Warren Zevon, who struggled with terminal cancer while finishing his latest album, The Wind, died Sunday in his sleep at his home in West Hollywood, Calif., a spokesman said. Zevon was 56. He was the author of such wry tunes as Werewolves of London and I'll Sleep When I'm Dead.

His illness, diagnosed a year ago, resonated in the lyrics of his new album. He beseeched in the fragile Please Stay, "Will you stay with me to the end?"

Zevon succumbed to mesothelioma, a rare lung cancer usually linked to asbestos.

Housebound because of his illness, Zevon finished The Wind by recording his last session at his home. He lived long enough to see his daughter Ariel give birth to twin boys in June.

- from USA Today.

Others will be along who will be able to write better than I about this loss. People have been posting since it was announced almost a year ago he had cancer. Just do a search for Zevon.

And here are parts of a more detailed obit by Geoff Boucher in the LA Times (the New York Times should soon have one here):

Warren Zevon dies after battle with cancer

LOS ANGELES — Warren Zevon, a restless, sardonic bard who embodied the dark edge and excess of the famed singer-songwriter scene in 1970s Southern California, died after a battle with lung cancer. He was 56.

Zevon died Sunday afternoon at his home in Los Angeles, according to his manager, Irving Azoff, who said that the singer had been ``very upbeat'' in the past week due to the success of his new album and the recent birth of twin grandchildren. ``He was in a good place.''

While casual pop fans might recognize only his 1978 horror-show hit ``Werewolves of London,'' Zevon for years enjoyed a cult following and the acclaim of his peers for songs that were often about fractured world politics and the disloyal human heart.

In a macabre songbook that includes ``Excitable Boy,'' ``Lawyers, Guns and Money'' and ``Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner,'' Zevon presented a world of the undead and the unethical on the rampage in a mercenary world. In ``Mr. Bad Example,'' an altar boy grows up to be a vagabond con man: ``I'm very well acquainted with the seven deadly sins/I keep a busy schedule trying to fit them in/I'm proud to be a glutton and I don't have time for sloth/I'm greedy and I'm angry and I don't care who I cross.''

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