I'll Sleep When I'm Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon by Crystal Zevon Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of I'll Sleep When I'm Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon
Book Review: Play it all night long (Warren's songs, that is ...)
Summary: 5 Stars
I have always been a fan of Warren's music, even more so now that I have read this book. He never sold out nor compromised, even while his friends began making more money than G_d. Ever the artist, satirist, philosopher.
Yes, his private life was a disasterous mess, but then again, whose isn't?
Book Review: The 'Excitable Boy' As Genius And 'Moral Imbecile'
Summary: 4 Stars
Crystal Zevon's I'll Sleep When I'm Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon (2007) is a harrowing, sad, and eye-opening examination of the life of the late musician whose brilliant songwriting found critical and commercial fame just as the Seventies and the era of the 'California Sound' were winding to a close. Championed early by influential luminaries Jackson Browne, J.D. Souther, Don Henley and Linda Ronstadt (who covered a quartet of his songs at the height of her fame), Zevon was something of a transitional figure as popular music moved towards the rawer edges of punk and new wave.
Ironically, Zevon, whose typically sharp, cynical, and biting songs helped bring an end to the Mellow Seventies, didn't really survive that decade himself, at least not commercially. As I'll Sleep When I'm Dead underscores, Zevon drifted through the next thirty years of his personal and creative life with difficulty, watching the popular audience for his work slowly evaporate while he became overwhelmed with substance, financial, and behavioral problems of astounding scope and variety. Always something of an 'artist's artist,' the acclaim of his industry peers never diminished.
Zevon apparently suffered from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and some type of agoraphobia as well as various kinds of addiction, but few readers may feel these problems excuse his physical, emotional, and verbal abusive towards one woman after another, his expectation that the women in his life were largely present only to respond to his needs, his failure to support his children for extended periods, and the infantile fits of rage he indulged himself in one year after another.
Often haughty and imperious during his youth and heyday, I'll Sleep When I'm Dead suggests that Zevon could neither cope with nor accept the relative failure of his post-Seventies career, when he had to struggle to obtain recording contracts, was reduced to opening for Richard Marx, and playing restaurants and sterile corporate 'parties.'
However, Zevon was hardly alone in facing this 'big chill.' The post-Seventies period was equally hard on most musicians who cut their teeth during the Me Decade, from Browne, Souther, and Joni Mitchell to America and Bob Seger. The Eagles wisely disbanded, while Ronstadt coolly and confidently moved on to other genres. As new multi-media acts like Madonna rose to prominence, even punk bands faltered: Patti Smith retired; Blondie broke up.
Those interviewed, who include Browne, Souther, Waddy Watchel, Bonnie Raitt, Bruce Springsteen, novelists Stephen King and Carl Hiaasen, as well as family members, intimate personal friends and ex-lovers, occasionally appear to fall into two broad camps to explain Zevon's bizarrely self-destructive behavior.
The more tolerant point of view is that Zevon was an artist and a musician, and "this is simply how artists and musicians behave." The other, more worrying but probably far more accurate view, is that Zevon was something of a sociopath, and one who caused infinite amounts of needless pain and suffering to himself and almost anyone who came into his personal orbit. Since many people, especially women, entered into relationships with Zevon and largely tolerated his abuse due to his fame and reputation, they ultimately have to accept their own responsibility in their experiences.
Much of I'll Sleep When I'm Dead portrays its subject as willful, manipulative, and emotionally immature at best, and as something of a "morale imbecile" at worst. Though only psychiatrists can make such assessments, readers have only to compare Zevon's behavior over the course of his life with Hervey Cleckley's "psychopathology checklist" from The Mask of Sanity (1941) to understand further what I'll Sleep When I'm Dead frequently suggests.
Authored by his ex-wife and the mother of Zevon's daughter, Ariel, I'll Sleep When I'm Dead is a work of integrity, and one initiated with Zevon's encouragement before his tragic death from cancer at 56. Raw but unexploitive, the book is a powerfully dramatic testament to both its subject's musical genius and troubled existence.
Book Review: Account of a mad genious
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a great story about a great artist. The format of snippits of interviews and such with friends and family is interesting, especially considering that the author adds her fair share of interviews with herself, which seems to lend the book a rambling sort of narrative.
Any fan of Zevon will love this book and the stories within.
Book Review: Good Read
Summary: 4 Stars
Altho I was never a big fan of Warren Zevon's music, I couldn't help but to be drawn to him when it was announced that he had terminal cancer and when VH1 aired their documentary of his last days working on "The Wind".
Crystal's book was raw and, as Warren had insisted, showed him, warts and all. The book is actually a series of conversations by people who knew him best, along with diary exerpts from Warren. After reading the book, I can understand how you couldn't help but love him, despite himself.
Whether you're a fan of his music or not, this book is a great read. God Bless you, Warren.
Book Review: Compelling and all too human.
Summary: 5 Stars
A book like this could be written about everyone, by interviewing all our friends through the years, etc., but there aren't many that would be as compelling as this book is. Warren Zevon was a genius and the way his genius worked was as an observer of life's absurdity and hypocrisy. He could see the ridiculousness of existence on earth so clearly that in some ways it skewed his own reality. The key quote in this book is from Jackson Brown, who said to Crystal "Warren is too honest. No one is supposed to be that honest." If ever there was a testament to honesty, it is this book. We all make mistakes in life, Warren's were often big and in public, but we've all done things we wish we didn't have to remember. It seems that Warren was haunted by his own honesty and intense clarity every day. Although he definitely lived in his own version of reality, as many geniuses do, he was able to understand that it wasn't that way for everyone.
If you want an anlysis of Zevon's music, you're due for a trip to the record store, or you need to be clicking over to the CDs. This book is about the man, good, bad, and ugly, and how some of his ideas came about. It is a final testament to an often troubled life, but at the same time it is an amazing tribute to the fact that at no time did he stop writing or playing music. He showed that adversity can be overcome by determination and the need to create, even when all seems lost. The stories of his alcoholism are harrowing, but whose alcoholism isn't? Zevon didn't want redemption, or glorification, he was too honest. He just wanted the truth about him to be told, and here it is. That alone makes this a rare book.