Nothing's Bad Luck

by C. M. Kushins

  Griffin later recalled that Warren’s guest spot was one of the more memorable cameos on the program. “What I remember about his time on Susan was that he was one of [the] rare musical icons who was naturally funny,” she said. “He might have thought it was an experience worth checking out. I also wondered if this was one of those situations where four other more well-known musicians turned down the gig and we ended up with someone truly great.”

  His dry growl had been perfect for the appropriately scripted lines, many of which carried the same sardonic humor and self-deprecating candor of his numerous appearances for David Letterman. Over the years, Letterman had been the one late-night host who not only welcomed Warren whenever there was a new album to be pitched but would make requests for him to stop by as a guest just for the fun of it. Over the fifteen years that Warren had consistently sat across from Letterman’s two desks—he had relaunched his late-night show on CBS as the Late Show with David Letterman in 1993—their banter had taken on a very genuine mutual respect and appreciation. It also helped that Letterman was an actual fan. When longtime musical director Paul Shaffer had to step away from his emcee duties to shoot a cameo for the upcoming Blues Brothers 2000 comedy, he thought that Warren would be one of the few substitutes that would meet with Letterman’s approval. He immediately called Warren. Shaffer later recalled, “All [Warren] said was, ‘I have to fly in one day early because it takes me the first day to get rid of my headache.’”

  Before flying to New York for the two-week late-night gig, Warren made additional use of the East Coast trip to first visit Carl Hiaasen in Florida. From the author’s account, the stress behind Warren’s headaches might have already started at that point; as soon as he arrived, CBS had chased him down with requests from Shaffer’s band for his sheet music to the songs he was planning for them. He quickly asked Hiaasen if there were any music shops around, or someplace else that might carry blank sheet music. Later, Hiaasen recalled, Warren sat down to write out each intricate part for the songs’ scores. “We got some sheet music, and he sat down like I would sit down and write out a grocery list,” he said. “He charted, for the whole band, these two songs he was going to do. Every single part—everything. Wrote it in nothing flat and faxed it to Shaffer’s office… I said to my wife, ‘How many rock musicians could do that?’”

  When Warren arrived in New York a few days later, he brought with him the original scores that Hiaasen had watched him notate in shorthand. Paul Shaffer recalled, “One of them was the current record by the Spice Girls. He had written it out in full score paper, as an arranger would write out a score, or [a] classical composer would write out a score, for a full orchestra. The synthesizer solo was also transcribed.”

  The two-week engagement was a successful run for Warren, with Letterman consistently requesting as many of Warren’s own songs as the band would play. At one point, both Letterman and the audience were amused at Warren’s insistence that he’d already “exhausted” the Warren Zevon Songbook. As Shaffer had recalled, “David loved Warren’s music so much it became such that whenever he would do the show, they would play all of his music throughout the evening. I used to call it, in radio parlance, ‘All Zevon—all the time.’”

  Letterman was particularly taken with Warren’s ability to write an original song in the brief length of two commercial breaks. Inspired by “The CBS Mailbag,” one his most frequent and popular routines, the host had playfully suggested that Warren pen a new song entitled “Licked by a Stranger.” Both men were laughing when the skit rolled on; Letterman wasn’t laughing when Warren led the CBS Orchestra in a finished song before the episode’s end; he was astounded. “Boy is that good!” the host had yelled. “Genius,” Letterman added, nodding.

  A consistent run of ten full late-night episodes had been a boost to Warren’s public exposure. While he had been making comedic cameos on numerous shows, much of his subsidiary income throughout his misperceived “hiatus” had been through lengthy scoring assignments for television. Martin Scorsese’s use of “Werewolves of London” in 1986’s The Color of Money had been a key factor in his Virgin “comeback” the following year; Warren already knew the potential in getting his existing songs into film. He had been infuriated when an independent crime film was released in 1995 deliberately cribbing one of his most unique song titles. “There’s a major movie coming out called Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead, for which we are entirely uncompensated and unacknowledged,” he had told Goldmine. “Poetic, isn’t it?”

  At one time, future star comedy writer-director Judd Apatow had sought Warren to score a potential film project, going so far as to take him to lunch to discuss the film. Apatow had been a fan of Warren’s since working on The Larry Sanders Show in 1993. When he told Warren that the new film project was in a temporary state of limbo as he “awaited notes” on the script, Warren had looked directly into his eyes and asked him point-blank, “You take notes?” Apatow later recalled, “Here was a real artist. If he wrote a song, he didn’t ask for notes!… It really changed my philosophy on my own work.”

  As far back as 1979, Warren had been courted for film work. He had joined George Gruel and J. D. Souther for a private screening of the football drama North Dallas Forty on the Paramount lot, and the producers were looking for a theme song. Warren and Souther had joined forces to quickly composes a tune, “Football Takes Its Toll,” but the filmmakers ultimately left it out. A decade later, the opportunity presented itself again. During the postproduction on Transverse City, industry music supervisor Debbie Gold scouted him for a major three-part miniseries based on the exploits of real-life drug kingpins. The prestigious project was being helmed by Hollywood filmmaker Michael Mann, whose gritty, neo-noir style seemed an ideal fit for Warren’s sound.

  Warren was intrigued at the prospect of again throwing his hat into that ring. Largely thanks to learning-by-example through old friend and film composer Mark Isham, he was soon pursuing high-profile work scoring film and television, as well, as the exercise paid well and let him flex his creative, instrumental composing muscles. Gold later recalled her surprise at Warren’s enthusiasm at the chance to compose elaborate instrumental music, claiming, “It was like a dream for him not to have to write lyrics. Like, Mr. Lyrics had a secret dream to just compose and not have that responsibility of the lyrics that people expected of him.”

  His dream to be taken seriously as a classical composer wasn’t much of a secret; throughout the 1970s, he had made mention of the mysterious symphonic work’s progress in nearly every unrelated interview. Although the subject had largely been dropped during his all-encompassing persona shift during the modern rock Virgin years, the digital advances that had been slowly revealed to him during his Giant tenure had brought the ambitious classical opus back into the realm of possibility.

  “Enjoy Warren Zevon, rock ’n’ roller, while you can,” wrote Marc D. Allan in the Indianapolis Star and News in March 1996. “Zevon is on tour now, performing a mostly solo rock show. But if he has his way, the next time you see him will be with a symphony orchestra… last fall, Zevon wrote a piece of classical music… he said he expected to pursue this aspect of his work when his current three-month tour ends.” It was the only interview throughout the tour during which Warren revealed any completed orchestral works, but its timing made it Warren’s immediate work following the ill-fated Mutineer.

  “I think the prospects of getting such a thing played are probably pretty good,” he had told Allan. “I may be deluding myself, but we know there’s an orchestra in every town, much less city, in America.” He added, “I think that would make a very persuasive letter accompanying the score and tape, particularly if the program directors of symphony orchestras watch David Letterman, but don’t have SoundScan to tell them what Mutineer sold.”

  Although Warren didn’t elaborate on his apparent plan to put the cost-efficient touring strategy of Learning to Flinch to use for his classical works, by the end of that year, he had already dec
ided to spend 1997 off the road.

  During his second five-year stint as a member of the record deal–challenged, he nonetheless wrote and recorded new work all the time at home. When he had been commissioned to write original music for specific networks—such as a 1992 episode of HBO’s horror anthology series, Tales from the Crypt, or NBC’s reboot of Route 66—they had provided the needed studio spaces required for Warren to make deadline. Starting with William Shatner’s TekWar—a cable-based sci-fi series created by the famed actor and author—he had been able to use Anatomy of a Headache to its full advantage.

  Warren later recalled both the blessing and curse of working at home. “[Shatner] is Captain Kirk, rest assured,” he later joked. “He would call me at home and demand to hear the [theme] song in progress, then he’d say, ‘We need more guitars! More driving guitars!’”

  But that too was part of the beauty in home production: no one had to hear what you were working on until you were ready.

  Warren flew to New York at the end of March 1998.

  Although Danny Goldberg hadn’t stipulated it directly on the phone, all signs pointed to Warren having his first record contract in half a decade. Over those years, he’d learned just enough self-reliance to conduct his consistent touring schedule, while letting his business manager, Bill Harper, book any of the extracurricular activities that might be thrown in his direction, such as the television and movie work both on and off camera. But walking into Café Un Deux Trois on West Forty-Fourth Street in New York, Warren was ready and willing to accept a handshake agreement. Goldberg recalled, “I committed to sign him the very next day. Warren didn’t have a manager at the time, so I asked him who his lawyer was so we could get a contract.”

  “Why do I need a lawyer?” Warren had asked. “Jackson Browne told me to sign with you. I’ll sign whatever you give me.”

  Goldberg knew full well that Ken Anderson had represented Warren for years. He attributed the feigned naïveté as either an example of Warren’s innocence when it came to industry business, or “bullshit”—or a sly attempt to flatter his new employer. Anderson negotiated a deal and Warren was budgeted $75,000 to complete and master Life’ll Kill Ya as his Artemis debut.

  One of the primary elements that had drawn Goldberg into staking Warren had been the high quality of the demos themselves. Goldberg recalled, “I tend to work with a lot of artists who just want the marketing, who just want to be packaged; Warren had a real notion of what he wanted, in general, and it made him stand out, I suppose, as an artist.”

  He had noted that the vocals were so good, there was debate if they’d even need rerecording, and many tracks already sounded as though Warren had been backed by a full band. But while Warren had played the majority of the instruments and run the home-based production, Jorge Calderón was the most frequent visitor to Anatomy of a Headache, and had often added harmonies, bass, percussion, and additional lyrics as needed. As Warren hadn’t any record contract while making the demos in his spare time, their individual recordings and production dates were even more sporadic than the numerous overdubbing “field trips” required to complete Transverse City.

  Now that Warren had finally gotten his hard-earned record contract, Calderón was excited at the prospect of buckling down with his friend once again. He later remembered, “Warren called me one day and said, ‘I’ve got these new songs, but I need a couple more.’ He gave me the same rap he always gave me—your sensibility and mine… he had a deal with Artemis Records and these guys who produced Courtney Love’s band.”

  It was Danny Goldberg who had put Warren into contact with the two-man production team of Paul Q. Kolderie and Sean Slade, with whom he had “successfully worked on the Lemonheads and the [Mighty] Mighty Bosstones albums.” The duo’s big claim to fame, at least in Warren’s eyes, was their work with Radiohead. “That was all I needed to know,” he later claimed.

  “I was a monster fan of Warren’s and I was very much aware that he hadn’t had a new album in years,” recalled Sean Slade. “When I finally got to talk with him on the phone, I was more than a little nervous—I mean, outside of maybe Randy Newman, Warren was my songwriting idol. I had to try very hard not to be a total fanboy when we were talking, but finally I said to him, ‘Warren, forgive me for sounding like just another fan, but I have to tell you that in college, I had the poster of your debut album on my dorm wall.’ And he just goes, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ like I’m just saying it—but it was completely true. I had all of his albums and I always thought he was just the coolest artist.” Slade knew cool—he and production partner Kolderie held court in their own studio in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where they had already worked with Hole, the Pixies, Radiohead, and Dinosaur Jr. “I knew that he was already talking with other producers,” he added. “That was just a normal part of the game. But Paul and I were really impressed with Warren’s homemade demos and told him that, emphasizing his self-production. When I told him that the vocals were perhaps strong enough to use as is, I think he kinda responded to that way of thinking.”

  Likewise, Kolderie was surprised at the high quality of Warren’s skills at Anatomy of a Headache, i.e., his home studio in his apartment’s upper loft. To the seasoned producer, not having to start from the ground up and focusing on an extended form of postproduction seemed like a worthwhile challenge. “I was like Sean in that I was a big fan of Warren’s in my earlier life,” Kolderie recalled. “In high school, I loved Warren, Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, the Eagles—that whole scene. And I loved Hunter S. Thompson and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and that whole Gonzo way of writing and thinking. And I always thought that Warren’s work epitomized that way of thinking in music.… But later, Warren really wowed us with those demos.… It was evident from listening to them, that he’d spent a lot of time and a lot of care in their production. When we said to him, ‘These may be good to go—you know, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel here,’ he seemed relieved that a few ‘studio pros’ were already happy with his work.”

  According to the producers, Warren had initially recorded his “impressive” vocals using one of his latest toys, a slimmer, modernized piece of mobile sound equipment that was relatively inexpensive—an ADAT machine, which had been introduced to replace the familiar unit Warren and Duncan had originally used during the Learning to Flinch world tour. Astounded, the producers suggested merely remixing those vocals recorded on Warren’s kitchen table, under his guidance of course, and bringing musicians in as needed for the rest of the tracks. “We found out later that other producers who were courting the job had offered Warren larger studios and his usual setup of big-name superstar cameos,” Slade said. “It was kind of humbling, since he thought our idea was interesting and went with us.”

  He recalled that the sessions went relatively smoothly from that point on, with Warren’s only insistence that no one drink or smoke pot in the studio—he explained that he didn’t want to be around it. According to Slade, “He said to us very seriously, but kind of smiling, ‘I know you’ll do it anyway. Just don’t let me see it.’”

  Kolderie remembered that Warren didn’t even want cigarettes around, but it was an understandable compromise in keeping with his sobriety and focus. But not being in a studio atmosphere for a number of years, there was a compromise on Warren’s part, as well, coming down to his overall creative control. “We weren’t looking to overload the album with cameos of big names, but part of the project was in fleshing out what was already there,” Kolderie recalled. “We brought in a great guitar player and a great friend, Chuck Prophet, but Warren was pretty adamant that he was going to be playing most of the guitar parts himself. He said to me, ‘I don’t want to fire your friend, but I’m not sure we’re going to be using his stuff.’”

  Slade recalled that he and Kolderie both got a particular kick out of contributing their own baritone harmonies to “Dirty Little Religion,” one of the album’s most playful tunes. The only song recorded completely in-house at Cambridge, however,
was Warren’s second homage to the death of Elvis Presley, the snarky “Porcelain Monkey,” for which co-writer Jorge Calderón flew in from Los Angeles to record various parts. “I had said to Warren, ‘I love that Elvis song and I think the lyrics are great,’” said Slade, “but I told him that it was kind of close to ‘Seminole Bingo’ off Mutineer. I honestly didn’t know how he would respond to the comparison, but I think he was genuinely impressed I was able to quote his worst-selling album! So, we had a good time reworking that one live in the studio.”

  “Porcelain Monkey” was cut from a similar cloth as Warren’s older, playful songs about the danger of celebrity. He and Calderón had one of their usual laugh sessions while composing the song, inspired by the tacky, gauche décor of the late Presley’s tourist-attraction estate, Graceland. But while Warren had been genuinely moved almost two decades earlier, mediating on the lonely death of the King of Rock and Roll in the humbling and haunting “Jesus Mentioned,” he now directed his keen and sardonic eye on the ultimate symbol of squandered talent: the hideous eponymous sculpture that resided in Presley’s velvet-roped-off living room. Not that the topic had any deeper meaning to Warren, as he flatly explained to Jam! Showbiz reporter Paul Cantin: “Nothing interests me less than Elvis Presley,” he’d said, adding, “We were writing a song, Jorge and I, as we do, sitting on the ‘davenport of despair,’ the ‘divan of doom.’ I looked over at his notebook and I noticed his postcard of the TV room [in Graceland]. And I said, ‘What’s that?’ ‘That is Elvis’ porcelain monkey.’ I said, ‘Let’s go!’”