nancynall.com » No man is a hero to his valet.
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No man is a hero to his valet.

Reg­u­lar read­ers may notice some­thing new on the night­stand — the War­ren Zevon biog­ra­phy, the exis­tence of which I only learned about a few days before it appeared in stores last week. In years past, I’d have known for months ahead of time, had the date cir­cled on the cal­en­dar and been among the first to buy a copy when Border’s unlocked its doors. Ah, well. Groupiedom really doesn’t become a woman as long in the tooth as I am.

“I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” weighs in at 450 pages or so, a lot for a rock musi­cian who remained stub­bornly unpop­u­lar until the end of his life. No mat­ter — if his pop­u­lar­ity wasn’t wide (and per­son­ally enrich­ing), it was deep. The right peo­ple loved Zevon, writ­ers and film­mak­ers and politi­cians and other musi­cians. David Let­ter­man, Mar­tin Scors­ese, Carl Hiaasen. Every jour­nal­ist I know loves him; it seems half the Zevon con­certs I attended were with car­loads of col­leagues, dri­ving to Chicago or Indi­anapo­lis in rau­cous car­a­vans and pound­ing the table along with “Lawyers, Guns and Money.” Ah, mem­o­ries. Zevon died in 2003 of mesothe­lioma, a rare lung can­cer linked to asbestos, not smok­ing, a bad habit Zevon had for most of his life. As has been chron­i­cled a mil­lion times by a mil­lion sym­pa­thetic jour­nal­ists, smok­ing was the least of it.

Well, there’s always room for one more. Crys­tal Zevon, the man’s long-suffering ex-wife, says War­ren him­self asked her to write his story, more or less on his deathbed. He promised her his diaries, and told her to tell the whole truth, “even the awful, ugly parts.” That she has done, deliv­er­ing a man­u­script that still has the power to shock and dis­may, even long­time fans/students like me, who thought they knew it all. Note to all my car­a­van bud­dies: We didn’t.

It’s not the big stuff that’s appalling, although some of it really and truly is. It’s the lit­tle things that pile up. The com­pul­sive shop­ping, the van­ity, the child-support dodg­ing, the casual cru­elty to the peo­ple who cared most about him (his chil­dren, notably, espe­cially his daugh­ter), the lying, the cheat­ing. He with­held LeRoy Marinell’s share of the “Were­wolves of Lon­don” roy­al­ties for a num­ber of years, a five-figure sum. After he quit drink­ing, he seemed to trans­fer his addic­tive behav­ior to women — house­wives by the score, you might say — and plowed through audi­to­ri­ums full of them. (Com­bin­ing two vices in one, he even details get­ting laid at a tan­ning salon, on the damn tan­ning bed, which made me think of my friend Emma, who once worked at such a place. Peo­ple were always pee­ing in the waste­bas­kets and doing other vile bod­ily func­tions behind closed doors. Maybe med­ical sci­ence can inves­ti­gate the effect of UV light on human inhi­bi­tions.) He bat­tered his wife in a black­out and later cursed her for try­ing to pin her black eye on him.

You start to won­der, what exactly did any­one find to like about him?

Well, that’s there, too. He was hugely smart and very funny, great with the quip — no won­der jour­nal­ists liked him. Musi­cians admired him, too. You look at the list of guest artists who played with him, every­one from Neil Young to Bob Dylan to George Clin­ton, for cryin’ out loud. He wrote great songs, right until the end — “The Wind” was the record that won the Gram­mys, but for my money, “My Ride’s Here” was the cre­ative peak, the title track being one of the all-time great death songs. It begins:

I was stay­ing at the Mar­riott
With Jesus and John Wayne
I was wait­ing for a char­iot
They were wait­ing for a train
The sky was full of car­rion
“I’ll take the mazuma“
Said Jesus to Mar­ion
“That’s the 3:10 to Yuma
My ride’s here…”

Rhyming “mazuma” with “3:10 to Yuma” — that’s Zevon all over. Played in the key of laughter-through-tears, they way so many of them were.

The under­ly­ing theme to all this, if there is one, is just how much havoc one addict can wreak, in their own lives and in the lives of oth­ers, acts that rever­ber­ate through gen­er­a­tions. I was halfway through “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” when I stopped and wrote a fan let­ter to Crys­tal Zevon (her e-mail is pub­lic). It’s hard to write about being an alcoholic’s wife with­out laps­ing into one or two pre­dictable slots — vic­tim or fool. She doesn’t do that, per­haps because at some point she real­ized she had her own drink­ing prob­lem, which she acknowl­edges, and what it took to quit. The tone is not one of pity-me but of clear-eyed, dis­pas­sion­ate truth-telling. I have a feel­ing some peo­ple are going to por­tray her as the embit­tered ex seek­ing revenge now that the man who hurt her is unable to protest. I hope that doesn’t hap­pen, because she ful­filled every writer’s No. 1 oblig­a­tion: She told the truth. Peo­ple, espe­cially cre­ative peo­ple, are com­pli­cated, and very few have pub­lic and pri­vate faces that would rec­og­nize one another. “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” doesn’t affect my opin­ions on the music, only what it took to make it. It ain’t that pretty at all, as the man him­self once sang. If we didn’t hear it, then maybe we weren’t really listening.

Thanks to all who stopped by yes­ter­day. This has hap­pened a time or two before, and most peo­ple don’t come back after­ward, but we some­times pick up a few new read­ers. For them, a brief­ing: This blog isn’t about any­thing in par­tic­u­lar. My pol­i­tics are center-left, but I try not to harp on them. I live in the sub­urbs of Detroit, a city of spec­tac­u­lar weird­ness and great sto­ries and fre­quently awful weather. I’m a free­lance writer, liv­ing with my hus­band Alan, daugh­ter Kate (10 going on 30), dog Spriggy and a few bad habits. My inter­ests are small-c catholic but I’m par­tic­u­larly fond of good writ­ing, movies, strange cur­rent events and domes­tic life. “Daily life, with links” — that’s the log line for this blog. I came up with it six years ago, and it seems to fit as well today as it ever did.

I think I’m done talk­ing about Lileks, but feel free if you’d like to con­tinue the dis­cus­sion. I was struck by a point some peo­ple made yes­ter­day, in all the com­ments — that there are many who find Lileks’ writ­ing “hilar­i­ous.” I’m not one of them, obvi­ously, but it got me think­ing about humor writ­ing, in the news­pa­pers and else­where, and some­time in the next few days I’ll try to wres­tle them to the ground. I don’t expect it to be ter­ri­bly funny, but if you feel like it, stick around.

Posted on Tuesday, May 8th, 2007 at 10:00 am
in Media, Popculch.

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36 responses to
“No man is a hero to his valet.”

  1. Kim said on May 8th, 2007 at 10:19 am

    I just fin­ished read­ing the com­ments from yesterday’s post, and I am com­pletely exhausted. After read­ing today’s post I’m try­ing imag­ine how I’ll feel after I read the Zevon book. Prob­a­bly like my ride’s here.

    Bravo on yes­ter­day, from one who came to this blog via the orig­i­nal bad-but-famous writer, Mr. G.

  2. brian stouder said on May 8th, 2007 at 12:10 pm

    the orig­i­nal bad-but-famous writer, Mr. G.

    Hmmmm…

    Al Gore?

    San­jay Gupta?

    Jimmy the Greek?

    Alan Greenspan?

    Joe Gara­gi­ola?

    Leav­ing that aside — I know a few peo­ple who really, really like War­ren Zevon’s stuff — so I shared with them the book review that Madam Telling Tales linked to her night­stand; and the sub­ject uni­formly drew intro­spec­tive, wist­ful comments

  3. Eric B. said on May 8th, 2007 at 12:15 pm

    Wow, I never put it together the War­ren Zevon-journalist con­nec­tion. It explains much.

    Humor and news­pa­pers … I seem to remem­ber one of those Read­er­ship Insti­tute sur­veys from a cou­ple of years ago that addressed this. It was one of those things that told news­pa­pers what to do to stay rel­e­vant, and which news­pa­per man­age­ment always talks about and ulti­mately ignores (like, skip celebrity cov­er­age). At one point, the Insti­tute sug­gested that news­pa­pers try to take them­selves less seri­ously, which I sup­pose was orig­i­nally the rea­son why you’d hire a humor colum­nist in the first place (see … we’re fun!).

    I don’t know, in an age where there isn’t much com­pe­ti­tion for local read­ers, humor­ous writ­ing seems like an extrav­agence. Besides, writ­ers who are gen­uinely and con­sis­tently funny are pretty far and few between.

  4. Kirk said on May 8th, 2007 at 12:23 pm

    Maybe this will help you on Mr. G., Brian: bad writer, bad toupee

  5. brian stouder said on May 8th, 2007 at 12:50 pm

    bad writer, bad toupee

    hmmm..

    Well, think­ing locally, a dark cloud sud­denly enveloped me — and then it hit me!

    But if I’m wrong about that, then the ques­tion arises — Jerry Glanville writes?

  6. LA mary said on May 8th, 2007 at 12:51 pm

    Does his first name rhyme with glob?

  7. Kirk said on May 8th, 2007 at 1:03 pm

    I’m bet­ting you’re on it, LA mary.

  8. Alice said on May 8th, 2007 at 1:14 pm

    Thanks for the book review, I hadn’t heard about it & since I’m a long time fan of his, I’ll have to read it.

    Not to step on your “small-c” toes but the fact that Zevon is dead & Dick Cheney still stalks the earth pretty much cemented my feel­ings that there is no god.

    I enjoy the blog. Will be check­ing it out more.

  9. brian stouder said on May 8th, 2007 at 1:20 pm

    Oh! I must be wrong then — since my local first name rhymed with wank

  10. Dorothy said on May 8th, 2007 at 1:35 pm

    Stop it, you guys. You’re mak­ing my face hurt from smil­ing so much! Somebody’s gonna fig­ure out I’m not actu­ally working…

  11. LA mary said on May 8th, 2007 at 1:57 pm

    This month’s Los Ange­les Mag­a­zine has an arti­cle about War­ren Zevon and it’s full of appalling and sad anec­dotes, quotes from Crys­tal Zevon and Bruce Spring­steen, and oth­ers.
    There’s also an arti­cle about the LA Aca­d­e­mic Decathalon, some­thing our house­hold was involved in for months. The arti­cle focuses on a high school in a rough neigh­bor­hood and their shot at the decathalon this year, and that’s swell, but they paint the three schools who in the past have won nation­ally as rich, anglo schools. Ain’t so. My son was the only Anglo on the team of one of those schools, and every kid I knew on that team was not from the neigh­bor­hood the school was in. They were mostly low income over­achiever kids there in the mag­net or AP pro­grams. The team had a bud­get of next to noth­ing, scrap­ing up bus money for meets from par­ents and a cou­ple of alums. At one time or another I prob­a­bly gave every kid on the team. a ride home. They were from Lin­coln Heights and Chi­na­town and Glas­sel Park, and the par­ents didn’t speak Eng­lish.
    They fin­ished sev­enth in the state, by the way, no small accom­plish­ment.
    Go Barristers.

  12. Danny said on May 8th, 2007 at 2:03 pm

    Hey, youz jour­nal­ists. I have a ques­tion regard­ing hyper-local or niche daily’s, weekly’s and the like. We have a few here in San Diego. The Reader and Com­peti­tor Mag­a­zine (a monthly endurance sports mag that may be national). You can buy mail-delivery sub­s­critions, but they are free oth­er­wise and there are many places around town to pick them up. It’s all ad rev­enue that sus­tains them. Kinda like most online con­tent, but with more over­head, obviously.

    Is this the way the locals papaers are going to go? And what sort of money is paid to writ­ers and reporters at these gigs? Sup­port a house­hold type of money?

  13. Danny said on May 8th, 2007 at 2:07 pm

    Brian — another clue. The writer’s first name is an ana­gram. But a really, really sim­ple rever­sal one. Did I men­tion it was simple?

  14. Kirk said on May 8th, 2007 at 2:13 pm

    Beg no beer.

  15. 4dbirds said on May 8th, 2007 at 2:16 pm

    I also found this blog through a linked piece Nancy wrote on Mr. G.

  16. nancy said on May 8th, 2007 at 2:22 pm

    I owe the as-yet-unnamed writer — oh, OK, it was Bob Greene — a lot. That blog entry, bat­ted out in about 20 min­utes and one I thought might be seen by 80 peo­ple, was my first brush with coast-to-coast inter­net expo­sure. It was also the cen­tral anec­dote in my appli­ca­tion essay for my KW fel­low­ship, and was much-discussed in my interview.

    Did I say I owe him a lot? No, I don’t. But I would say that after years of read­ing his atro­cious columns, the ben­e­fit I got from mak­ing fun of him evened the scales.

  17. Scout said on May 8th, 2007 at 2:25 pm

    I can hardly believe that your read­er­ship is (or was) so small. It is one of my daily must reads. I always think every­body else is doing what I’m doing. I’m silly that way.

  18. MichaelG said on May 8th, 2007 at 2:30 pm

    I owe Bob Greene the same nod since it was the Greene Piece (yuk, yuk) that intro­duced me to Nance’s blog.

  19. Danny said on May 8th, 2007 at 2:31 pm

    Scout, what’s the min­i­mum res­o­lu­tion one should use to scan hard copy pho­tos for dig­i­tal archival? These are my fam­ily stuff. I want to make a pris­tine dig­i­tal record to keep them safe from age dam­age and catastrophe.

  20. Connie said on May 8th, 2007 at 2:31 pm

    I too orig­i­nally came here via Mr. Green. A long time ago. As I read yesterday’s com­ments I was think­ing, hey you peo­ple think she’s being hard on Lileks? You ought to see her get going on Bob Green or Mitch Albom.

    I was also think­ing how quick all these strangers were to crit­i­cize any­thing and every­thing, not just the words, but even the web page design. Oh well.

  21. nancy said on May 8th, 2007 at 2:31 pm

    Well, it was five years ago, Scout. But thanks.

    This just in: Lileks’ (rumored) salary for the Daily Quirk — $92,000. Wow. Can news­pa­per man­age­ment BE any worse?

  22. Danny said on May 8th, 2007 at 2:33 pm

    Yeah Con­nie, except the ones that hated Lileks (and prob­a­bly con­ser­v­a­tives). They thought every­thing was bril­liant and peachy.

  23. Danny said on May 8th, 2007 at 2:36 pm

    Hmm.. 92K? Solidly middle-class if that is his main bread. What do you think his total earn­ings are? I know most say that the online stuff is gratis. Any sub­stan­tial book rev­enues or lec­ture circuits.

  24. John said on May 8th, 2007 at 3:17 pm

    Seems the storm has past and left debris in its wake. And now our host­ess has a new title, “That Nall per­son, the dragon slagger”.

  25. Kat Coble said on May 8th, 2007 at 3:35 pm

    Lileks’ (rumored) salary for the Daily Quirk — $92,000.

    WHA?!? And I even like the guy, but I don’t think that the DQ was any­where worth that amount of money.

    But I came to talk about Zevon.

    I hon­estly don’t think I can read the book.

    Okay, I want to read the book because I love Zevon. But I’ve loved him for more than two decades now and I can’t hon­estly say that I’d be sur­prised by the gen­eral behav­iour. He was a rock star in the 70s, which is pretty much syn­onomous with gen­eral debauch­ery. I just don’t know that I want to dwell on the details of that debauchery .

  26. nancy said on May 8th, 2007 at 4:12 pm

    Kat,

    The bad behav­ior con­tin­ued well into the ‘90s, unfortunately.

    And Danny, 92K is solidly mid­dle class in Cali, but in the Mid­west, and espe­cially in news­pa­pers, that’s extremely gen­er­ous. That’s a salary that gets a tar­get on your back, unless you’re management.

  27. LA mary said on May 8th, 2007 at 5:08 pm

    I was going to say pretty much the same thing. 92k here in the land of 1200 square foot houses going for a half a mil, and 3.55 per gal­lon gas is not the same thing as it is in Minnesota.

  28. basset said on May 8th, 2007 at 9:47 pm

    Zevon hit women. That’s all I need to know right there. Drunk I can han­dle, been there, seen that. Writer, well, he did some inter­est­ing stuff but it wasn’t exactly Lennon & McCart­ney, or even Jack­son Browne.

    So what you have here, from the few records of his I’m famil­iar with, a minute or so watch­ing his mor­tal remains propped up on Let­ter­man, and the half-hour or so I spent skim­ming the book in Bor­ders, was an occa­sion­ally witty and enter­tain­ing, and often obnox­ious and arro­gant, f***up who never quite got his life together.

    And he got drunk and punched his wife in the face. How avant-garde, how post­mod­ern, how cre­ative, what an exam­ple to any artiste. The stuff of which leg­end is made, no doubt.

  29. ashley said on May 8th, 2007 at 10:52 pm

    And for me…it was my Zevon page that intro­duced me to Ms. Nall-Derringer. Thanks, Warren.

  30. MarkH said on May 8th, 2007 at 10:56 pm

    Wow, bas­set; just as I was try­ing to find the words.…

    Each to his own taste, I sup­pose. I saw Zevon once (the Agora, Colum­bus, ’79) at the insis­tence of an adver­tis­ing buddy who extoled his live per­for­mances. Hmmm…

    Then I found out my buddy had a hand in pro­mot­ing the con­cert, so I knew HIS motives and was even less impressed. But, he had a good crowd that night, so I’m sure he was loved.

  31. Crystal Zevon » Thanks for the emails! said on May 9th, 2007 at 5:17 am

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  32. Phoenix Woman said on May 9th, 2007 at 5:18 pm

    Well, it was five years ago, Scout. But thanks.

    This just in: Lileks’ (rumored) salary for the Daily Quirk — $92,000. Wow. Can news­pa­per man­age­ment BE any worse?

    That’s McClatchy for you. They got severe indi­ges­tion buy­ing up Knight-Ridder, which forced them to sell off their crown jewel and top mon­ey­maker to Avista.

    (By the way: Save a copy of that Rake piece; The Rake itself’s about to go under.)

  33. Mike Berry said on May 11th, 2007 at 11:26 am

    I’ve read the Zevon biog­ra­phy, am ambiva­lent about much of it but think it’s a worth­while endeavor. It’s not the redemp­tive story put for­ward in the VH1 doc­u­men­tary, but the truth is always more com­pli­cated than we want it to be.

    The book also reminded me of the anger I felt when Zevon’s good friend Hunter Thomp­son com­mit­ted sui­cide. I believe peo­ple in extremis do have a right to plan their own depar­ture, but you don’t get to do it with your wife on the phone and your grand­son in the next room. Zevon’s behav­ior was often rep­re­hen­si­ble, but at least there’s a sense that he tried to make amends up until the very end.

    As for Lileks, I enjoy his writ­ing about pop cul­ture but think he went over the deep end with his polit­i­cal stuff after 9/11. (“The ter­ror­ists are com­ing to Min­neapo­lis to kill MY CHILD!!!!!”)

    The Reporting-in-My-Jammies-and-Slippers crowd are always the first to go in a news­pa­per reorg. He must have seen it com­ing and will prob­a­bly land safely. I don’t begrudge him that.

  34. Terry Karney said on May 16th, 2007 at 11:48 am

    Thanks. I’ve been to shows, pound­ing along. I miss him, and was irked at Let­ter­man that it took so long to get to two songs; moreso because I thought the ques­tions to be typ­i­cal Letterman.

    I wasn’t plan­ning to buy the book, now I think I shall.

    And, as an aside, I love the title, because I’ve been a valet.

    TK

  35. Brian said on May 16th, 2007 at 9:14 pm

    Hey Nancy -

    I’m another Fort Wayne expat. (Escapee?) I’m so happy that you’re doing well and you’ve found a medium where the qual­ity of your read­ers might just rise to the level of your work.

    Great piece on Zevon.

    Brian

  36. Old Dog, New Tricks - Smarter Freelance Writing » 1 Lesson Learned from Nancy Nall said on August 1st, 2007 at 12:09 am

    […] knows what she’s talk­ing about when she dis­cusses jour­nal­is­tic mat­ters. She’s also a fan of War­ren Zevon, which gives her bonus […]

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