All through the night, we danced and sang
Made love in the morning while the church bells rang
Leave the fire behind you and start
I’ll be playing it by ear
Left here with an empty-handed heart
There was one stop on the Excitable Boy tour that helped to set the course for the next year of Warren’s life, the last year of his marriage. The Grateful Dead were playing a massive outdoor concert in Santa Barbara, and they wanted Warren to open. They had been doing “Werewolves of London” in their show, and Jerry Garcia loved Warren’s music.
CRYSTAL ZEVON: We had finished a gig in Dallas the night before, arrived at LAX at dawn, and taken limos straight to Santa Barbara. Warren hadn’t had any sleep and he was popping pills and drinking from a hip flask to keep himself going. Warren refused to go onstage until he’d met Jerry Garcia. He dragged Ariel, Rita, and me into the trailer. A Hell’s Angel tried to stop Warren, but he made such a ruckus, Jerry waved us in. Bob Marley was in there, and the pot smoke was thick enough to choke on. Anyway, Warren barges in demanding to know how they’re going to protect his daughter from the crazies and the psychedelic punch. They were all totally stoned, and they just watched Warren performing like a circus act. Then Jerry very quietly assured him there was no acid in the punch and that the security was there for us all. He managed to calm Warren down, and we got him onstage.
JORGE CALDERON: People in the audience are stoned on acid and Warren’s ordering them to get to their feet. They won’t do it, and they hate him for wanting them to. He hates them back, and he tells them that. One guy especially won’t stop heckling, telling Warren to get off and bring the Dead on, and he and Warren get into a shouting match. Years later, I’m introduced to an accountant named Roy Matlin by Jackson Browne’s manager, and he confesses that he was the heckler.
Warren got his first bad reviews in the Santa Barbara papers the next day. Even so, Warren liked Santa Barbara. His business managers had been encouraging him to buy a home, so the Zevons decided to move to Santa Barbara.
CRYSTAL ZEVON: We ended up buying the third house we looked at on Featherhill Road in Montecito. Once again, I believed this would be the solution to our problems, to Warren’s drinking.
DAVID LANDAU: Crystal asked me to take Warren to lunch. He was drinking a lot; he was on a binge. She was hoping I might have some influence on him. We went to some Mexican restaurant. He had three martinis, and I watched him transform through the lunch. At a certain point, I didn’t know why I was talking to this person because clearly he was unreachable. That was very disturbing. After I left the tour, I swore to myself, after the experience with Warren, “I’m not doing this again.” I never intended to work with him again. But, I did.
Warren’s success was at its peak. He played another night at the Roxy and received his first gold record for Excitable Boy. Elektra/Asylum president Joe Smith presented it to him in front of another crowd of L.A. luminaries. The record company threw a lavish party in a suite at the Chateau Marmont in Warren’s honor.
CRYSTAL ZEVON: The night Warren got his gold record at the Roxy, we came home to our house, where the windows were still covered with black blankets. Ariel woke up and we brought her into bed with us. That night is the best memory I have of Warren as a father.
He picked up a cardboard tube from a paper towel roll and started tooting to the baby. She was giggling hysterically, tooting back at him, until we were all rolling around, laughing, with tears rolling down our cheeks. Then Warren said, “Crystal, there’s only one thing in life I’m sure of—it doesn’t get any better than this.” I knew, even then, that he was right.
He wanted to break and run. Buy a surfboard shop and live in quiet bliss. We might have done it, but he was under contract. We moved into our comfortable home in the chic suburbs of Santa Barbara. We hired a Danish au pair and someone to clean the house. Warren turned the guesthouse into a four-track studio so he could work at home, and I had time to write and pursue a few ventures of my own.
Warren’s gun collection grew to frightening proportions, and he kept them all loaded. There were holes in the bathroom door and bedroom wall where he’d punched them in drunken rages. He brought a flask of vodka to bed with him nightly and drank from it to ease sleeplessness. There were days when Warren couldn’t even find the way to his clothes closet, so I dressed him.
Warren and Babar with his new .44 Magnum.
In an effort to get him to face the reality of what was going on, I sent him to New York to see a Springsteen show at the Palladium and to talk to Jon Landau, who was considering producing his next album. The next day, I got calls from Jon and the Rolling Stone journalist we’d become close friends with, Paul Nelson.
Warren had been so drunk backstage, tripping over the elaborate lighting equipment, that Bruce had had to take the time he normally spent getting himself prepared for his show to calm Warren down. Finally, someone got Warren to his seat next to Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner. Later I heard that Warren was so obnoxious that Wenner swore he’d never print another word about him in Rolling Stone.
1979
…moved into our spacious house in Montecito…initial reason for Santa Barbara—Ross MacDonald lives here. It’s quiet, peaceful, safe, beautiful. The air is fine. It makes me nervous. The idea that I can’t afford the house makes me nervous. I had the guest house professionally soundproofed and built a four-track writing studio. The studio makes me nervous.
CRYSTAL ZEVON: He didn’t drink for a day or two after he got home, but during our housewarming Warren had a few beers, and after everyone left, he went out to his studio. I woke up at about two A.M. to the sound of three gunshots. The reports ricocheted through my head for a few minutes while I tried to collect my thoughts. My first fear was that he’d killed himself. But there had been three shots. Finally, I found myself sneaking across the lawn to the guesthouse.
I could see Warren through the glass doors. He was standing with his back to me. His .44 Magnum was hanging like an appendage from his hand. Shit, I thought. What if he shoots me? What would happen to Ariel? What if he missed me and the bullet went through the window to the baby’s room? I crept more quietly. As I mounted the porch, he turned. The look on his face was like that of a four-year-old who just saw his puppy run over. I opened the door and reached for the gun. He let me take it.
Then, I saw the album cover of Excitable Boy, an airbrushed close-up of his face, propped up on the couch. There were three bullet holes in the center of his face. A wan smile crossed his face like a shadow and he whispered, “It’s funny. I shot myself. It’s funny.” I looked at him and said, “No, Warren. This time it’s not funny.”
The next morning I drove him to Pinecrest Rehabilitation Center for alcohol and drug treatment. Friends came from everywhere, Jackson, Jorge, Roy Marinell, Paul Nelson, Jimmy Wachtel, my parents, and we had an intervention where we all told him exactly what we’d seen and experienced as a result of his drinking. He was humbled and, for the first time, I think, he understood the depth of love and friendship that finally drove us to be so brutally honest with him and with ourselves.
JIMMY WACHTEL: I remember Warren’s startled face when they escorted him into this room where his wife, his in-laws, and every friend that he had, other than Waddy, was there. Everybody told him what an ass he’d been to them, and how embarrassing he’d been to them on so many occasions, hoping that he would realize that he had a problem.
It worked, but I think it alienated him from us for quite a while. But eventually he stopped drinking. To be honest, he was the same asshole, drunk or sober, so there wasn’t that much difference except he didn’t repeat himself as much. But, you still couldn’t understand a word he was saying.
CLIFFORD BRELSFORD: I remember Warren’s entrance into the room with us all sitting there and the shock on his face. He looked at everyone and said, “Oh, God. I suppose you’re all gathered to watch the execution?” Then, we went around the table, and every
body talked about experiences they’d had when they’d seen him drunk. Probably everything everyone said was modified. The realities, at least in our case, were more severe than what we talked about. I don’t think anybody really spilled out the whole story.
Excerpt from 1981 Rolling Stone article by Paul Nelson:
Finally, we had our trial run. Crystal’s parents led off, and you could feel their rancor slash like a razor blade. Sweet Jesus, I thought, get me out of here. This hospital’s crazy. After about an hour, everyone was finished. Drained though we were, there was a collective sigh of relief. Then one of the doctors turned to Crystal and asked: “Where’s your list?” Those three words exploded like shots in the night, ricocheting around the room and bloodying us all before they practically knocked Crystal off her feet. An hour later, I felt that I’d led a very sheltered life; that I’d just been pulled through every nightmare sequence a spiritual terrorist like Ingmar Bergman could dream up; that The Lost Weekend was nothing more than a pleasant little fairy tale for children; that, were it not for his wife, Warren Zevon would have been dead ten times over; that—if there were still saints in this world—I’d just been listening to one.
From couples therapy group during treatment at Pinecrest.
After a few minutes of shock, tears, and stunned silence, another doctor led Zevon in. It started all over again. It was even worse this time. One by one, we blundered through our speeches, each of us dreading the moment when Crystal’s turn would come. Warren looked dazed and pale like a small animal who’d been struck on the head. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking…
[Warren:] “I felt resentment and mostly terror at first. After that, utter despair. Then I realized how much all of these people must genuinely care for me to put themselves through such an ordeal. And if I meant that much to people whom I respected, I felt I no longer had the right to pronounce and act out a death sentence on myself.”
When it was all over, one of the doctors asked us to go up to Warren and put our arms around him. We rose hesitantly. During the entire proceedings, Zevon had barely moved. His face was still a blank. God knows, he had no other secrets left—the Intervention had taken care of that. As we approached him, I didn’t know what to expect. Maybe he’d never talk to any of us again. Or fall to the floor. Or hit someone.
Then, as if in some kind of dream, we were all one body, embracing Warren. Suddenly, the tension broke. Everyone was crying—happily and un-ashamedly crying. The secrets were gone. We were a roomful of defenseless three-year-olds, members of a primal tribe that had ritually cleansed not Zevon but ourselves. No one could ever take that away from us.”
CRYSTAL ZEVON: After a month of treatment, we were ready for a new beginning. We took trips to Hawaii so he could write. We went to counseling and couples’ retreats. Finally, when things seemed good, we rented a second home in L.A. so that he could begin recording his new album, Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School.
Warren and Paul Nelson.
After several relapses, we tried separate vacations. I went to Ireland, and Warren checked into the Chateau Marmont. On his thirty-third birthday, I had taken Ariel to Arizona to stay with my parents and was at an airport hotel spending the night before my flight to Dublin. I had a pair of silk pajamas and a Montblanc pen and a birthday cake wrapped and waiting for him. We had a romantic bon voyage/birthday evening all planned.
Warren showed up very late and very drunk. He told me he had a limo waiting and couldn’t stay. Then he told me his room was across the hall from Bianca Jagger, and he implied that she was waiting for him. I left for Ireland the next morning, having made a firm promise to myself that this time, I wasn’t going back to him.
JORGE CALDERON: Warren called me from the Chateau Marmont to come over to finish this song we’d been writing called “Downtown L.A.” He said he had some new lines, so I knock on the door, and he opens it like a quarter of the way and real quickly tells me the two lines he has for “Downtown L.A.,” then he shuts the door. The lines were about late-night dinners at an all-night restaurant downtown called the Pantry: “It rained hard walking down Figueroa Street.” But, he could have told me that on the phone. Then, across the hall a door opens and I can see Bianca peering out.
GEORGE GRUEL: He was at the Chateau Marmont, and I got a call from the cops to come get his gun. Warren was drunk and shooting out his window of the Chateau Marmont. He was shooting at a billboard of Richard Pryor on Sunset.
DAVID LANDAU: There was the Chateau Marmont incident when he checked himself in because he heard that Robert DeNiro and Robert Duvall were staying there. He went on some drunken three-day binge. He would make these halfhearted attempts to stop drinking, and then he’d just go off.
CRYSTAL ZEVON: I was making friends in Ireland, not because I was Warren Zevon’s wife, but because I was Crystal, an American writer, and they accepted me. I was writing like crazy, and although I was terribly sad, for the first time I really realized that I would be okay on my own.
I had reservations to go to Belfast with a journalist from the Irish Times when Warren called me. He begged me not to go to Northern Ireland (there were a lot of bombings at the time). He told me Ken Millar (Ross MacDonald) had come over to our house and helped him get rid of the last of the liquor. He promised he would be sober in Santa Barbara waiting for me if I would just agree to come home. Once again, I went.
Warren had little notes for Crystal all over the house when she got home. This is one.
Warren picked me and Ariel up at the airport. He was driving the car himself, carrying an armload of roses. He was sober, he was sincere, and on the advice of Ross MacDonald, he had already planned an Easter trip to Hawaii. Again, things were good for quite a while. I was writing, and he cheered me on. He read what I wrote and edited with sensitive and honest appraisal. In Hawaii, we hid Easter eggs for Ariel, read detective novels, walked on the beach holding hands at sunset. We played Scrabble for fun. Warren was truly sober, and we were happy.
From a poem written at the Chateau Marmont titled “Poem to My Wife in the Middle of the Night.”
When we got home, we rented a second house, one that Karla Bonoff was moving out of on Mulholland Drive. Warren was going to begin recording Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School, and it was too far to commute from Santa Barbara. Once the recording started, I stayed in Montecito with Ariel during the week. I would go to L.A. on the weekends, usually with Ariel and Christina Olesen, our Danish au pair. He rarely came to Santa Barbara.
Ariel and Warren in Hawaii. After Warren got sick he called Crystal one day in tears—he’d run across this photo and he said, “We had a good life, didn’t we, old girl?”
One weekend, midway through the album, Warren wanted me to leave Ariel and Christina in Santa Barbara and come down alone so we could shop for stereos and curtains for the Montecito house. This was his idea, his way of telling me he wanted curtains; he wanted what we had together. We had spent the day shopping for fabric for curtains, then we looked at stereos, and we ended up having a wonderful dinner at Robaire’s. We went home and took a bath together in this red Jacuzzi tub that was in that house. Then we watched Johnny Carson, and we made love.
Months earlier, he’d started writing a song called “Riot in Women’s Prison” and that night he told me he wanted me to help him finish it. In bed, we were coming up with names for the women and lines of lyrics and laughing hysterically.
In the morning, I got up early and went to a fabric store and came back with swatches for curtains. I’d left him a note with ideas for the song. When I walked in, he’d drunk a bottle of cooking sherry that Karla had left behind. He was on the phone, getting his Darvon prescription refilled. He looked at the fabric swatches I was carrying, and he threw his coffee cup at me and told me I was evil. He said I was trying to destroy a great artist, to turn Dylan Thomas into Robert Young, and he told me to get out and never come back.
The last words he said to me when I walked out the door were, “I’ll never be your fa
ther,” and I left. The marriage was over.
The family: Warren, Crystal, and Ariel.
FOUR
BAD LUCK STREAK IN DANCING SCHOOL
Bad luck streak in dancing school
Down on my knees in pain
I’ve been breaking all the rules
Swear to God I’ll change
Within days, George Gruel had moved in with Warren, which began a protector/ protectee relationship that would last through the next few years.
GEORGE GRUEL: I went through an intense detox with Warren in the Mulholland house. The drinking got bad quickly. He knew he had to quit, but he wasn’t going back to rehab. Some doctor told me how to do it. He said all I had to do was just keep him hydrated, but he warned me it was going to be nuts. And it was. It was screaming and pink elephants and yelling at me.
I was probably still enabling, but he quit drinking for a few weeks. He started again when Bill Lee, the Boston Red Sox pitcher, was going to come over. When Bill Lee was interviewed, he’d quote Zevon lyrics and talk about putting dope on his pancakes as a pregame ritual. But Warren wanted to meet him, so we called him, and he ended up spending two or three days there at the house. For Warren, it was the old “I’ll just have one, George. You watch me.” It was three days of debauchery.
CRYSTAL ZEVON: On our wedding anniversary, he sent a driver to deliver a tape of the song “Empty-Handed Heart.” He also sent a telegram that read, “Old Girl, ain’t we had some times,” the lyric to a song that never got recorded.
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