Zevon, Crystal

PERSONAL:

Daughter of Clifford and Barbara Craven Brelsford; married Warren Zevon (a musician and composer), 1974 (divorced, c. 1979); children: Ariel.

ADDRESSES:

Home—VT. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer.

WRITINGS:

I'll Sleep When I'm Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon, foreword by Carl Hiassen, Ecco (New York, NY), 2007.

Also author of the Crystal Zevon blog. Screenwriter and producer for the film My Little Assassin.

SIDELIGHTS:

Crystal Zevon was married to rock musician Warren Zevon in the 1970s and, after they divorced, remained friendly with her ex-husband. When Warren, who is well known for his 1978 hit ‘Werewolves of London,’ was diagnosed with a rare form of lung cancer in 2002 and given only a short time to live, he told Crystal that it was up to her to tell the complete story of his life, blemishes and all. Zevon gave Crystal the journals he had kept throughout the last twenty-five years of his life before he died in 2003. Crystal followed through on his wishes by penning the biography I'll Sleep When I'm Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon. ‘Crystal's book offers an unflinching and honest view of Zevon's world, something he would doubtless have loved,’ reported Jeff Miers in the Buffalo News. ‘It also happens to be, in its seamless commingling of a chorus of voices close to Zevon with the man's own journal writings, one of the finest rock biographies ever written."

Realizing that she was faced with reliving painful memories, Zevon was initially hesitant to write Warren's biography. ‘All of a sudden I had a lot of misgivings,’ the author told Mark Brown in an interview on the Rocky Mountain News Web site. ‘I was going to have to go into a lot of territory I'd let go of and dredge up some pretty ugly stuff. Reading his journals was one of the most painful things I've ever done.’ Zevon went on to tell Brown: ‘I didn't know the depth of his torment. I didn't know how all-consuming his obsessive-compulsive disorder was. Or how really controlled by a sexual obsession he was. I knew about it. I just didn't know the extent."

In addition to entries reprinted from Warren Zevon's journals, the book is based on eighty-seven interviews, most of which are presented as exact transcriptions. In an interview with Dave Lifton on the Blog Critics Magazine Web site, the author explained her rationale for using this approach: ‘First of all, I did not want to have to take on the role that many biographers take of interpreting his intentions or his lyrics, or analyzing why he did things. I wanted it there, but I didn't feel like it was my job or right, or even that I was capable of interpreting the why's and whatfor's. He asked me to tell the truth, and to me the honest way to [do it] was to get as many voices in as possible."

True to her word to be honest about Warren's life, Zevon details the dark side of the artist, from how he nearly drank himself to death in the 1980s to how he beat his wife and played dangerous games with his .44 magnum gun. Among the friends and colleagues interviewed for the book are rock icons such as Jackson Browne, Bruce Springsteen, Linda Ronstadt, and the Everly Brothers. The author also presents interviews with her ex-husband's literary friends, such as Stephen King, Dave Barry, and Carl Hiassen, who wrote the foreword for I'll Sleep When I'm Dead. Zevon even interviewed girlfriends and ex-lovers. Dan DeLuca, writing in the Philadelphia Inquirer, noted that ‘everybody in Sleep is pretty certain that he was an underappreciated genius—albeit one who, sober, was driven to distraction by obsessive-compulsive disorder and began accumulating a prodigious library of pornography, starring himself."

Although Warren went clean and sober for seventeen years starting in the mid-1980s, he turned to drinking heavily once again after finding out about his fatal disease. The biography includes a close look at Warren's battle with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), which led him to be overly concerned with control. One example highlighted in the book is an appearance the singer-songwriter made on the David Letterman Show in 1997. Warren prepared by notating every piece of music that he could possibly talk about on the show, going so far as to make notes about every song on the Spice Girls' debut CD. Crystal Zevon chronicles Warren's final days, too, including the recording of his last album, ‘The Wind,’ which would go on to become one of his most critically acclaimed records and would win Warren two posthumous Grammy Awards.

"I'll Sleep When I'm Dead isn't as slavishly detailed as one of the late Timothy White's … exhausting rock bios, but one of Crystal Zevon's accomplishments is a conversational style rather than a lengthy narrative approach,’ according to Howard Cohen in the Miami Herald. Many other reviewers also praised the biography. Janet Maslin, writing in the New York Times, called I'll Sleep When I'm Dead ‘a no-holds-barred oral history that captures a lovable but wildly aberrant personality, draws upon a fascinatingly diverse cast of characters and peers into the heart of the Los Angeles singer-songwriter community in its prime.’ Entertainment Weekly contributor Chris Willman declared the book ‘one of the most casually insightful rock bios ever."

Zevon told CA: ‘To be a writer was my childhood dream. When I was nine, my grandmother told me about how she had travelled across the country in a covered wagon and that inspired my first ‘novel.’ I have always written, and probably always will. I am influenced by my family and the characters who populate my life; the places I live and love; events in my life or stories told to me by others. I am influenced by many writers of many eras and many genres.

"I am a morning writer. If I am working seriously, I need to be in front of the page by dawn. Coffee comes after I've settled in. Then something to eat. I write, I pace, I research. Ultimately, as long as I show up first thing in the morning, I'll end the day with words on the page. If I wait, or make a phone call first, the likelihood is that nothing will get written.

"The most surprising thing I have learned as a writer is that I'm not so bad, may be even pretty good, at what I do.

"I'll Sleep When I'm Dead is a book I was asked to write. My hope is that it will do several things: First, introduce a new audience to the music of Warren Zevon. Second, give those who already have an appreciation of his music an understanding of where it came from and what it took to write it. Third, offer hope to others who suffer from alcoholism, OCD, and other addictions. And mostly, I hope the book will entertain, amuse, and touch those who read it."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Zevon, Crystal, I'll Sleep When I'm Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon, foreword by Carl Hiassen, Ecco (New York, NY), 2007.

PERIODICALS

Biography, summer, 2007, Norman Snider, review of I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, p. 451.

Buffalo News, May 18, 2007, Jeff Miers, ‘Life with Warren: Crystal Zevon Tells the Story of Her Ex-Husband."

Entertainment Weekly, May 11, 2007, Chris Willman, review of I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, p. 79.

Library Journal, April 15, 2007, Henry L. Carrigan, review of I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, p. 93.

Miami Herald, May 8, 2007, Howard Cohen, ‘Mr. Bad Example on a Rocky Road to Fame: Warren Zevon's Ex-Wife Portrays Him as a Genius—and a Tyrant"; May 9, 2007, Howard Cohen, review of I'll Sleep When I'm Dead.

New York Times, April 30, 2007, Janet Maslin, ‘It Ain't That Pretty, That Life of Zevon's,’ p. 1.

New York Times Book Review, May 6, 2007, ‘Mr. Bad Example,’ p. 18.

Philadelphia Inquirer, May 20, 2007, Dan DeLuca, ‘The Delightful and Difficult Mr. Zevon."

Publishers Weekly, April 12, 2004, John F. Baker, ‘Zevon's Ex-Wife Doing a Bio,’ p. 11.

ONLINE

Blog Critics Magazine,http://blogcritics.org/ (May 18, 2007), Dave Lifton, ‘An Interview with Crystal Zevon, Author of I'll Sleep When I'm Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon."

Contact Music,http://www.contactmusic.com/ (May 18, 2007), ‘Ex-Wife Keeps Promise and Pens ‘Honest’ Zevon Book."

Crystal Zevon Home Page,http://www.crystalzevon.com (November 13, 2007).

Harper Collins,http://www.harpercollins.com/ (November 13, 2007), brief biography of Crystal Zevon.

Neufutur Magazine,http://www.neufutur.com/ (July 26, 2003), ‘Warren Zevon: Forgotten Rock Star."

Raizor's Edge 2,http://raizorsedge2.blogspot.com/ (November 13, 2007), ‘Crystal Zevon's Mother Dies."

Rocky Mountain News Online,http://www.rockymountainnews.com/ (November 13, 2007), Mark Brown, ‘The Man Amid the Madness: A Few Words with … Crystal Zevon."

Starpulse News Blog,http://www.starpulse.com/ (May 5, 2007), ‘Ex-Wife Reveals Warren Zevon Died an Alcoholic Druggie."