His most recent albums
Life'll Kill Ya and
My Ride's Here, are
tours de force of what he does best, and now (see below) a sweetly ironic revival of a great career.
I got to see him in March of 2000, at what he called "the fabulous Club Bene"--a bar/nightclub here in New Jersey (and let me tell you, the backstage is a dump--particle board walls, the dressing room is mustard yellow, with bare bulbs, ratty shag carpet and what looks like Frasier's dad's recliner in the corner,) and at one point, he said, "Where do you think Sting is right now?" in reference to the spectacular digs surrounding him, and under his breath he then said, "Probably not spending the last 25 years drunk." The thing is he's a really nice guy nowadays and just a hard-working musician. It pisses me off that he's playing dumps while someone like Britney Spears fills arenas with her bubblegum pop.
It's that sense of humor, though, that makes his songs brilliant and touching--and he's a good singer and keyboard player and an excellent guitarist and harmonica player.
You should buy all of his albums.
September 13th, 2002: A
press release reports that Warren Zevon has been diagnosed with
incurable lung cancer. He is spending time with his
children and will be going into the
studio to write and record one last time. He is accepting his fate in the way that you'd expect the writer of
My Shit's Fucked Up to--with a sense of
irony,
humor, and
dignity. To quote: "It would be a drag if I don't make it till the next
James Bond movie comes out."
Warren died in his sleep (in a VH-1 special, he commented that every time he wakes up from a nap, he looked around to see where he was. This time, he was no longer with us) at his apartment in West Hollywood on September 7th, 2003. He lived to see the birth of his twin grandsons, Maximus Patrick and Augustus Warren Zevon-Powell.