MITCH ALBOM: After he went to the doctors, I couldn’t help but wonder, what are these people doing? They’ve turned him into a junkie again. I got a letter from a doctor who had seen Warren in some capacity during the process. He heard me on the radio after Warren did the David Letterman appearance, and he sent me a letter saying, “I don’t want to talk out of school here, but what Warren is facing does not have to be immediately life threatening. There are alternatives, and I don’t think his doctors are giving him the right advice.”
But, honestly, this was at the point when there was no even talking to Warren. He wasn’t returning anybody’s phone calls. He wasn’t returning anybody’s e-mails. There was no way that any of us could get to him. That lunch that we had in the immediate throes of his diagnosis, they had just given him morphine like, “Here. Take a bottle of it.” He was sort of marveling like, “Who knew it was this easy to get this shit?”
DAVE BARRY: The last time I saw Warren, it was after he’d been diagnosed. I was one of the writers for the Academy Awards that Steve Martin hosted. I started going to L.A. every few weeks, so I called Warren and he said, “Let’s have dinner.” I was staying at a Beverly Hills hotel…the Merv Griffin hotel. Warren came over with this guy who drove him a lot, and he called me from the lobby. I came downstairs and he’d gone into the gift shop and bought these hideous, powder-blue Beverly Hills Hotel hats that nobody under the age of 107 would ever voluntarily wear.
He had his on, and he made me put mine on. We had a cameraman with us…VH1 was doing this documentary, and the camera guy was cool. I said, “If it’s fine with you, it’s fine with me.” So, the three of us walked through the lobby—Warren and I in our powder-blue asshole hats. We decided to eat in the hotel because that’s where we were. Warren, on the way to the hotel, had stopped and gotten like fifty-three gallons of liquid morphine. He had these bottles clinking away. He brought the bag in to show me how they’d really loaded him up.
He had kind of joyfully leaped off the wagon that he had been on for so many years. I was certainly not going to criticize him for that. I don’t know what I would do. Anyway, we went down to the nearly empty dining room there and made a huge amount of noise. First of all, Warren had placed all his bottles of morphine on the table and we were laughing hard…we were laughing so hard, we were crying. But, it was genuinely happy crying. It was one of the funniest meals I ever had, and it wasn’t funny because we were studiously avoiding the fact that he was dying. That was pretty much all we were talking about.
We kept looking for the light side of death. We discussed how he could get a tattoo if he wanted. No regrets. A couple of times we went outside by the pool because we were being too loud. Then we came back in. He ordered a lot of stuff—lobsters and steaks. He was wearing this bright-colored scarf, looking real rock star-ish. We had a great meal, then we went outside…we went outside to say good-bye and, you know, it’s different when you’re saying good-bye and you know it’s really good-bye. I thought maybe I’d see him again, but I didn’t. I think he knew we wouldn’t. I said, “I love you,” and he said, “I love you.” And, that was it. He got in the car.
RYAN RAYSTON: When he went to the studio, he would load up on pain pills because he didn’t want anyone to see how sick he was. He would get himself to a point where he could be stable for two hours, and then leave and come back where he would collapse.
BILLY BOB THORNTON: One night after Warren got sick, he came over to my house and he had his liquid morphine with him. We had this really expensive bottle of scotch, like a five-hundred-dollar bottle of scotch, and he was mixing it with liquid morphine.
RICHARD LEWIS: He knows that I’m sober, and once he was diagnosed, he cut off his e-mail and his phone. But, he did tell me he was going to go out this way because he didn’t know how long he had, and he was very honest about it. But, I don’t believe he wanted me in my early sobriety to be hanging around a guy who was whacked, who was drinking. A woman, Ryan, that I had dated back in the early ’90s became friendly with him, and I would give her messages and hope she would pass them along. I was grateful that Ryan called me from time to time.
RYAN RAYSTON: His belief in God was unwavering. Never once did Warren question why this was happening to him. But, it was very difficult. He started out taking the medication, then mixing the medication with alcohol, then just getting completely loaded and wasted and losing himself. I think he had to lose himself to gain his footing. It was like a minideath where he could have control and bring himself back. Because, in the bigger picture, he had no control over what would happen to him. So, he could let himself get really, really fucked up and be on the verge of, of…whatever…then it was like, “Okay, I can get through the day with two drinks, three percodans…”
He had a system. It kept him even and sane because we’re all going to die, but not many of us are told we have two months to live. Warren had no anxiety except for when his breathing started to really fail and certain nights he had to go on oxygen. The fact that his body was betraying him and he could watch that happen…He said, “I’m too old to die young and too young to die now.”
JORGE CALDERON: After the first songs were recorded, it got really hard. He never came back to the studio. He got very depressed, started drinking…He had started drinking before that. I didn’t know it. I found out after Letterman, when he came back from doing Letterman. And I told him, I said, “Listen, I heard about this…I don’t blame you…but the only thing I have to tell you is watch it. Drinking on top of the pain medication that you have could be lethal. It would be a shame for something to happen before you can live out your life as long as you can.” He understood that. He said, “Oh, I just had to. I couldn’t do without it.” I said, “I understand, but please. You need to be very careful.” I was the only one around who knew what he got like when he was drunk. I didn’t blame him, but it got pretty bad. Just like the old days.
Warren and Ry Cooder during the recording of The Wind.
DANNY GOLDBERG: The first time I was at the studio, they were doing “My Dirty Life and Times.” There’s that line “I’m looking for a woman with low self-esteem,” which he told me Billy Bob Thornton asked could he please sing that line. So, they remixed it specifically for that. I haven’t seen anybody actually write about that line yet, but at some point that’s going to be one of the lines he’s known for.
BILLY BOB THORNTON: Warren wanted to go down to the studio at my house to record “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door.” I start down the stairs and Warren’s right behind me. I just got this feeling, you know? Like something prickly on the back of my neck, and it made me stop in the middle of the stairway and turn around. Warren was right behind me and he put his arms around me and just hugged me. Not just a hug, like you do and then go on, but he just held on to me. And, I held on to him. It lasted a long time. Then, he gets up real close and he says, “Remember when you told me about the time you gave that guy the TV?” There was this time when I was so broke I couldn’t afford food, and there was this other actor, who was also broke…but there was something about this guy…I wanted to give him something…something from me. I had this old TV, and it was about all I owned. So, I gave him my TV. So, I said, “Yeah, I remember.” Warren said, “I want to give you something.” He took off his ring, it was a silver ring that was round on the inside, but square on the outside, and he gave it to me. I started bawling like a baby. He didn’t like people crying around him, and I kept having to say how sorry I was, but I couldn’t stop myself. I fell apart right there with him telling me it was okay.
NOAH SNYDER: We did some recording over at Billy Bob Thornton’s. Some of that was really great, and some was less great. Billy was a great friend to Warren and a wonderful guy, but Warren had started to drink and he was pretty wild. We had already recorded “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door,” but Billy wanted Warren on a couple of his own songs. So, he books Warren for a six P.M. session at the Cave, his studio. They rented a grand piano and they set up another
room. Warren was going to play on one song and sing backgrounds on another. We walk in and Billy’s got his glass of red wine in his hand, and there’s scotch and beer…Warren had just started drinking. He was starting to say things like, “Get a bottle of scotch.” In my mind, I’m thinking, “This is wrong.” It felt wrong immediately.
People who knew him back in the day must have had some idea about that Warren. But, people who weren’t there were all thinking at some level how they’d love to have partied one night with the Excitable Boy. I’m sorry, but that’s a sick thing. But, I didn’t have the wherewithal to say anything or to try to stop it. Anyway, that night, Warren got drunk. It’s ten-thirty. They’ve got Tommy Shaw down singing his nine zillionth background vocal. Finally, I say, “You’ve got to do Warren. It’s getting late. He’s hammered.” So, Warren sings background on a song called “The Desperate One” and they actually used it. It sounds like a drunk guy screaming into the mic, which it was.
So, we go to record this piano thing and Warren got real mad. He’s wasted and he’s not playing real good, and there’s some weird meter in the middle of the thing and he keeps missing it and screwing up the second half of the song. I’m down in the control room, and he’s upstairs with the piano. So, I go up to help him out, to see if we can get a performance. It’s working better, but not great. So, after one pass, Jim, the engineer, says, “I think we want a little more barroom.” He turns off the talkback so we can’t hear them, but we’ve got microphones all over and they can hear everything we’re saying. “Barroom,” Warren screams. “Fuck you. I don’t do fucking barroom. You big fuck, what the fuck do you know? I’ll do Stravinsky, but I don’t do barroom.” He is fired up.
Noah Snyder, Billy Bob Thornton, and Dwight Yoakam in Billy’s studio recording The Wind.
Okay, one more time and he plays amazing. Totally unusable for this song because they want barroom and he’s playing Stravinsky. But, it was an amazing thing to be a part of. I conducted him and he got through it perfectly, not for the song, but it was beautiful. We finish, he looks at me, and he says, “I love you.”
August 3, 2004, from a conversation in Billy Bob’s home recording studio:
JORGE CALDERON:…the night we cut “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door,” we were hanging out over here, at Billy Bob’s, and Warren was upstairs while we were waiting to start working and…he had taken pills and he was pouring a huge glass of straight booze…man, that night, he sang that song with a wonderful, heartfelt lyric, and I’m thinking, man, how can he do that? All that stuff at once, how can he sing the song and be drunk and be dying…but, he could do that…I guess that’s the only way he could deal with what was going on. At that time, we had only recorded a couple songs.
BILLY BOB THORNTON: We hadn’t done “Prison Grove” yet or any of that.
JORGE: No, not yet. We came here to actually sing on Billy’s album.
BILLY BOB: We had a grand piano upstairs and Warren was going to play piano on a country song of mine…It sounds like Ferante & Teicher on acid. He played something…we didn’t know what it was, but it was a riot. He was just having fun, man. We just let him go and he pulled this insane piano part.
JORGE: So, he said to me, “Come on, we’re going to play on some Billy Bob song.” I was thrilled to come meet you and we were waiting. You were doing something down in the studio and we were upstairs. There was a whole bunch of people here, playing pool and hanging around.
BILLY BOB: Then he came down, and he walked up to me, and he’s literally standing right here, right up to my face, real close to my face, and he said, “I want to do ‘Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door.’” I started laughing. He’d been joking with me all night, and he said, “Yeah, I want to do ‘Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door.’” So I said, “Sure, why not?” He said, “I don’t want to mess up what you’re doing, but frankly, it doesn’t look like you’re doing shit.” Which was true. We had all these people here, and we were just having this big party.
JORGE: He came upstairs, and he said, “I just asked Billy to get a half hour’s studio time and I want to cut ‘Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door.’” I was going, “What!?” Laughing. Like, “Oh, man, really? You really want to do that?” “Yep.” I thought it was a little too much to do that song, but when I heard him sing it…when we got it together, I thought, oh, my God, if anyone will sing it, it’s him. Because, you know, if you don’t mean it and feel it, then forget about it. It turned out to be the most effective version, except for Dylan’s, of course.
BILLY BOB: Well, I mean Dylan’s Dylan. But, Dylan was singing it about somebody. Warren’s singing it about himself. I just remember how we were all standing here watching. It was all pretty emotional, and he was right there in that booth singing the song. Then, we went out, the way we did the harmonies, we all went out in a gang. And, that was the moment that moved me…there’s a bunch of his friends, standing there in a circle, singing all in one mic.
JORGE: Warren was standing here, on the other side of the glass, looking at us and kind of producing us. He was kind of like, “Okay, well, do it again. It’s beautiful.”
BILLY BOB: Yeah. It was really good.
JORGE: What I have to say about what the band did…that was take two that made it onto the album. We just played it twice. But, the spirit in the room was so intense, the reverence that I felt from all the musicians was very soulful…I was sitting in here, on the edge of the couch, and there were a whole bunch of people here and I was so into it, more than any other song I had done. I played a certain way that I don’t usually do. It was intense. My wife listens to that song and says, “Wow. You were really into it that day.” Everybody…Randy…The way the guitar player is playing.
BILLY BOB: Yeah, Warren used my band and Jorge. Brad Davis and Tommy Shaw…there were all these people here…like bringing it back like the old days. What you were saying doesn’t usually happen now. That’s what we do here. We have sessions and we just have people over. My kids will be upstairs and running around, and they’re like ten and eleven, and they’ll have their little pals, and we’ll be in the studio recording and they’ll run down here right in the middle of stuff and it’s okay. It’s not that stiff kind of session where everybody has to be all buttoned down. It’s just, so what? Somebody opened the door. We’ll do it again. You know what I mean? It doesn’t matter, and that night was one of those nights. We probably had twenty-five people here, anyway.
JORGE: I was playing the bass all scrunched up because there were people sitting here, there were people standing up…your director from Monster’s Ball…
BILLY BOB: Paul Markowitz, yeah. I had a bunch of women over here and they were all singing at the same time.
JORGE:…shit was happening…and I was like with all these people, but at the same time, I was so deep into this, I was in a bubble. Nothing else mattered outside this spiritual music we were playing. And, I think the whole band was like that.
BILLY BOB: Yeah, oh yeah. It was like that.
CRYSTAL: So, “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” was totally spontaneous…
JORGE: He came up with the idea, and then he started telling everybody…everybody was going like, “What key?” And I said, “G”…And then, “Do you know the lyrics?” Oh, no. We don’t have the lyrics. And, I said, “Out in my car I have Dylan’s Greatest Hits that has that song. So, I went to the car, got it here, we copied the words from Dylan’s version…wrote ’em down, and then we just went out and did it.
BILLY BOB: You don’t want to say “Oh golly, if only I had…” You want to try to live. All that got me to thinking about, you know, my kids and everything…I’ve lived a life not dissimilar to Warren’s, and I started thinking, you know, I need to pay attention…
We end our shows with that…ever since then. And dedicate it to Warren, John [Ritter], and Johnny [Cash]. When Warren died…I’d been out on tour with my band and our last gig was the Farm Aid concert with Willie Nelson and everybody. I woke up that morning and my right lung was
burning up—I’m not kidding. It felt like it was on fire. I didn’t see how I was going to get through the day, let alone get onstage and play. I had to do an interview, and Kristin, my assistant, somehow got me out of the trailer and all these people wanted their pictures taken with me, like Dennis Kucinich, who was running for president, and I remember feeling like I was going to die. Anyway, we got onstage, and I swear, the pain went away, but the minute I walked off the stage, it started up again. It was the last gig of the tour and I was so sick, I told Kristin, my assistant, to get a hotel and I went to bed. At around midnight Kristin woke me up and said, “Billy, it’s Warren…” I knew it was going to happen…it shouldn’t have been a surprise, but somehow, I just couldn’t believe it. I’ve had a lot of loss, but I had such a hard time believing Warren was gone. I was still sick, so I stayed there for a couple days, then my manager called. He said, “Billy, we lost John.” John Ritter had died…just like that. No one expected that. And then we lost Johnny Cash. I used to stay at his house…I knew him for a long time. And just like that…in one week, I lost three of my best friends: Warren, John, and Johnny. They were all gone.
JORGE CALDERON: He called me one night and said, “I was writing poetry and it was really bad and flowery and esoteric, but I wrote this one line, ‘Disorder in the house’”…I said, “That’s a great line for a rock and roll song.” He said, “See what you can do with it.” I wrote the first verse and the middle section. “The top runneth over,” and that whole deal about the helicopters. And then, the middle part, “the floodgates are open and we’ve let the demons loose, big guns have spoken and we’ve fallen for the ruse.” He went, “Oh, man, that’s great. I knew you would go after George.” I said, “You did?” And he said, “Yeah, I had a feeling.” Any time I got into politics with him, he would never contradict me. He would be like, yeah, yeah, I know…He knew I was going after George W.
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