June 24, 1997—Mick Fleetwood’s birthday
…Mick & John McVie want to play with me—they stressed it. Lindsey suggested getting together. Had dinner with Kenny Gradney, Greg Ladanyi and their wives. Little Feat left Asher, so when I tell him the unbelievable Ira story, Kenny said, “I believe you! I was there!”
June 26, 1997
…Chateau Marmont: Hunter smoking a cigar with two publicists in attendance. Johnny Depp and I on either side of Hunter converse in sign language…We all go to the Viper Room. Terry Gilliam comes. Nice guy.
July 26, 1997
…Party at Angelica Huston’s for Laila. Great house in Venice. (Sculptor husband, Robt. Graham—“Yes, it is appalling that you don’t know his work,” Terry answered me); sultry voiced Angelica, very gracious; and, we’ve met, she says, like they all do…chatting with Bobby Neuwirth, overdue on my part…Tracy Jacobs, Johnny’s super agent, latches on to me for the evening. Larraine Newman and I approach each other tentatively & are soon exchanging children’s photos. Johnny shows me polaroids of himself as Hunter…Tracy and I leave together, big kisses: “Did you want to do that as much as I did?” she asks.
August 6, 1997
…Lunch at Fox with Peter Berg. His first words were “Obviously, you’re having an affair with Tracy Jacobs.”
August 8, 1997
…I left Peter an enthusiastic message at Tracy’s suggestion. I got a message—I was too stunned to speak: They want me to fill in for Paul Shaffer for a couple of weeks! Jordan wanted me to call right back & confirm as his “birthday present”—so I did.
EIGHT
FOR MY NEXT TRICK I’LL NEED A VOLUNTEER
I can saw a woman in two
But you won’t want to look in the box when
I’m through I can make love disappear
For my next trick I’ll need a volunteer
PAUL SHAFFER: The very first time Warren became my sub on the Letterman show was such an honor for me to get him to replace me, but it also got me out of a jam. I had to take two weeks off, which was unprecedented in this show’s history. But, I had the opportunity to be in the Blues Brothers 2000 movie sequel.
The show was fine with letting me off, but David has been notoriously tough on anybody who subbed for me because he doesn’t like to look over to his right and see a stranger there. And, here I was asking for two weeks off. Sheila Rogers, the talent coordinator, came up with the idea: Warren Zevon. I said, “Oh, fantastic.” Because Dave loves his music and digs him as a guy…in a totally heterosexual way, of course. I thought, if he would do it, that would be fantastic. And, sure enough, he was game to do it. So, it was wonderful. All he said was, “I have to fly in one day early because it takes me the first day to get rid of my headache.”
August 21, 1997
…Car to the Ed Sullivan Theater. Met Paul & we had lunch. Unbelievable tableau: Paul beating on the table & making me sing the theme after him—not softly. Met all. Everyone nice, greeted by Dave (“He never speaks to anyone else,” Paul insists.) Strange to have free reign of the whole theater. Bonnie Raitt guesting, she kissed me and said she and Jackson were just talking about Hunter’s notes on the anthology. Chatted with Michael O’Keefe: he & I told Sheila Rogers I need a wardrobe budget—“It’s a deal breaker, Sheila,” he said. Sitting up in the balcony with Larry, the monitor mixer, for both shows.
PAUL SHAFFER: David loved Warren’s music so much it became such that whenever he would do the show, they would play all of his music throughout the evening. I used to call it in radio parlance “All Zevon—all the time.”
August 22, 1997
…Met Paul at 12:30 to work on the theme—full band 2:00. “Rottweiler Blues” with big band should please Carl. Paul says the band’s confident, says he knows I’ve worked hard. Jordan arrived—we swung some.
PAUL SHAFFER: Before it was “All Zevon, all the time” we thought he would do maybe a few of his tunes and do some covers because, you know, we are really a cover band. I had been unaware that Warren was as much of a schooled musician as he was, but he was a classically trained pianist. He said, “Yeah, I thought for a while I’d be a classical pianist.” I said, “Classical pianist? Really? Why that?” And he said, “Well…romantic. I’m a romantic.” Simple as that.
August 23, 1997
…I actually dreamed about the theme—which I know now, I think. Went to Paul’s luxurious, 180 degree view apartment above Lincoln Center. Taught “The Girl from Ipanema.” Paul paid me a great compliment as I stood in his elevator—“You underestimate your musical abilities—you’re a cat.” Ran into Jon Landau on his way to see “Mimic”—I said I envied him. Turns out Ariel’s in New York looking for apartments so she, Jordan and I had dinner together. Ariel actually read “The Unconsoled”!!
PAUL SHAFFER: He came over to my apartment to prepare for this two-week stint, and he came in with a number of things he thought he might cover with my band. One of them was the current record by the Spice Girls. He had it written out in full score paper, as an arranger would write out a score, or classical composer would write out a score, for a full orchestra. The synthesizer solo was also transcribed.
Warren in the studio on a string session.
August 25, 1997—First show day
…Jordan came with me, Ariel met us. It went well enough—the theme came off okay, if Paul was listening & we figured he was…Had to do dumb guy; resented it slightly…
PAUL SHAFFER: I said, trying to choose my words carefully, “Warren, we are a cover band, but we choose our covers carefully because the covers dictate our image. Cover band is bad enough, but at least if we are doing the Rolling Stones, or Pearl Jam, or like, cool things…it’s important to us to do music that’s a little bit hipper than the Spice Girls.” He said, “But, don’t you see, Paul, that’s just how perverse I am.”
August 27, 1997—Third show
…The first really good show, where I felt relaxed; there was a really sweet moment when Dave caught me fiddling with a program change (“What are you doing?”) and I said, “Paul told me this would happen” and got a happy laugh from him. To me, it was like the ice breaker.
August 30, 1997—Sixth show
…Big box from Carl arrived—an immense, horrible mounted scorpion…
September 1, 1997—Eighth show
…Ariel & Ben moved into a sublet right down the street. I took them to Hell’s Kitchen where Julia’s neighbor had a Greek place. She met us. She looked great, in spite of her slightly disreputable and unruly dog left over from her last relationship. Julia was charming, and everybody was all chatty. My heart broke slightly. Nice night.
ARIEL ZEVON: The most memorable thing was that Letterman had sent him a big ice chest full of steaks. Dad gave them all to us because he couldn’t do anything with them in his hotel. So we went back with this enormous quantity of very high-quality steaks.
September 3, 1997
…I bought a green humidifier, then the trouble started. Dave wants six more songs of mine (by tomorrow, mark you). I refused and said I’d be happy to tell Sheila Rogers. I was indignant & she got indignant; things got said. I told her I thought she’d said something “inappropriate” to me…She said she didn’t want to insult me—I said, “I am insulted.” She apologized later, but—hey, I don’t give two shits.
September 4, 1997
…The shows went fine. Kevin Kline & I paid cordial tribute to each other. After, I was taken up to Dave’s sanctum. I didn’t have to wait too long…We had a pleasant conversation: He asked me about my background and L.A. early days, asked about Waddy, “He’s the real deal, isn’t he?” We had pictures taken & he gave me more Late Show paraphernalia—confirming my theory that there are two kinds of people: the ones who give you souvenirs of themselves and…
September 17, 1997
…. I played Waddy “I Was In the House…” and “Life’ll Kill Ya.” He really liked the latter. We listened to the new Rolling Stones which Waddy’s all over. Thoro
ughly enjoyable…Ariel faxed me her lease application to fill out & sign—it seems I’ll be responsible for her $1,050 Manhattan apartment—Crystal says she has no idea how she’ll afford it. Oh well. Dad helped me plenty. “Make him earn it is for farmers,” he once said. Visited Ryan.
October 19, 1997
…Strange title came to me unbidden today, “Hostage-O.” It’s reading all this Paul Bowles, I guess.
RYAN RAYSTON: Warren and I had several fights. The first one, oh, my God, I was reading some lyrics that Warren had next to his typewriter. I hadn’t known him very long, but I was familiar with his work, and with “Reconsider Me.” This page sounded like it could go to the music of “Reconsider Me.” He was washing his hands, and he came out and I said, “This song’s a little bit like ‘Reconsider Me.’” He freaked out. He accused me of accusing him of plagiarizing himself, and how dare I read his material. Well, it’s sitting right here, out in the open…I was asked to leave his apartment.
October 22, 1997
…Once & for all, here’s the jizz-storm formula: wearing a joke store dick harness inhibits the first ejaculation so that a blow job is required, and the second orgasm is absolutely mind blowing.
October 24, 1997—Dwight’s birthday party
…dressed in Prada, arrived late enough. “Here’s a great American,” Kinky Friedman says. “You haven’t called,” says Harry Dean. Kinky kept telling everyone we hadn’t seen each other in 25 years. We were both delighted. Despite my headache, I had a grand time.
RYAN RAYSTON: I don’t know why we bonded the way we did. Once in a while, Warren would ask me to fix him up. Sometimes, I would. One time, it actually worked. He dated a woman who he called “The Professor.” She’s a brilliant woman, and she was getting her doctorate in entertainment. She and Warren really hit it off, but she wanted the white picket fence and the happily ever after, and he wasn’t even ready to go out of his apartment with her. And yet, he cared for her. He cherished her. But, he couldn’t go that extra step.
Sometimes he would call me and ask me to go check someone out and tell him what I thought. There was one time I had hired Jordan to help me fix my computer, and Jordan was over here, and I said, “Have you seen Tattoo Lady?” And Jordan was like, “Yeah, even I’m disappointed in Dad.” But, you know, Warren loved all women. You didn’t have to be movie-star gorgeous or glamorous, but you had to have some spark, some effervescence—which is really saying a lot because most men just want the outside image. Warren was more interested in someone who could sustain a conversation…and fuck.
After Mutineer came out in 1995, Warren did not release another album until he signed with Artemis in 2000. He had a booking agent and a regular circuit of venues he could always play to keep a roof over his head, and he was writing some of the best songs he’d written since the early days of his career, but no one outside his immediate circle of friends and fans wanted to hear them.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: He did one of the hardest things there is to do in music, which was he injected a true sense of humor in all his work. There have only been a few guys who have pulled that off that well. Not jokes. He had real humor that was his own…The last song that I think of is “The Hockey Song,” which was not only hilarious, but brilliant in its exposition of character. He wasn’t a joke man; he would write something that had real meaning, and it was funny, too. That’s hard to do. I always envied that part of his ability and his talent.
In the end it would be Jackson Browne, who had convinced David Geffen to sign the fledgling songwriter to Asylum in 1975, who quietly and unobtrusively connected Warren with Danny Goldberg and Artemis Records. In the intervening years, however, one of the best bolsters for Warren’s ego came from his stint playing with a group of authors who had formed a rock band called the Rock Bottom Remainders.
DAVE BARRY, humorist: Warren made quite an impression on me. I met him through Carl Hiaasen. Carl likes to try to be a musician, although I think he’ll be the first to admit he’s one of the worst natural musicians in the history of the world. There’s a reason there’s not a lot of famous Norwegian rock stars. But Carl loves music, and he loved Warren’s music, and he used to sometimes play with this band of authors I’m in. Stephen King is in it and Amy Tan and a bunch of folks.
Carl called me once and said that Warren might be interested in coming out and playing with us, which I found stunning, but I was happy to hear it. He gave me Warren’s number, and I called him and we had a very funny conversation. I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody as accomplished and well known as Warren who was so determined never to say one remotely positive thing about himself. So, I kept assuring him we’d be really happy to have him. He kept assuring me he really can’t do anything but the hack.
MITCH ALBOM, writer: My first encounter with Warren was at a rehearsal of the Rock Bottom Remainders, which is a band of writers—Dave Barry, Ridley Pearson, Amy Tan, Stephen King, Roy Blount, Jr., who was with us at that time, and Carl. In and of itself, that should tell you how bad a band it actually is. We are a group of authors who have some rock and roll in our history, but not enough to qualify us even on the lowest rung of musicianship. Warren, on the other hand, is a real rock and roller who has a lot of rungs of literary interests and, somehow, somebody convinced him to play with us. I think he was intrigued by the idea of being around a lot of literary types after a lifetime of being around rock and roll types.
He was already at the rehearsal when I got there, and he was playing his guitar. I only knew Warren from playing keyboard, so I didn’t know that he was a guitar player. He had a guitar on, and he had a little box that had effects on it at his feet, and he kept stepping on these different buttons. It was like looking at a guy stepping on land mines to see if they blew up or not. Then, he would play some little whaa whaa whaa thing, then he’d hit another button, and he never looked up. So, for the first song or two that we were rehearsing, I never got his attention because he never looked up. He just played and he kept his back to everybody, and I thought, hey, I wonder what this guy’s like. Eventually, he looked up from his little effects box and he said, “Hi, I’m Warren.” I said, “Hi, I’m Mitch.”
November 20, 1997
…No headache…head up to Criteria Studios to meet Dave et al. Ridley Pearson’s there, Kathi Goldmark, the publicist/producer (and gilt-edged opportunist, I think), the band members, Dave’s okay, a little rude for my liking—the soul of a D.J. I put lead guitar on a funny blues song of his.
DAVE BARRY: We agreed to do a couple of his songs. One that even our band could play was “Werewolves of London,” because it’s three chords, which is close to our maximum. So, we talked about the key and everything, and Warren flew out. This was a Miami Book Fair band concert, but we were also recording a CD. It was a project of one of our band members, Kathi Goldmark, where it wasn’t really the band recording, but it was various authors she’d gotten to record songs—either songs they’d written or just songs they liked. I was recording a song called “The Tupperware Blues,” which was a stupid song I wrote that I first sang long ago at a drunken orgy of a Tupperware party at which more Tupperware was sold than any other Tupperware party in history.
Anyway, Warren said he wanted to play guitar on it. So, where I met him was in a recording studio. He showed up in Miami, rented a car, somehow found the recording studio—I say “somehow found” because I’ve never known Warren to be able to find anything without considerable trial and error. So, I was there. The musicians were there. We were halfway done with the actual song and in walks Warren Zevon. He was, as I later found out, pretty disorganized and not sure where he was or why he was there, but he had a guitar and, with some messing around, we got some of the stuff he wanted. He played this unbelievable solo. It’s the only good thing about this song…the way Warren played guitar on it. I’m still thrilled to this day that I have a song with Warren Zevon playing guitar. But, that’s how we met. We met musically.
November 20, 1997
…I fol
lowed Dave to his home where I met his & Ridley’s wives and had lunch: lunchmeat. Different strokes. They gave me directions to Dadeland Mall…Later, I was supposed to go to a restaurant with everybody—it was loose—I couldn’t find it. Had more fun roaming around & eating at Denny’s.
MITCH ALBOM: We traveled back and forth for these rehearsals, and Warren quickly gathered a reputation as a guy who had no idea how to get from point A to point B. He was always phoning Dave Barry on his cell phone, saying, “I think we made a wrong turn out of the hotel.” Then, we’d have to send a reconnaissance team to go find him and bring him in. We hadn’t had many real rock and rollers play with us. The band had been started with Al Cooper, but he dropped out and we were left with the writing contingent without any real rock and roll influence.
November 21, 1997
…Rehearsal. Stephen King’s as nice as can be. He told me he was thinking of “Mr. Bad Example” on his motorcycle trip across Australia. We exchanged compliments and seemed to hit it off. And, he sings “Werewolves of London” very well. I assume the show will be fine. I don’t know what I’m doing but they encourage my berserk lead playing. At the end of rehearsal, Steve actually said, “I have a car. You want to go to the mall and see “Starship Troopers”—then he remembered I’d promised my daughter.
STEPHEN KING, writer: He was reclusive, but he made himself come out enough to be with people. Like, we went to Dave’s house one night. This was before we went on one of those tours, and we all went to Dave’s house and went over a bunch of music. Warren was down with that, and then later on, we went over and we played at Scotty’s Landing, and Warren was down with that, too.
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