Nothing's Bad Luck

by C. M. Kushins

  Warren told Roger Catlin of The Hartford Courant that the songs for the album had come quickly and that, coupled with the familiar collaborators who surrounded him, the work went smoother than it had in the past. Compared to the epic struggles that had defined the postproduction of Transverse City, he claimed that that project had been “an elaborate production that was slow and painstaking to make. This one was simple and painless to record.”

  Even as the first album of Warren’s that had bypassed vinyl for a straight-to-CD release, the numbers for Mr. Bad Example were the lowest of his mainstream career, which did not go unnoticed by Giant. Although they hadn’t offered much in the way of a promotional budget, the lack of even a crack in Billboard proved a bad omen. The experimental Warren Zevon Acoustic Trio had been a considerable success, but that had also been concocted for the good of promoting both hindu love gods and the as-yet-recorded Mr. Bad Example. Discouraged by the sales figures of the latter album, yet aware it required some form of promotion, the label lapsed into the old strategy of previous labels that didn’t know what to do with the conundrum of Warren Zevon: have him tour, get him a solid younger rock band to open and back him—and decide if staking another album was worth the investment.

  Critical reviews and audience response had a funny way of not accurately determining Warren’s true fan base. With every album, his sales numbers appeared to drop, yet critics had all noted the focus and maturity that his lyricism had reacquired in the half decade since he’d become sober. Even the members of the band that would be touring with him this time out were a bunch of young guns from Canada who proclaimed to be huge fans of his music.

  It was a trend that worked in Warren’s favor ever since he needed a solid touring band for the promotion of Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School: he had scouted for the young band Boulder and things had gone so well that rock-and-roll symbiosis would occur when the full lineup took the stage; likewise, the energy of his work with R.E.M. Now, members of the band Odds were helping grab Warren some of his strongest performance write-ups since Sentimental Hygiene had worked the critics up from their apathy years before. “Mr. Bad Example may be Warren Zevon’s new nickname,” wrote Mike Boehm of The Los Angeles Times, “but he didn’t live up to it Thursday night at the Coach House… Instead, Zevon came off as Mr. Good Influence.” According to Boehm, once Warren took the stage, he led the younger rockers “down a path of healthy aggression,” adding, “Middle age apparently hasn’t mellowed Zevon… Maybe hanging out with younger rockers helps.”

  Or maybe it was that Warren had successfully proven wrong a certain revered French philosopher: “The old begin to complain of the conduct of the young when they themselves are no longer able to set a bad example,” wrote La Rochefoucauld.

  Like hell. La Rochefoucauld hadn’t known Warren Zevon.

  Much like his previous experiences with younger musicians out on the road, Warren’s apparent curmudgeonly persona only went so far; the band admitted to revering his work and were more than open to all suggestions he offered regarding songwriting and advice from his years on the road. Having learned by example from Don and Phil Everly, Warren now embodied a Zen-like indifference to the transient nature of his modern troubadour lifestyle. Odds’ lead Craig Northey remembered numerous occasions when the Mr. Bad Example tour took on a form of an extended crash course in Warren’s world. “Well aside from sending us out all over the world in order to find his Mountain Dew, Warren was really quiet unless we prodded him to join us in writing and hanging out,” Northey recalled. “[The band] is really a group of lighthearted guys and it didn’t take long for us to get him laughing and rolling his eyes.”

  Northey recalled that there were times during the tour when Warren would take the gaps between shows to offer advice and tips to the younger musicians. “There was a lot of discussion around then regarding [Warren’s] outlook on touring, and I guess, his changing audience—his audience, in general,” he recalled. “To us, all we saw were full houses and crowds of young fans yelling and screaming and everyone knew, you know, ‘Detox Mansion’ and his hits, but it seemed harder for him [to] enjoy it the same as we did.”

  The band always tried fruitlessly to get “the legendary Warren Zevon” to jam and hang out even more. “We’d sit in the back of the bus with our guitars, but if he caught us not working on our stuff—like if we were taking a break or watching a movie on that little TV—he’d come in and be really disappointed in us,” Northey remembered. He called me ‘Craigy-Weg’ and he goes, ‘Craigy-Weg, have you all seen this movie before?’ And I’d be honest and go, ‘Well, yeah, I’ve seen this already.’ And Warren would pause and look at me and go, ‘Well, then you should be writing.’”

  Warren’s influence on the boys’ writing extended not only toward their work ethic, but in influence and inspiration, as well. Northey recalled that he celebrated his own birthday while on that tour and was honored to receive a gift, a copy of Joyce Carol Oates’s latest release, The Rise of Life on Earth, from Warren himself—even if it led to one of his diciest yet most memorable tales from the tour. “After a while, Warren got very comfortable with us and hung out more and we got to discuss his own influences and his writing and reading,” Northey recalled. “And Warren was always reading. So, for my birthday, he had given me this Joyce Carol Oates book—and I remember it was a really dark psychological novel about a nurse killing her patients. Well, he gave it to me with a huge recommendation, you know, ‘Craigy, you’re going to love this, and everything,’ and he was right, I loved it. Well, one night I’m still in the bus reading it, and I have like a few pages left, and I missed the beginning of the show. I throw the book down and race out to the stage and, of course, they’re all playing—and Warren, wearing his guitar and playing and singing—shoots me the dirtiest look imaginable when I run out.”

  According to Northey, any anger that Warren felt quickly subsided after the performances once he was able to explain the cause for the tardiness. “Warren comes up to me right after the show and is still annoyed and said, ‘Where were you?’ I had no other excuse. I said, ‘Warren, I have to be honest—that book you gave me blew my mind and I couldn’t put it down. I was so into it that I lost track of time. But I finished it!’ And Warren just looks at me really quietly and really long and finally goes, ‘Well, okay then.’”

  The shows themselves seemed to bring out the best in both the band and the audiences. Northey recalled, “I have always loved ‘Mohammed’s Radio’ because it meant we had earned a second encore. [Warren] would save that one for the very last and the audience and band had to earn it… The chorus is huge and emotional so the crowd couldn’t help but sing along. It was a great way to go out.

  “I guess he always knew how to make a grand exit.”

  Throughout both his acoustic trio tour and now with the full backing of Odds, Warren had been using fluctuating tour budgets and the unpredictable arrangements for additional players as a way of honing his solo capabilities. Both critics and fans noted the enthusiasm with which he jammed with other musicians, particularly the younger ones who got his excitability back, but there was no longer any way of knowing what the next tour would bring. With that in mind, Warren not only waxed philosophical about his work and career but hinted to The Los Angeles Times that he was perfectly content to tour on his own. “I guess every year is a kind of a contrast to the [tour] before it,” he said. “I had done the rock band with no drummer—in spiritual intent it was like an acoustic trio. The Transverse City tour was band and computer. I really don’t want to see that screen flickering on a stage for a few years after that tour… I found myself touring for a couple of months, even a couple of times a year. I think in that regard it was a very good thing for me. It put me in touch with the reality of what I was doing, and who was listening to it, and what it was like to go out and play, earn a living that way.”

  Warren was aware that the low sales of Mr. Bad Example would surely equal budget cuts for both touring and his potential foll
ow-up album. The contract with Giant warranted two further releases, but with the surprisingly pitiful sales of this debut, the label was no longer as eager to stake another studio booking—at least not so soon.

  Giant had used the 1990 preliminary press announcements for Warren’s signing as an excuse to pump up their own launch. His contract was made public only months following Giant’s ill-fated attempts to get R.E.M. on board for a cross-promotional tour for hindu love gods. But once his debut was on shelves—and not doing all that hot—the attention paid to him by the company became noticeably meager.

  Again, with a three-album deal, compromises for the next one would have to be made on both sides—a fact that now applied to Warren’s touring plans, as well. Throughout his successful and, apparently, enjoyable tour with the young members of Odds, Warren’s one-sided remarks to numerous interviewers had hinted at his acceptance as both a “cult act” and as a professional musician who would, no doubt, be relegated to traveling the road indefinitely to earn a living. He had mentioned as much to Mike Boehm of The Los Angeles Times, perhaps already aware that Giant would be sending him out again almost immediately to make up for their losses.

  Warren’s acceptance was another testament to his six years of sobriety. In 1982, the failure of an ambitious passion project had been a primary factor in the yearlong binge that had nearly killed him; now, he was strong and focused enough to quickly put Giant’s backhanded strategy to his own use. He and Duncan Aldrich had worked together so closely using new tech throughout three studio albums and too many gigs for either of them to count. It was the latter task that could provide a solid album.

  Aldrich had recently acquired a digital audio tape, or DAT, machine—the latest mobile-engineered tool used for preserving live events. Sony had been refining the small, though expensive, industrial playback device since 1987, and in many ways it was a traveling musician’s wet dream. Although generating only one directional track of recorded sound, the cassette-based system was a higher “lossless” quality, making it ideal for inexpensive, studio-quality tracks. Warren hadn’t released a live album since 1980’s Stand in the Fire, the pinnacle of both his mainstream fame and reputation for incredible live sets. Although his sales on Giant had been astronomically low compared to his old Elektra/Asylum numbers, what hadn’t changed was the critical acclaim he received from every critic that witnessed his live show.

  It only made sense before Warren was once again exiled to the road that he and Aldrich hatch a plan to get Giant’s approval for a live album release: if the live performances were going to generate the most buzz about Warren’s amazing live sets and new material, then it was time to make that experience available on store shelves. The two made their case and, seeing this as the most inexpensive way to honor Warren’s contract and potentially use his mandated tour as a way of doubling potential revenue, Giant agreed.

  The massive world tour was set to begin just before the summer of 1992, with the first stop booked for the Carefree Theatre in West Palm Beach, Florida. Warren’s new manager at Front Line, Gloria Boyce, told the Sun-Sentinel’s John Lannert that Warren “customarily alternates between performing with a band and playing solo,” adding that for the current tour, he would be “accompanied by grand piano, guitars and harmonica.”

  Lannert was well versed in Warren’s live performance history, noting, “Zevon faithful will remember that his last live disc, 1977’s Stand in the Fire, was an onstage masterpiece that he recorded with a backing troupe. Zevon’s live release will be coming out barely a year after his latest album… Like the half-dozen or so albums before it, the excellent Mr. Bad Example became a disc of its word, at least from a commercial standpoint. The album never made a dent on any trade magazine chart.”

  Warren and Duncan Aldrich set off in “The Lipcutter,” as Warren had lovingly dubbed their touring van, at the end of May. Their journey was truly to be one of the longest in Warren’s career, starting with a major jaunt across the United States—beginning at the end of May with his West Palm Beach show and ending three months later with a closing performance at the Belly Up in Solana Beach, California—and then a second excursion throughout Europe and Australia for the rest of the year. Warren later recalled, “In the spring of ’92, Duncan, guitar technician Roger Bell and I embarked on a world tour with the intention of recording every performance live-to-DAT. After traveling from Helsinki to Woy Woy, I found myself with the hideous task of sorting through ninety-two show tapes.”

  Warren wasn’t exaggerating. After only a brief respite from the self-described “Homeric quest,” the team headed off to Modena, Italy, for the Fiesta Dell’Unita. From there, Warren and company hit Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Germany before an extended trek of the Australian continent throughout the month of October. By the time they made it home for Thanksgiving, they actually had nearly a hundred tapes to be sorted through at Red Zone.

  “That whole project was really commando,” Aldrich recalled. “I put together this whole rig with the DAT machine, then sat next to the house operators in each venue and every show. We had agreed to keep the same set list for the entire tour, more or less, because we knew we’d end up having to listen to each one carefully later. It the end, it was actually ninety-six total versions… But it was the man and his music, you can really hear where his voice is in the harmonies, like perfect song-realization, with no edits. It wasn’t just, ‘this chord, then this chord’—it was a way of really hearing the parts of Warren’s compositions.”

  “If I had to pick a favorite performance of a certain song,” Aldrich added, “I think that the ‘Werewolves’ version that Warren did in London was pretty special. I mean, we knew that we were going to have about a hundred versions of that song to weed through, but he was determined to make the London performance the best. And it really was.”

  Throughout his career, Warren never shied away from performing “Werewolves of London,” despite it being low on his list of favorites to pull out of the songbook; he admitted many times, however, that giving the audience what they wanted and expected was one major facet in being not only an artist, but a true entertainer. But there was also a catharsis of sorts. He later admitted to The Boston Globe’s Jim Sullivan, “I suppose on some deep and profound level, the evening would seem incomplete to me without three minutes of howling.”

  The excursion’s saving grace was its creative alternative to working within the confines of a studio setting. For most of Warren’s career, he’d had to practically beg just for the opportunity to lay down quality recordings of his work. Since his active fascination with modern digital recording advances began under Duncan Aldrich’s guidance in I987, Warren had all but mastered professional self-production. Since his earliest days as a recording artist, the single most important goal he’d had to work for each time out was the autonomy for complete creative control and, if possible, final approval on song selection, track listing, and overall album design; being a lifelong perfectionist, it went with the territory.

  Now, if Giant was going to display signs of apprehension in their backing of him—and was going to demonstrate it with a grueling world tour in lieu of a proper second studio album—he would have no trouble once again using the situation to his advantage.

  Throughout his career, Warren had gone to great lengths to avoid being labeled as any one style of performer—or being pigeonholed into any one genre of music. Shedding the skin of “stephen lyme” as the 1960s came to an end, he had played with numerous alternate stage names, going so far as to use them in social circles; Jackson Browne had initially been introduced to “Sandy Zevon,” an aspiring songwriter who avoided the color green because “it was bad luck.”

  When Warren’s first few Elektra/Asylum albums had earned him both critical recognition for his songwriting abilities and a dubious reputation for a chaotic personal life dangerously on par with the desperate, outlaw characters of the songs, he responded by leaping from behind the baby grand and sliding to the microphone on his knees,
howling and gyrating with such a frenzied lack of inhibition that critics described his live shows as like watching an exorcism. When that spectacle grew tiresome, at least to the majority of the record-buying public, he crafted The Envoy as a literary rock album with both political and intimately personal themes. That album had coincided with Warren’s very public dog-and-pony show, candidly praising the joys of sobriety, positive thinking, and the comforts of domicile living. A mature album called for a mature artist.

  He had now made it to middle age, having survived decades of the same dangerous habits and brazen behavior that had killed younger men—some of them musicians Warren idolized and later, some he had known. While he would later joke about having “lived like Jim Morrison a lot longer than he did,” in his younger years, he had touted that mischievous “werewolf about town” persona in the media as a means to enable the alcoholism his fans didn’t witness. It was only after achieving sobriety that he’d acknowledged the effects of allowing a public perception to shape his image.

  By 1990, for good or ill, he was far more stern in addressing what he was, and what he was not. When interviewers now made the error of addressing the clichés or stereotypes attributed to his work, he would make it a point to offer patient yet glib corrections—usually in a detailed fashion that included as many literary or obscure classical references as he could logically fit into one answer. Likewise, when his earlier classical aspirations would come up, Warren now waved the subject away. In its place, he began substituting the topic of the unfinished symphony with his own philosophical approach to music theory and its place in modern pop music.

  “If I was influenced by anything, it was probably when Revolver came out,” Warren told The Hartford Courant. “It was just like the classical composers who would write an opera, then follow it with a little church piece, then do a string quartet, and remain the same composer. And here was an album of songs; the first would be Indian-flavored, the next would be country, then it would be sweet pop, then move to hard rock. And through it all, it would stay intact because they were the same composers.” He soon reiterated that same idea to Goldmine, claiming Revolver was “the album, the only album” that had influenced his concept of what “pop music was supposed to do.”