A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Back to main page

I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead: the Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon
Crystal Zevon (HarperCollins)

Capable of brutal wit and affecting poignancy, Warren Zevon was an original singer/songwriter whose death from lung cancer at the age of 56 in 2003 was horribly premature. Mind you, read this compelling oral biography collated by Warren’s former wife and lifelong confidante, Crystal Zevon, and you might wonder how on earth he made it past 30. Urged by her ailing ex to tell the whole truth – “even the awful, ugly parts” – Crystal has more than met her brief, using a variety of contributors (including long-time champion Jackson Browne, Bruce Springsteen and novelist/collaborator Carl Hiaasen) to tell the story of a career whose greatest peak in the late ‘70s was undermined by chronic, sometimes violent alcoholism. Having finally come off the sauce in the mid ‘80s, Zevon’s addictive personality found new outlets in a severe case of obsessive compulsive disorder (buying numerous identical shirts from multiple stores being just one example) and a frankly staggering level of sexual promiscuity. Increasingly grumpy – and understandably so – at the fact that his fine later work did not enjoy greater sales, the sad subtext of this gripping book is that Zevon seemingly found little calm in life either before or after his tragic diagnosis.
David Davies

buy the book from Amazon

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Back to main page