I'll Sleep When I'm Dead

by Crystal Zevon

  We wrote that when Bush was setting the stage to go to Iraq, his hype was all over the news, and that’s what we were referring to. So, we got together at his house and did the same as with “Mr. Bad Example.” Not with all the joy because he didn’t feel good, but we started finishing each other’s lines. He wrote some great lines—the second verse, the zombies…he had a blank before “wisdom”…I said, “They have reptilian brains, so let’s make it reptile wisdom”…He said, “the less you know, the better off you’ll be”…I had asked him if he wanted to write a song called “Fresno Matinee” because every time we’d go to the movies, he’d say, “Let’s go somewhere that reminds me of Fresno.” So, that made it into a line of the song instead. I had written at the bottom of the page, because I didn’t think it had anything to do with the song, “a fate worse than fame.” He says, “Oh, yeah! Disorder in the house, a fate worse than fame, even my pet…like some pet…seems to be ashamed…some dog, some Rottweiler…no, I used Rottweiler already…what’s that little dog…Lhasa apso!” I said, “Yeah, Lhasa apso.” “How do you spell it?” he says. So we go to the dictionary and try to spell it right.

  YVONNE CALDERON: After he started drinking, Warren did something on Jorge’s birthday that was such a betrayal of their friendship I felt like going to the studio and saying, “Who do you think you are, you asshole?” It was Jorge’s 55th birthday and they had been working for days on end, and my daughter and I were getting ready to bring a cake to the studio. Warren said, “No, you can’t come to the studio. We can’t have anybody else in the studio here.” What? On Jorge’s birthday you’re going to deny his wife and his daughter from coming…“That’s right.” He had a rock and roll fit and it was outrageous. After all of the years of friendship and love and you’re my brother and blah blah blah…Jorge was like, well, I don’t even feel like going into the studio now.

  JORGE CALDERON: December 17th of 2002 Keltner and I put the track together for “Disorder in the House” and Bruce Springsteen was coming the next day to sing on it. We started putting the track together, and we said to Warren, “You play guitar, too.” But, he was so out of it that his timing was totally bad and we couldn’t get a track. I said, “Listen, why don’t you lay off and let me do this with Keltner.” So, we put the track together, then I said, “Okay, let’s sing it.” You can see him on the VH1 documentary and he’s trying, but he had taken painkillers and he had a flask in his bag that he was drinking from. He was totally unable to do it.

  I had to tell him, “There’s no use going on. Bruce can’t sing to this. Come back tomorrow and do it fresh when you first get up. In other words, don’t start drinking. Just come here and do it and then you can do whatever you want.” I said, “Bruce is going to sing on top of you. It has to be good. You can do it. I know you can do it.” He gave me that whole trip about I’m dying and I said, I know, I know, but we’re here—celebrating today. So, if you’re alive, let’s do it. The next morning…he apologized. “I’m really sorry. You had to take me to the side like in the old days to give the ‘You’ve got to straighten up, you’re too drunk’ rap, Jorge. I wouldn’t want to put you in this position.” I said, “Don’t worry. Let’s just do it right. Bruce is coming.” He was rested and he sang it two or three times. He was very cooperative. We got the vocal and, about an hour later, Bruce came in. And it was like, oh my God, thank you. Then they won a Grammy for best rock performance. Which is great, isn’t it?!

  BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: I’d read that he was recording and some people were going to play on it. I hadn’t seen him since he became ill. I wrote him a note and said hi and told him how I’d enjoyed the last series of records he’d made. I said, “If you need anybody to sing or play guitar, give me a call.” It was nice. He called me up and it was bittersweet. He was quite different. He was the same and different. He still had that wryness, but he was very, very open in a way that I don’t recall having seen before. Very, very open and generous and filled with life at that particular moment.

  Bruce Springsteen and Warren recording The Wind.

  It was a lovely experience for me. I enjoyed being there, and he let me play a lot of lead guitar, which he seemed to get a big kick out of, and so that was fun. We spent a few hours, and I had a feeling I wasn’t going to be seeing him again. We hugged and talked a little bit. At the time, he was concerned about what kind of treatment he was going to get. He was debating…I’m not sure if it was the chemotherapy…but I remember he said, “Gee, it’s a sin not to try to stay alive.”

  We just hugged and said good-bye. He played me a big piece of the record, and it was quite an afternoon. But, he was different. He was fatigued. You could see that he was fighting and had been worn down. He was struggling to get the record made, but on the other hand, he was very wide open and loving. He was appreciative of where he was standing and what he was doing at that time. It was a memorable afternoon.

  Jackson Browne and Warren during the recording of The Wind.

  JORGE CALDERON: When Bruce came to sing on “Disorder in the House” I told him to just sing harmony to all the lines, then we’ll pick and choose. Every time he got to the Lhasa apso line he couldn’t sing it because he’d laugh so hard. So, you can hear it on the record…the Lhasa apso line goes by and you can hear Bruce say, “Oh, I’m going to let Warren handle that one by himself.” Yeah. I was proud of that one.

  NOAH SNYDER: When Springsteen played on “Disorder in the House,” which was a cosmic event as far as both Warren and I were concerned, there was something so magical about the energy that he brought. When he came in, I’m all ready for him to be picky about how he wants to record the guitar, the amp, whatever. Then, all he does is turn the amp all the way up. So, after he plays, he kills the amp. The speakers are ripped and torn, and the last sounds he made are those sounds on the album.

  He calls Warren the next day, and we had been knocked out by it at the time. We listen to it, and it was incredible. I said, “The amp died. It was like Sir Galahad at the moment he finds the Grail. There was nothing left for the amp to do—it had achieved the highest state of amp-dom and went right up to God at that point.” Warren thought that was the greatest thing on earth.

  BILLY BOB THORNTON: After he got sick, I saw a side of him I hadn’t seen before. A softer, gentler side. He told me how scared he was. He said sometimes underneath all the sarcastic things he was saying about death, he felt frightened—like he just didn’t know what was happening to him. His last album had something beyond what he’d done before musically. It wasn’t just about the strange humor, although his humor and style were there, for sure, but the songs had meaning. Heart.

  DANNY GOLDBERG: Then, suddenly, it was done. He was so happy and so sad, it was an amazing time to be around him. He was mostly enjoying all the attention…Ry Cooder was playing on his record. He was like a little kid. Ry had blown him off on all his previous records, and this one was just a spiritual album for everyone.

  FOUR

  DON’T LET US GET SICK

  Don’t let us get sick

  Don’t let us get old

  Don’t let us get stupid, all right?

  Just make us be brave

  Make us play nice

  And let us be together tonight

  Warren lived for a year past his initial diagnosed death date. He wasn’t sick enough to go to the hospital, he didn’t get old, and, most important, he never got stupid.

  Shortly before Warren’s diagnosis, Ariel and Ben had become engaged. They had planned a long engagement, but then thought that perhaps they would have a small ceremony so that Warren could be there.

  CRYSTAL ZEVON: Ariel wanted me to ask Warren if they should move their wedding plans up. By this time, he was being bombarded with requests for interviews, friends wanting to spend time with him, Letterman doing a show devoted to him…Even so, his reaction was not what I expected. He said, “It’s just one more thing to have to think about. Everybody wants me to make them feel better. Tell Ariel I appreciate the thou
ght, but I don’t need to be there.”

  Somehow, I told Ariel…so they decided to have an engagement party instead. I flew out for the party. Warren and I talked on the phone right after I arrived, and we got our signals crossed. He thought I was coming over to his place the next day, the day of the party. I thought he was going to call me first. So, by the time he arrived at the party with Susan Jaffy, he was in a very surly mood, mostly directed at me. Apparently, this was the night he started drinking, although most of us didn’t know that until much later.

  Warren and Ariel at Ariel and Ben’s engagement party, one month after his diagnosis. He started drinking the night of the party.

  SUSAN JAFFY: The night of Ariel’s engagement party, he was being such a drama queen. I kept saying, “This is not about you. This is about your daughter tonight.” He was so mad at me. You never say that to him. I was mad at him, too, but I did my role. The day before, he was like, “You have a boyfriend, and I don’t want you to come.” Then, he changed his mind, but I had to bring five outfits over so he could decide what he wanted me to wear. Always with the clothes.

  On the way home was the first night I saw him have a drink. We stopped at a hamburger place and got dinner to go. I had a glass of wine and he said, “I’m having something.” So I said, “Go ahead.” That’s the first time I ever saw him have alcohol. The next thing I know, there was a bottle of scotch next to the bed. I was a little concerned about the amount of alcohol, but I also figured, truly, what difference does it make?

  He was uncomfortable about it and he was upset, and yet, it was something he loved. Although he hated himself for doing it. I don’t think he would’ve gone back to it if he hadn’t died this way. Although he used to joke, “Let’s get an apartment in the Valley and just get drunk every day.” But, I don’t think he would have done it.

  v On October 30, 2002, Warren appeared on David Letterman’s show as his only guest.

  PAUL SHAFFER: That last performance on Letterman, well, it was unforgettable. First of all, David devoted the entire show to him and his interview, which will be quoted on and on—his amazing attitude toward the inevitable that he was facing. He was going to sing three songs, and did. That’s a lot even for a guy who’s well because you rehearse it just the hour before. He rehearsed three songs in an hour, and then got changed, and then did the show. He said to me on the phone, when he was still in Los Angeles and we were preparing it, “Just keep the jokes coming. I don’t want anybody feeling sorry for me in this rehearsal.” I said, “Don’t worry. I’m just going to be doing my job of trying to help you get things together.”

  He had a beautiful string quartet piece…the story of the guy who was making out like Charlie Sheen…“Genius”…That was like way off-the-wall classical string quartet writing he pulled off. Then, the other one was “Mutineer,” and that was beautiful. And “Roland,” which we had played with him in the early days of the show, and he rocked that one. It was quite a tour de force. It would have been even for a healthy guy and at that time he was a little bit weak. And, he had flown in and he didn’t even have that day to recover from his headache that time.

  RICHARD LEWIS: When someone like Letterman, who is on the commercial airwaves, feels so deeply appreciative of Warren and his work that he gives him this unbelievably emotional hour, which as far as I can recall he had never done before, I had to let him know that I was speaking for all the people who didn’t know how to write to him. Dave replied in one sentence: “Dear Richard, thanks, but it was all Warren. Dave.” I had written the Gettysburg Address, and he answered with one sentence.

  ARIEL ZEVON: I found out I was pregnant, which changed how much I was able to help out. But, in the early months, I was going over to see him a few times a week. I’d make casseroles or things he’d like to eat, and I’d be there as much as I could, or as much as he would let me. But, whenever Dad was really bad, he wouldn’t let anyone come, so…Sometimes it was bad because of his illness, other times it was the drinking. I didn’t know, or maybe I knew but I didn’t see the drinking until Christmas.

  CRYSTAL ZEVON: On Christmas Eve, I was with my parents in Arizona and Ariel called me. She was crying and she told me Warren was drunk. She said she’d had a fantasy that the one good thing that would come out of her dad’s illness was that they would finally have their moment. She said, “I imagined the sun would be shining through the window, and we would hold hands and look into each other’s eyes and say all the things we’ve never been able to say to each other. Now I know we’ll never have that moment.”

  ARIEL ZEVON: At the Christmas Eve party at his apartment, he was drunk and that was the first time I really saw it. When the evening started, it seemed like just the typical awkwardness…the family opening presents in a self-conscious way in front of his manager and his dentist. But, after that, he was drunk and I was disappointed and angry and scared and just generally miserable about the fact that he was drinking. Brigette’s boyfriend was drinking beer and Dr. Stan brought him a bottle of champagne. I was four months pregnant and Dad was smoking in the apartment, so I had to go outside because I was pregnant and I didn’t want to breathe in his smoke. He didn’t even notice.

  Jordan, Ariel, and Ben, Christmas Eve, 2002.

  Ben, Ariel, and Warren, Christmas Eve, 2002, in Warren’s apartment.

  CARL HIAASEN: I honestly wasn’t surprised that he started drinking, but I didn’t know him before. What I was worried about was that it was going to go unchecked. It did, actually. There were some bad times. Some of it I’m glad I didn’t know about. At one point I was going to get on a plane and go out there because Brigette and Jorge had called me and said he wouldn’t even open the door. They couldn’t get into the apartment. They were trying to find Jordan with the key, but Warren wouldn’t even answer phone calls. I was fearing the worst. Apparently, it was pretty bad, but he told me that the holidays always put him in a depression. It was just multiplied infinitely by the knowledge that this was going to be his last Christmas and New Year’s.

  MITCH ALBOM: The last time I corresponded with him was Christmas. It was right on Christmas Eve, or Christmas Day, and I was complimenting him on all these people who were coming to record with him. Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty. I thought it was nice that they were paying tribute to how much they thought of his career, and I sent him a note along the lines of, “Hey, big shot, you’ve got Bruce Springsteen coming over on Tuesday and Tom Petty on Thursday. Congratulations.” He sent me back this sweet little note: “Mitch, they don’t hold a candle to you. Merry Christmas and let’s have a happy New Year. Your little buddy, Warren.” And that was it. That turned out to be the last real correspondence I had with him because in the last couple of months it was pretty much down to immediate family and the David Letterman appearance. Then, we got the news.

  ARIEL ZEVON: We went to Arizona for Christmas and, by the time we got back, Dad wasn’t letting anyone into his apartment. No one had heard from him, no one knew what was going on. Finally, Jordan camped out outside his apartment because he knew that he was having groceries delivered. So he waited until they came up with the groceries and he got in that way. Dad had been on a drinking binge for weeks.

  Ryan talked about how there was shit on the walls and it was a bad, bad scene. So, Jordan went in and cleaned up the apartment. It was a struggle for a while. We hired a twenty-four-hour nurse to be with him, and then it was a battle with Brigette and Ryan and everyone talking about his drinking and trying to hide the bottles or stop him from being able to buy the booze. Some people were buying it for him, some people were trying to hide it, some people were trying to regulate how much he got delivered. It was a fiasco of trying to control an alcoholic’s drinking, which is, of course, impossible.

  RYAN RAYSTON: When we finally got into his apartment, it was like death had already come. There were bottles and trash everywhere. Warren was passed out on the floor, covered in his own filth. Jordan and I cleaned the apartment. I got Warren in the bath and washed him
. He was so embarrassed and humiliated, but mostly he was just scared.

  CARL HIAASEN: Warren was going through a very dark period. After Christmas, no one could get to him and he was drinking a lot. Jorge was at the end of his rope just trying to get Warren to finish the last few songs, and I would leave messages. Once in a great while he would call back. Or, once in a great while, he’d pick up the phone, or one of the nurses would give him the phone. But, it was tough for a few months. So Jorge said, “I don’t know what to do to get him to do these songs, but we’re not going to be able to finish the album if he doesn’t do them. We need his vocals. I know he doesn’t feel well, and I know he’s depressed…” I said, “Here’s what you do. Leave a message on his machine that you’re going to get John Hiatt to do the vocals.” I said, “You’ll get a call.” Of course, the irony was that John Hiatt was a big fan of Warren’s. There were people who thought the world of him.

  ARIEL ZEVON: After that, I was visiting at one point and he cried and told me how sorry he was that he was drinking, and how guilty he felt. I told him that I didn’t blame him for drinking, and I understood. But, I did tell him that I couldn’t watch him drinking. I understood, but I didn’t want to watch it. I learned that if I got there before he’d started drinking, it was fine. But, if I got there after he’d started drinking, there was nothing that would stop him. I’d go in the other room and come back and he’d be sneaking booze into his Coke can. I didn’t judge him, but it was bad, and I felt cheated by it.