Although we never lived together again, we remained married for two or three more years. We shared checking accounts and credit cards, and when we did divorce I gave up any publishing rights and royalties and I accepted Warren’s first offer of five hundred dollars a month in child support. Until the day Warren died, he called me his wife. It wasn’t until a boyfriend of mine insisted that I asked Warren to file for divorce. His business managers took care of it.
KIM LANKFORD, actress: Warren and I first met through Fred Walecki. We had dinner at Warren’s house. Warren had on a cashmere sweater with ribbing on it. He looked very dapper, as he often would.
GEORGE GRUEL: Kim Lankford was a friend of Fred Walecki’s, and she was going out with Doug Haywood. She was this twenty-one-year-old coming into Fred’s store, Westwood Music, wearing hot shorts and big eyes. She had some movie credits, plus she was a guitar player. Either me or Fred introduced Warren to Kim. It was the typical Hollywood situation.
DOUG HAYWOOD: I thought I had a girlfriend named Kim Lankford. I probably thought that because we were carnally involved from time to time. Then I discovered she was living with Warren.
KIM LANKFORD: Warren was impressed with how healthy I was. We were simpatico in many areas, the music, our lifestyles, the way we thought and felt about life. My lifestyle was much more on the tame side, for sure, but we related well. I was starting my series, Knots Landing, and Warren was midway through his album Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School.
CLIFFORD BRELSFORD: There were a number of occasions where I probably should have decked Warren, but Ariel’s third birthday party was the closest I came. I was sitting in a lawn chair, and Warren and some other men were on their knees reading the assembly instructions for a swing set.
Ariel hadn’t seen her daddy since he’d moved out several months before, which had to be confusing for her since he had worked at home and always been around since she was born. The minute he arrived, she left the kids she was playing with and never took her eyes off her daddy. He was down on his knees, and she ran over with her arms opened wide, wanting a hug. He saw her coming and put out his hand to stop her.
It knocked her down, but he didn’t even seem to notice. He ignored her. I will never forget that little girl standing up and brushing herself off, holding back her tears. I was out of my chair, livid. Quite a big lesson for a very little girl.
Warren and Ariel on a rare visit to Santa Barbara.
CRYSTAL ZEVON: At my request, Warren told Ariel he wouldn’t be coming home anymore, then he went inside and started stuffing stuff into paper bags. The party was still going on, but he’d done his duty and he was clearing out as quickly as possible.
Warren said, “Kim and I would like to pick Ariel up tomorrow and have our own birthday celebration with her.” I agreed, even though I knew he was drinking. They were supposed to pick her up for lunch the next day, and they were about three hours late.
I still have this hauntingly beautiful black-and-white photo of Ariel, all dressed up for her daddy, sitting on this big boulder in front of our house, waiting. She stayed there for a full two hours, refusing to come inside.
ARIEL ZEVON: I had this fairy-tale idea that my dad was this knight in shining armor and he was going to come swooping in—like any kid builds up a fantasy of something if it’s not there.
JORDAN ZEVON: The only thing I remember about Kim is that I had a crush on her. But, I never saw her as motherly. I just thought she was hot.
David Landau and Warren on the road.
KIM LANKFORD: I had started a movie with Chuck and Aaron Norris, and Warren was interested in the karate, so Aaron Norris came to the house and gave us private lessons. For a while, it was a good outlet for him; Warren got centered. In his eyes, I was a healthy person, but like many things with Warren, the healthy things didn’t stick.
JIMMY WACHTEL: We rented a lot of guns for Warren’s album covers. We rented an Uzi for Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School. Because it was a machine gun, we had to rent a guy with it who was licensed. So, a little old guy came with the gun and stood around. Had we known we could have fired it off, we would have. But, we didn’t know.
We got in a lot of trouble for Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School because we had the shot on the back of the album of the girl’s pointe shoes and the Uzi machine gun and bullet casing. This women’s group got up in arms that it was saying that we were going to mow down these ballerinas with a gun. And I had to go to Asylum Records, to Joe Smith’s office, to defend the album cover to some lesbian fanatic women’s group.
A crowning moment for Warren was a dinner invitation, thanks to writer Jay Cocks, to the Manhattan home of Martin Scorsese.
KIM LANKFORD: We went over to Martin Scorsese’s house. Scorsese was a fan of Warren’s. The same way that Clint Eastwood came over for supper. These guys recognized Warren’s talent, his uniqueness, his brilliance. I wanted Warren to cultivate that, but he fought with faults so deep in himself that he couldn’t. To maintain those relationships was impossible for him because he felt that eventually they would see through him. Of course, it all required the right combination of drugs to be with people at all.
DAVID LANDAU: At the end of the Bad Luck tour, it was decided we were going to play seven nights at the Roxy and do a live album. Richard Belzer opened for us there. He was great. He had Don Grolnick playing piano for him. No matter what joke Richard told, Don had a musical association for it that fit perfectly. It was seamless. The shows were good, and the record was good, although it didn’t do anything.
JIMMY WACHTEL: The album was Stand in the Fire, which was an amazing album. At that show, I went to the bathroom at the Roxy and Tom Waits and John Belushi were wrestling on the floor of the bathroom. Over what, I don’t know.
DAVID LANDAU: Money was something that was never discussed between Warren and me. Ever. It was between whoever was handling his affairs and the musicians. They were offering some ridiculously small amount of money for Stand in the Fire. I was unhappy, and I remember batting things back and forth and being persistent. Eventually, I got something that felt right. But I was also aware that they were doing a live record to fulfill a contractual obligation. It was exciting to do, but I also had a sense that Warren’s success was on a downswing.
From Rolling Stone—Paul Nelson:
Zevon and Lankford have moved into a new house, this one not cursed with red bathtubs. I’m interviewing Clint Eastwood for a story, and he and Sondra Locke stop by to visit. Eastwood remembers Warren from three years ago (“He did everything but drink vodka from a silver boot then”) and is delighted at the change. Later, Zevon previews Stand in the Fire for me. He paces back and forth while I listen. “What do you think?” he asks.
“Along with Neil Young’s Live Rust,” I answer, “it’s the best live rock & roll LP I’ve ever heard.”
GEORGE GRUEL: After Stand in the Fire there was the 1981 solo tour where Elektra just sent me and Warren. I had a two-track tape of three songs under my arm and we did every European version of American Bandstand. That’s where Warren gathered the information for The Envoy. We were in Belgium, and he’s upstairs in the casino thinking he’s James Bond with his zillion-dollar suits on. It was a movie, basically. Back in L.A., Warren’s out on the LAPD target range shooting guns, still in his own movie.
GEORGE GRUEL: We were at the Zorada Drive house—The House of Drama where Warren lived with Kim after Mulholland. It was a constant soap opera there. So, it’s five A.M., and Kim comes to my room in a panic. “Come quick. Warren’s going to kill Michael O’Hare.” He was an actor who knew Kim and had the hots for her, and Warren found out about it.
I’m going, “Why are you waking me up for this?” Kim’s frantic: “He’s going to get killed.” Then Warren says, “I gotta go. Just take me.”
Michael was a good-sized lad—dashing leading man type. We got there and O’Hare says, “Kim’s a nice girl, but I’m not doing anything with her.” And Warren says, “I spit on your mother’s grave.” He’
d seen that in some B movie somewhere, and O’Hare went nuts. “You don’t talk about my mother that way.” And, he grabbed him.
I tried to get him off, but his adrenaline was pumped. He got a hatchet, and he got Warren over in the koi pond. The house had been Maureen O’Hara’s at one time. Anyway, I got the hatchet away from him. Then he tried drowning Warren in the koi pond. I had told Kim to call Aaron Norris and tell him where we were going. So, about the time I’m wrestling with O’Hare, trying to get Warren out of the koi pond, I got them apart, and then O’Hare stands up and smashes Warren in the mouth with his fist. He knocked a tooth out. Finally, Aaron Norris showed up and the party was over. He did some moves, and O’Hare realized he was formidable, and it stopped.
KIM LANKFORD: Thomas McGuane came to stay with us shortly after the episode where Warren got beat up. Warren really respected and loved Tom. We loved Missouri Breaks and Panama and all his books. Tom was in town and staying at the Chateau Marmont—the worst of worst places. We had him come and stay at our house. There was a lot of coke around then; however, it was a really good time. I don’t mean in the sense that everybody was getting high, but it was a sane time in an insane time. Tom was going through whatever he was going through—women, whatever—and we just had him come stay with us.
THOMAS MCGUANE, writer: Characteristic of the time, I don’t remember exactly how we met. Warren was pretty enthusiastic about writers, and I think writing was what interested him, in a way, more than anything else he did.
As I recall, he called me or wrote me and said he wanted to meet. At that point, I was working in the movie business, so I arranged to go see him someplace. My clearest memories are of staying at his house during one of my movie spells. I was working on one of many projects that never went anywhere. We were trying to write some songs, and we did write one song. J. D. Souther came over and we stayed up all night long trying to write, and nothing materialized. Carole King’s daughter, Louise Goffin, she tried to ignite our enthusiasm for music by coming over and strumming away and about half an hour before daylight, J. D. Souther said, “For Christ’s sake, any three words will do.” And, so we said, “That’s it. That’s our song.” So, we wrote this song, “Any Three Words Will Do,” which, of course, in the light of day didn’t look so great. Somewhere, I’ve actually got the recording of us trying to sing “Any Three Words Will Do.”
Warren was recording The Envoy at the time. I’m a day person, he was a night person, so we were passing ships in that household. I’d be up doing things in the day and he’d be sleeping. At night, he’d be all spruced up and ready to go to the studio and meet Waddy and work on this album. I was very fond of Warren, but we didn’t have really the world’s greatest comfort level because he was so intense.
I kept wanting to say to him, “Take your hat off and let your brain cool down. You just need to cool it a little bit.” I remember telling him it was like skiing. Sometimes you fight the hill, and sometimes you glide, and he needed to do a little gliding. But that was his style, everything dialed up to ten.
GEORGE GRUEL: In those days, Warren spent so much money at Bijan he got his name carved into the wall in their store. Then, he’d go sliding across the stage in brand-new Armani pants and shred ’em. The amount of money he spent at the Palm for a chunk of cow, a red onion, and a tomato…One thing about him, I may have been employed by him, and it was my job to drive him to the Palm, but he never left me sitting in the car. He brought me inside, and I ate my meal at the Palm just like he did.
THOMAS MCGUANE: To me, Warren is a very enigmatic character. He had this life in rock and roll, and he idealized some of his grimmer aspects. At the same time, part of his mind was given over to high culture. High art. Serious literature. Classical music. It was an anomalous combination of traits, which was one of the things that was so interesting about him. Because I’m sort of a dumb Irishman, I was always sitting around saying, “Well, which one are we, Warren? Which will we be today?” That was always a mystery to me.
Warren and Kim Lankford.
GEORGE GRUEL: The story behind the song “Charlie’s Medicine” was that Charlie was a kid in his mid-twenties who worked at some pharmacy on Hollywood Boulevard where Warren used to get his legitimate prescriptions. Charlie was a fan and star struck, so it ended up that we’d go over to Charlie’s house on Fairfax. He lived with his mom in this apartment, and he would sell Warren bags of these pink downers.
KIM LANKFORD: I walked in the Zorada house one time and they were shooting heroin. I about had a friggin’ heart attack. I had never seen anything like that in my life. Warren said that was the first time, and he was never going to do it again. He was doing it with this guy by the name of Charlie. His girlfriend was also there, and there was another girl there, too. It was absolutely horrid.
It’s not that I’m so naïve, but I don’t expect people to be tying off in my bathroom and shooting up junk. It affected me on so many levels—Warren’s well-being, respect for our home…to have that junk in our house, and I’m doing a television show. What if I should be arrested for this? The lack of courtesy or any kind of moral dignity. You want to do that—go someplace else.
GEORGE GRUEL: I went over to Charlie’s one time, and his mother answers the door and tells me Charlie was killed the night before. He was blown away out in the street in front of their apartment by another drug dealer. Warren went to Charlie’s funeral. He went by himself. He said, “I’m going alone. I just want to do this.” That’s where the line in the song “I came to finish paying my bill” came from.
KIM LANKFORD: Warren stopped using again while we were on Zorada. Then he started again after we moved to Walnut Drive. I knew he’d been drinking, but I hadn’t actually seen it. He was big with the Darvon and Valium and Percodan, but I only physically saw him drinking again at the house I bought on Walnut. I was cleaning, and I went to the upstairs bathroom, which was Warren’s. I opened the cabinet under the sink and there were all these vodka bottles.
GEORGE GRUEL: Warren had been taking a lot of pills…from Charlie’s Medicine…and he wanted to get off them. Jackson told him to go see this amazing acupuncturist, Howard Lee. Howard did his magic. He’s a real shaman. The same day, Warren and Kim were going to Hawaii, and he had this massive seizure at the airport. Howard had cleaned him out and it was instant withdrawal.
Kim was freaking out, the usual drama, so I picked her up and put her in a baggage rack and said, “Shut up and sit down.” She was no help. I called the paramedics, and he ended up in the hospital for a day, and he got mad at Jackson for it. He thought he was trying to kill him when, of course, he was trying to help him.
When Warren moved into Kim’s house on Walnut Drive in Laurel Canyon, he reasoned that a change of scenery would be the panacea for his discontent. He vowed to include his children in his life, to make amends for his errant behavior, and to get back to work on the symphony he had begun in the early ’70s and continued to work on throughout his life.
JORDAN ZEVON: The next memory I have of spending much time with my dad was when he and Kim lived up in Laurel Canyon. That was a time when there was a little more of an effort made to have contact with me. It was fun to hang out, but you just knew that a kid didn’t really fit into the lifestyle, or into the place itself.
Ariel and Jordan at Kim Lankford and Warren’s.
ARIEL ZEVON: My earliest memories of my father are when I was staying with him and Kim and sleeping under the stairwell. I had my Strawberry Shortcake sleeping bag, and I used to like sleeping under the stairwell. It was fun because it was like this secret little place. They slept in the loft up above me.
JORDAN ZEVON: I remember Dad having a discussion with me about morals and this and that—a big father-son chat. While we were having that conversation, I looked down at my feet and there was a mirror that had powder residue on it and, later, he said it must have been Kim’s.
ARIEL ZEVON: Jordan and I didn’t grow up together. I always liked him and I liked the idea of having
a brother. As we got older, we were both always relieved when we did hang out that we could talk about things and know we weren’t alone. We would talk about Dad and we’d be saying, “Oh my God, he does that to you, too?”
JORDAN ZEVON: I’d get showered with gifts. He had his big, fancy Cadillac with the computer in it that he proceeded to shoot up with a Magnum. It was fun to be there, but he was still young enough and she [Kim] was still young enough that it was hard for them to deal with this presence in their house.
KIM LANKFORD: The Walnut house had three levels, and the happiest times were when we had the kids. Warren loved it when the kids were over. One time both the kids were there, and Warren came up and said, “It feels like a home. This is what it feels like to be normal.” I’d say, “Yeah. We can do it. We really can.” However, he had too many demons from his mother and his childhood. Warren manipulated adults through intimidation, but I didn’t ever see him intentionally intimidate his children.
He used to do the whole Russian roulette thing. I got so mad I finally went, “You want to kill yourself? Go ahead and do it, but do it when I’m not home. And, don’t do it in the house because I don’t think I should have to come home and clean up that mess.” He’d look at me like that wasn’t what I was supposed to say.
GEORGE GRUEL: Warren wanted to go to Hawaii, and he thought it would be a good idea to take Jordan, but he wanted me to go, too. I went, but I don’t think it turned out to be much of a father-son bonding experience.
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