“Oh shit, I’m sorry,” I blurted out, alarmed. The waiter came and we ordered beverages, a Diet Coke for him, a beer for me. In the fall of 1989, I had lunch with him at Musso & Frank, the hip Hollywood eatery where he was a regular. I got to know Zevon pretty well through those decades, reviewing and interviewing him for the Globe. Zevon backstage at the Park West in 1982. He’d play a gig at a Boston club and then schlep up to Maine to play a ski lodge. Later on, without the financial backing, and his audience at what might be termed “cult level,” he’d play solo club shows - just him with an acoustic-electric guitar and grand piano. That was when he and his record company could afford it and the crowds turned out. It has a pretty staggering effect.”įrom the late ‘70s through the early ‘90s, when he was riding semi-high, Zevon often toured with a full band. But they’re there because they believe in you. Each one of them has prepared a statement about all the times you were drunk, how they didn’t want to tell you what an ass you made of yourself and how you imperiled everybody around you. “They do that intervention therapy,” Zevon said, “where they casually walk you into a room and there’s everybody you know in the world. Zevon checked into a California facility and underwent a month-long intensive detoxification program. “It was a scary thing, but you’re real lucky if the gorge rises and the self-disgust gets to a sufficient cinematic kind of thing where you know that you’re an asshole.”
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