who defined the volatile edge of the famed singer-songwriter scene of 1970s Los Angeles with his wild, vodka-fueled living and songs of morbid humor, and now he finds himself facing the very unfunny fact of his own mortality.

And, of course, he finds irresistible humor in that.

"Really, the thing I want is to last through the winter so I don't miss the new James Bond movie," he said Wednesday by phone from his home in West Hollywood. "And I want to wear sweaters, a scarf, the overcoat, the whole thing, like a Winona Ryder movie. And I can be this miserable, classic Walter Matthau invalid. Not that I haven't been that before.... "

That sort of riff will come as no surprise to longtime fans of the iconoclastic cult hero, who pals around with sardonic authors Hunter S. Thompson and Carl Hiaasen and tapped David Letterman and Irish poet Paul Muldoon for contributions on his last album.

Zevon's songbook is packed with bizarre character sketches--prom-date killers, rehab-center divas, jubilant crack dealers, mercenaries, murdered clowns and dangerous dogs--that are for neither the politically correct nor the meek.

Casual pop fans might not be able to name a Zevon record beyond his quirky 1978 horror-show hit "Werewolves of London," or perhaps "Excitable Boy" and "Lawyers, Guns and Money," from the same year. But he's been a fascinating character on the L.A. scene and, like Randy Newman, a master of subversive song craft.

His longtime friend Jackson Browne said Thursday that Zevon's music is defined by its bravery and candor.

"He is a standard-bearer; he's very adventurous and there's a confidence and power that translates to effectiveness," said Browne, producer of two Zevon albums in the '70s. "There's a literacy, not just of words but also an emotional literacy. The coin of that realm is honesty and vulnerability. But then, you know, there's a berserk quality to the whole thing when it's done."