Warren Zevon

The man who brought us "Lawyers, Guns and Money" talks about everything but.

By David Bowman

Mar 18, 2000 | Warren Zevon's new record, "Life'll Kill Ya," is prime Zevon. Toxic. Sardonic. Melodic. One song's refrain is, "My shit's fucked up." In another, Zevon unsuccessfully saws a woman in half. He covers that old Steve Winwood hit "Back in the High Life Again" with the resigned detachment of someone sitting on death row in Texas wearing a "Bush for President" button.

Zevon is an acquired taste, like sloe gin ... or capital punishment. He is best known, perhaps, for his musical stints for the David Letterman show. You may even remember "Werewolves of London," his novelty hit in the 1970s. But Zevon is a highbrow. When he was a young man, he was befriended by Igor Stravinsky. Zevon himself can write a symphony in his sleep. His best rock songs are literate elegies about lawyers and love and detoxing in Los Angeles.

I had lunch with Zevon recently on the other coast. In New York. At first Zevon seems as terse as an L.A. private eye.

"Where are you living?" I ask.

"Los Angeles." Zevon spits out the name.

"Where?"

"Hollywood."

"The same place?" I ask. (I'm unintentionally speaking in shorthand. Thirty years ago he lived in Hollywood. Is Zevon living in the same place?)

"The same place for a long, long time," he answers.

"Where?" I ask again.

"Where in Hollywood?"

"Yeah."

He frowns. "I'll never be more specific than that. It's just a squalid apartment in Hollywood."

"Like Tom Waits at the Tropicana?" I say.

"No," he says, with an edge to his voice. "I don't think Tom Waits lives in the Tropicana anymore."

Oh course. Waits hasn't lived there since the 1970s. The same decade that introduced Zevon records to the world. I've followed Zevon's personal mythology for more than 20 years. I would have imagined that we'd lunch in a joint with proximity to lawyers, guns and money (to appropriate one of his song titles). But we're not. His record company set us up in a tea shop in Chelsea.

Yes, tea. I could have imagined Zevon speaking tenderly of the perfect grip of the Smith & Wesson model 41 match pistol, but instead I'm sitting here and he's having a conversation with our waitress about goddamn tea.

When she asks me what I want, I say, "I'll just have coffee."

Long silence.

"We don't serve coffee," the waitress says. She says this pleasantly, but she says it like I must be an idiot.

I order hot chocolate. "No whipped cream or anything," I insist.

I'm having hot chocolate with Warren Zevon? At least let us talk about handguns. But when I bring up the subject, he's evasive. I ask if he owns a gun.

"I wouldn't answer that if I did or didn't," he says. "If I had enemies I might want them to think I was heavily armed and fortified. As opposed to readily available and cheerfully, good-naturedly available as we know that I am."

I change the subject. "The new record is great. Are you hearing that from people?"

"Not too many have really heard it," he says. "I kinda made the record for six people." He says he recorded it for the most part at home. "I thought this might be my last album. I gave a tape to David Letterman and he plugged it on the air. At some point, I played it for Jackson [Browne]. 'I don't think I'm gong to do anything with it, but I think you should hear it.' We sat in my car and I played it for him. He said, 'Are you going to do anything with these?' I said, 'I dunno. Maybe not.'"

Brown knew a guy starting a label and Zevon popped a tape in the mail. As ambivalent as Zevon was, he had a new album.

"Your last few records sounded too much like 'Warren Zevon' records," I say. "The new one sounds like you're trying."

"I'm always trying exactly the same thing," he says. "I don't have any agenda. No commercial ones."

While the waitress sets up the tea and hot chocolate, I ask Zevon for personal details. He has a "significant other." He has two grown children -- a son who's a film producer and an actress daughter. Zevon then asks the waitress for "phony sugar." I look at the menu for food. Everything is fishy. Does fish go with tea? I don't want fish. I ask for something "bread-ish." She suggests scones.

Zevon doesn't want anything to eat.

"Is your health OK?" I ask.

"I hope so," he answers slowly. "I think so."

"I'm not asking because you're not eating," I tell him. "There are three different songs about health on the new record. ["Life'll Kill Ya," "My Shit's Fucked Up" and "Don't Let Us Get Sick."] It made me think, 'I hope he's OK.'"

"It made me think that, too," Zevon says, sipping tea. "But I try not to think about it too much. I write songs about things that I'm simultaneously trying to not think about."

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