So I read the Warren Zevon biography.

Actually, I finished it about a week ago. Promised Caprese I’d review it here, so here goes!

First of all, I liked it a lot. I gather that some people don’t like it on the grounds that it makes him look like a dick, but I already knew that, so why sugarcoat anything? He’s shown doing a lot of jerkish things, but there are enough humanizing moments to balance it out. Whoever edited it also did a fine job of pacing. There’s an account of him getting in a fight with a guy who tries to drown him in a koi pond, and it would have been horrifying if that anecdote had not come two pages after he pushed his three-year-old daughter away from him and knocked her down. So I was thinking, “You deserve it, asshole.”

Basically, I read it the same way I’ve read biographies of Elvis: I’m not reading the story of a saint. I mean, gee, a rock musician spent the seventies in a drunken stupor – this is news? It was a vivid portrait of a vivid person. But unlike the Elvis bios, which were dedicated to showing the person behind the facade, Warren didn’t even have much of a facade. I always gobbled up anything printed about him, but there was so little until this. My primary source of info was the Rolling Stone cover story back in '81, but even that, I took with a grain of salt. I kept thinking, “The guy who wrote this is so hopelessly naive; there has to be more to it.”

And there was indeed. For one thing. I’d thought that Warren merely relapsed, five years after he got sober in 1980, when in fact, he didn’t get sober until 1986. Lying sack! The whole time he was rabbiting on about how great sobriety was, he was still drinking! But I don’t feel disillusioned; I’m just glad to finally know the truth. I’m also glad to know that Crystal was not the doormat I thought she was, and to know more about his relationships with his children. It seems that they came to the same conclusion I did with my dad: just accept him the way he is. And he was willing to meet them halfway. One bit towards the end has Ariel talking about being pregnant with her twin sons at the same time Warren was in his last days. One would call the other and say, “How you doing?” “Terrible.” “Me too. You get out of bed today?” “No.” “Me neither.” Sad smile.

The only real disappointment for me was not being told more about his childhood. Warren said once in an interview that “when I had the slightest illness as a child, I was given powerful medicine…stoned a lot at an early age.” Reading that, I thought, “So he was an addict from what, age 5?” and hoped I’d find out how true it was, but there’s no mention of such a thing. I guess the only people who can confirm that are dead, and didn’t talk about it when they were alive. Beyond that, though, I appreciated the excerpts from his journals, the many, many photos, interspersed with text instead of grouped together – I hate flipping back and forth to check photos – and the quotes from, seemingly, everyone who crossed paths with him. Some people also claim there’s not enough talk about his music, but since that was not the reason I was reading it, I didn’t notice a lack.

So all in all, I’d recommend it. It reads fast, and I’ve long been a supporter of the…what do you call that style, when it’s all quotes strung together in sequence, instead of narrative? I mean, why not have people give their impressions in their own words, instead of a biographer trying to put hir own spin on the story? Yes, he was dysfunctional: highly so. But that’s why I became a fan.

Seriously, I wouldn’t want to read a hagiography of Zevon, either. He didn’t get his due in life, let’s hope this book gets him some respect in death.

Sorry for the resurrection. Is the book in question, “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead?”

I hope to read a biography of him by a less biased source in the future. He was a genius asshole, and Crystal’s book emphasized the latter at the expense of the former. It really gave short shrift to his music.

Inigo: Yes, that’s it.