Doesn't seem to be much I can do about it.
"I wish they'd buy a few more - it would help in many ways. His unexpected cover of Steve Winwood's Back In The High Life Again suggests both the painful transience of fame and Zevon's indifference to it.īut doesn't he get angry that people don't buy his records? "Uhhh, not really," he answers. Despite the morbid tone of the title tune, or I Was In The House When The House Burned Down, and the terror of medical crises that palpitates through My Shit's Fucked Up or Don't Let Us Get Sick, Zevon's black, ironic delivery manages to suggest that there are still a few more twists left in these tales. In the past, Zevon has occasionally been guilty of LA sludge-rock bluster, but these songs flash back to the rough simplicity of his original inspiration, Bob Dylan. Life'll Kill Ya is a fine addition to the Zevon canon, all the better for its stripped down and frequently acoustic arrangements. Somewhat to his bemusement, the 53-year-old songwriter found that his career had spluttered into life again. Goldberg, something of a rockbiz legend in his own right and Nirvana's former manager, heard Zevon's tapes and promptly offered him a deal with his new record label, Artemis. When I told him I had no idea, he suggested calling Danny Goldberg - he's known not to be allergic to artists over 30 or 40 or 50." "Jackson Browne and I were having dinner and driving around Santa Monica and I was playing him the new songs, and he asked me what I was going to do. He made up his own demo tapes to play in his car. He concocted his latest batch of songs without a recording contract, and feeling no particular urge to find one. Logic led Zevon to the conclusion that he was, to all intents and purposes, retired. It didn't matter that 1991's Mr Bad Example was beyond the wildest dreams of the average singer-songwriter, nor that 1995's Mutineer, though not a masterpiece, deserved far better promotion than it got. After the blistering career-best brilliance of his 1987 disc Sentimental Hygiene, Zevon spent the 90s subsiding gradually into a quicksand of popular indifference. Warren Zevon's latest album is called Life'll Kill Ya, and it's a record he didn't expect to make. It means, 'The fear of death just fucks me up.' " His face creases up and he emits a deep, leathery laugh. "It's a medieval Scottish poem by William Dunbar. Just because he doesn't sell many records these days, that doesn't mean he can't afford deluxe California-style dental care. Zevon gives a ferocious leer, flashing two rows of evenly spaced, impossibly white teeth.
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