Nothing's Bad Luck

by C. M. Kushins

  Ginsberg later realized that Warren not only watched the same films over and over again out of habit, but that all the rituals that were becoming his creature comforts were part of the larger scope of his aggressive alcoholism suppression. She added, “I realized that this is the behavior of someone who is disturbed and depressed, but he was in recovery, and my idea was that this was the life of someone in recovery. As he got sober over the next year, he was working on his album. The happiest I ever saw Warren was when he was in the recording studio. He came alive and he was a different person.”

  As part of Ginsberg’s new position with the fledging entertainment network, her assignments shifted from covering the music industry to the movie industry. Initially excited at the boost she was able to give her career with the move to Los Angeles, Ginsberg recalled the disappointment over Warren’s lack of enthusiasm regarding just about everything—including the swanky events and movie premieres her new job entailed. “He never wanted to go out in public,” she later recalled. “He felt like people were staring at him. He hated most movies. I started dragging him a little bit because he was utterly miserable.”

  Warren returned from the Sentimental Hygiene European leg at the end of February, just in time to celebrate his second anniversary of sobriety. He had successfully reached the eleventh and twelfth steps—advanced-level spiritual maxims urging the alcoholic to use prayer and meditation in their struggle for inner strength. He reread them obsessively before their final phone call. “The conversation was very short,” Ginsberg remembered. “He said, ‘My sponsor says I’ve been drunk and married, drunk and alone, and sober and with you. But I’ve never been sober and alone, and I think it would be a good thing for me to be sober and alone for a while.’” Ginsberg recalled leaving the conversation with a “very different” view than Warren, as she had assumed it would be a temporary breather in the relationship, yet “Warren thought we were breaking up.”

  By 1988’s Sick ’Em Dogs on Me Tour, critics were beginning to refer to Warren as a “cult favorite.” While accurate, those were not exactly the words Virgin executives were hoping to hear about the recipient of an unprecedented—and costly—PR push to win him mainstream appeal. He was contracted at Virgin for two albums, meaning much was riding on Sentimental Hygiene’s follow-up.

  Fortunately for Warren, he wasn’t pressed for new material. Sobriety and travel had provided inspiration enough to fuel his writing. As the new songs came together, it was apparent that for the second time in his career, the resulting product would be an ambitious concept album. Just as his goofy 1981 American Bandstand European lip-synch tour with George Gruel had inspired the international-intrigue themes of The Envoy, so Warren’s new interests in digital technology and cyberpunk literature attracted him to the science-fiction genre.

  Despite conflicting critical opinion, Sentimental Hygiene had been densely autobiographical; songs like “Detox Mansion,” “Trouble Waiting to Happen,” and “Reconsider Me” had all come from such a personal place within Warren, they could have been poetic journal entries. And any debate regarding the true meaning of “sentimental hygiene” need only consider the sixth step of Warren’s new twelve-step code of sobriety: he was indeed ready to have a higher power remove his defects of character, and to ask Him to remove his shortcomings. He prayed the third-step prayer over and over like a mantra, begging for a release from the bondage of self. He prayed for the cleansing of a soul riddled with filth from years of rock-and-roll debauchery.

  Warren’s follow-up would find him coming to grips with strange, new external surroundings. After devouring William Gibson’s 1984 science-fiction masterpiece Neuromancer while on the road, and “woozy from reading the Thomas Pynchon canon in one sitting,” he had decided a nightmarish dystopia would be tellingly appropriate for expressing those observations. His debut on Virgin had been deeply autobiographical: an honest expression of his struggle to attain lasting sobriety; the new album would explore the urban nightmare only those now sober eyes could see.

  “I wanted to make this one like a really good novel,” he later told The Chicago Tribune. “For good or ill, it was going to be a concept album. Which meant that three-quarters of the way through, I couldn’t write a song about 11th Century Indian architecture because I felt like it.” Upon his return from Japan in July 1988, Warren put his full focus into the production of his “2010 sci-fi project,” soon to be entitled Transverse City.

  This time around, Virgin refused to hand over nearly as generous a budget as they’d done for Sentimental Hygiene. The bulk of the recording took place at Red Zone studios in Burbank, but with the option of more digital technology in the arrangement and editing processes, Warren was able to use the scaled-down experience to his advantage.

  With his unique expertise of the modern engineering equipment being used, Duncan Aldrich was promoted to a place beside Warren and Andrew Slater as a fellow producer. “It was odd for me because I came off of working with people like Chick Corea,” Aldrich recalled. “I was originally looking down on rock [music] after working with musicians with such amazing chops, versus working within a music that could be considered much more primitive—you know, great musicians, but in a much more primitive style. So, there was a period of adjustment, but I admired Warren and the musicians that I had been working with.”

  Aldrich later recalled Transverse City as the instance when Warren’s elevated creative control reached its most expansive. “I was trying to make the thing as good as possible and keep it in a budget, which I was [doing],” Aldrich later said. “Then, Slater would come along and hire all these people, and he ended up not paying me more for a bunch of it, and that ended up ripping the seam between Warren and myself, even though I knew he had nothing to do with it.”

  While Virgin hadn’t exactly left the trio high and dry, the slashed budget was meager in comparison to the inflated financial backing of Sentimental Hygiene. As the label saw it, handing over less funding for Transverse City wasn’t punishment for going over the previous budget; those bailout funds had been more like an advance on the new album—and as Virgin saw it, Warren, Slater, and Aldrich had already spent it. As far as what was left over for Transverse City, the three producers would just have to get creative.

  Much to Aldrich’s dismay, even working within the confines of their budgetary limitations, Slater insisted on enlisting the usual suspects of high-profile guest appearances—something Aldrich didn’t feel was necessary, and stated so. Ultimately, compromises would be plotted to make a few of the most prestigious cameos happen, thanks in no small part to Aldrich and Warren’s innovative use of digital computer-editing—a first for such a rock-and-roll album. By 1989, high-quality digital audio workstations and digital multitrack systems were slowly becoming the industry standard, and with Aldrich’s guidance, Warren was ahead of the curve. As The Chicago Tribune later reported, “With the aid of Duncan Aldrich, Zevon learned the musical capabilities of a Macintosh computer and created the glistening orchestrations.”

  The use of new digital technology worked to keep costs lower, while some of the guest appearances, such as David Gilmour’s and Neil Young’s, were recorded off-site and sent back for editing. Given the dystopian, postapocalyptic tone of the album, the technological fail-safes throughout the production seemed entirely appropriate.

  Throughout the Sic ’Em Dogs on Me Tour, Warren had tested the waters on a few of the new songs. Knowing ahead of time that their final versions would be heavily produced in line with the sonic scope of the album he was planning, Warren first introduced songs like “Networking” and “Splendid Isolation” acoustically. Audiences were somewhat confounded by the maudlin, dystopian tone of some songs’ earliest forms. When he played the Park West in November, Chicago Tribune critic David Silverman wrote of his appreciation for the older fare, yet noted audience disapproval of Warren’s new work. “There is little doubt that Zevon knew what his audience was hoping for,” wrote Silverman. “He delivered these favorites willing
ly, with a smile and a wink. Then it was time for some untitled songs, new cuts from a yet-to-be-released album, Transverse City. It was a collection of sordid ballads, probably due for reworking in the studio, judging from a lukewarm audience response.”

  By the time Warren got down to Red Zone studios, each song had been refined enough to accommodate the many layers of overdubs and special effects he had in mind for his cinematic song cycle. From the opening sounds of Transverse City’s title track, listeners were transported into the nightmarish landscape of Warren’s design: the audible electric current summoning computer-programmed arpeggios like an electronic overture, his narration soon rhyming a list of dark imagery like ominous signposts—equal parts futuristic technological advancements and poverty-stricken tenements. More Ridley Scott’s bleak neon iridescence of Blade Runner than William Gibson’s Neuromancer, Transverse City’s immediate sense of angered culture shock and crippling paranoia made it all Warren.

  Unlike with his previous albums, Transverse City’s tightened budget had necessitated much of its overdubbing; with The Envoy, producer and lead guitarist Waddy Wachtel had likewise experimented with layering, but for dramatic effect. With Virgin now pushing a quicker turnaround time and hurried promotional tour, Warren, Aldrich, and Slater had to work with the respective schedules of the album’s many esteemed guests. Coupled with the few instances of those guests sending in their prerecorded parts, this also meant that some of Transverse City’s songs sat in periods of limbo, awaiting different parts to be edited in later—the first time Warren had been given the task of assembling individual tracks piecemeal, and over extended periods of weeks. It was largely due to both the modern digital technology that the team had at their disposal—and Aldrich’s and Slater’s pragmatic use of it—that the frazzled production came together.

  Although the album’s title track had been written even earlier than preproduction, in order to secure Jerry Garcia’s wailing lead guitar sections of both “Transverse City” and, later, on “They Moved the Moon,” the sessions were pushed to mid-June. Warren and Slater had to drive to San Rafael to Garcia’s home, aka the Hog Farm, in order to lay down his leads. As was common practice—and more practical with Transverse City than ever before—Warren utilized a rotating lineup of session players but was able to secure two mainly consistent solid players for the bulk of the sporadic studio dates: old friend Bob Glaub on bass, and Little Feat’s Richie Hayward, who had brought his thundering drum and percussion skills to 1987’s Sentimental Hygiene tour.

  As part of the overarching thematic links between the songs of Transverse City, for the first time on any of his albums, Warren opted to “bleed” the tracks into each other, rather than cut each song into individual tracks; the experimental practice wasn’t as noticeable on the radio edits or single releases, but the album’s overt cinematic tone runs through each track like a daisy chain. For the title track, Warren and Aldrich were able to tinker in postproduction to cross-fade the electric current sound effects seamlessly into the dark tonality of “Run Straight Down”—the second consecutive song emphasizing Warren’s inner sense of paranoia amid his strange new landscape. The product itself was a point of pride to the team, as they had been able to secure one of their highest-profile guest appearances on the track: Pink Floyd’s legendary lead guitarist David Gilmour. However, due to both budgetary constraints and Gilmour’s own hectic schedule, it was arranged for the twenty-four-track tape of his prerecorded lead parts be sent over to Red Zone straight from London. Warren was particularly pleased to find that the audio samples had been sent directly from Abbey Road.

  To Warren, “Run Straight Down” epitomized the themes of Transverse City even more so than the album’s title song. He later recalled, “This track, with several simultaneous vocal lines including a list of carcinogens in the environment I got from [nonprofit organization] the Sierra Club, suggests the dense texture I was striving to create when I ran out of Virgin’s money.”

  For over two years, critics and interviewers had taken note of a distinct coyness in Warren’s demeanor when two specific topics would be approached: while in the past, he was not only open about his struggles with addiction, he seemed to wear those battles as badges of honor, proving publicly his priorities were on straight; following his “comeback” signing with Virgin, his candor on the subject rescinded completely. Likewise, he had stopped all mentions of his ongoing frustrations in making time to complete his symphonic works. Once his greatest motivation and ultimate passion project, when the subject of his classic aspirations were broached, Warren now steered the conversations toward his own working knowledge of music theory itself, and how he was adapting those ideas to his rock-and-roll material. Duncan Aldrich’s fascination with computer programming and digital editing had unlocked a world of musical options to Warren, who slowly saw the potential for the full creative autonomy the technology could provide. While not nearly as publicly vocal about those interests anymore, Warren nonetheless continued to monitor his contemporaries within the classical music community with as much fervor as his rock-and-roll peers. They were dual interests that would never fade away, even behind the closed doors of Cat Piss Manor—and even when his creative vision seemed to stump even his most ardent advocates.

  In the end, Warren would be penning almost all of the album’s material without a co-writer—but not for lack of trying. Once one of his closest collaborators, Jorge Calderón’s role within Warren’s creative process had lessened since the Virgin comeback. He later admitted the primary reason was Warren’s overtly personal approach to Transverse City and the uncompromising ways in which he was tackling that latest project. He recalled a surprise visit from Warren while bedridden at home with chicken pox. “At the end of the eighties, Warren was obsessed with cyberpunk music,” Calderón later recalled. “He gives me a copy of New Cyber Punk magazine and says he wants me to get into the theme of his next album. It’s a big deal when you get chicken pox at forty, so maybe I didn’t get excited enough or something, but I didn’t have anything to do with Transverse City.”

  Consistent attendance of A.A. meetings had worked in surrounding Warren with positive influences, a distinct counterbalance to the seedier elements of Los Angeles that he had actively sought out in his youth. Of the lasting friends he made during those meetings was well-known character actor Michael Ironside, who embodied the kind of rough-and-tumble “man’s man” that Warren most admired. Ironside recalled his major misstep in offering honest feedback the first time Warren played for him some of the in-progress tracks from Transverse City. “There was one song about pollutants and stuff,” Ironside later remembered. “I went into the studio one night and just read the list of chemicals in the background when they were mixing it… I only listened to it once, and I just didn’t get it. I thought it was very overproduced, and it’s a lot like a film where it gets so overproduced that what it’s about gets lost.”

  Despite accusations that Transverse City’s themes were too fatalistic—some critics considered the album’s tone morbidly dark, even for Warren—it was primarily the album’s first three tracks that addressed the dystopian themes and pointed paranoia. Linked together, “Transverse City,” “Run Straight Down,” and finally “The Long Arm of the Law” formed their own thematic trilogy—a three-act cyberpunk tale including all the true elements of a literary dystopia: a futuristic society where technological advances, and the power they yield, are concentrated in the hands of an omnipresent government; economics are polarized between the rich and powerful and the impoverished residents of urban slums; the powerful display an apparent indifference to the dying environment; and finally, digital references, computer-speak, and science-fiction lingo abound. This wasn’t the “Song Noir” of Jackson Browne’s astute 1976 description. Warren had evolved. This was “Song Neo Noir.”

  Just as stylized electrical currents reminiscent of a Tesla coil bled “Transverse City” seamlessly into the opening of its following track, so the dramatic sounds of urb
an dissonance bridged “Run Straight Down” into its succeeding track, “The Long Arm of the Law.” Here, Warren used the sound effects integration at his disposal to its fullest extent, adding police sirens and search helicopters, crafting the album’s most cinematic moment.

  As Warren later recalled, he had written the song in the back of his tour bus, presumably with the intention of incorporating the ambitious studio effects for the final version. Like much of the material on Transverse City, he rarely performed the song during later tours, mainly due to the material’s overall dependency on not only a backing band, but oodles of additional effects.

  For the elaborate studio edit, Warren again benefited enormously from Duncan Aldrich’s background; not only an expert in the modern equipment that characterized Transverse City’s unique sound, the engineer had also spent years working sessions and touring gigs for some of jazz’s biggest names. With Warren largely preoccupied with using the new album as a showcase for his guitar acumen, Aldrich reached out to an old friend, jazz fusion pianist Chick Corea, and was able to nail one of the album’s most unlikely and highest-profile guests.

  None of the first three songs on Transverse City would make it to Warren’s performance repertoire past the album’s promotional tour. On those occasions throughout 1990, the three thematically linked tracks were always played consecutively and with no break in between—solidifying Warren’s unspoken intention of making “Transverse City,” “Run Straight Down,” and “The Long Arm of the Law” a stand-alone cyberpunk rock performance piece. When later asked about the material’s thematic thread, Warren joked that the songs had been deliberately sequenced for “maximum depressive effect.” He added, “Hey, if the Cure can do it, why not us?”