I'll Sleep When I'm Dead

by Crystal Zevon

  ANDY SLATER: Neil Young was working in the room across the hall from us. We’d been hanging out and had become friendly in this two-studio house. Warren always wanted to play lead but I said, “We should get Neil to play on ‘Sentimental Hygiene.’” He said, “Okay.” Niko went down the hall to ask him to play. Warren and I were sitting in the control room, and Neil sets up his big red pedal board, and he’s got his black Les Paul, and we turn the track up in the control room. He’s got no headphones on, he just wants the track loud, and he starts playing lead guitar to “Sentimental Hygiene.” He did three passes, and after the first pass, Warren leans over and says, “This is like Woodstock, man.” There was Neil in all his raging glory, immersed in this song, playing like he was onstage at a festival. Then, Neil looks over at us and says, “I think you guys got it there. You can cut something together out of that.” Warren says, “Yeah, Andy, you edit something.”

  And there I was, having never made a record, editing three Neil Young solos together that became the part on “Sentimental Hygiene.” That was a great thing about Warren. He knew I loved this guy’s work, and he loved to put you in a situation that there was no way you could master. He let you do things that you probably shouldn’t—things you weren’t qualified to do. But, there was something perverse, a cosmic joke he was playing, where he’d allow me, having never managed, to manage him; he’d allow me, having never made a record, to edit Neil Young’s solo…

  February 9, 1987

  …I was plunking at “Boom Boom” when Niko brought Neil Young and his son Zeke into the studio. We met and he offered to play—whenever—so I said, “Here,” and handed him the Blackknife. He took a couple of passes at “Boom Boom”—we were delighted. Later they brought his fantastic future/funk rig down so he could play “Old Black,” his Les Paul. He played “Sentimental Hygiene” three times. It was amazing. He asked me to show him the changes so he could see them—I warned him my fingerings were weird—he agreed but said they were “fantastic.” His second pass was breathtaking—the third had me in tears! It was incredible—he moves like he does on stage—very, very intense. It was some day!

  ANDY SLATER: We were working on “Boom Boom Mancini” and I said to him [Warren], “I know you love playing lead guitar, but you’re a piano player. I know you wrote the song on guitar, but it needs a piano part as a rhythmic and musical foundation for the chord structure.” He said, “Well, I’m not playing piano.” I said, “Warren, what do I have to do to get you to just try it on piano?” He says, “You got cash?” I say, “Yeah.” He says, “You got two hundred dollars?” I say, “Yeah, I’ve got two hundred dollars in cash.” He says, “You put two hundred dollars in cash on the piano, I’ll go play it.”

  I said, “Warren, this is your record. What are you talking about?” He said, “I need cash. You want that part, I don’t want to play that part. You give me cash, I’ll go play it.” I said, “Alright, I’ll give you the cash. But, if I like it, we can have a discussion about keeping it.” He goes, “Oh, yeah. Sure, sure.” I put the cash on the piano, he goes out and plays the part. He comes back in and goes, “Yeah, I like it. I played it. It’s pretty good. We’ll keep it.” He later told that story on Letterman. It’s the first time I ever had to bribe somebody.

  February 10, 1987

  …Slip dream last night reminded me of why I was in AA.

  April 20, 1987

  …Met Eddie Van Halen—played him “Leave My Monkey Alone” (he didn’t want to play on it)—felt a little self-conscious playing loud lead with him across the hall. Nice guy, though.

  April 21, 1987

  …Henley put all the parts on “Trouble” replacing Setzer…I’m mad at Andy…

  April 22, 1987

  …Dylan was expected any time, so I hurried to the studio. Ayeroff was there when I arrived in my mirror shades—I played him my “Prelude”—he said, “Don’t give up your day job.” I was sitting at the computer when Dylan arrived (still wearing the mirror shades)—played him “Prelude,” too…he played harp on “The Factory”—several tracks. He told me he and The Grateful Dead might do “Mohammed’s Radio.”

  DUNCAN ALDRICH: There was one great speech Warren gave to the R.E.M. guys about playing a ballad, about how “you gotta pick this thing like you’re eating pussy.” He went on and on in this kind of base analogy of what a ballad is to this garage band that’s already kind of famous.

  MERLE GINSBERG: Sentimental Hygiene was going to come out. Martin Scorsese asked for “Werewolves of London” to be in The Color of Money. Any movie with Tom Cruise that Scorsese directed was going to be huge. And, it coincided with the release of Sentimental Hygiene and appearing on David Letterman’s show, so this all pointed to Warren having a big comeback. It was very exciting.

  CRYSTAL ZEVON: Just before the release of Sentimental Hygiene, I sold our apartment in Paris and was making plans to return to L.A. I asked Warren to help find French schools for Ariel, and, amazingly, he did. However, he balked at the idea of paying tuition. He owed me almost three years’ back child support, and finally, I said I would forget about what he owed me if he would just help pay for the school.

  So, we returned just as his album was released, and I was impressed with the change in him. He was in a committed relationship with Merle, and I liked her a lot, but I gave up on the idea of getting sober myself. Warren and I became friends in a way we hadn’t before. I took Ariel to his rehearsals, we went out to lunch. We talked about his career and about parenting. It was nice, but might have been nicer had it not been for the fact that now it was me hiding bottles when he would pick Ariel up or come to dinner.

  MERLE GINSBERG: The album came out to great acclaim. Fabulous reviews in The Village Voice and The New York Times. He was thrilled, but the more acclaimed the album was, the meaner he was to me. People magazine took a picture of us at home together and we were in a bitter, bitter fight because he wanted me to wear my hair back.

  Sentimental Hygiene came on the Billboard charts, but it never rose to great heights. However, there was a video coming out, and European and American tours were booked. Virgin Records was giving good promotional support, and Warren was going to appear on Late Night with Letterman, which he hadn’t done since he performed “Excitable Boy” in 1982.

  July 7, 1987

  …Met with Andy, Jeff Ayeroff and Danny Kleinman…he’s redoing the video, and we’ve got Paula Abdul to help with the moves, and George Clinton coming. I also held my own with Ayeroff and convinced him I should do “Boom Boom Mancini” on Letterman…Andy told me the record stayed the same in Billboard—a mistake (?) Headache. Went to Men’s Stag. Flung myself at a newcomer afterward. Feel better. Headache almost gone, too.

  July 9, 1987

  …I heard an astrological forecast on KROQ—a good day for completing projects…met Paula Abdul. George Clinton arrived and we started learning an involved, strenuous routine…we were sweating plenty. Before long, Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini walked in. He’s a very, very nice guy…I kept asking Paula why she thought we could do it—she did say ZZ Top couldn’t have done our dance…Merle came over after her meeting…I could barely move.

  MERLE GINSBERG: I went to the screening of The Color of Money with him, and I was unbelievably proud. There were just a few people Warren idolized—Martin Scorsese, David Letterman, Tom McGuane, the writer. He definitely had a thing about tough, macho, male, loner, writer guys. If there was someone who was an alcoholic, who’d gotten sober, he related to them all the more.

  PAUL SHAFFER, musical director for Late Show with David Letterman:Warren made a couple of appearances on Letterman early in our run at NBC in the small studio, and he played a number of times as a featured artist with my band backing him up. Always terrific. We did his early hits with him. He was a sweetheart of a guy.

  July 17, 1987—Letterman show

  …Little sleep and a headache. Still, I knew I’d done things with a headache, and that would be okay. I feel I’ve made some progress by workin
g the Steps. I feel changed—and I guess I turned it over so I felt the show would go okay…The songs and the show went really well—I was fast enough with answers and funny, ad libs, too—Andy was pleasantly shocked. I was in Higher Power’s hands.

  EIGHT

  SPLENDID ISOLATION

  I’m putting tinfoil up on the windows

  Lying down in the dark to dream

  I don’t want to see their faces

  I don’t want to hear them scream

  In the fall of 1987, Warren went on the road. He describes audiences as “politely enthusiastic” but lacking the raucous hooting and hollering of his Excitable Boy days. In places where tickets weren’t selling well in concert halls, he was moved to clubs. Difficult as it was to accept, Sentimental Hygiene was not going to catapult Warren back into the ranks of superstardom.

  As the disappointments mounted, Warren’s obsessive-compulsive behaviors began asserting themselves. His OCD had probably always been there, but alcohol and drugs had kept it disguised.

  BILLY BOB THORNTON, actor musician: Most people who knew Warren met him through his music or his art. I met Warren because we lived in the same apartment building at 733 Kings Road. The mailboxes were out by the entrance, and one day he walked up to the mailboxes when I was trying to get my mail out. At the time, I had to do it three times. Actually, it depended on how many letters were in there because it had to work out to a certain number—a formula. Like, say, if there were four pieces of mail, I could take it out and put it back in three times because four times three is twelve, which is a three, which is really good. So, I was doing something like that, and he was just standing there staring at me and he said, “Oh, so you have that, too.” I said, “Yeah.”

  MERLE GINSBERG: He had decided that gray was his lucky color. He was truly the most superstitious person I have ever met. He wore gray cashmere sweaters from Ralph Lauren, gray jeans, which were not easy to find, gray knickers, gray Calvin Klein underwear, gray Calvin Klein T-shirts, he had to have a gray Corvette, and all his furniture was gray. He wouldn’t even wear black.

  ANDY SLATER: He once asked me, “Andy, how many times do you wash your hands in a day?” I said, “I don’t know. Two, three.” He says, “You don’t ever wash ’em like thirty, huh?” He had the whole thing about stepping on the lines in the street. He told me that whenever he heard the word cancer in a day, anything he had bought, shoes, food, anything, he’d have to return everything, or get rid of it.

  MERLE GINSBERG: Warren had interesting friends, like Jimmy Wachtel and Duncan and Andy, and we saw them. They adored him, and were unbelievably loyal to him. But, mostly he was devoted to his sponsor and his AA meetings, which was fantastic. But, he started putting everybody else down. He thought anybody who ever had a drink was a drunk. He was jealous of people like Jackson and Don Henley and Glenn Frey who had been in his circle but gone on to make a ton of money. Very bitter, but hoping to revive his career.

  MICHAEL IRONSIDE, actor: One night, he said he’d seen JoJo Dancer. He said, “My God, you’re so intense in that movie.” There’s a scene where I’m playing this Chicago detective and I’m going to go in and save Pryor’s ass, and I come through the door and these mobsters come through the door in a very powerful way and I scoop him out of the way and get him on a bus.

  Warren says to me, “Can I ask you a dumb question?” I said, “Sure.” He said, “What were you thinking when you came through that door? I mean, you came in with a kind of honesty and presence, so what were you thinking at that moment?” I literally, absolutely did remember what I was thinking. It was one of those rare things. I had this fedora, this Borsalino, on, and I had this thing with hats. I always thought wearing a hat knocked my I.Q. down 30–40 percent, and I said, “I remember exactly what I was thinking. I thought, ‘I hope I look good in this hat.’”

  And Warren burst out laughing, walking around in circles laughing, hysterical. And I said, “What? What’s so funny?” He said, “That’s exactly how I feel when people ask me what those lyrics mean.” He said, “You know, when I write something, I’m thinking, ‘I wonder what I look like wearing this hat.’”

  JIMMY WACHTEL: He was totally obsessive…like Jack Nicholson in that movie. He would get into eating obsessively, foods, like he would just eat raspberries and cream, every night. Or, he would eat turkey sandwiches every night. And that’s all he would eat. Some people say this is crazy, but when you’re a musician, it’s eccentric.

  MERLE GINSBERG: When he was on tour with a bunch of guys for a while, he would get in a worse and worse mood. He’d become a terror. They finally attributed it to him not having sex. So, when I would show up they would say, “Thank God, the animal is going to be tamed.” I was known as the Animal Tamer. He did treat sex as a sort of outlet. One of the ways you could make him be nice was to have sex with him.

  Warren had the most disgusting eating habits. He started to get portly. He transferred his addiction from alcohol to food. He would eat popsicles and throw the wrappers on the floor. He could live in complete squalor. He would never take the trash out and he would say, “Because I like the fruit flies.” He would give them names. I’m not kidding. But, he was fastidious about himself. And his laundry. He was fanatical about how the laundry was done. He loved art and beautiful things, but he lived in squalor. Also, much as he wanted to isolate, he never wanted to be alone.

  JIMMY WACHTEL: I was bankrupt and getting divorced. I was starting over, and Warren was going on tour, so he offered to let me stay in his apartment, which was very sweet, except that he hadn’t cleaned his apartment in about two years. He hadn’t changed his sheets on his bed, and it was absolutely disgusting. I couldn’t stay there. I couldn’t even bring maids in to clean it because it was so gross.

  While I was there, I saw his sock drawer. Warren was hung up on the color gray, which for me is like not white and not black, it’s gray. It’s like walking down on a tightrope…you’re not here, you’re not there. But, he had a drawer of socks that were all the same socks. He had like forty pair of gray socks all balled up in this drawer, and I thought it was one of the greatest art pieces I’d ever seen.

  STUART ROSS, tour manager: Warren had his habits, and they were really important habits. It was his car mechanic, his dry cleaners. He went to the same restaurant every day, which was Hugo’s. A lot of times, he’d eat by himself. I’d show up about the time I thought he’d be there, and we’d have lunch together.

  He shopped at the same shops where they knew him, like Maxfield’s on Melrose or at Prada. Warren, being a guy who always struggled with finances, still shopped at Prada. It didn’t matter. He would hide the money that he took from me on the road, and he would buy a nine-hundred-dollar Prada jacket.

  MERLE GINSBERG: He was always in a dark mood. His huge outing for the day was to the grocery store, and he was so superstitious that we would go up and down the aisles and he’d say, “Get a carton of milk, but make sure it’s a lucky one.” I’d come back with milk and he’d say, “That’s not lucky. You didn’t get a lucky one.”

  DUNCAN ALDRIDGE: He told me he had the highest I.Q. ever tested in Fresno, for whatever that’s worth. He’d drive around and he’d have four or five books going like clicking the remote on a TV. People with that kind of intelligence—there are side effects like the OCD. His synopsis of a situation was always compelling to me, hilarious. We had the same lofty view of humanity. We’re in a certain position, then there’s everybody else.

  The crowd were Hammerheads. The Turd Handlers and Mud Jugglers were the businesspeople who worked for him. He was a generous guy, but very intolerant of lower-caste intelligence. It drove him crazy, and he wrote about it a lot.

  MERLE GINSBERG: One of Warren’s favorite things when we would come home was to look at his answering machine, and if there was no blinking light, he’d say, “My favorite person called.”

  CRYSTAL ZEVON: Near the end of the Sentimental Hygiene tour, Warren played the Wiltern in Los Angeles. Everyone was
there. People I hadn’t seen in years. Warren blew us all away. He was in control of the music and he commanded his audience. Ariel and I were sitting with Warren’s dad, and J. D. Souther was right behind us.

  I was jumping to my feet, shouting, whistling, acting like a fan. What I also remember is that there was no alcohol backstage, so I kept making trips to the theater lobby to guzzle glasses of wine. That night marked the beginning of the end of my drinking. I didn’t get sober for another six months, but seeing him onstage, I knew sober was the way to live.

  November 20, 1987

  …The Wiltern. Nice theater. Nervous. Dad and his friend, Milt, arrived about 7:00. Then, Merle and Beth. When I came out of the shower, there were roses from Michael Ironside. Andy was nervous, too. The nervousness worked for us—the show felt great. The kids were there with their friends, Crystal & Yvonne, LeRoy, Jimmy, Stephan, J. D., Duncan & his wife—it was quite a night. It was a great night.

  JORDAN ZEVON: Dad was trying to develop a father/son thing when he got sober. But, see…the father/son conversations we would have were not about baseball or the weather, but DLWs. “You know, son, there may be a few Dirty Little Whores hanging around the studio.” He was a rock and roll dad. I watch the Osbournes and think, oh well, they love each other and they curse a lot. What’s so exciting about this?

  December 1, 1987

  …Put an acoustic piano on “Reconsider Me.” I was tired, coffee’d up & plenty mad…in the studio ’til 3:00. Didn’t return Merle’s call.