In a glowing review following Warren’s June appearance at the Bottom Line, The New York Times’ Stephen Holden took note of his newfound creativity and patience. “Throughout his set, the interplay between two very different musical worlds underscored the running theme of his songs: civilized and destructive impulses at war… The best of Mr. Zevon’s new songs, ‘The Factory,’ used the vocabulary of Bruce Springsteen to evoke the same struggle… In recent years, Mr. Zevon has gone begging for a record contract. ‘The Factory’ alone ought to win him one.”
The reviews were not only positive, but critics in major publications were once again paying attention. Here, Slater’s influence in pushing for better-known, moderately sized venues—such as Warren’s successful stint at the Bottom Line—all contributed to the growing buzz of a potential comeback. But with a record deal still nowhere in sight, those consistent, well-received live shows became crucial to keep that buzz going. Slater left nothing to chance and sought out a semi-permanent road manager to oversee Warren’s upcoming spring tour of the East Coast. The gig stipulated one unique element: as an out-of-pocket, bare-bones tour, the candidate would be alone with—i.e., responsible for—Warren for the entire trip.
He eventually persuaded Duncan Aldrich to take the position. Affectionately known by his closest friends as “Dr. Babyhead,” Aldrich was already a seasoned road manager within the jazz world. He also moonlighted as a studio musician and engineer, giving him the well-balanced experience of both the road and the music. Aside from some early negotiations regarding pay, Aldrich’s major apprehension stemmed from Slater’s apparent reluctance to introduce the new road manager to Warren until the day of the trip. “I was aware of Warren’s work, but I wasn’t so much of a fan back then,” Aldrich later recalled. “In fact, I only met him after I kept telling [Andrew] Slater that I should meet him before we went off on tour. And he told me, ‘Don’t worry about it—he’s in rehab…’”
Aldrich was relieved when things seemed to go off without a hitch, he and Warren engrossed in conversation throughout the five-hour flight to Rochester, New York, where Warren was booked for one of the first shows of the tour. By the very next night, however, Warren’s dissatisfaction over the venue and conditions immediately brought about their first argument. Aldrich later recalled, “I lectured him, ‘As far as I’m concerned, you’re among the luckiest people in the world to be doing this kind of work… You could be working in a factory.” Instinctively, Aldrich had used the strongest method of reaching Warren, previously recognized by only his closest friends. Like Jackson Browne and Paul Nelson before him, Aldrich had used sheer logic to stump Warren’s ego in its path. “From that point on,” he added, “I guess he took on a respect for me that I guess I’d had to learn through that little exchange.”
Warren was fascinated by Aldrich’s knowledge of digital recording equipment and soon, the endless hours on the road became crash courses in the latest studio trends. Although he’d told reporters that he’d “tinkered” too long with The Envoy, deep down Warren had a lifelong curiosity for unorthodox instrumentation. From the “fuzz-box” qualities of his psychedelic sound collages with David Marks to the classically tinged synthesizer hybrids of The Envoy, Warren viewed sounds like an artist’s palate. He told The Chicago Tribune that he’d recently “succumbed to the romance of technology,” and that his sixteen-year-old son Jordan was advising him on which computer he should purchase.
Slater saw the warning signs of Warren’s sobriety lapsing early on in his return to Los Angeles. It had started with Warren’s visits to Slater’s downtown office, uncharacteristically smoking a large cigar. It wasn’t difficult to surmise he’d been using the smoke to mask the scent of alcohol on his breath. And, Slater wondered, what other incentive would lead Warren to throw knives at the wall, leaving the interior of his Oakwood Garden apartment riddled with unsightly holes? He later recalled, “[Warren] was constantly writing, but there were all sorts of shenanigans that were going on there… It became clear to me that he was going to have to get sober if he was going to be able to work.”
Aware that Slater had the six-week East Coast tour lined up for the end of April, Warren unceremoniously asked to be escorted back to rehab; he wanted this round of sobriety to stick, and everyone to know it. Proud of his client and friend, Slater not only agreed, but headed out at Warren’s request to pick up a “cheeseburger for the condemned man.” As Slater recalled, when he got back, Warren had already knocked back two beers and was gulping his third as though he were “going to the chair,” recognizing that it was just Warren’s way of saying, “‘You know what, fuck you, I’m going to have my last beer.’” And although this particular rehab stint had been his own idea, once Warren and Slater walked in, he immediately regretted his decision. “He kicked and screamed,” according to Slater. “Within forty-eight hours, he was in rehab, only he didn’t last too long.” However, as a necessary element to his bid for lasting sobriety, Warren began attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. As was the case with most new members, his initial attempts were met with mixed success and lapses were frequent—and when Warren crashed, he crashed hard; but he had come too far to fall back into the depths of the last few years. It helped that, in an effort to ensure the intimate nature of the sponsor-sponsoree relationship remained on a relatable level, A.A. had paired Warren with a well-known character actor and musician named Stefan Arngrim. A former child actor who had spent his life battling a fair share of inner demons, when Arngrim spoke, Warren listened.
Coupled with the unbridled faith of Andrew Slater, Warren stood fast. When he had caught up with old friend Don Henley, now a thriving solo artist, Henley had advised him to continue to walk the narrow path; he didn’t want “to rake leaves.” Warren couldn’t agree more, and began to take his twelve-step work seriously. He’d even quit smoking.
Over the next few months, Warren made every attempt to negate the bad luck that had plagued the previous decade of his life. Although a potential reconciliation with Crystal had been, as she recalled, “a disaster,” he made it a point to remain some form of presence in Ariel’s life. Likewise, he had contacted first-love and Jordan’s mother, Marilyn Livingston, to arrange a long overdue family dinner before taking his son for a trip to Fresno to visit his own mother and grandmother—Warren’s first return visit in nearly a decade.
Warren marked March 19, 1986. Almost three years to the day of Rolling Stone’s devastating Electra/Asylum termination blurb, it was now his first official day of complete sobriety.
He didn’t have another drink for seventeen years.
Warren had just completed writing a song entitled “Bad Karma” when his own karma began to drastically improve.
Four years earlier, he had dedicated Stand in the Fire, regarded by many music critics to be Warren’s crowning achievement, to friend Martin Scorsese. Following his own glorious heyday with 1980’s Raging Bull, the young director had been through his own recent career slump. He too was now gearing up for a comeback of sorts, filming the long-awaited sequel to the 1961 classic The Hustler, with returning leading man Paul Newman and rising superstar Tom Cruise. Returning Warren’s earlier heartfelt dedication, the director was eager to use “Werewolves of London” in a crucial scene within the new film. It was only fair; Warren had once reveled in a critic’s description of him as “the Travis Bickle of rock and roll,” drawing a comparison between him and Taxi Driver’s angriest of angry young men. When the soundtrack to The Color of Money was released in conjunction with the hit film, Warren found himself on a bestselling release that also included old and new material by Eric Clapton, Don Henley, B.B. King, and Robert Palmer. Thanks to the exposure, a new generation of college students was howling; thanks to the film itself, Warren was forever linked to an iconic cinematic scene—and one frequently reenacted in pool halls with working jukeboxes.
Just as Warren had hoisted a final beer as a “fuck you” before entering rehab, so Elektra/Asylum found a reason to put out their firs
t Warren Zevon release in three years. In anticipation of Scorsese’s “Werewolves” usage, his former label cobbled together a compilation of best-known songs from his tenure there. It was another effort to clean house of the label’s former roster, lock, stock, and barrel. In the case of former label-mate Tom Waits, Elektra/Asylum had already put out not one but two “best of” albums before he even jumped ship. A year later, they released a third, The Asylum Years, including almost identical material.
When his former label contacted him for a title of his collected songbook, Warren submitted a phrase of personal, intimate meaning—the line from author Wallace Stevens to which he clung like an elusive dream: A Quiet Normal Life was released on October 24, 1986—two weeks after The Color of Money.
But being back on the Billboard charts on two separate albums for the same song had its benefits: Warren’s earlier work was being positively reassessed in major media outlets, all while Andrew Slater continued to shop his new demos. “Unlike so many songpoets, Zevon’s a real writer,” wrote Robert Christgau in The Village Voice. “Because he inhabits his tricksters, blackguards, and flat-out psychotics rather than reconstituting variations on a formula, he tops his boy Ross Macdonald any day.… Thompson gunner, mercenary, NSC operative, werewolf, easy lay, he puts his head on the tracks for penance, and when the train doesn’t come gets up and hurls himself against the wall of the Louvre museum. Really now, could Ross Macdonald imagine such a thing?”
While emphasizing Warren’s longstanding reputation for mischief, Billboard nonetheless put it succinctly: “Greatest hits package from the City of Angels’ No. 1 bad boy. Exposure of ‘Werewolves of London’ via the ‘Color of Money’ soundtrack could spur interest.”
It did, almost instantly. Slater later recalled that based on the strength of the dual releases, especially the mainstream attraction of the hit film, his next meeting finally yielded the results they’d been hoping for. “I was able to convince my friend Jeff Ayeroff, who was starting Virgin Records with Jordan Harris, to sign Warren as one of their first artists based on the demo of ‘Reconsider Me’ and the activity with [The Color of Money].” Ever the publicist, Slater not only admitted that the song was a personal favorite of his, but knew the title’s apparent double meaning would resonate with listeners with fond memories of Warren’s younger, wilder persona. The poignancy of the title and the heartbreaking emotions of Warren’s lyrics attracted other admirers, as well; although it wouldn’t be released for years, Stevie Nicks recorded her own emotional cover before the ink had even dried on Warren’s Virgin contract. It was apparent to many that Warren Zevon the songwriter was back in good form.
Warren, however, was immediately concerned about what effects sobriety would have on his creative process. During even the most focused and professional of sessions, Warren’s albums had been made in the safe haven of a studio where everyone drank, smoke, popped, or snorted without batting an eye. Half a decade later—and with a can of Coca-Cola on the engineering console—Warren feared he wouldn’t be able to create a new album without so much as smoking pot.
Before he could even address his own internal concerns, Slater’s enthusiastic PR blitz went into full effect. Within a month of A Quiet Normal Life’s release, unintentionally bringing Warren back to the “New Release” wall of record chains and into the purview of a younger generation of listeners, the November 22 issue of Billboard ran the announcement they’d both been waiting for: “First sightings to reactivated U.S. Virgin Records are Warren Zevon and Steve Winwood.”
Upon the same page, Billboard reported Virgin’s intention to test their new marketing concept, the CD single, throughout England, providing Genesis fans with twenty-four minutes of new music for three dollars. Elektra/Asylum’s greatest hits compendium of Warren’s songs had been his first appearance on compact disc—the digital medium slowly phasing out the LP as consumers’ preferred means of hearing new music. With Virgin’s energetic and competitive approach to marketing, Warren was slated to be given the rock-star-of-the-1980s treatment. It was a brave new world. “I’ve got songs to play for you, I’ve got some new songs to play for you,” he told a crowd in Texas. “I got my Miami Vice haircut—and I’m all set to party like it’s 1999!”
It was inadvertently through Slater’s aggressive PR campaign that Warren met the woman who would become his next love and inspiration—and at of all places, the one publication sure not to give him the press Virgin sought: Jann Wenner’s Rolling Stone.
Merle Ginsberg later remembered, “Andy Slater called me up and said, ‘Warren Zevon’s having a comeback. He’s gone through rehab and he’s got this great new album and he’s such a genius.’ I didn’t know that much about Warren Zevon, so I bought all his records and as I listened, I realized this was really fascinating.” Then in her early twenties, Ginsberg was unaware of Warren’s not-so-illustrious years. Curiosity led her to the Rolling Stone archives, where she read the full chronicle of Warren’s dirty life and times. When she got to the 1981 Paul Nelson masterpiece that had doomed its author, “The Crack-Up and Resurrection of Warren Zevon,” she was certain Slater had given her more than a solid lead; to her, Warren was “a fucking wild man” and represented “what rock stars used to be.” She immediately began work on a profile of her own. From the Rolling Stone office in New York, she called Warren in the hopes of booking an interview, but admittedly was under his spell before even meeting. “Nobody intimidated me much, but I was very intimidated by Warren,” she later recalled. “His voice went right through me—this gravelly, masculine voice.” He suggested they meet during her next visit to the West Coast, which she had already planned for coverage of the Grammy Awards a few weeks later.
Despite being over a decade younger than Warren, Ginsberg was quickly taken by his boyish charm when he picked her up at the Sunset Marquis. When he awkwardly told her he wasn’t allowed inside because of past behavior, she remembered the Rolling Stone files she’d devoured and wasn’t quite certain if he was joking. Fully aware that she was on a date with a tried-and-true rock star, Ginsberg was nervous enough to want a drink to loosen up; also aware of Warren’s past, she purposely broached the subject. He took her back to his Oakwood Garden apartment, which she found uncharacteristically modest for a perceived music legend; more so, she was surprised to find that Warren seemed equally nervous. “I definitely did not think this guy was going to seduce me,” she later recalled. “He was so quiet and shy.… Of course, I thought he was unbelievably quirky and shy. He was nervous, and I was dying to tell him because I was so nervous.” Playing the good host, Warren insisted that she have a glass of wine, even if he couldn’t. She was again surprised to find that he seemed to have no problem smoking pot with her—although Andrew Slater had warned her ahead of time to keep all substances away from him. After the two began to get intimate on Warren’s bed, Ginsberg noticed his words slurred and his drowsiness deepening. When he finally passed out, she leaned over his side of the bed to find a large, empty vodka bottle. He’d apparently polished it off by quickly sneaking off to the bedroom all night. Two days later, Ginsberg was poolside at the hotel when she spied a large, expensive arrangement of flowers being delivered somewhere inside the hotel. When she returned to her room, she found that they had been from Warren, along with a note. “When I meet you again, it will be like the first time,” he wrote. “If you want to. I’m so, so sorry.”
Still very much under his spell, the two cautiously began to date. With Ginsberg still working at Rolling Stone’s New York headquarters, they attempted to start things slow.
In the meantime, Warren entered the studio for the first time in five years.
Although the word “comeback” was never officially attached to the promotion of Sentimental Hygiene, every element of its production and promotion rang of a full-fledged return to form for Warren Zevon. In Slater, Warren had truly met the right manager at the most-needed time in his career—a young fan with a marketing and publicity background who also knew his way around
the studio, and intimately knew the latest industry trends. Not since Jackson Browne’s all-encompassing efforts during the mid-1970s had any one individual pulled so many tricks just to get public awareness aimed in Warren’s direction.
When it came time for the actual recording sessions for Sentimental Hygiene, Slater’s push for the highest-quality everything carried over into the studio. With Slater’s insistence on Warren’s long-term bankability, and both Jeff Ayeroff and Jordan Harris in his corner, Virgin had no issue in allocating $225,000 for the album’s budget. Warren was, after all, the first artist to have joined the fledging label’s roster, and therefore benefited enormously from their proactive attempt to stake a claim within the American market. It was also decided that the album would be given the largest “star treatment,” with six total singles slated for US release—the largest number Warren had ever been granted, even during his peak at Elektra/Asylum.
Seasoned producer and engineer Niko Bolas was not only good friends with Slater but was also a devoted fan of Warren’s before he was even approached to co-produce the new project. “Warren is the reason I became an engineer,” Bolas warmly recalled. “I first met him in 1979 when he was doing Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School, and I worked on part of that record as an assistant—but, Excitable Boy was the album that convinced me that this was what I wanted to do for a living, to be an engineer and mixer and producer.” While working as a young assistant and “runner” on Warren’s third Elektra/Asylum release, Bolas had worked under Greg Ladanyi, and had impressed Waddy Wachtel during the sessions for “A Certain Girl.” When that production had ended, the three became friends and, as Bolas recalled, he “fell into that camp.”
Nothing's Bad Luck Page 27
