We were staying at the El Encanto we had so much fun! Sometimes we took the baby down to the beach, even on cold days when nobody was out we’d dig our toes in the sand and walk up and down the beach : we loved it.Ĭrystal Zevon will be signing I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead at Borders Books on State Street, June 13 at 7 p.m. We decided to move to Santa Barbara when he opened for the Grateful Dead. You two lived in Santa Barbara for a while do any memories stand out? Oh yes. After he finished the album, he said, “Now I have to hurry up and die, so they can nominate me for a Grammy.” He didn’t believe they’d ever do it if he was alive, and he was right he got two Grammys posthumously. He always believed people would discover him after he died. Do you think he’d see any irony in the re-releases of his music, the interest in this book, now that he’s gone? Definitely. Warren was never hugely successful-commercially or financially, anyway. He got sober shortly before he died, and managed to be there for the births of his grandsons, and make peace with himself and the people around him. He felt he’d done his job for whatever legacy he was going to have, and made his family his priority. After the album was finished, he reprioritized. It seemed like he got a handle on it by the time he passed away, though. Nobody wants to go down with one of those awful diseases where you don’t make sense anymore, but he says it with that little twist of phrase that’s for everybody.Īfter he got sick and started drinking again after 17 years of sobriety, what did you think? It broke my heart. Like on the Life’ll Kill Ya album, the song that closes, “Don’t let us get sick / Don’t let us get old / Don’t let us get stupid, all right?” It’s so simple. Some of what he wrote requires a certain perspective that might be a little skewed from your average Joe, but I also think his songs are very accessible. There’s a great quote from Bonnie Raitt: “We had to be truly twisted to get Warren, and I mean that in a good way.” Do you agree? (Laughs) Well, yes and no. Later, he compartmentalized, so people saw different sides of him, which was another reason for the book’s format, so different people could talk about those different sides. He’d let himself be exposed to me when we were young, vulnerable, and open. But somewhere along the way, it hit me that I wasn’t really surprised, and that that was why Warren asked me to write the book. Were you shocked by anything you uncovered? The degree of excess, the degree of torment, the degree of obsession, and how many women-I didn’t know the extent of it. I felt his story would be better told-and more interesting, honestly-if it was told by all these people. I wasn’t comfortable analyzing or interpreting his thoughts or feelings or reasons for doing something. But when I was alone with the journals, it was gut-wrenching sometimes.ĭid you originally envision the book taking the format it did, or did that come about organically? Very early on, I imagined it as an oral history told through the voices of lots of people, including his journals. Doing the interviews was generally really fun. The good times were sometimes more painful, because with the bad times I could say, “Well, we moved beyond that,” but the good times were once-in-a-lifetime experiences. What was it like reliving your relationship through Warren’s journals? It was cathartic, though part of me resisted going back. And it wasn’t only exposing him, but me, my family, and other people. “That’s the excitable boy that wrote them excitable songs,” is how he put it. I worried, because he asked me to tell the truth-even the awful, ugly parts. I talked to Warren about it he just shrugged it off. Were you worried about how the book might be received, given that you’re his ex-wife? Yeah. Crystal ZevonĬrystal Zevon spoke with me recently about the book. The result leaves the reader stunned, and scrambling to find that Zevon CD that’s probably still lurking somewhere on the shelf. Before his 2003 death, Warren extracted from Crystal a promise: to expose the sweet and sordid truth of the “Excitable Boy,” in all its drug-, alcohol-, and sex-soaked glory. Through interviews with the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne, Stephen King, Billy Bob Thornton, and Carl Hiaasen, as well as Zevon’s children, the many (many, many) women he loved, and his own journals, we get an intimate, oftentimes unbelievable glimpse of this witty, dangerous, and dirty talent. In I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon, Zevon’s ex-wife Crystal offers an uncensored look at the tumultuous life of one of rock ‘n’ roll’s quintessential wild men.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |