I'll Sleep When I'm Dead

by Crystal Zevon

  Crystal and Ariel had returned to Paris.

  SEVEN

  BED OF COALS

  I’ve been lying in a bed of coals

  I’ve been crying out of control

  I roll and I tumble

  Every time I come down

  I’m too old to die young

  And too young to die now

  On March 19, 1986, Warren marked his first day free of all mind-altering substances. He remained sober for the next seventeen years. In the early years of his sobriety, Warren found a sponsor who took him on a thorough and rigorous journey through the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.

  MERLE GINSBERG: One night Warren called me and it was so clear how utterly sober he was. He said, “I’m going to go to three meetings a day. A friend of mine is helping me.” I knew it was Eve Babitz. He said, “I’m not going to be able to talk to you for a while. I have a sponsor and he knows I’m in the midst of a relationship, but I need a while to help myself, and I will be back in touch with you.” We’re both crying and it was heartbreaking, but I didn’t talk to him for a couple weeks.

  CRYSTAL ZEVON: I bought an apartment in Paris and Ariel and I moved back. After we left, Warren got sober, but I was busy with the escalation of my own drinking and didn’t know much about Warren’s sobriety. He was writing to both Ariel and me, and we were writing back, but we mostly talked about books and movies or the weather.

  One day he said he was coming to Paris for Ariel’s birthday to make amends to her. He asked me about English-speaking AA meetings, and I told him I had a friend who went and I could give him her number. I warned him that my friend, Linda Moore, spouted those AA clichés like a walking bumper sticker. He said, “Those AA clichés save my life on a daily basis, and it sounds like Linda is just the person I’ll need to talk to while I’m getting over jet lag.”

  He arrived in the middle of Ariel’s birthday party and my first thought was that nothing had changed. But, it had. He stayed for the whole party and even went to the IMAX theater with Ariel and her friends. He took her out alone and talked to her about alcoholism; he told her he wanted to start their relationship over. He wanted to be her sober daddy. He stayed in Paris for a week, and we had a great time. All the best parts of him were right there, not just in fleeting moments, but for the entire week.

  I was so blown away that a few months later, I sold our apartment and returned to Los Angeles thinking I would be struck sober. I wanted what he had. My fantasy was that I would walk into an AA meeting, Warren would be there, and we’d live happily ever after. Of course, life doesn’t work like that.

  August 4, 1986…Arrived Paris 7 a.m.

  I called Ariel. She said, “I love you.” Crystal called at 2. Went to her apartment, cute but very poor section. Ariel’s grown and I’m overwhelmed at first. She looks lovely. Birthday party with her little African friend, Nabou. Took metro to see giant film at Le Geod.

  MERLE GINSBERG: I was sure I was never going to hear from him again, but one day I got a letter basically apologizing for torturing me. It didn’t allude to the idea that I might ever see him again, so I just thought, well, I’ll never see him again. Then, in May, Rolling Stone was sending me to L.A. again. Andy told Warren I was coming out, and he called me. He sounded very quiet and sober. He said, “I want to see you.” I said, “Andy seems to think it’s not a good idea for you.” He said, “No. I think I’m fine. My sponsor thinks it’s okay. I’m doing very well.”

  He picked me up at the airport, and we went to my room at the Sunset Marquis. The first thing that happened was that Warren called the front desk and asked them to clean the minibar out. And that started my two-year relationship with him. He could never be around alcohol. If he saw a liquor bottle, he’d have a meltdown. It started my own sobriety. I quit drinking and quit smoking pot.

  On my trip to L.A., he was sober the whole time. He was going to AA meetings. He was thinking about his career and he was writing songs. We would go to coffee shops and eat, but he wanted to be either in his apartment or in my hotel room. He never wanted to go out. He never wanted to go to a movie. He was very fragile, and I thought we were meant to be together. I believed I could fix his life and help him. Mostly we talked about books and music and art. Then, he asked me to go on the road with him.

  DUNCAN ALDRICH: We traveled in a Lincoln Town Car then. I did all the driving. Any time we passed a mall, he had to stop and buy socks and underwear. Half the stuff he’d buy, he’d toss off as bad luck pieces. That was a bit disturbing to me. I’d bring it up, but it didn’t matter what I asked, there was no logical reason for it.

  MERLE GINSBERG: We were driving all around New England in this screwy rental car, and I would watch Warren perform, and it was incredibly romantic. He would sing songs for me, and I was totally, totally his. Then, I started to realize what it was like to be a rock star’s girlfriend. Even though he was playing in these funky clubs on the Jersey shore, when people would meet me they’d whisper, “Are you his girlfriend?” I’d say, “Yeah,” and they’d be in awe.

  Warren and Linda Moore in Paris.

  He played the Bottom Line, and the guys from Rolling Stone came, and I was Warren’s girlfriend, and they were all very, very impressed. But, suddenly I was a rock star’s girlfriend and my coworkers started to hate me for that. I definitely got a kind of arrogance about it, I’m sure. It became a mutual agreement between me and Bob Wallace, the editor of Rolling Stone, that it was time for me to go.

  I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but I wanted to move to L.A. to be with Warren. I told him I was going to move there, thinking that’s all he wanted in the world. But, he was freaked out. He didn’t want to support me. He said, “What are you going to do? Where are you going to live?” I thought, don’t you want me to be with you? The minute I was going to give everything up to be with him, it freaked him out.

  ANDY SLATER: I learned how to be a manager through an on-the-job training course with Warren. He empowered me to do things I wasn’t qualified to do. At twenty-six or twenty-seven, I didn’t know anything about contracts and building deals. I learned, but he trusted me to advise him on things that I had no experience formulating intelligent opinions on. But, it all seemed to work out. We whittled his debt down, and we made him a great record deal at Virgin and got him sober, which was probably the greatest contribution of all.

  August, 26, 1986…

  We met Jeff Ayeroff [Virgin Records] at Musso’s for lunch. I like him, and he seems very enthusiastic & into it. He even said I was “handsome” at one point. He thinks he can present me to 15 year olds. And I like that he thinks I should sing my ballads. It went very well…

  August 27, 1986

  …Went over the songs with Kootch & Henley’s band. Great to see them—Ladanyi, Lindsey, Don…Bob Glaub dropped by with his daughters…J. D. came and we had a great talk…Waddy will play lead tomorrow…big reunion…Merle called Andy and he put her on the speaker and told her what a hard time I’d been giving him. A practical joke—which I went along with. He said I didn’t like the pictures—she said, “no one asked him to drink for 20 years.” And something about how she didn’t like it when I acted like a “precious little child.” Came home, talked to Stephan [AA sponsor] who said I should make amends for eavesdropping. I did. The evening’s peaceful—but I am hurt.

  MERLE GINSBERG: Once Andy and I were on the phone talking about Warren and his problems and I said, “You don’t drink for fifteen or twenty years and expect things to be a bowl of cherries.” Warren was listening on the phone. He was furious. I said, “Why are you spying on me?”

  September 9, 1986

  …Marilyn calls to tell me she wants to talk about Jordan’s custody…no school will take him now, and he should move in with me…Did the laundry, and looking through the index in Wallace Stevens I find the title: “A Quiet Normal Life”…. Marilyn and I worked things out—since I could not handle moving and living with Jordan. Anyway, the check is late which probably started the ball
rolling…Went to Men’s Stag AA, asked if I could take antibiotics (yes). Talked to Merle, told her I was hurt—maybe I shouldn’t have.

  September 18, 1986

  …Virgin made a formal offer of $225,000…

  September 26, 1986

  …Picked up Corvette…

  October 7, 1986

  …Finished 4th Step.

  October 8, 1986

  …read my inventory to Stephan—so we did the 5th Step, then burned the inventory. I asked if he was used to the smell of burning 4th Steps—“Smells like victory,” he said. I felt really good afterwards. I came home and took the 6th and 7th Steps.

  ARIEL ZEVON: I think I met most of Dad’s real girlfriends, the ones who mattered to him. There were a lot of others, though. When I was younger, I had relationships with his girlfriends while they were together. Then they would split up with Dad, so they were out of my life, too. Merle was one of the ones I met. She was fun and I thought she was cool. She had a neat apartment and cool clothes. But, we didn’t stay in touch after they broke up. The older I got the less I wanted to know his girlfriends because I knew they were pretty transient in our lives, so I didn’t want to put out the effort. But, I always liked the ones I met. The real girlfriends were always interesting women.

  ANDY SLATER: We made the deal with Virgin, and as we were looking for a producer, I was throwing names out that Warren didn’t want to hear. He wanted to produce his record himself. He told me that for years nobody listened to him, and how whether it was Jackson or Waddy, they were in charge and now that he was sober, he thought he could produce his own record. Naïvely, I thought, well, if I put a good engineer with him, it’ll be fine.

  There was an engineer who had worked on Don Henley’s record, Niko Bolas, who Warren liked, but he said to me, “We’re going to need help, and you should help us.” I said, “Why don’t you use R.E.M. as the backup band?” Warren said, “Okay, let’s cut the tracks with them. And, you’re going to co-produce.” I thought, I’ve never made a record. I’d been in the studios, and I was a guitar player, but gee, I’m a manager.

  Warren said, “Hey, man, it’s easy. You’ll book the studio time and come down and help me.” I realized he was probably setting me up to be the fall guy in case the whole thing went to the shithouse. But, somehow, the three of us went to Record One, cut tracks with the guys in R.E.M., and embarked on making that record.

  MERLE GINSBERG: So, I have a new life in L.A., and I’m Warren’s girlfriend. I began to realize that this was a full-time job. He expected me to go to the grocery store with him. We’d go to Book Soup and buy a million magazines and books. Then, we’d go to the video store and rent movies he’d already seen. The only movies he ever wanted to watch were movies he’d already seen. I realized this is the behavior of someone who is disturbed and depressed, but he was in recovery, and my idea was that this was the life of someone in recovery. As he got sober over the next year, he was working on his album. The happiest I ever saw Warren was when he was in the recording studio. He came alive and he was a different person. But, I wasn’t really a part of that.

  ANDY SLATER: Through the course of making that record, I tried to cast different people into roles, but it was not the same group of spectacular L.A. musicians that made the previous records. I wanted to give it some different kinds of sonic contour that weren’t on the other records and part of that was casting people to play lead guitar…Warren always wanted to play lead guitar on everything, and it was an exercise in convincing him that perhaps his style was not best suited to this song.

  DUNCAN ALDRICH: The first record I worked on was Sentimental Hygiene, which was the first thing he did since he hit bottom. We had what we called the “thanks anyway” bin of people who played and never were heard. Brian Fetzer, Jorma Kaukonen. Slater was calling everybody in and then using stuff that I thought was kind of dismal. It was a producer war. Warren was casting the world in not appropriate ways, I thought. Of course, he’s the genius.

  Dr. Babyhead (Duncan Aldrich) and Andy Slater in the studio during Sentimental Hygiene.

  ANDY SLATER: We had a fortieth birthday party for Warren at the studio. It was a surprise. Through making that record, I realized that Warren seemed less organized than I was, and as Niko and I sat in the control room and Warren was cutting the tracks, we saw that we needed to police him more than we thought.

  January 24, 1987—40th

  …I went to “Artists in Sobriety”; Ray gave me a great card. Went to Maxfield’s…Erin Everly, Don’s daughter, came up and (re) introduced herself to me. Bought light gray cashmere sweater. Went to Record One where Andy had brought an incredible effects rig. Peter Buck and I quickly put guitars on “Bad Karma.” I had on my old Jorn Jeff T-Shirt. I was getting nervous. There was an amazing cake and all kinds of cheese and pastry from The Ivy—they’d looked all over for raspberries, and all this water; Calderon arrived, then Stephan & Thea, Ted & Mike Nadir, Ray, Kootch—J. D. called with a stomach problem—Henley, Jordan & Lisa, Jimmy, Waddy, Henry Diltz with his cameras. Griffin Dunne (who told me he’d “ripped me off” taken a picture of me when he was asked what kind of glasses he wanted for his new movie), Bill Harper…I was grotesquely nervous, playing host to all the factions—AA’s, musicians excluded from the album, and a horde of people I didn’t know. I walked into the studio with Jordan and Lisa and Jimmy & Waddy were getting high—I am mad. Jordan told me he’d never tried it—it was a great moment.

  DUNCAN ALDRICH: Bob Dylan came to the studio looking for Warren. The receptionist came in all quivery and said, “Bob Dylan’s out there looking for Warren.” Warren wasn’t there yet, so I went out and said, “How’re you doing?” He said, “Is Warren here?” I said, “He’s not here yet. Do you want a cup of coffee while you’re waiting?”

  Then, Slater came in and was trying to ask him a question: “So, you been touring?” And he said, “Yeah, I travel from time to time.” Very strange meeting. He didn’t say much the whole time. He played on “The Factory.” I took Dylan’s tracks and put them into a compilation solo. That was something. I made Bob Dylan sound like a jazz guy.

  ANDY SLATER: In the middle of the Sentimental Hygiene sessions, Warren was going to go in early and just warm up, play piano awhile. I get a phone call from him. “Andy, you’ve got to get down here right now.” I said, “What’s wrong?” He said, “Dylan’s here.” I say, “I’ll be right down.” I get to the studio as fast as I can, and I walk into the control booth, and Dylan is sitting there with a kid. I go into the tracking room, and I walk up to each of the guys in R.E.M. and say, “Hey, how’re you doing?” They say, “Did you see Dylan out there? You freaking out?” I said, “No, I’m not freaking out. Are you freaking out?” “Yeah, I’m freaking out.” So, I go to the next guy. “So, what’s Dylan doing here?” “I don’t know, but he’s sitting right there. I’m freaking out.”

  He had never met Warren, and he showed up at the studio to check out the session. Warren pulls me aside and I said, “Warren, what happened?” He says, “I don’t know. I walked into the studio and the receptionist said, ‘Bob Dylan’s waiting for you in the waiting room.’ I thought, ah, this is a joke. Andy’s probably got a wig on. It’s one of his jokes. But, there he was sitting there.” I said, “What’d you do?” Warren said, “I said, ‘Hey, Bob, how’re you doing?’ He said, ‘Hi.’ And, I said, ‘So, what’s ya been doin’?’ and he said, ‘Traveling.’ I realized he wasn’t a small-talk guy, and I’m not a small-talk guy, so okay.

  “So, I went in the control room, and we started playing him the songs we were doing, and now we’re going to track this thing.” So, I walk back into the control room and I say, “Hey, Bob, I’m Andy. How’re you doing?” He shook my hand, then this kid says to me, “Hi. I’m Jakob. I’m in a band.” I said, “Cool, man, cool.” And that’s how I met Jakob Dylan. So, when I say my association with Warren made my career, it goes way beyond anything that was apparent at the time. Who would know that I would end up working with the Wal
lflowers?

  Anyway, Dylan leaves, and I start plotting as to how we’re going to get him to play on the record, which we eventually did about a month later. I called Carol Childs, who I knew, and I said, “Can you get Bob to come down and play harmonica on this one song?” And she said, “Sure. I’ll call you back.” Some days later, Dylan came down and played on “The Factory,” did three passes. He was Warren’s hero.

  January 27, 1987

  …When I walked in the receptionist said, “Bob Dylan’s waiting for you” and he was sitting in the living room with his son, wearing shades and motorcycle boots. He looked good—he looked like Dylan. I told him I was a great fan and all, and he said he was, too; he said he’d first heard of me through T-Bone Burnett…actually, he said as little as possible, but he was nice to me—I asked him if he wanted to hear some roughs—he said he did—he seemed to like “The Factory.” I slipped away to call Andy, and he hurried over…Dylan said he had tried to get in touch with me through Gelfand last summer. I asked him if he had any new songs he wasn’t using. He said no, but he’d think about it…it was great—Andy & I were awed. He stayed for 2 ½ hours. Neil Young told Niko he’d suggested to him that he drop by. We couldn’t really play “Reconsider Me” but I did write a verse for “The Heartache.” A great day.