THREE
THE FRENCH INHALER
How’re you going to make your way in the world
When you weren’t cut out for working
When your fingers are slender and frail
How’re you going to get around
In this sleazy bedroom town
If you don’t put yourself up for sale
Where will you go with your scarves and your miracles
Who’s gonna know who you are
Drugs and wine and flattering light
You must try it again till you get it right
Maybe you’ll end up with someone different every night
All these people with no home to go home to
They’d all like to spend the night with you
Maybe I would too
JACKSON BROWNE, singer/songwriter, Ariel Zevon’s godfather: I met Warren in Laurel Canyon at the house of Barry Friedman, who later became known as Frazier Mohawk. The place had a pool and an enormous front room, and he started inviting players over all the time. There were a bunch of houses right up there on Ridpath where people lived, and people just sort of wandered in and out of each other’s houses and living rooms. I was living down the street with Billy and Judy James.
Barry Friedman had a great sound system, and guys would come by and play their work. David Crosby would come by and play. People did this. They worked in studios, and then they didn’t just take it home. They took it all over the place and played it in various living rooms all over town.
You listened on people’s home systems to hear what you had. To see what it sounded like. It was this world of making comparisons and also a social thing. Warren was invited there the same way I was and a number of other people that later set out on this ship of fools.
Warren’s name was Sandy…Sandy Zevon (pronounced Zay-von). Later, when I re-met him, he told me right away, “I’m going by the name Warren. And, by the way, that’s Zee-von.”
ROY MARINELL, co-writer of many Zevon hits, including “Werewolves of London”: Back then, there was a joy in the experience of the rock and roll world that we were all pursuing that doesn’t exist anymore. If someone were to walk into the studio at four A.M., we were just…“Okay!” Now, it’s work. I love my work. But, it’s different. It’s big business. Even the musicians look at it like big business.
BONES HOWE: It is big business now, and everyone has their own studio at home, and no one lets anybody hear anything until it’s a finished CD. There was a lot of good collaboration in those days and a lot of good emotional and psychological support.
When you look back on it, it’s like you didn’t have to decide all alone that it was okay to feel confident that what you were doing was right or good because you had all these friends around telling you it was good.
David Geffen was one of those rare music executives willing to go out on a limb for the artists he believed in. Geffen’s record label, Asylum Records, was founded because he wasn’t able to get Jackson Browne a record deal anywhere else.
BONES HOWE: David Geffen at one point told me he signed David Blue. I said that David Blue would never make a record, and Geffen said, “I don’t care if he never makes a record, I just want to say he’s on my label.” That is why the label is called Asylum—he wanted the musicians he thought were really creative people to be on the label and feel as though they were protected. He would give them money, which he had plenty of by that time, and he wanted to develop a label that was about writers and artists and not about commercial success necessarily.
JACKSON BROWNE: The one cool thing was that you could have this kind of a discussion with David. He’d say, “Why the hell should I make a record of any of your friends?” Then, you could say, “David, we have to do this. This is going to be great. You’ll see.”
Warren’s songs were very good—very memorable. He played “Tule’s Blues.” I don’t think he had yet written any other songs that I now think of as his best early work. He had made Wanted Dead or Alive, but I don’t remember thinking it was as good as he really was.
RICHARD EDLUND: Right after the first album [Wanted Dead or Alive] was done, Warren started working on songs for the second album. The problem was that he needed a producer who would literally wrench the material out of his hands before it got too rarefied.
What he would do is write a song. Then he’d get bored with that song, and then there’d be an allusion to that song in another song—the songs became so esoteric that nobody could understand them unless you saw the whole progression. Jackson Browne was able to get him to stop messing with it…to say, “Let’s record that one before it gets beyond control.”
On the domestic front…
KIM FOWLEY: Tule would cook, and Warren liked that—that somebody was there pouring things into glasses and cooking. Jordan was a miniature line-backer in a highchair. He made noise, and Warren used to smile and think it was cool when Jordan would yell and bellow, wondering why nobody was paying attention to him.
We went to a restaurant once, Warren, Jordan, Tule, and me, and Jordan threw food at everybody, and Warren was delighted that his son could take over an adult restaurant by flinging food at people and screaming and bellowing.
JORDAN ZEVON: My earliest memories are when we lived on Beachwood. Most of what I recall was good, but I also have memories of Mom and Dad not getting along at all. I don’t think he was too far into the whole drinking thing, yet. I think my parents were just two people that cared a lot about each other but butted heads a lot.
KIM FOWLEY: One night Warren and Tule were at the Troubadour, which was the Liverpool Cavern of Hollywood at the time. Everybody went there, and stood around, and put their foot up on the fender of a car and bragged about their dreams. Warren had been drinking, and he yelled and screamed at Tule, then he went away.
The crowd dispersed, and I said, “Well, do you have cab fare?” “No. I better not go home even if I did.” So, I said, “You’re welcome on my sofa, and in the morning I’ll feed you and put you in a cab and send you home.” I was living in one of my shabby places at the corner of Fairfax and Sunset, and she’s crying, “Why is he like that? Why does he yell? I love him so much. Why does he behave like that?” I said, “Listen to the lyrics of the songs that he hasn’t written yet, and that’s where he’ll be tonight.”
I went to sleep, and she went to sleep, and in the morning, I fed her, called a cab, and off she went. When she got home, Warren was waiting with, “Where have you been?” “Kim Fowley’s sofa.” Uh oh. “I know you two were intimate.” I don’t think he said it that way…Tule says, “No, we weren’t.”
Warren knew I was one of the great womanizers of L.A., and he said, “He couldn’t have left you alone. That guy hustles everything.” “No.” “Why did you go with him?” “Because you yelled and screamed and abandoned me.”
I saw Warren shortly afterward and he says, “You bastard, you had sex with my girlfriend.” You always talked with Warren in a literary language, so I said, “It would have been bad form for me to leave her standing there after you left her standing there. To quote Alan Watts, I have ‘objective sensitivity.’ You were subjective.” He said, “I don’t buy that.” That was in 1969. I didn’t see him again until 1988.
RICHARD EDLUND: We weren’t always too considerate of our wives, our families, in those days. Warren was into anything and everything Norman Mailer wrote, so he’d actually volunteer to go to the Laundromat so he could read undisturbed. But, he’d also create arguments so he could storm out of the house, and of course he’d end up at the Troubadour, McCabe’s, or the Whiskey…He’d wake up in the morning in the Tropicana or some seedy motel with God knows who.
DAVID MARKS: Warren was constantly moving in and out of the place he lived with Tule and Jordan. He’d move into the Tropicana, then when he got tired of it, he’d go back for a home-cooked meal. One night he ended up at the Hollywood Hawaiian motel somewhere around Gower and Yucca. He was there for a while, I mean, maybe two or three weeks,
and he couldn’t check out because he didn’t have the money to pay the bill. So, one night, I got my mother’s station wagon and pulled it into the alley. He threw all his stuff out the bathroom window and we escaped without paying.
CRYSTAL ZEVON: Years later, when Warren got sober, he actually went back there to pay the bill. Of course, by then he’d written and recorded “Desperadoes Under the Eaves,” so they settled for a few copies of his Warren Zevon album.
I was sitting in the Hollywood Hawaiian Hotel
I was listening to the air conditioner hum
It went ummm—mmmm—ummm…
BONES HOWE: He was into heavy-duty rock at that point, so I convinced Imperial to give him another shot, and they gave us a pretty good budget. David Marks was playing guitar. The whole second side was psychedelic instrumental. It was very adventurous and experimental, but it never got released.
RICHARD EDLUND: Warren was closely associated with my invention of the Pignose amplifier. For the first model, I built one inside an English Leather box. Warren was recording “An Emblem for the Devil” and he had these Marshall amps turned up to 12, and he was incurring the wrath of all the other sessions because his sound went through the walls. I said, “Try this.” It had a peculiar sound that Warren loved, and he was the first one to use a Pignose on an album. Eventually, I handmade seventy of these amps and gave them to Mick Jagger, Keith Richards…everybody. Warren got the “Jukin’ Dedication Model,” which was the first one.
DAVID MARKS: When Jordan was about two, I had gotten them a place in this apartment building on Franklin Avenue that I bought with Beach Boy royalties. My parents managed it. As it happens, that’s also the period when Phil Everly was hanging out with my mom. He liked her because she pretended to be psychic, and Phil was into all that stuff. Plus Phil and my father liked old cars and they refurbished them together. So, my mom introduced Phil to Warren.
WARREN ZEVON: The Everly Brothers were looking for a piano player, and when I met Phil, he said I could audition for them. Don and Phil were both at the audition and I played “Hasten Down the Wind.” Phil said, “Can you play like Floyd Cramer?” I said, “You bet I can.” Without asking me to play another note, they hired me.
BONES HOWE: A phone call came to me from David Geffen, who had been an agent I knew when I was producing the Association, and we had grown to be friends. By then he had started Asylum Records, and he said, “You have a contract with a guy named Warren Zevon.” I said, “Yeah,” and he said, “I think he is a very talented writer, and I want to make a deal for him to write some songs.”
From Warren’s sketchbook—on the road with the Everly Brothers.
Warren would go out on the road with the Everly Brothers, which, aside from paying well, would hone his performance chops. Simultaneously, he would be earning money for writing his own songs.
Warren’s first mission was to put together the Everly Brothers’ band.
WADDY WACHTEL, guitarist extraordinaire: When I heard the Everly Brothers were looking for a guitar player, I went, “That’s my gig. I know every song they’ve ever done.” I walk in and I’m looking for who I think would be Sandy Zevon [the name Warren was using at the time], then in walks a guy with a seersucker jacket and this hideous fedora hat on. Me, I’m looking like me. I’ve got a ponytail. I had my big beard then. I had clogs on, an undershirt, and I weighed nothing. In walks the most affected person I’ve ever seen. “You’re the band leader?” We didn’t get along immediately. It was perfect.
So, we went through the songs, and as I’m sitting there going, “I know these songs,” Sandy goes, “No. You listen, then we’ll play it with you. We’re going to do ‘Wake Up, Little Susie.’ You listen.” “No, I don’t have to listen through.” He goes, “Yeah, you listen through.” Alright, fine. Okay. Next song—“Walk Right Back”—and Warren goes, “You listen, then you’ll play it with us.” Okay, fine. He starts playing it, and he’s playing it wrong. His piano part is totally not the way it goes.
I finally said, “I’ll play it with you, but you’re playing it wrong.” He goes, “What?” with this phony fucking attitude. I go, “Sorry, man. It doesn’t go like that, it goes like this.” I played it, and Knigge, the bass player who has played with them the longest, goes, “Hey, he’s right.” So Warren…grrr…another grumble at me.
We went through the rest of the tunes, and like I said, there’s no way I can’t get this gig. So, at the end, Warren goes, “Well, you probably got the gig, but you’ll have to cut your beard off.” I go, “What the fuck are you talking about? I’m not even working for you yet.” He goes, “Well, the Everly Brothers image…” I say, “Let the Everly Brothers tell me I got to cut my beard off. Besides, where are the fucking Everly Brothers?” He says, “They’re making an album.”
So, I say, “How come, if you’re their band, you’re not making an album with them? Great band you must be.” And he’s going, oh right, wise guy, that’s all I need. We had this fuck-you relationship right away. The topper of it was…he knew a lot of classical compositions, and I don’t know any classical compositions except for one because there was one classical album in my house, and on acid one day I put it on and I fell in love with it. It was the only classical piece I ever knew.
So, as I’m walking out, Warren goes, “Alright, wise guy, what’s this?” He plays this thing, and in my mind I’m going, I can’t believe this. This guy is dead now. I just looked at him and I went, “That? That’s Beethoven’s Fourth in G, asshole. See you later.” And I walked out the door.
I didn’t tell him for about ten years. Then, I told him, “Oh, by the way, Warren, you could have picked any classical tune in the world and I wouldn’t have known any of them. But, you picked the only classical piece I’ve ever heard.”
ROY MARINELL: I met Warren through Waddy. Interestingly, a couple years before I met Warren, there was a fellow named Jack Daly who I knew from the Randy Spark and the New Christie Minstrel days. Jack Daly was managing the Everly Brothers, and he asked me if I knew a keyboard player who might be a good musical director for the Everlys. I said I didn’t, but I did know a heck of a guitar player who knew all the Everlys’ stuff—Waddy Wachtel. Jack said, no, they were looking for a keyboard player. Ironically, soon after that, Waddy was hired by Warren.
WADDY WACHTEL: Warren had to call me and tell me I got the job. He hated doing that. Oh, and of course, I didn’t have to shave my beard off. Warren and I were like oil and water all the way until we realized how good we were together.
CRYSTAL ZEVON: At the time Warren hired Waddy to play with the Everly Brothers, I was living in Victoria, British Columbia. I had two foster kids whose mother died and whose father was a drunk. I’d been their babysitter, and when none of their relatives wanted them, I just took them in. It was the ’60s, and I was into peace, love, and the communal family thing.
I’d gone out with Waddy on and off since 1967 when we met in Vermont. Waddy’s band Twice Nicely was hired to play at this club in Sugarbush, the Blue Tooth, where I worked. Bud Cowsill, the father of the family singing group the Cowsills, became the band’s manager and took them to L.A. He hired me to run the Cowsills’ fan club.
So, we all ended up in L.A. Waddy was into the free love aspect of the ’60s more than I was, so after I took in these two kids, I decided to move to Canada. I actually married a Canadian to be able to stay there. The night we were married, I was in bed with my new husband and Waddy called. He played me a song he’d just written called “Maybe I’m Right” over the phone on my wedding night. I don’t think Waddy actually told me the song was for me, but hearing it that night was all I needed to decide I had to get out of my “marriage” and return to Los Angeles. When I returned, kids in tow, Waddy was leaving for his first Everly Brothers tour.
WADDY WACHTEL: The first tour, we went to Europe. It was like Amsterdam, boom. I had just gotten to California a couple years prior, and the next thing I know I’m standing on the terrace in Amsterdam looking out at this canal
going, wow, boy, am I far away from home.
Don Wayne, the tour manager, told me on day one, “Look, man, whatever you do, don’t try to mix it up with both brothers. Don’t try to get them together.” I went, “What? Me? These are my idols, what do you mean, get them together?” He says, “They don’t get along. Don’t try to be the one to unite the Everly Brothers.”
Through Europe, Warren; Bob Knigge, the bass player; and I wound up together every night, playing music. We started getting our musical legs in the same socks. By the time we came back from Europe, every night Don and Phil were in the room. They wanted to make noise and sing—both of them.
CRYSTAL ZEVON: Waddy would call me from hotel rooms and tell me about this crazy guy named Warren Zevon. The first time I heard Warren’s song “Carmelita” was when Waddy played it for me over the phone. Waddy was playing that song for everyone he knew. The day I met Warren, I was picking Waddy up at the end of the tour. He asked me to give Warren a ride to the Tropicana.
From Waddy’s descriptions, I was prepared to meet some kind of tequila-guzzling, latter-day genius. I definitely wasn’t prepared to fall in love at first sight. I was even less prepared for the instant understanding that the feelings were mutual. It was like there was some electrical current creating lightning bolts between Warren and me. And there was Waddy, sitting in the passenger seat, rolling joints, oblivious to the storm rolling in.
DAVID CROSBY: I first fell in love with Warren’s music when I heard the line about “your big Samoan boyfriend…” That song knocked my socks off, and I started listening to everything I could find of his and realized that this guy was probably the best writer around.
I'll Sleep When I'm Dead Page 5