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When I started working for a mesothelioma compensation company, I knew it was only a matter of time before they let me write about Warren Zevon. Not as a favour to me being a fan, not because he's one of the finest American singer-songwriters of recent years, although those are true, but because of how he died.
Zevon was diagnosed with mesothelioma in 2002, and died from the disease in 2003. Looking back at his lyrics, surely the one of the best ways to celebrate a singer-songwriter, there's what looks like a terrible omen in the words of 'The Factory', which include a line about "kickin' asbestos in the factory".
The character in that song gives us his age, fifteen years younger than Zevon, so it's fair to assume that this isn't autobiographical. Where he was exposed to asbestos remains unclear in the official sources, although the forum on his fan site suggests that it was from playing in a carpet warehouse as a child. Zevon would have been sixty this year; the incubation period for mesothelioma is long enough that this could be true.
Even before the diagnosis, he seemed to have little fear of death. A recurring icon in his work is 'old velvet-nose', a smoking skull, and his textbook rock and roll lifestyle through the Seventies was that of a man who felt immortal. 'My Ride's Here', written before he knew he had contracted mesothelioma, imagines death as little more than the car that'll take you away from a party you're still enjoying.
Then, after the diagnosis, Zevon rejected self-pity. While there are goodbyes to be found in 'The Wind', his last album, it is the work of a man who believes that "once you find out what it's like on the other side [of a terminal diagnosis], you can go beyond fear."
It also features a range of friends and admirers, from Bruce Springsteen to Billy Bob Thornton to Ry Cooder. REM have been great supporters of his in the past. A tribute album, 'Enjoy Every Sandwich' - a Zevon quote, describing what mesothelioma had taught him to do - features covers from an incredible selection of stars.
It's not only musicians who rate his work; his lyrics have drawn many writers to be fans. It was through the writerly connections that I discovered Zevon. I'd seen a reference to what I now know to be one of his finest albums, 'An Excitable Boy', in Paul Muldoon's sequence of poems, 'Sleeve Notes'.
This being one of my favourite poets, I was thrilled to discover that he'd written two of the songs on Zevon's 2002 album, 'My Ride's Here', including the title track. When I found that, I discovered it also featured collaborations with other writers, including Carl Hiaasen and Hunter S Thompson. As if to complete the circle, Zevon acted as musical co-ordinator to a band including Stephen King, Amy Tan and Barbara Kingsolver.
Following his death, then, it was unsurprising that powerful elegies should appear - first from journalists, rapidly followed by Hiaasen's letter still preserved on the internet.
Perhaps the most significant elegy, though, came from Muldoon, who had become friendly with Zevon since their collaboration. His 2006 collection, Horse Latitudes, closes with a long poem that combines references to Zevon's mesothelioma, his lyrics and his life with John Donne, guitar-nerd topics, and grief for the poet's sister, also fighting cancer. It's rightly a high point of the book, managing to be heart-felt and touching, yet laugh-out-loud goofy, sometimes at the same time.
More significant than this, perhaps, is the effect that Zevon had on Muldoon's style. Muldoon has had a distinctive voice for years, marked by idiosyncratic rhythms and half-rhymes, and seemed to be able to shrug off influences from other poets. Yet since coming into Zevon's sphere, he has begun to turn to the song lyric as a form, insisting on a stricter obedience to the beat. And he has been learning electric guitar.
In the seemingly eternal argument over whether song lyrics are poetry, this friendship is strong evidence that they can, at least, communicate. And that mesothelioma can't prevent Zevon's continuing influence.
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