With Zevon himself too ill for interviews, some of the artists involved agreed to speak to promote the cause of the album. “I was playing through tears.”Ĭalderon remembered: “I kept thinking in helping with the songwriting that I had to put myself in the place of my dying friend.” “To be playing that song, to know the words and not have him there to sing it, well, it really hit me,” Keltner said. The song had to be assembled in layers, and Zevon, too ill to visit the studio, wasn’t there the day the track was finished. The most compelling piece on “The Wind” is the final track, “Keep Me in Your Heart,” a Dylan-esque song that bids farewell with lines such as “Shadows are falling and I’m running out of breath/ Keep me in your heart for a while” and “I’m tied to you like the buttons on your blouse/ Keep me in your heart for a while.”ĭrummer Jim Keltner said he was overwhelmed with emotion as he played the final version. His vocal takes it to a place I was not expecting.” When I heard him sing it, well, I knew I was wrong. “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” was hardly screaming out for reinterpretation, and he worried that it might be a bit clumsy in the emotional setting of the moment.
Zevon included a Dylan song on “The Wind,” much to the initial dismay of Calderon, who didn’t object to the songwriter but to the song. “Maybe this is worth it,” he told Calderon.
Warren zevon knocking on heavens door cracked#
Another example: After Zevon heard one of his true idols, Bob Dylan, sprinkle his Los Angeles concerts with Zevon songs, the dying man cracked a smile. Zevon has made a habit of deflating the melodrama with his one-liners. “What he brought emotionally into the room, the way he handled himself and gave of himself - well, to me he is a national treasure.” Calderon laughed and added that Zevon, after Springsteen played, shook his head and said, “So you are him.” “I’ve never heard Bruce play like that in my life,” Calderon said. For him, Springsteen’s visit was especially memorable. He produced the album, played or sang on all 11 tracks, co-wrote seven of them, and often laid down dummy lead vocals on songs when Zevon was too ill to show up. Standing closest to Zevon on “The Wind” is Jorge Calderon, his longtime friend and collaborator. The context of the album’s recording, as well as the presence of VH1 cameras for a documentary that airs on that channel a week from today, makes it a strange hybrid between a tribute album and an Irish wake (although a mellow wake, especially considering Zevon was known in the 1970s and part of the 1980s for hellacious excesses). 26 and has the feel of a tribute done while it still matters, when the honoree is still here. Zevon is much beloved by many of his fellow artists (for his talent, to be sure, but also in equal measure for his uncompromising career path and wry charm) and the result of their collective efforts, “The Wind,” is due Aug. So when the call went out, many answered: Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne, Don Henley, Tom Petty, Emmylou Harris, Ry Cooder and many others, some contributing from afar, others coming to see the stricken Zevon, who had gone public with the diagnosis of his terminal cancer. This was exactly the sort of thing you would expect from the singer-songwriter, whose grim and funny music always seemed like a margarita stand in a mausoleum - sure, the songs all seemed say, have some fun, just don’t forget where this big party is going to end. The ones who know Zevon best probably allowed themselves a sad smile. It was a jolting and macabre message to be sure, and that propelled it only faster through the wiring of famous friends, managers, agents and labels that links rock musicians to one another. Warren Zevon is dying and he wants to make a record.
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