Warren Zevon's Resurrection

Zevon -- bright, cleareyed, looking as sleek and powerful as Sugar Ray Leonard these days - is talking about the last time he fell off the wagon after his voluntary rehabilitation at Pinecrest, a private hospital in Santa Barbara.

The reason for that final binge -- not that an alcoholic needs any special reason, Zevon will tell you -- was the visit of Montreal Expos pitcher Bill Lee, about whom Warren had written a song. Lee had liked l978's Excitable Boy, and Warren wanted to play a tape of "Bill Lee" (later included on Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School) for him. George Gruel, Zevon's live-in aide-de-camp and a warm and wonderfully understanding man, had some doubts as to trust might happen.

Zevon tells the story: "I said, 'Now look, George, we don't necessarily have to buy all this stuff that the hospital tells us. Let's just see if I can drink moderately.'

"So there was this one occasion -- especially unfortunate because I think it left a bad impression on Bill Lee -- when George said, 'Okay. You can have a drink when he gets here. Don't drink anything all day and I'll let you have a drink then.'

"A couple of days later, George said. 'You can't control the amount you drink. You didn't stop yesterday. You didn't stop today. When are you going to stop?'

"I had a bottle and a half of Wild Turkey left. I said, 'When that's gone.'

"He said: 'Enjoy it.'

"And that's how we did it. I had to detox again. And for a few days, it wasn't bad. Once again I thought, Aw, see, they make more out of it than they should. Then one night I got what was like the flu, only it wasn't the flu. It was much worse. I really didn't know if my brain was frying, I felt so feverish. I got the chills. There was no getting warm enough. I was lying there, shaking and praying. Praying. I'm not even a religious man, but there comes a time . . ."

I first met Warren and Crystal Zevon after his initial performance at the Bottom Line in New York City. Asylum had just released Warren Zevon and I'd listened to nothing else for days. Though I loved the record and had, in fact, been familiar with Zevon's music for years, seeing the man onstage was like experiencing -- what? Jackson Browne's "For Everyman," the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, the New York Dolls, Norman Mailer. Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry and Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer novels at an impressionable age. Rightly or wrongly, your life just changed.

The Zevons -- Crystal then seven months pregnant -- stayed in New York for a few days, and the three of us became fast friends. Mutual interests, etc. All I wanted to talk about were Zevon's songs, while Warren and Crystal simply brushed aside my questions and kept asking me about Ross Macdonald, whom I'd recently met in Santa Barbara. They'd read all his books and could quote passages verbatim. I was impressed. Provided it's all right with Millar, I said, I'll take you with me to visit him for a day or two. It was as if I'd invited them to meet God. Though I knew Zevon had something of a drinking problem, I had no idea then how deep it went. This was in the spring of 1976.

In the late summer of 1978, Warren Zevon and I became "blood brothers." Late one night, Crystal phoned from their new home in Santa Barbara. She sounded very distraught. Warren's drinking had gotten much worse. They'd had a fight, and he was in New York now to talk to friends: Bruce Springsteen, producer Jon Landau, guitarist David Landau, critic Jay Cocks, me.

"I know," I said. "He just called."

"I talked to him this afternoon," she said. "He told me loved me and was coming home once he'd seen you, Bruce, Jon and David. 'Warren,' I said, 'you did see them, last night at the Palladium.' He didn't even remember being at the concert, Paul."

Shit, I thought.

There was a long pause.

"Will you try to talk him into going into a hospital for treatment?" Crystal asked. "I've already found one right here in town."

"Yes," I said, with a large gulp. "I'll try."