August 24, 2003

Warren Zevon Finally Finds Tenderness on the Block

OME days I feel like my shadow's casting me," sings Warren Zevon in the opening line of "My Dirty Life and Times," the first track on his new album, "The Wind." Previously, a sentiment like that would have been just another wry treat from the singer's bottomless bag of rhetorical tricks: take a cliché and invert it, so that it's transformed into a blackly humorous punch line. Since Mr. Zevon was found to have terminal lung cancer last March, however, that declaration sounds far more literal — and more poignant.

Mr. Zevon, of course, is well aware that his illness has brought his music more notice than it's received at any point since the late 70's, when his album "Excitable Boy," propelled by the offbeat hit "Werewolves of London," sold a million copies. (To cite just one example, a VH1 documentary about the making of "The Wind" will be shown this evening.) Rather than bitter, he seems grateful for the attention. And, on "The Wind," he's used an occasion that might have proven ponderous or sentimental to say goodbye to his audience in a way that is at once dignified, high-spirited and touching.

Death has played a frequent role in Mr. Zevon's work over the years, mostly as an adversary against which the defiant singer could prove his emotional mettle. Violent characters litter his songs with corpses, and Mr. Zevon himself boasts in one typical title, "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead." Now that mortality has edged out of the realm of metaphor, however, Mr. Zevon has softened his tone. He sings Bob Dylan's prayerful "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" with a kind of resigned intensity, demanding "Open up for me!" as a chorus of friends, including Jackson Browne and Billy Bob Thornton, chant the song's title. Don Henley, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Emmylou Harris and Ry Cooder join him elsewhere on the album.

"Disorder in the House" and "The Rest of the Night" are muscular rockers of the sort that earned Mr. Zevon his reputation. Their power chords and indelible riffs never compromise the singer's fondness for irony, surprising details and deft lyrical twists. "Even the Lhasa apso seems to be ashamed," he laments in "Disorder in the House," before concluding, "It's the home of the brave/ And the land of the free/ Where the less you know/ The better off you'll be." On the bruising blues number "Rub Me Raw," which features torrid slide guitar by Joe Walsh of the Eagles, Mr. Zevon sends a pre-emptive message to his potential eulogists: "I don't want your pity/ Or your $50 words/ I don't share your need/ To discuss the absurd."

Mr. Zevon has always balanced such tough-minded material with ballads that display his vulnerability. On "The Wind," songs like "She's Too Good for Me," "El Amor De Mi Vida" and "Please Stay" take on an especially personal cast. "Will you stay with me to the end?/ When there's nothing left/ But you and me and the wind," he asks, shedding any pretense of aesthetic detachment.

Mr. Zevon had to stop working on "The Wind" for several months earlier this year as his health worsened. Then, in the spring, he recovered sufficiently to complete two final songs at his home, including "Keep Me in Your Heart," the ballad that closes the album. It's a wish that is both honest and modest: "Shadows are falling and I'm running out of breath," he sings. "Keep me in your heart for a while." Few artists get to write their own farewell as Mr. Zevon has here. It is high praise to say that "The Wind" would stand honorably beside his best work even if he were not dying when he made it.  

Anthony DeDurtis is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine.