His was a satiric literature. Funny but pointed. He was most famous for his song "Werewolves of London" (if you haven't heard of that song, you haven't heard of Zevon), but I remember him more for the twisted "Excitable Boy" and the sardonic "Accidentally Like a Martyr." He was an entertainer as well as a rocker, and he hit me on all the right levels. His music could inspire me on visceral levels to laugh, dance, think, feel, meditate. All at once. His esoteric lyrics became my private anthems.

Last September, almost exactly a year before he died, Warren Zevon was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. This just after he released an album called "My Ride's Here," the title referring to the Grim Reaper's chariot.

Zevon's diagnosis made the front page of CNN.com, perhaps giving him the most mainstream exposure of his career. I immediately forwarded a quote from the article to a friend: "I'm OK with it," Zevon, 55, said in a statement. "But it'll be a drag if I don't make it until the next James Bond movie comes out." He instead lived to see his grandchildren born and to finish one last project.

After he was diagnosed and knew hew was going to die, Zevon began work on his final album: The Wind. It's sweet. It's sad. It's dark. It's lovely. It's comical. What I mean is: it's a Warren Zevon album.

It's less cynical than his earlier work, and, though time must have been more precious than ever to him, he has never been so willing to pace himself. On previous albums he shouted "I'll sleep when I'm dead." Here's where he goes into more detail and we learn that it's not as simple as he once liked to dismiss. But, as he co-wrote with the infamously gonzo Hunter S. Thompson: "You're a Whole Different Person When You're Scared."

He casually sings "I'm running out of breath... if I leave you it doesn't mean I love you any less... Keep me in your heart for a while," but not before reminiscing about his "Dirty Life and Times" in a rocking anthem that could have been straight out of one of his 70s albums. His rendition of Dylan's "Knocking on Heaven's Door" is perhaps the most haunting and heart-wrenching (though never trite--Zevon rightly treats it as a song, not as a performance) I've ever heard, and it might well be the first time it was ever recorded by someone facing the reality of his own end. It's a beautiful send-off, full of everything that made him great, and a few things that make him greater.

Warren Zevon. Born January 1947, died September 2003. Finally getting a good night's sleep.

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Posted by: Ron Hudson at March 14, 2005 12:38 PM