Warren Zevon's Resurrection

After we hung up, I wondered what to do. How do you introduce this particular topic into a casual conversation? Warren, o1d buddy: not to change the subject or anything, but have you ever considered committing yourself? Terrific, I thought. Just terrific.

As it turned out, I needn't have worried. About thirty seconds after I'd knocked on his door, Zevon announced: "I want to ask you a serious question. The answer's important." He looked me straight in the eye. "Do you think I'm a drunk?"

My reply wasn't as dumb as I'd expected. It went like this: By asking the question, you've already answered it. Your answer's yes. So why not try to get some help -- a hospital or something? There's probably one in Santa Barbara. You've got nothing to lose, absolutely everything to gain. After all, if you decide you don't like being sober, you can always buy another bottle, can't you?

Warren looked greatly relieved. All he'd really come to New York for was confirmation. He'd known for a long time what he had to do. He just didn't know if he could do it.

We talked for hours that night: our life stories. Fear was a major theme. Zevon, who'd spent some time with Igor Stravinsky as a teenager, wanted to make his mark in classical music as well as in rock & roll. There was this unfinished symphony, hanging like a stone around his neck. Me, I wanted to write a series of detective novels, be the next Ross Macdonald. About dawn, we agreed we owed it to ourselves to take separate shots at it. And to give each other all the support we could. Things had gotten pretty corny by then. "Blood brothers," we swore. If there had been a knife, perhaps some blood would have been mingled.

0ne of the reasons the Zevons moved to Santa Barbara was the hope that clearing out of Los Angeles would curb Warren's drinking. On his own, he'd attempted to stop, but it didn't work. And the calmness of Santa Barbara, which he'd "thought was going to he an idyllic existence," was driving him nuts.

Warren, in a bio he wrote, remembers the move this way:

That summer, we buy a spacious house in Montecito. Our initial reason for 1ooking in the Santa Barbara area is simple: Ross Macdonald lives there. It's quiet, peaceful, safe, beautiful. The air is fine. It makes me nervous. The idea that I can't afford the house makes me nervous. The idea that I can afford the house makes me nervous. I have the guest house professionally soundproofed and build a four-track "writing studio." The studio makes me nervous.

What happened in that studio just a short while after our "blood brothers" ceremony was enough to make everyone who knew Zevon nervous.

"I tried not to drink for a few days when I got back so Santa Barbara," Warren says, "but decided to give myself a little rope at our housewarming. By the end of the evening, I was hanging from it, of course."

Let Crystal finish the story: "The next day, some friends come over, and he started drinking more beer. After they left, I mentioned it. He got irritated. There was nothing wrong with having a few beers, he claimed. He said he wasn't going into the hospital, that he could quit by himself. We argued. He got mad and went out to the studio.

"About two in the morning, I heard three shots. I just sat straight up in my bed, and the sound of those shots was like a bolt of lightning going through me. My first thought was that he'd shot himself. Then I thought, Well, there were three shots. But I didn't know.

"I got up and looked out the window, but I couldn't really see what was going on, so I went out. But is wasn't until I started walking across the yard that I started to think of the possibility that he might shoot me, that Ariel [their two-year-old daughter] was in the house, that if he was drunk and shot me, what would happen to her?

"I found myself sort of sneaking up to the studio. I opened the door and went in, and he was just standing there with the gun, staring at the couch. He was obviously drunk. Then I saw his album cover -- the Excitable Boy cover, a portrait of him -- propped up against the couch. There were three holes right in the middle of the face.

"At first, he looked really scared. He put the gun down. Then he laughed -- a real nervous laugh -- and said, 'It's funny, isn't it?'

"I said, 'Warren, it's not funny at all. This time, it's really not funny.'

"I turned around and walked out of the studio, and he just chased after me. He was like a little boy, kind of pulling at my arm and crying, 'It was all a joke. It's okay.'

"When we finally got to Pinecrest, he was terrified. After he checked in, he said: 'Call Joe Smith [chairman of the board of Asylum] and tell him to issue a press release.' I think he knew that he might change his mind and try to get out. It was his way of making sure he stayed."

When Crystal telephoned to tell me that Warren had entered the hospital, she described his condition: "He's dying, Paul. Some days, he can't even dress himself."

I caught a plane to Los Angeles right away. Jackson Browne and I drove up to Santa Barbara the next day for what was called an intervention. Several other people were coming, too. Crystal had explained to us what we'd have to do: make a list of all the times we'd seen Warren drunk and tell him -in no uncertain terms -- exactly how he'd acted. Under hospital rules, the whole thing would be a complete surprise to him.

Intervention. The very word suggests such a cold and exact, sanctioned and yet sinister interference with another person's life that I still get the shakes whenever I say it out loud. In-ter-ven-tion. Is it a Nixonian noun for some act of official pornography, a euphemism for gang rape by governmental robots? No. In a way, it's what Pinecrest has instead of God. While an intervention can seem as harsh and fear-provoking as the idea of eternal damnation, it's also kindly and forgiving. Put it this way: an intervention is an execution with a happy ending.