I hung the phone up, and thank God I was in treatment. It was five years after he got sober. It was devastating to me because here was somebody who I had been friends with for almost ten years. I had loaned money to him and made it my life’s mission to get him back in the record business when he was drunk and living in Philadelphia. I had taken him to rehab three times, and he was a member of the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. His life was going pretty well. Then, when I had a problem, he wasn’t there.
PETER ASHER: I can’t recall how I came to manage Warren. Gloria Boyce was the person who worked with him on a day-to-day basis. It could have been through Azoff. He has a finger in every pie and anything that happens in show business, he somehow has a part of. Irving and I remain friends, so he might have said, “I can’t manage him. Will you?”
I enjoyed Warren’s conversations, but then he would always say something disconcerting and it would be one of those moments where you weren’t sure whether he was kidding or not. He’d say something pretty outrageous, but totally straight-faced, and it would be something where with most people you’d be sure they were kidding. But, if it was Warren, you’d kind of go, internally, is he kidding? You didn’t know. There’d be these moments when you’d be looking into his eyes, thinking, am I supposed to laugh now? Or, does he actually mean this outrageous thing he’s just said?
BRIGETTE BARR, artists’ manager: I met Warren when I was working at Peter Asher Management, and he had come in, and we just clicked. Because he lived in the area, he would come into the office all the time. Of all the artists that we managed, he was the one that was the closest to all of us.
Warren found relief and consistency on the road. His routines were as chronic on tour as they were at home, but on the road there were fewer repercussions in the wake of excessive and eccentric behaviors.
STUART ROSS: He was buying only one shirt—Calvin Klein gray extra-large T-shirt. He was buying them in every city. Every time there was a store that sold that exact T-shirt, he would go in and buy them. I figured that he was acting like a rock star, and he wore them once and threw them away. No idea.
Well, New Year’s Day, 1991, we’re in Grand Rapids, Michigan. We have the night off and we’re playing on January 2nd. On January 1st, he calls me. “Is there anything to do?” So, we rented a car and drove to a mall. He loved to shop—more than any heterosexual man alive. We go into a department store, and he immediately starts buying gray Calvin Klein T-shirts. He’s flipping through the rack, and they’re all the same size, all the same color, but he’d flip two or three, take that one, flip another, take that one. I don’t know how he made his decisions, but some were lucky shirts, some were not lucky shirts.
So, he buys five or six of these. Later, we’re walking to the car, and he notices another department store on the other side of the mall. He says, “We haven’t gone there yet.” I said, “Why would we go there?” He says, “To get Calvin Klein T-shirts.” I said, “Warren, you just got six of them.” He says, “But, not from that store.” I said, “What does it matter what store they came from?” He said, “It matters to me.”
I said, “Warren, once you take them out of the package, you don’t know what store they came from.” And he said, I’ll never forget this, “I don’t take them out of the package.” “What do you mean, you don’t take them out of the package?” He said, “Look. You collect fountain pens, right?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Well, I collect gray Calvin Klein T-shirts.” I said, “What are you talking about? Every one of my fountain pens is different. All your T-shirts are the same.” And he said, “The value is to the collector.” I said, “That’s wrong. The value is to the marketplace and every one of your shirts is identical.”
Until this time, I thought he was just wearing them and throwing them away because he didn’t want to do laundry. But no. He had more gray Calvin Klein T-shirts in their packages than Calvin Klein had.
Years later, we were having lunch and he says, “Guess what? They don’t make the same gray Calvin Klein T-shirts now. They’re completely different. They’re made in Malaysia now.” He said, “You laughed at me when I bought all those shirts. Now, I have the only good gray Calvin Klein T-shirts in existence.” *
Warren was adamant in his decision never to have more children, and yet he loved the two he had beyond measure. Every place he ever lived was crowded with their photographs. He kept letters from Ariel in the drawer by his bed, and recordings of Jordan’s bands close at hand. But, doing daddy-duty depressed and mystified him.
After being estranged from her father for over two years, Ariel decided she wanted a relationship with him, so she wrote this letter. It was in the drawer next to his bed when he died.
It was easier with Jordan; they had music and the guy thing; but, Warren wanted his daughter to be protected—that meant protected from men like himself.
January 10, 1991
…Pleased not to hear back from Ariel’s therapist so I won’t have that to deal with this weekend. Julia stayed over. Nice.
January 12, 1991
…left town for Idyllwild.* Checked into the Bluebird Motel—no phone. Went to the school—found Ariel’s dorm eventually, but she’d gone into town…stuck in this rustic motel.
January 13, 1991
…Picked Ariel up at 12:30. She was hungry so we had lunch. Her head is shaved, all right, except for a black maxi up front…She took me on a foot tour of the school, and I left.
JULIA MUELLER: He did not want me to meet Ariel. I had met Jordan, and later on Jordan called me “Johnny Mom,” which made me feel both weird and fun. But, Ariel, Warren said specifically, “I do not want Ariel to meet someone unless I know for sure that that person is not leaving.” He said, “She’s unstable right now, and I don’t want her to meet someone transient in my life.” Which I respected.
January 14, 1991
…Left Blythe at dawn, driving east into Arizona, headache, no sleep at all and I wrote the opening line with riff “Quite Ugly One Morning”…Tempe…Carla had arranged a room for me, fruit basket waiting, $29!!!
February 14, 1991
…Julia made a splendid meatloaf with mashed potatoes, gravy & key lime pie. I told her I loved her; then she gave me a (Miles Davis) card which said, “I love you, you know.”
December 24, 1991
…First glimpse of the family: Captain Mueller looks like George C. Scott as Patton. We all got along well, I thought, and had a nice time. Her brother, Eric, the physicist, was there with his fiancé; her mother is very sweet; dinner conversation is quite brilliant. I think they liked me for determinedly solving a puzzle Mr. Mueller had made in his shop…Christmas ritual, including singing carols, mostly in German…drove back.
JULIA MUELLER: We were going to spend Christmas with my parents. I’m not making any money, and I’m a wreck. I’ve turned down a job at my old theater company because I knew he was coming in that night. Ridiculous things I did to be there when he arrived. He comes in and he says, “Is everything okay?” I’m honest, so I start to answer honestly. I said, “Well, I’m having a little trouble with money…” He says, “What? What!? How could you say that to me? I’m asking you if everything is okay for me.”
For Mr. Bad Example, Warren reunited with Waddy, Roy Marinell, David Lindell, and Jorge Calderon. The album sales were so dismal that it was his first record taken out of circulation.
JORGE CALDERON: My best experience writing with Warren was when we wrote “Mr. Bad Example.” It had too many lyrics—on purpose. Verse after verse after verse. We used to go to Noura Café. Warren went at least once a day, and they had Turkish coffee. We would have the chicken plate, and then he would order a humongous thing of Turkish coffee. It was like mud…but, man, we would sit there and drink cup after cup—we were so high, it was almost psychedelic. Then, we went back to his apartment and just went crazy with this song. But, we were falling down on the floor laughing because I’d say something, then he’d say something…I’d complete his line, he�
�d complete my line. Just laughing, laughing, really, like kids.
ROY MARINELL: Warren had a publishing deal with Virgin. Somehow, my share of the royalties for “Werewolves” was being paid to Warren, not to me. I discovered it by accident because I had gotten a statement and it showed my BMI royalties as $671. Now, I’m not a BMI writer. I’m an ASCAP writer. So, I called Bill Harper, his business manager. I said, “I’ve got some money here that’s not mine,” being the honest kid that I was. He said, “Oh, great. Thanks, Roy.” I hung up and I thought, wait a second, there’s no ASCAP money. I started looking at back statements, and twelve thousand dollars was missing. I called the business management. I called Peter Asher’s office. I called everybody. Nobody wanted to talk to me. Gloria at Peter Asher’s office had the nerve to say, “Roy, you don’t earn that kind of money.”
Well, I went wild. She said, “Even if Warren did owe you the money, he can’t afford to pay you right now.” And I said, “Tell him to fucking start driving a Toyota and not a Corvette and maybe he could pay his debts.” She hung up on me.
STUART ROSS: He burned bridges with people. Or, they burned bridges with him. We were at the Park West in Chicago and there was an issue with Roy Marinell. It was a money-based issue and Warren was nervous to see him.
ROY MARINELL: Normally, when he was playing the Park West and I was in Chicago, he’d call me up onstage and we’d do “Werewolves” together, which was always fun. For some reason, I was late. As I walked into the venue, I thought I heard him asking me up onstage, but I wasn’t sure. I thought, well, I’ll see him in between and I’ll go up second set.
Warren finished the set, I went up to the dressing room. We hugged, we kissed like you do, and then there was this pregnant silence. Gloria had called, and so there was no way to avoid the subject. I thought we were good enough friends that we could broach it, so I brought the thing up. He said, “My management tells me you’re deluded.” I said, “Warren, you know me better than that. I’ve got the documentation to show you.”
STUART ROSS: They had words backstage. Roy said something like, “Hey man, you drive a Corvette.” Warren snapped, “This is a ten-year-old Corvette that’s constantly breaking down.” When Roy left the room, I don’t think Warren ever saw him again.
ROY MARINELL: At some point, he said, “You’ve killed the goose that laid the golden egg.” I said, “What do you mean?” He says, “I’m never going to do a song with your name on it again.” I thought to myself, what’re you going to do for a career, schmuck? Now, I was getting angry. Never going to sing “Werewolves” again? So, I said, “Come on, man. We can talk about this.” He was getting angrier, raising his voice, and he says, “So you think I should get rid of my Corvette, do you?” Everything got a little tweaked.
His road manager came in and said, “Is everything all right?” I said, “Yeah, we’re just talking.” Warren said, “No, it’s not all right. Get out of my dressing room.” We never spoke again, which was a sad thing because of the friendship and the writing.
In the end, someone at Virgin Records called me back and said, “You’re right, except it’s not twelve thousand dollars, its twenty-two thousand dollars. I’ll have a check drawn on Warren’s account.” Within a week I had a check for the twenty-two grand, and there was never a problem again, except that it cost me a friendship and a writing partner.
Although Warren’s records no longer hit the top of the charts, by the 1990s the name Warren Zevon had established a hard-earned place in rock and roll history. While the public at large knew him for “Werewolves of London,” other songs were becoming standards. Lawrence Kasdan set the tone for his movie Grand Canyon with “Lawyers, Guns and Money,” and later in the film Warren’s music is the backdrop for an entirely different mood with “Searching for a Heart.”
Warren took pride and pleasure in being quoted by authors. His love for detective fiction was well known, and to think that some of the top writers in the genre loved his songs as much as he loved their books both astonished and delighted him. His library was filled with the complete works, in hardbound and paperback, of all the writers he admired and, especially, those he ended up befriending. He attended book signings of writers he liked, standing in line for an autograph and chatting with other hard-boiled fans.
JONATHAN KELLERMAN: I met Warren at one of [my wife] Faye’s signings. Of course, I was aware of Warren’s music, and I admired it, and I had heard stories of the wild man, but I don’t pay much attention to that. Even though I’m a musician, I don’t get too involved with personalities, but more into the music.
Faye was doing a signing at a mystery bookshop and people were waiting in line dutifully. I was just there to keep her company, and a fellow walked up and said, “Could you please sign this to Warren Zevon?” And, I said, “Warren Zevon? This is great.” He called me Dr. Kellerman, which I thought was great. He said, “You’re Dr. Kellerman.” We started to talk, and he said he had read my books and admired them. I said, “Well, this is the truth. I love your music and I’m well versed in it.” We decided to get together.
CARL HIAASEN: I met Warren when he came to a book signing of mine. It was after a book called Native Tongue came out. I was in L.A. at this mystery book shop owned by a guy named Sheldon. A couple years earlier Shelly had told me, “Zevon comes in here.” I said, “No kidding,” because I had mentioned Warren’s music in a couple of my novels, and Native Tongue was a book that had a character who, whenever life was caving in on him, he’d go home and he’d put on one of Warren’s albums full blast and lock himself in his house.
So, I’m standing there, signing books…I’m not looking up, just signing…and, I hear, “Hi, I’m Warren Zevon,” in that unmistakable voice. I look up and he’s standing there.
At that time he had that huge ponytail down the middle of his back, and I almost fell out of my chair. I didn’t know whether he was there to punch me, or whether he read something he didn’t like…I was stammering like an idiot. I said, “I can’t believe you actually came,” and he said, “I only came for one reason, and that’s to thank you for mentioning my music in your books.” I said, “That’s very cool, but it’s my pleasure and my honor.”
Afterwards, we went to Noura’s and he said, “Do you like Turkish coffee?” I said, “No, but I’ll sit with you.” He’d just finished recording Mr. Bad Example, and he had rough cuts on a cassette in his Stingray, and I asked to hear it. He said, “Well, if you really want to…” We drove around listening to bits and pieces. He got very uncomfortable with me there listening because I wanted to hear the whole thing. Then we just sat and talked about writing, and books, and what authors we liked. That’s how we became friends.
STUART ROSS: As far as friends go, a good portion of them were in the literary world. Whether it was the proprietor or the clerks at Book Soup, or the guy who owned the mystery bookstore, or the waiters at Hugo’s, these were the people Warren felt comfortable around.
The bond between Warren and Carl Hiaasen was instantaneous and lasting. Warren demanded a lot, but in Carl he found an equal. They gave each other the attention, time, and intellectual stimulation each craved. They shared a quirky sense of humor, and satisfied a mutual need for conversation, especially when either one was on the road. Carl also understood and respected Warren’s need to parcel out personal information judiciously, and he rarely attempted to delve beyond what Warren shared willingly.
CARL HIAASEN: He never shared much of the girlfriend stuff with me. I hate to use the phrase “gentlemanly,” but he was prudent about it. Often, I would ask some question about a date or a social function, or somebody’s coming by, and before I could say “You have a date?” or “Who is it?” he would cut me off and say, “You don’t want to know.” That was code for “Don’t ask any more questions.” Or, he’d say, “It’s an ugly business.” And I’d say, “Sorry I mentioned it.”
STUART ROSS: Warren loved playing with a band, but he could barely afford one. The first tour I did, he had an
all-star studio players’ band and they were wonderful. The next time out, Peter Asher came up with this great idea. He said, “Let’s get an opening act that can double as your band.”
He found a band called the Odds out of Vancouver. They had put their first album out and had a good fan base north of the border. We all shared a bus and they played forty-five minutes of their own, then they backed up Warren. It was a brilliant move on Peter’s part. They had record company support. They had their own crew. Warren and I would stay in one hotel, and the Odds would stay at either a different hotel or on the bus.
Warren was thrilled because they were young musicians and they looked up to him as one of the great singer/songwriters and showed him an incredible amount of respect. Plus, they were great players.
JULIA MUELLER: As far as Warren sleeping around, one of the first tours he went on after we were definitely together—it was “us”—was the Mr. Bad Example tour. He had his phony names on the road chosen from Norman Mailer novels.
He was such a creature of habit that it was incredibly easy to know when he was lying because he always did everything the same way. He was staying at the Ritz-Carlton in Chicago, and I called, and he had a Do Not Disturb message on. I thought, wait a minute, this is when we were supposed to talk. I didn’t hear back, so I called again. Do Not Disturb. I left this very cryptic message: “How’s Chicago? I heard it’s really windy there.” He knew exactly what that message meant.
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