Nothing's Bad Luck

by C. M. Kushins

  With “Turbulence,” Warren returned to the somewhat playful, hard-edged tunes loaded with geopolitical humor and topical references that had so inspired The Envoy six years earlier. As tuned in to current events as ever, Warren aimed his biting and cynical eye toward the then new “glasnost” foreign policy, seeing the United States and the Soviet Union make their first attempts at civil diplomacy in decades. Most notably, the song required Warren to brush up on his language skills—he had penned a full verse in Russian and was gung ho about performing it as authentically as possible. And just like the Polynesian non sequitur of “The Hula Hula Boys,” he had been able to cobble just enough humor into the translation. Ultimately, he was able to call for his mommy in near-perfect Russian.

  “They Moved the Moon” was one of the bleakest and most introspective set of lyrics Warren had ever penned. Brief in its verses and with his slow, reverberated baritone, it wouldn’t have been out of place on a spoken-word album. On the surface, words used to describe an ended love affair find its narrator questioning whether or not he is visible to her, or anyone, at all. As Warren had been writing the song during the earliest days of his sobriety and with an apparent spiritual influence, he matched the pensive nature of the song with a sparse studio arrangement. Recorded in mid-April, Warren used Jerry Garcia’s lead parts from the June visit to the Hog Farm, then overdubbed the famed bassist of Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna, Jack Casady, into the moody mix. With Warren’s turn on ambient synths, cut with Garcia’s periodic exclamations of lead guitar riffs, “They Moved the Moon” remained one of the moodiest pieces he’d ever composed.

  Confidence had been restored to Warren’s ego in the period between Sentimental Hygiene and its follow-up, at least in the studio; much of the emotions hidden beneath the science-fiction exterior of the new album were as autobiographically charged as its predecessor. When luminaries such as Bob Dylan and Neil Young had stopped into the studio—first as social calls, then both for collaboration—Warren was assured his work was taken seriously by two fellow writers he’d always admired. In the case of Young, Warren had loved relaying stories of their Record One encounters to friends and interviewers. He jumped at the chance to get Young involved once again—and this encounter would prove even more memorable.

  Due to Young’s own touring schedule, his guitar parts would have to be recorded at his home in the Santa Cruz Mountains. To Warren, Young’s participation was worth the trip. Toward the end of May, he and Slater flew to San Francisco, then drove south the rest of the way to Young’s place in Redwood City; Warren had insisted ahead of time that the rented Cadillac be gray in color. From there, they followed Niko Bolas’s directions to the sprawling rural property that Young lovingly named Broken Arrow Ranch, seeing firsthand the veritable petting zoo that surrounded the rock legend’s home. Warren later recalled that “dogs, ducks, cows, horses, goats, a cat, [and] peacocks” all came up to the Cadillac to “stare at” the visiting city folk. Deep inside the rural facade, however, Young’s personal playroom was a state-of-the-art recording studio. AudioTechnology journalist Andy Stewart later wrote his memories of the near-mythical studio, where Young enforced a strict no-photography policy. “The interior of the studio looks like a classic California bungalow retreat cabin like the ones you see in old movies,” Stewart wrote. “There are pictures, paintings and memorabilia everywhere… There’s nothing about the place that feels remotely like a commercial studio. Redwood is, in fact, the ultimate home studio plonked in the middle of a forest surrounded by hundreds of acres of silence, a silence broken only when Neil plugs in ‘Old Black’ in the next room. Soundproof, this building most certainly isn’t.”

  Even up until that point, Young hadn’t heard any of the completed cuts from Transverse City, so Warren and Slater brought along a few new demos. Young opted to add a ferocious lead guitar overdub to “Gridlock”—although Warren sensed he “wasn’t that into it”—and harmony vocals on his personal favorite, “Splendid Isolation.”

  He wouldn’t allow Warren and Slater to leave Broken Arrow Ranch before proudly showing them his prized train set.

  Before Transverse City was released on October 1, 1989, Warren had been through two difficult breakups. Facets of his previous relationship with Merle Ginsberg had worked their way into the album’s lovelorn ballads, yet the song he’d written specifically for her, “Angel Dressed in Black,” remained unfinished. Throughout the writing and production of Transverse City, his primary muse was a young woman he’d met soon upon returning from the European leg of the Sentimental Hygiene tour. Continuing his trend of deliberately surrounding himself with “positive influences” that would best relate to his ongoing battle to remain sober, Warren was immediately drawn to Annette Aguilar the first time he had seen her at his regular A.A. meeting in April 1988.

  “We were both in twelve-step programs and I had seen him at some of the meetings in Beverly Hills,” the now Annette Aguilar-Ramos later recalled. “I think we probably had around the same amount of time living with sobriety and we were both pretty hardcore ‘meeting junkies’—meaning we both went every single day. I was not familiar with his work as an artist at all, but I found him quirky and interesting and awkwardly funny.”

  It took encouraging words from a mutual A.A. friend, “John,” to convince Aguilar-Ramos that despite the rock-and-roll facade, Warren’s boorish behavior was merely a boyish nervousness. Like a high school student passing a note in class, Warren convinced John to give him the pretty brunette’s number. She later recalled the message left on her answering machine: “Hello, this is Warren Zevon,” he said. “I’m not going to ask you out on your answering machine, so you’ll have to call me back.”

  Aguilar-Ramos was instantly flattered by the playful message, especially coming from someone who “embodied the reclusive rock star.” She remembered, “When he was onstage, he was so electric and ‘out there,’ but in his personal life, he was quiet. He had this sense of boundaries that was really good, I thought.” As a fellow recovering alcoholic, Aguilar-Ramos was uniquely accepting of Warren’s constant fear of being around alcohol or other temptations. Looking to impress her, Warren planned their first date at the Ivy; when she immediately agreed to a second outing, he invited her back to his apartment. “He was naturally romantic,” she recalled. “He served grape juice for us in wine glasses and serenaded me with his music.” When Aguilar-Ramos admitted she didn’t know his work, Warren grabbed his acoustic guitar and played for her “Desperadoes Under the Eaves” and “Hasten Down the Wind.” She told him they were beautiful, but they still weren’t familiar. He then played her “Werewolves of London.” She recalled, “I didn’t realize how funny it was until later, but he made sure to play that one for me last.”

  Only a few weeks later, Warren pulled out all the stops for their third date: he took her to a Bruce Springsteen concert, giving his old Asbury Park buddy a heads-up beforehand. Aguilar-Ramos was awestruck to find herself sitting backstage and chatting with Springsteen, still casually reclining in a bathrobe following the electrified performance. But more memorable to Aguilar-Ramos was Warren’s shy approach toward her during the drive back. “On the way home, Warren’s like, ‘Do you want to go steady?’” she remembered. “I’m like, ‘Heck, yeah!’” Admittedly, Warren shared her enthusiasm; he had found a new love who knew virtually nothing of his old self—but understood everything he now was.

  She also found his new “homebody” personal habits compatible with her own, citing the most basic creature comforts shared as a couple making their eventual relationship “the most magical time” of her life.

  Warren had Aguilar-Ramos in mind when he began writing Transverse City’s title track by the same name—the “Pollyanna” addressed throughout the song was his nickname for her, inspired by the sunny disposition he claimed she never lost. Their eventual breakup, however, was the inspiration for the album’s most heartfelt and most haunting tracks. As had been a pattern in all of Warren’s romantic relationships—
or any relationship—he was drawn to the person who most embodied his own current persona; Aguilar-Ramos had been the ideal soul mate for the Warren she knew at the time. Where his A.A.-mandated code of sobriety affected every element of his new life, Aguilar-Ramos had already been there; she even sympathized with the deepening OCD habits that others found so strange. “I loved massaging his hands because he had that ‘wash-his-hands-one-hundred-times-a-day syndrome,” she recalled. “His hands would bleed and crack, so I would massage them with good moisturizer at night.”

  Despite any normal relationship woes that the couple faced, or the personal quirks that came with being in Warren’s innermost circle, Aguilar-Ramos was forgiving and understanding, largely driven by the mystique of his creative process. “I actually was fascinated enough to ask him about it directly one time,” she recalled. “He told me that he ‘dreamed the notes,’ maybe five notes, or seven, or a whole sequence of notes. And I said to him, ‘Well, do you hear the notes?’ and he said, ‘No, I see the notes, and then I put them together and rearrange them in front of me. Then, I lay down the tracks, and then the last thing I do is hear them.’ To me, that was his mathematical, analytical, scientific mind. He was always writing down notes, and I knew he was a classically trained musician, and that’s when I could really see it. He was, truly, a refined composer.”

  Along with the solid foundation that A.A. had instilled over the course of his three years of sobriety, Warren’s relationship with Aguilar-Ramos had given him a confidence that carried over into his once-again assertive behavior in the studio. In the past, Warren had eventually considered marriage within each of his relationships; his quest for the quiet, normal life never truly wavered, although the definition of “normal” seemed to be in a constant state of negotiation. Three years of proactive sobriety, on top of mounting stresses in the studio regarding Transverse City’s marketing potential and his place at Virgin, had made even the dubious squalor of Cat Piss Manor seem suitable enough. At that time and at that place, it was a rare instance when marriage would only upset the delicate status quo that was holding him together.

  The subject finally came up in July. She later recalled, “We broke up because I started getting itchy in my later twenties to find a relationship that was consistent. It probably broke his heart when we first broke up.”

  More than she knew. For Warren, Aguilar-Ramos had represented a balance of understanding and acceptance that he knew would be hard to replicate. She had stood by him and had seen him through the roughest moments of early sober living. Her departure had turned the stability of his earth—so dependent on consistency and the comfort of habit—completely upside down.

  Within weeks of his breakup with Aguilar-Ramos, Warren had completed writing “They Moved the Moon,” “Nobody’s in Love This Year,” and “Searching for a Heart,” ultimately deciding to hold the final song for future use. He did, however, take full advantage of the studio setup to quickly add a lush arrangement of “Nobody’s in Love This Year” as Transverse City’s closing track.

  Here again, Duncan Aldrich’s contacts within the jazz world proved useful. With Bob Glaub and Richie Hayward returning alongside Waddy Wachtel on lead guitar, Mike Campbell on mandolin, and a visiting J. D. Souther for harmony vocals, jazz horn player Mark Isham came down at Aldrich’s behest to add a soulful flugelhorn to the ballad. It proved to be a major contact for Warren, as Isham also worked composing scores for film and television.

  Following the recording session, Isham approached Warren about contributing some music to a new film he had been working on, one that required a jazzy, throwback torch number. Playing to the retro, film noir tone of the movie, Isham had selected a 1941 tune from the Great American songbook, “You Don’t Know What Love Is,” made popular by, among others, Billie Holiday, Chet Baker, and Tony Bennett. It wasn’t exactly Warren’s normal fare—he admitted later to not knowing much of the genre. “I’m not a big jazz fan,” he claimed. “I missed jazz, kind of. And by the time I came to it in life, it was too intimidating to enjoy thoroughly.” However, Isham had convinced Warren to step out of his comfort zone and record his own unique spin on the famous standard. Warren recalled his curiosity about the song, initially asking Isham, “Who wrote it?” “I don’t know,” Isham had said, but, “Bird did it—Trane did it.” Even though he was a novice to the world of jazz, those artists, along with Miles Davis and Chick Corea, were among the few jazz artists that Warren spoke of with genuine admiration.

  As Isham was a fellow Virgin Records artist, it was effortless for Warren to add both his cover of “You Don’t Know What Love Is” and soon, the completed version of “Searching for a Heart” to the soundtrack of Alan Rudolph’s romantic noir drama Love at Large. Upon its release in March of the following year, the movie tanked at the box office—but Warren saw the potential in dividing his time between songwriting and composing incidental music for other media.

  Warren walked away from the production of Transverse City having completed the ultimate crash course in independent production and new recording technologies. He may not have offered much in the way of updates when asked about his long-percolating incomplete classical symphony, but Warren was already planning his own home studio, one that would provide complete autonomy and perhaps the opportunity for more personal projects. During their time together, Annette Aguilar-Ramos had noted Warren’s interest in utilizing the digital technology at his disposal to potentially, and finally, complete his classical symphonic works. “When he finally got his Mac [computer], he saw possibilities to record the works he hadn’t been able to afford before,” she recalled. “It was like, those multiple levels of his audio tracks were the multiple levels of his thinking and his creativity. That was really it for him—to be able to work on what he wanted to work on.”

  As suspected by all involved, Transverse City immediately polarized both fans and critics upon its release in early October. “With his eye on the fate of the earth, from malls and gridlock to entropy and deorbiting heavenly bodies, Zevon succumbs to the temptations of art-rock,” wrote Robert Christgau in The Village Voice. “This beats country-rock, at least as he defines it, and given his formal training it was decent of him to wait until his material demanded sci-fi key-bs—arpeggios and ostinatos and swirling soundtracks… ‘Splendid Isolation,’ about solipsism as a life choice, ‘Turbulence,’ about perestroika and Afghanistan, and ‘Run Straight Down,’ about the fate of the earth on the 11 o’clock news, are exactly as grim as they ought to be.” The Philadelphia Inquirer also singled out two of Christgau’s favorites, stating, “New songs, such as ‘Turbulence’ and ‘Splendid Isolation,’ displayed Zevon’s knack for driving pop that is both witty and melodic.”

  The long leash that Virgin had given Warren, Aldrich, and Slater hadn’t been in the name of trust or gracious autonomy; all three had sensed the label’s growing concerns over Warren’s bankability. Tensions had grown throughout the production, with the stop-and-start piecemeal assembly of most of the songs proving to be both a blessing and a curse. On the positive side, Warren and Aldrich had been able to mix and master certain completed track elements as they went along, which meant the album was set for presentation almost immediately following the final sessions in mid-June. However, Virgin was more anxious than excited in getting a reasonable return on their investment; they opted to send Warren out on tour right after the holiday season.

  In what would later be perceived as a final grasp at earning back the fortune sunk in staking their first American client, the label agreed to not only an extensive tour of the United States, but also an extended tour throughout the Australian continent—a first for Warren, and admittedly, a lifelong dream. Due to the rapid turnaround of Transverse City’s release and its promotional Millennium Paranoia Tour, many of his best critical write-ups weighed the content of the experimental rock album with the lavish stage performance meant to match it in cyberpunk tone and futuristic style. Following his February performance at the Beacon Theater, Stephen
Holden of The New York Times observed, “‘Transverse City,’ the title song of Warren Zevon’s newest album, is a futuristic nightmare in which the grimmer trends of the present are the only realities in a world that has deteriorated into a living hell… The song is only one in a gallery of grim scenarios in which Mr. Zevon expresses a generalized disgust and despair in his characteristically punchy style. What is missing from most of the new songs is the sardonic sense of humor that has given his best work an antic zing.”

  After a few warm-up shows on the East Coast, the Millennium Paranoia Tour officially kicked off in February 1990. Warren’s practice of scouting younger, though seasoned, musicians from small indie bands had paid off well in the past, making that the best strategy for the hardened, dark rock of Transverse City’s live performances. With Duncan Aldrich and Andrew Slater’s help, a solid touring band was ready for the February launch: bassist Jennifer Condos had just come off tour with Fleetwood Mac, while drummer Ian Wallace was not only a founding member of King Crimson, but had long collaborated with all Warren’s old pals, including Karla Bonoff, Jackson Browne, Don Henley, Bob Dylan, and was a prominent member in David Lindley’s own band, El Rayo-X. Of guitarist Frank Simms, Warren told his audience, “Perhaps every lead guitarist, or every heavy-metal guitarist, is a frustrated nuclear physicist—but our lead guitarist isn’t frustrated. He’s our expert in wave mechanics, card tricks, and everything in between.”

  The live performances of Transverse City’s dark, electronica influences left critics as polarized as the album itself. “Last night, the relatively obscure quartet Zevon formed for his tour caught a groove and carved out a powerful identity of its own,” wrote Scott Brodeur of The Philadelphia Inquirer, who added that the lineup “slipped into wild improvisation frenzies and back into a cohesive unit without showing a seam.” He added, “Led by Zevon’s computer-driven synthesizer, the combo delivered a sonic version of ‘Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner,’ and noted that other highlights had included, “a tough version of ‘Sentimental Hygiene’ and a raucous cover of ‘A Certain Girl,’ which brought the appreciative crowd to its feet.”