The announcement was made while I was on vacation, and somehow I missed it. So I was mystified by the reverential tone of the promos for Warren Zevon's appearance on "The Late Show with David Letterman" last week.
Zevon is dying of lung cancer, which has spread to his liver. It's too far along to be operable. He was diagnosed in August and made the official announcement Sept. 12.
Warren Zevon, for those unfamiliar with his work, is a brilliant singer-songwriter who first came to prominence in the '70s, has released nearly a dozen albums and counts among his friends and admirers such high rollers as Bob Dylan, Jackson Browne, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, Letterman and author and columnist Carl Hiaasen. He's one of those artists who is highly respected by his peers but not a regular on any Top-40 radio playlists. He is best known for the hit (heard mostly around Halloween) "Werewolves of London" and the offbeat classics "Lawyers, Guns and Money" and "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner."
"I might have made a tactical error," he told Letterman dryly the night before Halloween, "in not going to a physician for 20 years. It was one of those phobias that didn't pay off."
Since being diagnosed, Zevon has been making the most of the time he has -- probably measurable in weeks. He has been spending time with his two grown children and writing and recording as many songs as possible. It's a poignant burst of creativity and living up against the ultimate deadline.
He is only 55 years old.
I'm not qualified to write an appreciation of Warren Zevon. I'm neither a professional music critic nor even a big fan. I have only one of his albums, "Excitable Boy," though it's one I listen to often. He has played many times at Rosebud, and when I saw that he was coming here, I always had the impulse to go see him. I regret now that I didn't take the chance when I had it.
And that's really what I'm more interested in here. Not the gifted, rather twisted songwriter and performer the world is about to lose, but the unusual circumstances of a man who knows he is about to die and tells the world.
Anyone who knows his music at all knows he was always winking at death. "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" is the name of one of his releases, and his latest album of new material, released before he was diagnosed, is eerily titled "My Ride's Here." He wrote songs about killers, vengeful ghosts and violence. (He also wrote beautiful love songs.) And now, Death is coming for him, and he is getting ready with his characteristic sense of irony.
What would you do if a doctor told you you had three months to live? (After you got a second opinion, naturally.) We're all going to die, and that's hardly a news flash. But we skate through our lives under the comforting assumption that we've got plenty of time. "I could walk out of here right now and be hit by a bus," people say, by way of illustrating the capricious suddenness of death, but no one who says that really believes that's going to happen, certainly not today.
What would it feel like to walk through fallen leaves, knowing that you'll never see new ones grow again?
Zevon, who battled with alcohol in his younger days and saw two marriages end, decided two things were important enough to do in his last weeks: be with his children and add to his musical legacy. He wasn't particularly prolific through his career, but now he is furiously writing and recording songs, as if to finish a long life's worth in his short time.
Letterman asked Zevon how his life has changed since his diagnosis. Like any condemned man, the singer is enjoying his last meals. He has learned how much you have to "enjoy every sandwich."
That seems like a good lesson, because everyone's sandwiches are numbered.
Samantha Bennett can be reached at sbennett@post-gazette.com or 412-263-3572.
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