Although it was to be expected it is sad news indeed

A fine obituary from the ‘LA Times’ :
Warren Zevon dies after battle with cancer
By Geoff Boucher
Los Angeles Times

September 8, 2003

LOS ANGELES — Warren Zevon, a restless, sardonic bard who embodied
the dark edge and excess of the famed singer-songwriter scene in
1970s Southern California, died after a battle with lung cancer. He
was 56.

Zevon died Sunday afternoon at his home in Los Angeles, according to
his manager, Irving Azoff, who said that the singer had been “very
upbeat” in the past week due to the success of his new album and the
recent birth of twin grandchildren. “He was in a good place.”

While casual pop fans might recognize only his 1978 horror-show hit
“Werewolves of London,” Zevon for years enjoyed a cult following
and the acclaim of his peers for songs that were often about
fractured world politics and the disloyal human heart.

In a macabre songbook that includes “Excitable Boy,” “Lawyers,
Guns and Money” and “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner,” Zevon
presented a world of the undead and the unethical on the rampage in a
mercenary world. In “Mr. Bad Example,” an altar boy grows up to be
a vagabond con man: “I’m very well acquainted with the seven deadly
sins/I keep a busy schedule trying to fit them in/I’m proud to be a
glutton and I don’t have time for sloth/I’m greedy and I’m angry and
I don’t care who I cross.”

Death and dying were among Zevon’s favorite topics (the cover of his
2002 album “My Ride’s Here” showed him in a hearse, while another
collection was titled “Life’ll Kill Ya”), and when confronted with
his own mortality he continued the exploration with aplomb. The
singer, a longtime smoker, learned in August 2002 that he was
suffering from inoperable lung cancer and a month later he went
public with his condition in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.

“I feel the opposite of regret,” he said then. “I was the hardest-
living rocker on my block for a while. I was a malfunctioning rummy
for a while and running away for a while. Then for 18 years I was a
sober dad of some amazing kids. Hey, I feel like I’ve lived a couple
of lives — and now when people listen to the music they’ll say, `Hey
maybe the guy wasn’t being so morbid after all.’ ”

Zevon spent much of his time during his illness doting on family and
working in a home studio on a new album, “The Wind.” His popularity
among his peers was underscored by a parade of contributors to the
record, including longtime friends Bruce Springsteen, Don Henley and
Jackson Browne. The Artemis Records disc debuted recently in the Top
20 of U.S. pop charts, an unprecedented showing for the singer.

The tracks also include some wry, unsentimental songs, in Zevon’s
familiar mode, and a version of the Bob Dylan classic “Knockin’ on
Heaven’s Door,” a selection that speaks to Zevon’s candor and sense
of grim theater. Zevon’s candor about his condition also extended to
allowing VH1 to film the sessions for “The Wind” for a poignant
documentary that aired near the album’s release date.

Dylan himself has recently paid tribute to Zevon by singing several
of his songs, including “Accidentally Like a Martyr,” in his
concert sets. That same month, David Letterman devoted an entire
episode on his late night CBS show to his old friend, an
unprecedented time commitment by the long-running program.

Warren William Zevon was born Jan. 24, 1947, in Chicago and spent
much of his youth shuttling between different cities in California,
among them Los Angeles and San Francisco. His father, William, was a
Russian Jewish immigrant who was a boxer in his early days in
America, then settled into a career as a professional gambler and “a
mobster, generally,” as his son described him. The singer’s mother,
Beverly, was of Scottish heritage and a Mormon. The singer told
Rolling Stone magazine in 1981 that his mother was “extraordinarily
withdrawn — you can barely hear her speaking voice. She did
encourage my interest in art, though.”

Zevon’s parents divorced when he was 16 and the classically trained
young pianist quit high school and traveled from Los Angeles to New
York to become a folk singer. That dream fizzled and Zevon bounced
around the country, eventually returning to Southern California by
the late 1960s. He made a living composing commercial jingles and
playing on recording sessions. He also wrote some songs for the
Turtles (“Like the Seasons” and “Outside Chance”), and by the
early 1970s was a keyboard player and music director for the Everly
Brothers.

By that point, he would later tell Rolling Stone, “The road, booze
and I became an inseparable team.” In 1969, he had put out his first
album, “Wanted: Dead or Alive,” on One Way Records, but it was
largely ignored (it was, however, reissued this past March on Virgin
Records). After some more false starts, Zevon and his then-wife,
Crystal Zevon, became embittered about L.A. life and moved to Spain
in 1975, but a short time later they returned. Jackson Browne,
Zevon’s close friend, had championed his cause to music mogul David
Geffen and the result would be “Warren Zevon,” a 1976 release from
Asylum Records that would make the singer a darling of the critics.
Browne produced the album, which included “Poor, Poor Pitiful Me,”
a major hit a year later for Linda Ronstadt.

The album boasted an impressive crowd of contributors, among them
Henley, Glenn Frey, Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham, Carl Wilson,
Bonnie Raitt and J.D. Souther. The assembly showed that Zevon was
part of the loose circle of Southern California musicians that forged
a defining sound in 1970s rock. But while the Eagles and others were
minting platinum albums, Zevon was making far more ominous music that
failed to click in a big way with the wide public. That would form
the pattern of his career, and it both haunted and inspired him — he
longed for the audience but also reveled in the role of intellectual
and uncompromising maverick.

He did have one song cut through in a big way — “Werewolves of
London” from 1978 became an ominous novelty with its lyrics about a
werewolf who enjoyed socializing but also mutilated little old
ladies. “I saw a werewolf drinking a pina colada at Trader Vic’s,”
the song memorably offered, “His hair was perfect.” By the early
1980s, Zevon’s notoriously wild ways had wrecked much of his personal
life and he went into a rehab program, which he would later memorably
mock in “Detox Mansion.”

His 1982 album, “The Envoy,” was a product of his cleaner living
and was hailed as a return to his early form. “Sentimental Hygiene”
from 1987 and the 1991 collection “Mr. Bad Example” again won him
effusive reviews. Still, major commercial success eluded him. By last
year, after learning of his health issues, he was sanguine about his
flirtations with major stardom.

“It was a little more interesting this way, maybe,” he said.
“Maybe more aggravating, too. At least I’ve had one foot in a very
normal kind of life.”

Geoff Boucher is a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, a Tribune
Publishing newspaper.