There was one other thing about the promising young manager and producer: he loved the music of Warren Zevon.
Slater had expressed his enthusiasm at one of his earliest meetings with Front Line in which their client roster was up for review. As Slater later recalled, when someone claimed that Warren was “$180,000 in debt to the IRS, he has no record deal, he’s moved to Philadelphia, and he doesn’t want to work,” and announced plans to cut Warren from the agency’s list, Slater had unceremoniously defended his favorite artist, citing Warren as “the best artist” they represented.
“He was a tremendous fan,” remembered Gevinson, whom Warren had urged to screen calls. For weeks, he had ignored Slater’s messages. Finally, Gevinson had persuaded him to at least hear what the young manager had to say. “When Andy called and had all these ideas and mentioned the members of R.E.M., I knew all about their local popularity,” Gevinson recalled. “I thought it was an amazing opportunity. I thought it would be the healthiest thing for [Warren], really.”
Although he couldn’t promise a record deal right away, Slater assured Warren that he would find an amazing band for a few solid preliminary gigs, followed by some high-quality demos that he was positive would attract a new label. Eventually, both Slater’s enthusiasm and logical strategy won over Warren’s hardened skepticism—or at least softened it a bit. In the hopes of a “home-team advantage,” Slater had called old friend Peter Buck and arranged for the members of R.E.M.—sans lead singer Michael Stipe, who was taking a hiatus from touring—to back Warren up for a few shows around their old stomping ground of Athens, Georgia. Gevinson recalled, “Andy went to school in Georgia, so he was very familiar with the music scene up there,” although Warren remained apprehensive. That changed following a few electrically charged gigs at the 40 Watt Club toward the end of February. “I think Warren felt it was like he had been set up on a blind date,” Gevinson said. “When they were out playing early gigs together, he would call and laugh and say, ‘It’s freezing,’ and ‘These guys are so young—we had to drive around to find a drum kit!’ But I knew he loved it.”
At that point, Warren and Slater had never met in person. On the night of the gig, Warren eyed Slater suspiciously, not quite sure who he was, but certain he was some form of industry executive. Slater later recalled, “At this point, I’m standing in the corner of the dressing room and Mike Mills, the bass player from R.E.M., comes to me and says, ‘Andy Slater, back in Georgia, oh my God, isn’t that great?’ Warren’s sitting about five feet from me, and he comes over, he puts both his hands on my shoulders, and he goes, ‘You’re Andy Slater!’ he had no idea who I was. So that was my first meeting with Warren.”
However, Anita Gevinson quickly recognized the growing admiration that Warren had for young Slater. “He really sensed that Andy was going to be ‘the one,’” she said, “the one person who would recognize what he had left to offer. I think it took awhile, but Andy finally convinced him.”
Even if Warren didn’t admit it, playing with the younger musicians had brought out much of his former self, the stage presence that had been so magnetic while performing alongside the boys from Boulder. But Warren also allowed that persona to spiral out of control while offstage. The trick would be to harness it, to take control of it himself. And for that, there was only one cure: non-negotiable and total sobriety.
It was right after the successful Athens gigs that Warren made his desperate call to his cousin Sandford.
It was with genuine determination that Warren flew to Minnesota—and he needed it. Unlike the then experimental intervention therapy that had so prominently distinguished Warren’s first attempt at sobriety, the St. Mary’s program offered the latest in modern trends: the group therapy session. But with Warren’s determination came the incentive of Andrew Slater’s faith in him, and his renewed faith in himself. The few new songs that he’d unveiled during the Georgia shows had really won over the young crowd, and he even had a few more ideas in the bag. Being back in rehab offered Warren plenty of inspiration for new material, and he was chomping at the bit for an opportunity to record; and sobriety meant focus.
Warren told as much to Gevinson when she arrived at the Minnesota hospital. She instantly found the facility’s atmosphere to be “dreary and institutional,” noting the beds all covered in plastic and “the smell of sickness everywhere.” Gevinson’s photo hung above Warren’s own plastic-lined mattress.
As his fiancée, she was expected to be more than a mere participant in Warren’s recovery—she was expected to be his moral anchor and pillar of strength. The idea made her shudder. “At that point, I really wasn’t equipped emotionally to accept that he could come back to Philly and we could move on with our lives,” Gevinson later admitted. “I knew he was shocked when I told him that, but I had already been through so much… I just didn’t believe that I could live in a world where this would be my main focus. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to do it, I just felt that at that point, I couldn’t do it.”
What had hit Warren hardest was that Gevinson had shared these fears during a mandatory group therapy session. She later recalled, “I had always had my own misgivings about interventions and rehab places, and I felt that the person who came out on the other side may be healthier, but there was something missing. I felt it led to the beginning of an entirely different person, and I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad one. I probably shouldn’t have told Warren that, but he got very angry when I did.”
In proposing to Gevinson, Warren had sought to complete the trifecta of stability that would define his ever-elusive quiet, normal life: a shot at career redemption through Andrew Slater’s ongoing campaign to enact his comeback; a bright future without drugs or alcohol; the strength of his family to keep him focused. Gevinson factored into all three. He hadn’t expected to lose that final piece of the puzzle. He ran out of the therapy session and back to his room. Gevinson followed and, when she sat down on his bed, he reached under his pillow to reveal that he had brought with him one of her T-shirts. She recalled, “My heart was breaking… I told him I just didn’t think it was going to work and he shouldn’t come back to Philly. But I remember thinking that if I left Warren there, he wouldn’t die on my watch.” He asked her leave. On her way out, Gevinson was asked to stop at the counselor’s office. They needed to know who should now be listed as Warren’s contact in case of an emergency.
“Call Jackson Browne,” she said.
In order to pull together as many successful gigs and the demo recordings, Slater had to use every trick in the book. Warren was not only a genuine hero of his, but Front Line viewed this as Slater’s first true client—meaning, there was no room for error. After contacting as many A&R representatives as his Rolodex held, Michael Austin at Warner Bros. agreed to invest $5,000 for four high-quality studio cuts of Warren’s new material. At the time, Warner Bros. was home to numerous Elektra/Asylum expatriates, including former Eagles Glenn Frey and Joe Walsh, making Warren a logical fit to the label’s expanding roster of established talent. “I called up Peter [Buck] and I said, ‘Warren’s up in Philadelphia, and if I send him to Atlanta, could you guys back him up and get a demo made?’” Slater later remembered. “Peter said, ‘Sure, man, send him down.’”
Like the unexpected chemistry between Warren and the young mavericks from Boulder in 1980—and the musicians who had composed his makeshift lineup on Stand in the Fire two years later—Slater’s buddies from R.E.M. brought the very best, youthful energy to Warren’s new work. At the 40 Watt Club, the three younger musicians seemed to enjoy playing “Werewolves of London” more than he did—and had really fired up his early debuts of “Boom Boom Mancini” and “Trouble Waiting to Happen” for the club’s crowd.
The group had originally formed in Athens in 1980 and had, at that point, released two studio albums on the Universal offshoot, I.R.S. Records. Those releases had garnered critical acclaim, but very little sales—something to which Warren could deeply relate. Then at
a crossroads regarding the direction of the band, lead singer Michael Stipe had taken an extended hiatus from the band, leaving drummer Bill Berry, bassist Mike Mills, and guitarist Peter Buck available for a fun side project. For the Athens dates, the loose ensemble had billed themselves as the “hindu love gods”—the first time Warren had been an official member of a band since his folk duo lyme and cybelle in the mid-1960s, as well as the last time he’d used all stylistically lowercase letters for its name. Once the chemistry between the four had been properly established, it made it that much easier to work together for Warren’s new demos.
That summer, the band entered the studio. They were joined by a fellow pianist from the Athens-based bands Oh-OK and Time Toy, Bryan Cook. The quintet laid down Warren’s four semi-polished originals, “Boom Boom Mancini,” “Detox Mansion,” “Reconsider Me,” and “Trouble Waiting to Happen”—all of which had proven audience favorites throughout the Athens club dates. Additionally, they took the studio time to record fun covers of old blues favorites, since those had made up the bulk of their 40 Watt Club performances. For the recording, they picked an obscure 1968 tune by Australian rockers the Easybeats, “Good Times.”
Due to R.E.M.’s growing popularity, I.R.S. later coupled the track with “Narrator,” a Bill Berry original, and eventually released it under the hindu love gods as “Gonna Have a Good Time Tonight.” Noticeably, the label didn’t merely mistitle the song; they’d also forgotten Warren’s name among the credits. By then, Slater was already shopping Warren’s demos around Los Angeles.
Following his discharge from St. Mary’s in Minnesota, Warren was picked up from LAX by Jackson Browne and his new girlfriend, Hollywood actor Daryl Hannah. Before leaving the terminal, Warren walked to the payphone and left a message on Anita Gevinson’s answering machine. “I just wanted you to know that Daryl said when I smile, I remind her of Ryan O’Neal,” he said. “Goodbye.”
Browne then drove Warren to the Oakwood Garden apartment that he and Slater had found for him. Gevinson knew of the complex, which apparently had a steady clientele of newly single bachelor bad boys on the emotional rebound; as Gevinson claimed, it was a place where “all the rock stars wind up” after their divorces. Warren later deemed it “Cat Piss Manor,” furnished in “early hotel room.”
But even in a somewhat meager living situation, Warren’s quiet return to Los Angeles had behind it the momentum of his circulating demos, plus a newfound popularity among the smaller performance venues. For most of the following year, Warren remained on tour, sometimes alone, sometimes with Slater-assigned road manager Ron Moss. While scaled-down solo gigs were about as far removed from the champagne and caviar of his glorious Excitable Boy days, Warren was slowly realizing that he still had a loyal following, regardless of its size and demographic. The acoustic solo recontextualizations of his older hits went over well with the real fans among the crowd, and the brief string of shows with R.E.M.—or rather, their hindu love gods incarnation—had proven that he could attract younger listeners under the right circumstances.
There was also the pragmatic bonus that smaller, intimate gigs provided great venues for testing out new material, as his preliminary shows had helped shape the final versions of his latest songs prior to their demo recordings. With that practice put in place, Warren toured endlessly throughout 1985 and 1986, refining both the songs that would make up his new album—whenever the hell that would be—and his own unique methods of solo performance. Throughout 1984, Warren had been slowly integrating new work into his set lists. Audiences were privy to the earliest debuts of the tracks that would compose his next album, and some unorthodox arrangements that would be reworked by the eventual studio dates. For the hard-edged rockers that had obviously been written with a full band in mind, Warren attacked his acoustic six- and twelve-strings à la Pete Townshend, humorously informing the audience of the musical classification by which he now described his new style—“heavy metal folk.”
In September, he played the Stone in San Francisco—solo, but with an invigorated energy that had been severely lacking in his performances the previous year. The audience took note, with the playful banter hitting as many right notes as the songs themselves. Gone was the self-loathing Warren who had offered refunds in Ireland; in his place, a smart-alecky curmudgeon who offered self-deprecating jokes laced with world-weary wisdom, all while rocking out without the need of a backup band.
“Let’s just say it’s inappropriate for me to be an excitable boy at my age,” he told The Chicago Tribune. “But after what I consider a long, disheartening creative drought, I have a lot of new material. My manager and I have decided that since I’m touring and enjoy it, it gives us a base to hold back and jump in later.”
Warren was proud of the new songs he had in the bag, should a record label finally agree to a deal. He’d been performing “Boom Boom Mancini” ever since picking up the guitar again, and “Trouble Waiting to Happen” had received a huge response from the college crowds at the 40 Watt Club—thanks in no small part to the well-known sins of his past. And while that song openly referenced Rolling Stone’s 1983 notice of his Elektra/Asylum termination, he had written it with J. D. Souther only days following the real events. At that point, Warren hadn’t yet made the determination to get clean and sober, nor contacted his cousin Sandford. It was only fitting to now write a song that directly addressed his latest stint in rehab, both as a pseudo-sequel to the events of “Trouble Waiting to Happen,” and a social commentary on rehab itself becoming the latest celebrity trend. He hinted as much during his San Francisco performance, dedicating “Carmelita” to his “friends at ‘detox mansion.’”
Only months later, the joke became a title—which in turn became a chorus, then a verse, and then a line—and finally, a tremendous fan favorite.
“There are a few places in the country where people can go ‘the morning after,’” Warren quipped when unveiling the new sketch at Rockefeller’s in Houston, Texas. “You know, even after maybe twenty or thirty years of those. Well, we got one out in California that my friend Jorge calls ‘Detox Mansion.’ And Calderón is wont to remind me, when I’m hefting a Coca-Cola, ‘You’re drinking soda, Warren, because you don’t want to go back to ‘Detox Mansion.’” He then launched into the song in its earliest incarnation, incorporating a fingerpicked, rolling bass line and vocal drop at the chorus, both elements paying clear homage to Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues.”
No one could know the later, final version of “Detox Mansion” would go on to become one of Warren’s best-known songs; its earliest listeners simply found the autobiographical country tune amusing. When he took the song into the studio later with the backing of an all-star lineup of musicians, however, the country and western flair would be traded for a pure hard-rock sound—and a concert staple.
Warren performed yet another new song he’d been tinkering with, “The Factory.” In its earliest form, it was a hard anthem of a blue-collar union man with the same acoustic ferociousness of “Trouble Waiting to Happen,” but added a nostalgic 1960s twang to the near-rockabilly beat. “This song’s about seven weeks old,” he told the audience, “but this riff’s about twenty-five years old. Duane won’t miss it!” The audience laughed at Warren’s reference to famed surf-rock pioneer Duane Eddy, but the song owed more to Warren’s own frequent cover of Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues.”
At his Rockefeller’s gig in Houston, Warren had also played the new song of which he was most proud—his message to Crystal, the one that had to be completed and perfected before he dared even approach her following the events in Philadelphia. The words had to be just right and had to express the emotions he’d felt overlooking Rittenhouse Square, words he could not find in his daze of pills and alcohol. Those words were ready now. But when Warren introduced “Reconsider Me” to his audience, he simply told them he’d written it with Don Henley.
When tuning up his twelve-string before “Boom Boom Mancini” during the same set, Warr
en had quickly tossed out the signature melody of “Backs Turned Looking Down the Path.” It was one of his first love songs for Crystal, written just prior to their 1975 idyllic jaunt to Spain—and he hadn’t played it live in almost a decade. The audience didn’t seem to notice.
By coincidence, Warren and Crystal had both moved back to Los Angeles at the same time. As he settled in at Oakwood Garden Apartments, she and Ariel had taken a condo in Burbank. She recalled that very soon after, he had called to say that “he was sober and that Philadelphia had all been a huge mistake.” Apprehensive as ever, Crystal granted Warren a visit with her and Ariel for that Easter weekend. He came over the night before a planned daytrip to Knott’s Berry Farm, guitar case in hand, visually eager to play Crystal her new love song. But while the lovelorn Warren serenaded his former wife with the now finished “Reconsider Me,” all she could notice was his cavalier behavior toward their eight-year-old daughter. “There was a moment when we both thought it might work out between us again,” Crystal later wrote, recalling that Ariel had been waiting to proudly show her father a glowing report card from school and drawing she had made, only to meet his indifference. “Ariel was crushed,” Crystal added, “and Warren was totally oblivious. That overshadowed what used to allow me to forgive anything. I offered him some platitudes but not what he was looking for.” Crystal noted that when Warren arrived for their Knott’s Berry Farm excursion the following day, he was two hours late—and had been drinking.
One of the biggest benefits to come from Warren’s association with Andrew Slater was the young maverick’s PR savvy. Despite still not having a record deal by the last few months of 1985, Warren’s ongoing live appearances—and even his quest for a new label to call home—made frequent press. “[Warren’s] streak and recording contract with Elektra-Asylum ended with the uneven efforts of The Envoy,” wrote Justin Mitchell in a Scripps Howard News Service report, later run in The Chicago Tribune. “Zevon filled the gaps with tours, but no new product. However, last year Zevon mentioned that a recording contract was possible and noted that he had been working with members of R.E.M.… The record label negotiations continue and Zevon said he would like to have a new album out by the end of the year.”
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