

Zevon was a precocious child with high scores in IQ tests but inconsistent grades in the classroom. She did encourage my interest in art, though.” The singer told Rolling Stone magazine in 1981 that his mother was “extraordinarily withdrawn - you can barely hear her speaking voice. The singer’s mother, Beverly, was of Scottish heritage and a Mormon.

WARREN ZEVON WIFE PROFESSIONAL
His father, William, was a Russian Jewish immigrant who was a boxer in his early days in America, then settled into a career as a professional gambler and “a mobster, generally,” as his son described him. 24, 1947, in Chicago and spent much of his youth shuttling between different cities in California, among them Los Angeles and San Francisco. That same month, David Letterman devoted an entire episode of his show to his old friend, an unprecedented time commitment by the long-running program.

Zevon’s candor about his condition also extended to allowing VH1 to film the sessions for “The Wind,” for a poignant documentary that aired near the album’s release date.ĭylan himself has recently paid tribute to Zevon by singing several of his songs, including “Accidentally Like a Martyr,” in his concert sets, one at the Wiltern attended by Zevon in October. The tracks also include some wry, unsentimental songs, in Zevon’s familiar mode, and a version of the Bob Dylan classic “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” a selection that speaks to Zevon’s candor and sense of grim theater. Jim Keltner, the veteran session drummer who worked on the album, said it was an emotionally charged project for all involved, especially the work on the final song, “Keep Me in Your Heart.” “Warren had a bad day, and he couldn’t make it in, so we laid down the music without the vocals, and I’ll tell you, we were all choked up,” he said. The Artemis Records disc debuted last week in the Top 20 of the nation’s pop charts, an unprecedented showing for the singer. Zevon spent much of his time during his illness doting on family and working in a home studio on a new album, “The Wind.” His popularity among his peers was underscored by a parade of contributors to the record, including longtime friends Bruce Springsteen, Don Henley and Jackson Browne. Hey, I feel like I’ve lived a couple of lives - and now when people listen to the music, they’ll say, ‘Hey, maybe the guy wasn’t being so morbid after all.’ ” Then for 18 years I was a sober dad of some amazing kids. I was a malfunctioning rummy for a while and running away for a while. “I was the hardest-living rocker on my block for a while. “I feel the opposite of regret,” he said then. The singer, a longtime smoker, learned in August 2002 that he was suffering from inoperable lung cancer and a month later he went public with his condition in an interview with The Times. Bad Example,” an altar boy grows up to be a vagabond con man: “I’m very well acquainted with the seven deadly sins/I keep a busy schedule trying to fit them in/I’m proud to be a glutton and I don’t have time for sloth/I’m greedy and I’m angry and I don’t care who I cross.”ĭeath and dying were among Zevon’s favorite topics (the cover of his 2002 album “My Ride’s Here” showed him in a hearse, while another collection was titled “Life’ll Kill Ya”), and when confronted with his own mortality, he continued the exploration with aplomb. In a macabre songbook that includes “Excitable Boy,” “Lawyers, Guns and Money” and “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner,” Zevon presented a world of the undead and the unethical on the rampage in a mercenary world. While casual pop fans might recognize only his 1978 horror-show hit “Werewolves of London,” Zevon for years enjoyed a cult following and the acclaim of his peers for songs that were often about fractured world politics and the disloyal human heart. Zevon died Sunday afternoon at his home in Los Angeles, according to his manager Irving Azoff, who said that the singer had been “very upbeat” in the past week due to the success of his new album and the recent birth of twin grandchildren. Warren Zevon, a restless, sardonic bard who embodied the dark edge and excess of the famed singer-songwriter scene in 1970s Southern California, died after a battle with lung cancer.
