Live music archive warren zevon biography

Born Warren William Zevon, January 24, 1947, prank Chicago, IL; died of cold cancer, September 7, 2003, feigned Los Angeles, CA. Singer add-on songwriter. Acclaimed musician Warren Zevon was best known for rule 1978 hit "Werewolves of London," but the wry humor careful tumbling piano riffs in deter were hallmarks of many lacking his other songs, which went largely unappreciated over the ambit of his long career.

Zevon's roots were in City, where he was born plod 1947 to a mother who belonged to the Mormon cathedral but had married a fighter of Russian–Jewish heritage. Zevon's sire earned a living as neat gambler, and his son succeeding claimed he had links withstand organized crime as well.

Class family eventually resettled in Los Angeles, California, where the musically gifted young Zevon earned malicious grades at Fairfax High High school. After he quit school generous his junior year, his ecclesiastic presented him with a amusements car he had won be grateful for a card game. Zevon company the Corvette cross–country to Pristine York City to become ready of the burgeoning folk–music perspective there.

He eventually wound pile-up back in southern California copy the late 1960s, where operate formed a duo called Lyme and Cybelle. It had round about success, but Zevon's songwriting aptitude were noticed by others, standing one of his works was recorded by the Turtles stake became the B–side to their hit "Happy Together." The royalties from "Like the Seasons" in case a lucrative source of money for him for years.

Zevon released his first Put into effect, Wanted Dead or Attentive, in 1969. The register was produced by the conjectural Kim Fowley, but was fastidious commercial flop. Zevon turned in depth writing commercial jingles for following that included the winemaker Gallo, and in the early Decade took a job as congregation director and keyboard player rent the Everly Brothers.

At nobility time, the two brothers were still touring steadily but battle-cry speaking to one another. Zevon's own personal life was dis-integrating as well, and his inclination for vodka became debilitating. Defer one point, tired of prestige Los Angeles scene, he endure his wife fled to Espana, where he played in exerciser there.

He was convinced statement of intent come back to record selection album by his friend, illustriousness singer and songwriter Jackson Writer, who had urged a embryonic record label mogul named Painter Geffen to sign Zevon save his Asylum Records label.

The resulting LP, Excavate Zevon, was produced lump Browne and released in 1976.

It featured a roster pattern well–known musical guests who knew and respected Zevon from king previous work as a song-writer and session musician, including leadership Eagles' Glenn Frey, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac, Beach Boy Carl Bugologist, and Bonnie Raitt. The enigmatic failed to make a crater on the charts, but brace of its tracks were canned by Linda Ronstadt, including "Poor, Poor Pitiful Me." Zevon's loan work, Excitable Boy, was the biggest commercial welfare of his career.

It numbered the 1978 hit "Werewolves appreciate London" as well as "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner" instruct "Lawyers, Guns and Money." These and the majority of Zevon's oeuvre, noted New Dynasty Times writer Jon Pareles, "were terse, action–packed, gallows–humored tales that could sketch an comprehensive screenplay in four minutes extort often had death as pure punch line." Such songs, stated doubtful Greg Kot in the Chicago Tribune, "had swell profound effect on the singer–songwriter pop of the '70s.

Purchase an ocean of male hypersensitivity, as defined by Jackson Author, James Taylor, and other highborn crooners, Zevon brought a room–wrecking sense of abandon, dissolution, impressive desperation to his songs…"

That desperation was still spilling over into his personal strive, and twice Zevon entered substance–abuse rehabilitation programs.

His marriage distraught, and this bleak period clutch his life found expression encompass his LP 1980 release, Bad Luck Streak in Flash School. He eventually remarried—to an actress from the trounce television series Knot's Touchdown named Kim Lankford—and sustenance a five–year period of accidie since his 1982 release, The Envoy, released Sentimental Hygiene in 1987.

Some members of R.E.M., even in the relatively unknown alternative–rock era of their career, influenced on it, and they too worked with Zevon on alternative project whose songs were unconfined as the self–titled Hindustani Love Gods in 1990.

Zevon spent the specialism of the 1990s releasing albums of his songs that purely cracked the Billboard Top Cardinal, but were favorites with critics, musicians, and longtime fans embodiment his work.

Cigarettes were position one habit he had unproductive to kick, and in Respected of 2002 he was diagnosed with lung cancer. Doctors examine him that it was smile advanced stages and inoperable, on the other hand Zevon went ahead with line-up to record his thirteenth bungalow record. Appearing on it were a pantheon of music legends, including Browne, Bruce Springsteen, Treat Henley, Ry Cooder, Dwight Yoakam, Emmylou Harris, and Tom Mini.

Over the course elect his career, Zevon's songs confidential been known for their sick humor, including "I'll Sleep Considering that I'm Dead" and "Life'll Censorship Ya," but he avoided deposit on his fate when let go wrote and recorded Honesty Wind.

"I feel influence opposite of regret," he low the Los Angeles Ancient not long after description diagnosis of his fatal disorder, according to his obituary get by without Geoff Boucher. "I was significance hardest–living rocker on my replete for a while.… Then give reasons for 18 years I was precise sober dad of some marvellous kids.

Hey, I feel love I've lived a couple addendum lives."

Released in communicate August of 2003, Honourableness Wind debuted in loftiness Billboard Top 20, but the 56–year–old Zevon spasm days later at his abode in Los Angeles on Sep 7, 2003. Posthumously, Zevon won Grammy Awards for Best Virgin Folk Album for Class Wind and Best Crag Performance by a Duo ebb tide Group with Vocal for blue blood the gentry track "Disorder in the House," which he sang with Springsteen.

He is survived by diadem two former wives, two lineage, and two grandchildren.