Crystal Zevon

    We met each other in 1976, backstage at some concert hall in San Jose. You had Ariel in your arms. My wife, Jill, and I had our two children, Clay and Rachel, ages two and one. It was a “Save the Whales” benefit with Jackson Brown headlining and Andrew Gold, (or John David Souther) and Warren as well. There was a show in Santa Cruz the night before that we drove up (from Claremont, CA) to see. We missed that one, so I came to the hotel where you all were staying to say hello to Warren. The reason I wanted to speak with him is because we were best of friends from around ‘65 or ‘66 to ‘69. He lived on Orchid St. (near Franklin & Highland), next door to Allen & Brian Hart, twin brothers from Chicago who are artists who paint. One of Allen’s paintings can be seen in the liner notes booklet of the” Preludes” CD in the photo opposite the Jon Landau notes. That painting was orange and we called it “Captain Tangerine”. Allen and Brian visited me at my home in Texas last February, and knew where I lived, 40 years later, only because; long story short; a friend of mine picked up Allen hitchhiking in Taos. When a Zevon song came on the radio, Allen said he used to know that guy, and my friend said he knows a guy who knows Warren Zevon named Ross. Since this was so cosmically coincidental and all, my friend gave Allen my number, and we’ve been in touch for ten years now. When they visited we did oil paintings while listening to Warren’s music and we talked of the sixties and those weird times in Hollywood. We also read books. I didn’t get your book, or the “Preludes” CD, until July, as a birthday gift. If we would’ve had “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead,” we probably would want to know why we are not in it. I know I do. So much so, that I couldn’t read beyond the part that interviews everyone who knew him then, but me. We all miss him. When I heard of his passing from Peter Jennings on national TV news, I took it in and went out to look at the stars, and played his music loud for a while, as if he could hear it somehow. I have all his songbooks and have played the ones I’ve learned for folks around campfires and in Texas bars. Everyone loves his songs. I learn them and play them because I was fortunate to have known the man, and to know him is to love him. Everything he said was profound, poetic, or funny. He an Aquarius, me a Leo, we really got along well. I knew him and visited him as often as possible, driving over from Burbank. He lived on Orchid St. when I met him, music pouring out of his place, trying to write another hit song with that girl of the “Lyme & Cybel”/”Follow Me” hit record. I’ve got some stories from that place. Then he moved way up the hill to a Frank Lloyd Wright house. I’ve got movies we made from that house. One movie from that house has David Marks in it. He’s the man claiming to be the one who Warren dropped his suitcase to from the Hollywood Hawaiian Hotel. I know this is not true, because it was me who caught the suitcase that day in 1968. I’ve been telling people for years that it was me, whenever “Desperados Under the Eves” gets played. So now I’m reading in the CD booklet, on that page with your name on it, some other things that never happened the way it is written. This is how it actually happened: Warren had a friend, Randy Carlson, who worked at a music store on Melrose. He told Warren that Judy Collins was staying at the Hwd. Hawaiian, because they just delivered a piano to her there. Warren had a song for her to sing, so we checked in the hotel, just so he could run into her there and play it for her. He never got the nerve to go knock on her door, and we just stayed there, enjoying the free “continental breakfast”, which we constantly joked about. There were no junkies and winos to step over to share stories with. I hung with him most of that time, and we were only there for less than two weeks. I know it’s been 39 years, but David Marks did not come in his mother’s station wagon. He knows it, I know it, and now you know it. Perhaps Warren had recalled it to you that way and his memory failed him temporarily, and David just went along with it. I came in my mother’s car, and we went to live at her house in Burbank. Of course a former Beach Boy band member does sound more colorful than some guy from the valley. It’s painful enough being omitted; now I’ve been replaced by someone else! I took Warren everywhere I could with his guitar, to blow people’s minds with his great playing. I have movies we made, drawings, photos, and stories if you want them.  My deepest condolences to you and your family for your loss. Love Ross Heberly