In August 1980, Warren Zevon, onstage at the Roxy on Sunset Boulevard, sat down at the piano and introduced his song, "Hasten Down the Wind," which had been covered by Linda Ronstadt on a platinum-selling 1976 album.
"This is the song that intervened between me and starvation," he told the crowd.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Saturday May 05, 2007 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 37 words Type of Material: Correction
Warren Zevon: A photo caption with an article about Warren Zevon in Friday's Calendar section identified Andrew Slater as the president of Capitol Records. Slater left the label in January when it was merged with Virgin Records.
This night found Zevon fairly fresh out of a rehab stint and grateful in a larger sense: "As someone who abused the privilege for a long time, I'd like to say, it's good to be alive."
Zevon, who had strained a nerve in rehearsal, was on painkillers and steroids, and the rebirth he cited that night would soon give way to half a decade of heavy boozing and drug abuse that finally yielded in 1986 to a rededication to sobriety. That resolve would last 17 years -- until, in a small tragedy engulfed by the larger tragedy of his slow decline from lung cancer, he temporarily succumbed to drugging and boozing again.
"It was very painful," recalled former wife Crystal Zevon of that spell leading to his death on Sept. 7, 2003. "Because we lost that time with him."
One thing that can definitively be said of Crystal Zevon, whose new memoir "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon" is that she's forgiving. Now living near her (and Warren's) daughter, Ariel, in central Vermont, two decades after the breakup that helped send her and Ariel spiraling through years of addictive behavior, she's touring the country to promote the book, which came out this week. It's a compulsively readable oral history composed of brief narrative blocks, a wealth of personal anecdotes from her husband's friends, lovers (including his first wife, Marilyn "Tule" Livingston), and collaborators, and most importantly, Zevon's journals.
Going through his microscopic daily notations, she noted in a recent interview, "There were many times where I said, 'I can't do this, I don't want to read another word, let alone put us all out for public consumption.' Then I'd run across some great line or the moment when a song trigger came to him, and I'd say, 'The story has got to be told.'
"As I say in the acknowledgements, I fell in and out of love a lot of times."
A life on tape
