![]() The singer's mother, Beverly, was of Scottish heritage and a Mormon. His father, William, was a Russian Jewish immigrant who was a boxer in his early days in America, then settled into a career as a professional gambler and "a mobster, generally," as his son described him. 24, 1947, in Chicago and spent much of his youth shuttling between different cities in California, among them Los Angeles and San Francisco. pop charts, an unprecedented showing for the singer. The Artemis Records disc debuted recently in the Top 20 of U.S. Zevon spent much of his time during his illness doting on family and working in a home studio on a new album, "The Wind." His popularity among his peers was underscored by a parade of contributors to the record, including longtime friends Bruce Springsteen, Don Henley and Jackson Browne. Hey, I feel like I've lived a couple of lives - and now when people listen to the music they'll say, 'Hey, maybe the guy wasn't being so morbid after all.' " Then for 18 years I was a sober dad of some amazing kids. I was a malfunctioning rummy for a while and running away for a while. "I was the hardest-living rocker on my block for a while. ![]() "I feel the opposite of regret," he said then. The singer, a longtime smoker, learned in August 2002 that he was suffering from inoperable lung cancer, and a month later he went public with his condition in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. "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."ĭeath and dying were among Zevon's favorite topics (the cover of his 2002 album "My Ride's Here" showed him in a hearse, while another collection was titled "Life'll Kill Ya"), and when confronted with his own mortality he continued the exploration with aplomb. ![]() Bad Example," an altar boy grows up to be a vagabond con man: 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. 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. ![]()
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