![]() ![]() “Because of my father’s profession, our situation rose and dropped pretty radically,” Zevon said. and other locales depending on “whether my mother or father was influencing the course of events,” he said in 1980. The family was often on the move during Warren’s youth, bouncing between San Francisco, Fresno, Calif., Phoenix, L.A. Born in Chicago in 1947, he was the only child of an uneducated Russian immigrant gambler and an American mother. Looking at the particulars of Zevon’s upbringing and early career, it’s hardly a surprise that he developed a unique songwriting perspective. His booming voice and sturdy piano lent strength to the sometimes weak and troubled souls that populated his songs. There was a dramatic grandeur in his music that was also tinged with sadness. ![]() was a world of shadows and closed doors, desperate characters and crippling ennui. Critics invariably talked about his debt to Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and the noir detective films and books of the ’40s at the same time, his vivid portraits of society’s underbelly seemed completely contemporary. Zevon’s vision was darker, more bent than that of his peers. ![]() As a songwriter, Zevon bore little resemblance to the other leading craftsmen of the day, such as his friends Jackson Browne (who produced Zevon’s brilliant first Asylum album), Don Henley and Glenn Frey of The Eagles, or J.D. When Warren Zevon emerged in the midst of L.A.’s vibrant singer/songwriter scene in the mid-’70s, he was like a breath of…well, strange air. ![]()
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