Warren Zevon, who has never won a Grammy before, is nominated for Song of the Year (a writer's award) and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for "Keep Me In Your Heart," the devastatingly affecting song from his final album, The Wind, which is itself nominated for Best Contemporary Folk Album, a sort of odd catch-all category where greats like Tom Waits, Emmylou Harris and Lucinda Williams are often stuck. Zevon is also nominated along with Bruce Springsteen for Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal, and Best Rock Song for "Disorder In the House," also from The Wind.
Zevon died of cancer September 7, 2003 at the age of 56. One of rock's most distinctive, enduring and disturbing singer-songwriters, Zevon's sonorous baritone has lovingly expressed his affinity for the macabre in such jaunty anthems as "Werewolves of London," "Excitable Boy," "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead," and "Life'll Kill Ya." Though best known for his dark humor, Zevon's songs of tender sincerity and emotional insight are equally cherished by his many fans and include "Hasten Down the Wind," "Carmelita," "Accidentally Like a Martyr" and "Never Too Late for Love."
After a life spent wrestling with the angels of creativity and compassion and demons of self-abuse and cynicism, Zevon responded to the news of his, as he put it, "impending doom" with courage, humor, humility and an outburst of music created with his dearest friends and contemporaries, including Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne, Don Henley, Tom Petty, Emmylou Harris, Ry Cooder, David Lindley, and his long-time collaborator Jorge Calderon.
Zevon's stunning album, The Wind, released last August, will proudly stand with his finest work.
The Wind is at once a summation of Zevon's career, and a life-affirming celebration of the joys of music-making. "Dirty Life and Times" has a timeless Civil War march feel, tasty churning guitar from Cooder, and continues a mythic Western outlaw theme begun back in '76 with "Frank and Jesse James" on Zevon's brilliant self-titled album. The theme extends much farther back personally, as Zevon's father was a professional gambler, frequently on the run around California and Arizona. Warren's formative years were like something out of "House of the Rising Sun" - the younger Zevon's music career began when he headed to New York at 16 in a Corvette his father had won in a card game.
"Disorder in the House" and "The Rest of the Night" are ripping rockers, raging cheerfully against the dying of the light, and love songs to the unhinged party life Zevon largely gave up in the early '80s after a long struggle with alcohol abuse. Tom Petty harmonizes to great effect on the latter, and Springsteen unleashes his most jaw-droppingly savage lead guitar on the former.
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