No Rock And Roll Fun

ROCKOBIT: I'LL SLEEP WHEN I'M DEAD: The death, at 56, of Warren Zevon isn't entirely unexpected - he announced over a year ago that he was suffering from mesothelioma, a lung cancer usually more associated with people who worked with asbestos than sardonic rock singers. Zevon's work was always marked out by an obsession with the macabre, in one of his round of farewell interviews he told VH1 "Hemingway said all good stories ended in death, and I write songs about death and violence for some reason. Some of them are based on my upbringing and some are based on my reading habits. We live in a culture where violence is all around us and I found myself writing more songs about violence than romantic subjects. I like to think I have some goodhearted romantic impulses now and then, but for the most part I write a different kind of song."

Benefitting from the positive sales effects of a negative prognosis, Zevon achieved his highest US debut chart placing in twenty-five years a couple of weeks ago with The Wind, at the time accepted as his last work. In the UK, he's probably best known for his Werewolves of London hit in the 1970's, but yer chin-stroking name-dropper will, of course, point to his work in the Voodoo Love Gods, a 1990 collaboration between the non-Stipe parts of REM and Zevon. His songs were also recorded by Linda Rondstat.

In another of his last round of press, Warren Zevon told Billboard ""I'm working a lot every day. I already have great relationships with my children . . . I've already led two lives. I got to be a wild, crazy, Jim Morrison quasi-rock star, anyway, and I got to be a sober dad for 18 years. I can't possibly complain."