George Plasketes - Warren Zevon: Desperado of Los Angeles

Tempo: A Rowman & Littlefield Music Series on Rock, Pop, and Culture offers titles that explore rock and popular music through the lens of social and cultural history, revealing the dynamic relationship between musicians, music, and their milieu. Like other major art forms, rock and pop music comment on their cultural, political, and even economic situation, reflecting the technological advances, psychological concerns, religious feelings, and artistic trends of their times. Contributions to the Tempo series are the ideal introduction to major pop and rock artists and genres.

Bob Dylan: American Troubadour, by Donald Brown

Bon Jovi: Americas Ultimate Band, by Margaret Olson

British Invasion: The Crosscurrents of Musical Influence, by Simon Philo

Bruce Springsteen: American Poet and Prophet, by Donald L. Deardorff II

The Clash: The Only Band That Mattered, by Sean Egan

Kris Kristofferson: Country Highwayman, by Mary G. Hurd

Patti Smith: Americas Punk Rock Rhapsodist, by Eric Wendell

Paul Simon: An American Tune, by Cornel Bonca

Ska: The Rhythm of Liberation, by Heather Augustyn

Warren Zevon: Desperado of Los Angeles, by George Plasketes

Desperado of Los Angeles

George Plasketes

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham Boulder New York London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Plasketes, George.

Title: Warren Zevon : desperado of Los Angeles / George Plasketes.

Description: Lanham, Maryland : Published by Rowman & Littlefield, 2016. | Series: Tempo : A Rowman & Littlefield music series on rock, pop, and culture | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015041682 (print) | LCCN 2015043652 (ebook) | ISBN 9781442234567 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781442234574 (electronic)

Subjects: LCSH: Zevon, Warren. | Rock musiciansUnited StatesBiography.

Classification: LCC ML420.Z475 P53 2016 (print) | LCC ML420.Z475 (ebook) | DDC 782.42166092dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015041682

TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Always, for Julie

...we will float.

Out in Los Angeles in the 1970s, sat Warren Zevon at his piano, precariously perched on the edge of Americas dream factory. He was at home on the edge. At the start of his adolescence, in 1960, Zevons parents moved from Chicago into the Southern California sun. Since then, Zevon had spent most of his years not so much basking in that sun, its culture, and its music, but rather dehydrating the L.A. romance of living forever as a media (and mediated) creation. By 1976, when Zevon was 29at the trailing edge of what everyone would call youthhe released his first major-label debut album, titled Warren Zevon. The buoyant sounds and parched sentiments eponymously announced a new artist headed in a new direction: here was one bound to enjoy the ride through canyons overheated from an interminable sun, singing intimations of mortality.

Zevons wit, wordplay, and wonderment at lifes shortcomings, all wrapped in smartly arranged pop-rock songs, played against the sun-kissed California singer-songwriters of the 1970s much like a tonic is to an Orange Julius. George Plasketes tells this story with a scholars assessment of Zevons career and cultural influence, and a fans appreciation for his artistry. Plasketess writing complements Zevons lexical dexterity, and each chapter is itself a delightful direction toward pinning down a renegades craft. Zevon expended some effort to cultivate his outlaw persona, but not much. Being drawn to the edges by temperament, Zevon drew from real life to compose fictions to say what he saw underneath all the glamour. A consummate reader, making him one of rocks most literate songwriters, he knew the power of a story of a character in crisis, and seemed to court peril as his muse. Zevon greedily stepped over borders when he could, to blur the edges and combine forces. He brought a classical musicians training to the rock culture milieu; he used more, and more challenging, words than rock and roll had typically thought necessary to say life was short and then you die, so savor it; he drank his human tenderness to the brink of destruction, then, after having enjoyed a long stretch of regained health, had cancer take him all the way.

For his intelligence, poetics, musicianship, and cultural criticism, Zevon earned the respect of his contemporariesthe likes of Jackson Browne, Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, and Bob Dylanand many more in the 1 percent of the showbiz industry. His signing to David Geffens Asylum Records in the 1970s would prove monumental for Zevon and Geffen, not to mention all the artists on the label, and by the end of his life in 2003, he was much revered and beloved as a result of having lent his hand to many musical projects. Postmortem celebrations and affections for Zevon continue to this day, perhaps ironically, as Plasketes charts throughout this book. For as much as he has been a central figure since the 1970s in the history of American singer-songwriters, Zevon has never had the popular appeal of a Neil Young or a Springsteen. He continues to cling to the edges, but rewards all who come out to find him.

Scott Calhoun