Crystal Zevon

I woke up early, getting ready to leave beautiful Sedona.  But, I thought I should try to get back on track here so how about a little more of what you come here for… some of the Michael Ironside interview that got cut from the book…

MICHAEL IRONSIDES
October 2005
Los Angeles

MI:  Warren and I had a bullet-to-the-bone way of communicating.  It was almost elemental like in science classes with all those elements on the wall, there should be one there for conversations between people that get each other.  I think that was the way it was with us.  At least, I got Warren, and he seemed to get me.

The first time I ever heard Warren Zevon, or became aware of what a Warren Zevon song was, I was completely whacked out of my brain.  I was in that kind of pie wedge between low self-esteem and suicide somewhere in Toronto early in the 70’s.  I was having an affair with this very wealthy woman who had a loft.  Her husband was somewhere in Europe and this was her dive into the arts community.  I was teaching at the art college and writing at night, and I was out of my mind, couldn’t even stand.  I was standing in this kitchenette at this lofty loft party.  I remember everyone was in high heels cuz I was on the floor.  I’m wondering why they’re wearing heels.  And, this woman had just gotten back from New York, and I heard her say, in this manner where you can actually hear the money in her voice, “I brought this back from New York.  You have to hear it.  It’s fabulous.”  On came the album “Excitable Boy”.  When it got to “Lawyers, Guns and Money”, it had such an impact on me, it nudged me a little closer to suicide.  I felt like I had blown my shot, and here was a guy who hadn’t.  I’m thinking there’s that guy, and he’s really doing it, and I’ll never be one of those guys who can click that quickly with somebody… to be able to be that present in a medium.  Whatever anybody thinks about Warren’s music, there was a presence to it that is simply undeniable.  “The shit has hit the fan” is what happens when his music comes on.

Cut forward to 1986 or 85.  Warren and I had met through mutual friends.  Both of us weren’t using or drinking anymore.  We’re joking about seizures and shit and past scores… like they say only people like us can joke and find humor about the past tragedies and darkness the way people who survived a car wreck or boat wreck together can communicate.  And, Warren’s saying, “I don’t know if I can tour anymore.  I don’t know if I can physically do it sober.”  And, I think, he and Doc (Dr. Babyhead, Duncan Aldrich) went on the road and they did some outlandish 200 one-night stands in a year… some kind of joyous, self-abusive endeavor.  He called me from the road and said, “Look, I’m going to be in San Diego at this place.  Just me and Doc.  I’m having a ball, and I think I can do this.  Why don’t you come down?”  So, I went down with my wife, Karen, and we’re sitting up in the dark and it’s a joy to watch him perform.  I’d never seen Warren perform, and it’s just him on stage with his guitar and piano, and he’d just done “Summertime Blues”, hoofing the shit out of the stage, and he cut right to “Lawyers, Guns and Money” and I flashed back to that moment in the early 70’s being completely self-destructive and despairing on the floor, and I got that kind of vertigo you get from having the gift of a moment of clarity twice over the same person.  I actually felt motion sickness.  Here I was having a joyous moment of survival, watching a dear friend, and went back to that moment of complete despair, and I burst into tears.  I really got it that night, what cry for happy, that Japanese phrase, meant.  I remember Karen asking if I was okay, and I said, “I’m crying for happy.”  She looked at me like, “You’re weird.”

After the show, Warren’s asking, “How was it?”  We’re in this little dressing trailer pop-up behind the bar.  We’re standing in the dark with the garbage and the gravel behind the club, and we were laughing and crying our asses off.  A true celebration of the spirit.  That disclosure allowed Warren and I to develop this relationship where we had permission to ask each other stupid kinds of questions without feeling stupid.

One night, he said he’d seen “JoJo Dancer”.  He said, “My God, you’re so intense in that movie.”  There’s a scene where I’m playing this Chicago detective and I’m going to go in and save Pryor’s ass, and I come through the door and these mobsters come through the door in a very powerful way and I scoop him  out of the way and get him on a bus.  It’s actually in Lansing, I think.  Warren says to me, “Can I ask you a dumb question?”  I said, “Sure.”  He said, “What were you thinking when you came through that door? I mean, you came in with a kind of honesty and presence, so what were you thinking at that moment?”  I literally, absolutely did remember what I was thinking.  It was one of those rare things.  I had this Fedora, this Borsalino, on and I had this thing with hats.  I always thought wearing a hat knocked my IQ down 30-40%, and I said, “I remember exactly what I was thinking.  I thought, I hope I look good in this hat.”  And, Warren burst out laughing, walking around in circles laughing, hysterical.  And, I said, “What?  What’s so funny?”  He said, “That’s exactly how I feel when people ask me what those lyrics mean.”  He said, “You know, when I write something, I’m thinking, I wonder what  I look like wearing this hat.”  And, we went, “Wow, yeah.  It’s not real but it’s real.  It’s not reality, it’s artificial, but at the same time it means a lot to you.”  What a funny guy.

He called my dad “The Originator”.  My dad’s a very basic man, well read.  And he and Warren would talk, both retrograde type people.  I’m sure they ended up in the same place, wherever that is… or maybe they’re already back.  But, one time, they were talking and talking and talking, and I wander by and say, “What’re you guys talking about?”  And, Warren says, “We’re talking about stuff.”  I said, “Oh, really?”  He said, “Yeah, your dad’s really something.  He’s like The Originator, isn’t he?” The Terminator was out at that time, and so there was The Terminator and The Originator.  I got a picture of him and my dad and Big Ray in a hot tub somewhere.  It was like Stone Soup, you know?

Warren called me up one day and he was doing that kind of overly produced, very electronic album.  There was one song about pollutants and chemicals and stuff.  It was “Transverse City” album.  Anyway, I went into the studio one night and just read the list of chemicals in the background when they were mixing it.  I only listened to the album once, and I just didn’t get it.  I thought it was very over produced, and it’s a lot like a film where it gets so overproduced that what it’s about gets lost.  So much layering of technology and tricks that the actual one-on-one of the performance or personality or story gets lost.   That’s just my opinion, but I thought since I had such an organic relationship with Warren, we could call each other up and piss in each other’s ears, tell the truth to each other… so, he said to me, “What’d you think of the album?”  And, I said, “Oh, yeah, it’s not my taste.  It kind of left me a-back after I heard it.”  He said, “What do you mean?”  And, I said, “I felt like I got pushed away from your music, rather than pulled in.”  He said, “Really?!”  I said, “Maybe it’s the nature of my relationship with you.  Maybe it’s the organic joy I experienced with you that time in San Diego, and the way it feels when it’s just you on stage.  I wanted some of that.  I wanted some of the Troubador.”  And, I thought it was safe to say all this, but he just went, “Really.”  And, he didn’t really say anything, just kind of went away.  But, after that, he didn’t return my phone calls for over a year.  Then, I was going down Crescent Heights one day and traffic was bad, and there was this guy trying to pull out into the traffic, so I waved him in.  He turned around to say, “Thank you” and it was Warren.  He looked like he’d been shot in the ass because he saw it was me and you could hear that “Aw, fuck.”  But, he waved me over onto a side street and we pulled over and he says, “I owe you an amends.”  I said, “What for?”  He says, “I haven’t call you.  My feelings got hurt.  I didn’t know how to take that talk about my album, and my feelings got hurt.”  I said, “I’m sorry you took it that way.”  He said, “Yeah, well, you may have been right.”  And, it got us back together.  I sat there and thought, wow, a year and a half resentment that might have just gone on if the universe hadn’t brought us back together.  In some ways, I’m still feeling apologetic for hurting his feelings.  It’s interesting, because there was absolutely no need for approval on either of our parts, but it changed our communication.  I still don’t know whether it’s my fault or whether it’s part of Warren’s creativity, the way he synthesized the world, his sensitivity… I do know it’s all part of what came out of him and what he gave us all.

Warren was very proud, proud of his life.  I like that.  There’s that Nelson Mandela thing where he says, “We’re not afraid of our darkness.  What we’re afraid of is our lightness.” Our job isn’t to turn our bulb down to make the person next to us more comfortable.  Our job is to turn our bulb up and give the next person permission to do the same.  Warren did that.  In his case, I never got the sense that he was bragging as much as he was trying to document the way events happened in his life to give other people permission to do the same.  Why should you be ashamed…

I remember him and my dad looking at some plant in the garden.  A stupid plant the dog pissed on, and they were studying it, and discussing it.  I remember saying to Big Ray, “What do you think they’re talking about, staring at that urine stained plant?”  Ray said, “I don’t know, but I want no part of it.”

When I heard Warren died, I was on location somewhere.  I was in a car and it was raining, and the radio was on.  It was one of those things where they’re saying, “So and so turned 41 today, and so and so got married, and Excitable Boy, Werewolf of London, Warren Zevon passed away from whatever…”   I remember not feeling isolated from the information.  I didn’t feel alone.  I thought, oh.  Sometimes, feeling nothing can be profound, but it was kind of like I was waiting for Warren to give me a one-liner assessment of what happened when he passed with his album.  It didn’t happen until I sent a bunch of songs to my sister who was having a rough time up in Canada.  I threw a bunch of old songs on like Eric Anderson, Ella Fitzgerald and things from our childhood… because music for me is emotional continuity.  And, I threw on “Keep Me In Your Heart” off “The Wind”.  The email I got back from my sister was “As close as the buttons on your blouse.”  And, I just broke down and started crying.  That song was the coda for me.

Filed by Crystal at 8:12 am under Uncategorized, Book interview