His final album, The Wind was a triumph of imagination over impending disaster.
Warren zevon the wind how to#
Zevon has shown us how to exit this life with grace and dignity – hell, he’s even shown us how to laugh with the Reaper.This year will mark the 16th anniversary of the death of Warren Zevon. Some of those friends included Jackson Browne, Dwight Yoakam, Ry Cooder, Tom Petty, Billy Bob Thornton, T Bone Burnett and Don Henley.Ĭasual Zevon fans might not recall many of his songs beyond “Werewolves of London” and “Excitable Boy,” but this record is one every adult should listen to at least once, because we were all born to die. Zevon told Rolling Stone last year, “The people closest to me were asking, ‘What can we do?’ My friends lined up around the block like ‘Die Hard 4’ was opening.” The Boss wasn’t the only artist of note who wanted to work with Zevon on this final project.
It was reported that Springsteen wanted to be a part of Zevon’s swan song so much that he chartered a jet and left his world tour for a day last fall to do a studio session with the man that resulted in “Disorder.” The incisive narrative and unsentimental characters of his youth emerge on “Disorder in the House,” which features Bruce Springsteen on guitar and back-up vocals. The best is the raucous, live-for-the-moment rocker “The Rest of the Night” where Zevon’s looking to party for the rest of the night because “We may not get this chance again.” These songs rub your nerves raw and make your eyes well with tears.īut as hard as Zevon tugs your heartstrings, he also contemplates his mortality with mischief.
Later, in “Keep Me in Your Heart,” he asks his lover to remember him once in a while. The first is “Please Stay,” where he sings with Emmylou Harris, “Please stay with me until the end, when there nothing left but you and me and the wind.” The saddest songs carried on “The Wind” are both pleas to his love. Whether that tune’s weary delivery is actually an artistic expression or the artist himself stepping closer to the grave is for you to interpret. She got away, but the feelings never left him. In “El Amor de mi Vida,” Zevon sings about not snagging the love of his life. Songs in “The Wind” chronicle serious regrets. This album is marked by the same love of words and the power they have to elicit emotion from his fans. He’s a master of subversive songs that have dealt with psycho killers, headless mercenaries, red-headed girls and lawyers, guns and money – all written with extraordinary literacy. The guy breaks your heart and makes you smile at the same time when he shouts the improvised petition to Saint Pete, “Open up, open up, open up.” Zevon’s version draws its power from the obvious synergy of lyric content and artist but, more important, showcases his signature sense of twisted humor – one more time. The centerpiece of “The Wind” is Zevon’s cover of “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” Bob Dylan’s song about a dying lawman. “The Wind” is Zevon at his best – an irreverent artistic achievement that stands as a triumph of his will to live, a manic-depressive album that mixes tearjerkers and tracks etched with acid wit and gallows humor. Instead, he used his fleeting time to rage against the impending dark by writing a remarkable album’s worth of songs, out today under the title “The Wind.” A year ago Thursday, doctors gave Warren Zevon just three months to live.ĭiagnosed with inoperable lung cancer, the 56-year-old rocker could have folded his hand and boohoo-ed his way to the marble orchard singing poor, poor pitiful me.
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