Backlisted - I'll Sleep When I'm Dead by Crystal Zevon

Episode Date: June 12, 2017

Author and editor Richard T. Kelly joins John and Andy in the studio to discuss 'I'll Sleep When I'm Dead' The Dirty Life And Times of Warren Zevon' by Crystal Zevon. They also discuss the art of the oral history, and run through some of their favourites, including Simon Garfield's The Wrestling and Edie - An Americana Biography by Jean Stein.Timings: (may differ due to adverts)9'57 - Edie by Jean Stein17'20 - The Beatles Anthology26'25 - The Wrestling by Simon Garfield,31'09 The Nations Favourite by Simon Garfield38'42 - I'll Sleep When I'm Dead by Crystal Zevon* To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops.* For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm*If you'd like to support the show, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. You've been in New York City. I was in New York City last week. What were you doing in New York City. I was in New York City last week. What were you doing in New York City? Dan and I were looking to the very first steps

towards opening a New York office for Unbound. So it was very exciting. Wow. They're in your pocket. Well, you finally should mention that. It also coincided with the Book Expo, which is in a massive place called the Javits Centre, which is on the Hudson River.

I mean, it's the biggest venue I've ever seen for a book trade event. And in fact, that was rather nice. It was the only time I've been to a book trade event where there was a lot of space between the stands. You could breathe, or you could hide, not talk to people. But I had one moment which I thought I should share. I mean, amongst the many great, we had fantastic, we had an afternoon at Kickstarter,

and we hung out with Morgan Etrigan and great people, publishing people, New York publishing people. But the cool moment was going to the New York Review of Books classics stand, and Sarah Comer coming up to me and saying, it's my favourite podcast in all the world, can I just say thank you? If you want any of these books.

And I said, obviously I was a bit flattered, a bit embarrassed to be honest, being English, but very pleased. And it's, being English, but very pleased. And it's, anyway, it's very sweet. That's amazing. It was just quite, it was a bit surreal, standing in the middle of a Javits Centre surrounded by, I mean, I'd just seen James Patterson doing a signing.

So to wander up and then to be recognised for... I just couldn't read, she said, I was just reading your badge, I couldn't believe it was you. Yes, it is. In all my ice cream Sunday glory. Well, so it was very successful and exciting. So we'll be going back for sure. But great.

It's just such a great city. And I have to say, reading Zivon's book. We should definitely extend our world tour of backlisted live venues to somewhere in New York. I mean, it seems foolish not to. Very foolish. Live in NYC. Yes, that was great. And then I was back to Hay.

I went to Hay one weekend, went to New York, came back to Hay, and you've been, meanwhile, in Stoke. I was at North London's most popular literary festival the Stoke Newington Literary Festival last weekend as was our guest Richard you were there weren't you? Yes, happy to have been You had a packed house because I was there and I saw that packed house

Yeah, we were talking about politics and whether it's stranger than fiction so the material was ample Yeah, it was a really interesting session and I went to see Stuart Evers and Maggie Gee do a session about The material was ample. Yeah. Yeah, it was a really interesting session. And I went to see Stuart Evers and Maggie Gee do a session about protest that our former guest Kit Duvall was supposed to be attending as well and couldn't get there because of the disruption after the London Bridge events. Was this the Ralph Page book on protest?

That's right, yeah. I saw a really good event in Hay on that very theme. Yeah, this was really good. With Frank Cottrell-Boyce and Court and coaching newman which was very good i did i did a session of this thing i've done at stone unity before called author confidential where i had a really nice panel of authors together and i asked them to talk about what it's like to be an author at the sharp end and i have to say the thing that resonated most with the audience was uh i was talking about how um i don't really understand the thing.

I mean, I really love Twitter, as you will realize. I'm on it a lot and I find it very funny. But I also find it infuriating at times. And I was saying to the audience, the thing I hate on Twitter more than anything else is if you say, you know, I tell you what I really like. You know, I really like Cat Stevens. And I guarantee someone will go, Cat Stevens is shit, mate. And I was talking about the worst time it's ever happened to me, and the thing that was a line in the sand.

I was at a hotel on the Isle of Man, and I was feeling quite homesick, and I came down for breakfast. It was a nice full English breakfast, full Douglas breakfast. And with my breakfast, full Douglas breakfast. And I, with my breakfast some fried bread came. And so I ate some fried bread. I thought, this is nice. I haven't had fried bread like this since I was a kid. And so, full of

happiness and homesickness I tweeted. It's not great content I give you. I tweeted, oh, I'm eating some fried bread and it's really nice. And three people went, oh, fried bread's shit, mate. Right? People can't help themselves. It's so...

I try never to do that. If you don't like something, Matt, I think it's often better to just keep quiet about it, don't you? Do you? Yeah. Speaking of which, we should start, really. Do you see that tweet going around with the picture from Zulu? Have you seen that? Hot takes, sir. Do you see that tweet going around with the picture from Zulu? Have you seen that?

Hot takes, sir. Thousands of them. OK. Shall we start? Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast which gives new life to old books. My name's John Mitchinson and I publish books at Unbound, the website which brings authors and readers together to create something special. And I'm Andy Miller and I write books,

including a book about the kinks of the Village Green Preservation Society which I mentioned today because in keeping with our already theme of me having a bee in my bonnet about things people do on Twitter I saw somebody this week describe the kinks of the Village Green Preservation Society as quote well Brexit and if I if I see anyone else do that I will explain the kinks of the village green preservation society to them until they are dead. Happily, right? So that's me. John?

Well, Matt, you're joining us in a seven-story suite in the Riot House on Sunset Boulevard, where Andy has just chucked the TV off the balcony into the swimming pool. Because today we're discussing, apologies to our American listeners, we're discussing I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon, edited by Crystal Zevon. And this is, we're talking about that book, but we're also talking about other books this time because this is an oral histories

or an oral biographies special edition of Backlisted. We felt confident that probably no other podcast would have an oral history special edition, but here we are to do it. So we're talking about I'll Sleep When I'm Dead by Crystal Zevon. We're also going to be talking about a few other oral histories or oral biographies. And with us today to talk about that subject, this book in particular, and oral histories in general, is the author and editor richard t kelly hello richard hello hello he's a bluff man as you'll as you'll discover

i edit other people's words he says rarely use my own richard's novels include Crusaders, The Possessions of Dr. Forrest and The Knives and he has also written and edited a couple of oral histories or oral biographies himself on Alan Clark the film director Alan Clark who directed Scum and Pender's Fen and

Made in Britain and Rita Sue and Bob Too Rita Sue and Bob Too and also your biography of Sean Penn. Is that an oral history book? It is. It is, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we're going to be talking a little bit to Richard about how you go about putting one of these books together.

But we should also say, in a sense, Richard is the ultimate backlisted guest because he used to run Faber Finds. Faber Finds is the part of Faber devoted to finding giving new life to old giving new life to our books exactly right yeah and so several of the books that we've covered here on backlisted have been available for us to read thanks to richard's efforts at faber finds bridget brophy was one that's yeah the snowball and the amazing emmerich pressburger yeah glad you like that that That's a wonderful book.

How did that come to be? Well, I have the good fortune of... Glass Pearls, that's called, isn't it? Yes, Glass Pearls. Mr Pressburger's grandson, Kevin MacDonald, the Oscar-winning film director, a pal of mine, and he, having liked what Faber-Fiennes was up to,

sent the book my way. I mean, I think, to be honest, he was hoping just something could be done with it because Pressburger wrote two novels, so we should fall into the cracks of the book. But this one was obviously great, and I said, oh, I'd love to do this in Faber-Fiennes, if you don't mind. So that's what we're doing today, and normally we would...

Do the... Do the what we've been reading this week, but we thought it would be better if we both talked about, before we'd gone on to the Zevon book, that we talked a little bit about some of our favourite oral histories or writers who've put those books together. So, John, what oral histories have you been reading over the last 30 years? Well, the one that I think everybody comes back to.

I mean, we could talk... I'm a huge fan of Studs Terkel, amazing impresario and journalist, and his book on the Great War was a classic. I mean, he kind of initiated the genre. Yes, I've got a list of them here. The Good War, the oral history of World War II, which won the Pulitzer Prize. I think it started as an academic discipline, didn't it, really, Richard? People going out and collecting, sort of talking to, kind of people who were going to die as a way of

getting the history of ordinary people. Yeah, and if you think about what mass observation went to in Britain after the war and during the war, the academic sociological interest of it's very obvious. But you get the authenticity of the voice and then you, I guess the thing that makes

them interesting is that they're almost like like they're kind of plotted as dramas. We should say, if anybody doesn't know, an oral history is an edited collection of interview material where the protagonists tell their own story. Mostly in their own words. And the one that I go back to, I think a lot of people go back to as a sort of classic of the genre,

is Edie by Gene Stein, which is the life of Edie Sedgwick. Edie, an American biography. An American biography. And it's much more than just somebody's life. I mean, it's the history of her family. It's the history of a kind of... It's the book, I think Mailer called it's the book i think mailer called it the book

about the 60s that we always wanted somebody to write it's a massive i mean if ever there was a kind of uh you know that that sort of idea of something that is properly symphonic you know with all these different kind of um ranges and you know you've got truman capote you've got on one side you've got family members you've got warhol you've got patty smith you've got Truman Capote you've got on one side you've got family members you've got Warhol you've got Patti Smith you've got people who knew her her members of her family you've got people who were historians of the period it's it's just and it it you know again cliche it is a page turner because the story is and this is an interesting thing which you often find in oral histories they They become emblematic.

I mean, it's almost like a sort of a Greek tragedy, the way, with the chorus and the voices off. And the one voice that kind of isn't there, in a way, is hers. It's a sort of a... I remember I bought a copy of Edie from in the... Yeah, must be mid-80s, from, I want to say, Claude Gill. Do you remember Claude Gill? Yeah, I do.

In Charing Cross Road, because I was just discovering the Velvet Underground. So I had Victor Bocracy's oral history of the Velvet Underground uptight, and here was this book about Edie Sedgwick, so I bought it. I must have read Edie about four or five times in the space of a couple of years. It's so... It's totally compelling, isn't it? Yeah.

I just was rereading it again at the weekend. And what I find is every time I go back, I found that the early stuff about the family, which I sort of skipped over to get to the War Hobbits, reading it sort of 20 years later, I'm much more interested in that. You think that what... So Jean Stein herself was a...

I mean, she did a number of these. She did a sort of similar biography of Robert Kennedy. And we should probably cite that, I mean, did them with George Plimpton, who was her editor at Paris. So she started as an editor. She's also, I discovered, as you do, grazing Wikipedia, that she worked as Ilya Kazan's assistant when he was making Streetcar Named Desire.

So she's, I mean, interesting woman there. The most, I mean, that sort of Plimpton generation, Paris Review. They publish American Journey, which is the book about Robert Kennedy in 1970, and then they publish Edie in 1982, and Edie becomes a bestseller. I think probably to everybody's surprise... And sort of, in a funny kind of way, if I remember it correctly, at the time, for a whole generation of us,

it reinvested the whole Warhol myth in the 60s and the Velvets. I think a lot of people who... Whereas that had maybe kind of dipped as the 70s went on and punk erupted, by the early 80s, suddenly this book came out and it was the book that all Bowie fans, everybody who... I don't know, was it on his list? I bet it was, wasn't it? It must have been on his list. And she anyway...

And also last year she published a book called West of Eden, which is about the founding, the six founding families of Hollywood, which our guest on the last episode, Nivin Kavindan, was raving to me about when I mentioned that we were going to be doing this. So she's published these two or three big books,

which sort of, I've got a definition here. There's a really good article, which we tweeted a link to by Gillian McCain and Lex McNeill, author of the brilliant oral history of US punk, Please Kill Me. Which is another classic of John. Indeed.

And they quote Gene Stein's definition here of what she and Plimpton were trying to do. She used the term oral narrative which also isn't great is it but she's oral's the problematic word oral narrative oral oral history has been largely thought of as the collecting of interview transcripts for storage in archives in order to provide historians with research material somewhat less common is the use of interview transcripts as a literary form, in which the raw transcripts are edited, arranged,

and allowed to stand for themselves without the intervention by the historian. So that's what we're talking about. We should ask Richard, which is the most fun bit of putting together an oral narrative? Is it the interviewing, the accumulating, the editing, or the having finished? The worst part is the transcribing by a million miles, but every writer knows that.

The interviewing or being well is great fun. Sometimes it's torture. But if you do one of these, you're committed to talk to everybody. So you can't pick and choose. You've just got to... The subject, family, friends, people they love, people they hated, the concentric circles just keep going.

So you have some fun there and some it's a bit trickier. The satisfying part of it, the part that feels like writing, is the crafting of it. I mean, to me, the heart of the matter, why the form becomes so good at the point when it becomes good with Plimpton and Jane Steen, is its relation to the American genius of the new journalism in that period, the era of Wolfe and Mailer and Gay Talisa, and applying fictional qualities to non-fictional projects.

I was looking the other day at Tom Wolfe's original manifesto of the new journalism, where you've seen in his not-backward-coming-forward way, he tried to show what new journalism should do, and I think it bears very close relation to what oral history should do, what its strength should be.

The dramatic quality of scenes upon scenes, where the backstory isn't really there, but it has to have forward momentum. You need dialogue, the spoken word in a dynamic form. And you need something interesting going on with point of view. And the great thing about oral history is its form allows you to say, I don't know what the truth is. I can put together two contradictory versions on the page together, and you go and decide. And when you were looking for models, I mean, one of the things that seems that the good ones do is that they have that sort of vernacular intimacy, but they're not, obviously, all

the pauses and the ums and the ahs and the repetitions are taken out. When you were looking at your subjects, did you have models that you... Or is it more a question of finding the right tone for the subject? Oh, I mean, you certainly want to make everyone speak and you want to be a sort of dramatist that way so the voices rub against each other. It's a bit like writing plays or screenplays. Or in

novels too, each character has to have their own voice to differentiate them. They should become recognisable to the reader that way. So you have to have some kind of ear for speech patterns. Obviously you're getting rid of all those ums and ahs and verbatim transcript nonsense, but you're presenting a plausible version

of how they spoke. Well, it's interesting you say that. For me, one of the things that I really love about these books is that Rashomon element of getting the same story from different points of view. And in fact, John, we should also say that you published probably the best-selling oral history, oral narrative of the last, however, 20, 30 years, right? The most expensive best-selling, which was the Beatles Anthology.

The Beatles Anthology really makes a virtue of that Rashomon thing, which is because they can't remember and disagree. They make a virtue of constantly saying, no, I think remember this. This is an interesting thing, because you've just done two of people who are still alive.

Edie was dead when... Yeah, well, Owen Clarke was dead. Oh, was he? Yeah, so that was very much gathered in memoriam. But Sean Penn was very much alive and is a participant in the books. Sure, as is, bizarrely, John Lennon in the Beatles anthology. It was a brilliant bit of work.

They took largely Rolling Stone interviews and some of the interviews that weren't as familiar and it was edited into into the text but the new the rest of it was um the rest of it was definitely interviews long interviews with the three surviving beatles yeah so that so the thing about it was the this is the the first thing is when i it was the the theater of the whole thing was amazing it was frankfurt book fair and you had to sign an NDA and you had to go into a room

and you were left with precisely half an hour to go through it. And it was incredibly moving because it was... We should say it's a great book. I have nothing to say about the content because the content was... We could add or subtract nothing from it. You were basically given the chance to look at it and then you had to come back and respond and say how you how you might want to publish it which amazingly given that everybody was looking at the time we we um we won the auction the amazing thing about that book is

very very familiar people seen in an unfamiliar light and there are stories in there that may that were so the idea that they they book out they book out a whole floor of the hotel for them and the four of them would all end up in one or other of their bathrooms just sort of you know hanging out those four working-class boys from Liverpool not really wanting a whole hotel suite there were just lots of lovely it's the detail and I think that's the thing about the form, is that people's memories and what people choose to say about somebody. That book captures better than any other book the niggly relationship between Paul McCartney and George Harrison.

Yeah. And there are several times where George Harrison very dryly... Flatly contradicts. Where Paul's always been a year and a half older than me or there's a brilliant bit where they're talking about Dylan and they say about Dylan who will come up when we talk about Zeevon they say about Dylan McCartney says

yeah we met Dylan he was our idol and George says well he wasn't our idol we liked him they're just that kind of thing of Paulul doing the and you know people don't realize i was the one that introduced them all to avant-garde art it wasn't john it was me i was the one and you know it's well i think i told you the story which is my

favorite story the thing of the book was working with neil aspinall was was one of the great experiences who had been the beatles roadie and was now the head of Apple. Head of Apple, amazing. I mean, he was, you know, again, he'd grown up on the streets, as it were, with them. And the only person who'd been through, and who told me very early,

he said, there's no point asking me, John, about my book. It'll never see the light of day. I've promised him. He said, that's a promise I'll keep. He's dead now sadly but he was like Yoda

he was like full of these kind of you know if you can see the bandwagon you've already missed it you know

that kind of stuff and when we did a marketing plan he threw it in the bin it was brilliant looked at it 10 minutes threw it in the bin

I said Neil what are you doing he said we're the Beatles he said we can always go to number one he said we don't... But then later on,

I learned a huge amount sitting at the... when we won the Nibi for Illustrated Book of the Year, sitting at the table, and I said, can you explain to me Paul's poetry book, which is published by Faber? And he said, well, what do you want me to explain? I said, well, there's a few perfectly nice poems at the front, and the rest are Beatles lyrics.

And he said, yes. He said, well, and your question. I said, well, you know a few perfectly nice poems at the front and the rest are Beatles lyrics. And he said, yes. He said, well, and your question. I said, well, you know, we all know the Beatles lyrics. We don't particularly need them gathered into it to trick out a book of poetry. And he said, well, why do you think Paul would want to do that? And I said, I have no idea. He said, well, who wrote the Beatles songs?

And I said, well, Lennon and McCartney. Oh, shit. You mean, welcome to my world, John. welcome to my world welcome to my world no it's just priceless but there you go yeah um just letting everybody know these were mine so going back to is it is it gene stein or steven i've been saying it wrong i couldn't tell you myself i'm gonna stick to gene stein yeah Stein. So Gene Stein died about a month ago. Yeah. At the age of 83.

So going back to Edie, the thing about Edie which I think is significant, as you were saying, John, is it helps create that 80s interest in the Velvet Underground and in the factory and all those things. But I also think because it was a best seller and because it talked about some pop subjects but some historically interesting subjects in that way

it was a very influential book on how people came to write about film and popular music and other popular forms, the oral history form often takes the standard when we did a book on punk that wasn't Leg mcneil but the legs mcneil book would come out shortly before we did a big illustrated book on punk we did the same thing went and interviewed lots of people we did a book here that we funded on 80s club culture i mean i think it becomes almost like the standard

if you want to take a bit of cultural history and to make it kind of authentic you go and talk to the people well we should we should met a couple of books we should mention we should definitely mention days in the life by our former guest jonathan green which is a magnificent book about 1960s london and the counterculture and we should also mention daniel rachel's book that came out last year walls come tumbling down which has just won the Pandarian Music Prize which I've got, I haven't read but I have a copy of which I've been trying not to read to be honest with you

because I know that I'll get sucked into it straight away which is a book about rock against racism and about political pop in the 80s it does seem to be, it seems like as we were saying earlier, it's a really good form to capture people who can talk and have something to say.

Yeah. I mean, the subject matter, the personality at the heart of it has to be a lively individual. You know, they have to inspire storytelling, where everybody you meet will go, yeah, I've got some stories. Yeah. I mean, I'd like to put a word in for the one that inspired me to do mine,

which is Mailer, His Life and Times by Peter Mansell. Vast, door-stopping thing. But a great American life and a great American artist, and the thing is masked in precisely the way we've been talking about. One of the things I was thinking about is what I love about the form is you don't get the, you know, kind of idle psychologising that a lot of biographers, which seems to me to be

I think what... Or do you? Here's what you get. I mean, these books are authored, you know, and this is the other new journalism trick. So they look like they're history but in fact they're prosecuting an agenda. Yeah, you arrange the pieces.

I mean, the way I do the books is I skeletally map them out and then I attach the quotes to serve the structure. But I'm not alone in that. Of course. It's not some kind of neutral practice. Well, it's the thing that Gillian McCain and Legs McNeill have referred to it. Again, I commend this to everyone listening. They give you six rules of putting one of these books together,

and I think the second or third one is it's not writing, it's carving. Yes. Which might be why we all like them, because there is an editorial element to it. It's closer to documentary filmmaking than most forms of writing. Your rushes are your material,

so you're stuck with that, like the piece of marble determines the sculpture it's a really good

point but when we come on to the later I watched the

documentary and you realise what a thin gruel most documentary

filmmaking is in comparison to the book it's interesting you just

get so much more detail and a much more complex before we Andy's got another brilliant my favourite I know this is my favourite oral history

but it's one of my favourite books bar none it's a book that was published I'm just going to show this to the gentleman at the other side of the table I was very very bad there's a picture of Jimmy Savile that was published, I'm just going to show this to the gentleman at the other side of the table. I was very, very bad. There's a picture of Jimmy Savile saying I was very, very bad and this was published in 1994 or 5,

6. So this is a book called The Wrestling by Simon Garfield. Simon Garfield has gone on to write all sorts of interesting and wonderful books. Maps, Time, he new book about time. And this is a book about British wrestling from the early 70s that I used to watch with my dad.

Mick McManus. Jackie Palo. Big Daddy, Giant Haystacks, Adrian Street, and on the front cover of this book, Kendo Nagasaki. I guarantee you can open this book at any page and some superb anecdote spills out right and I thought um I just I will just read you two very tiny things than actually within Simon Garfield puts himself in as a character in this book and gives himself the first words

so chapter one that fat bastard I could kill him Jackie Palo, is the name of that chapter, right? Simon Garfield. In August 1995, more than 150 professional wrestlers gathered at a pub in Greenwich to talk about how things used to be, a reunion. They looked all right, apart from the ears. But their walking was terrible. And when they got up to order a drink, you saw that many had bad limps or ruined backs. It was like a reunion of people with hip replacements. A friend of mine took a group photograph.

We positioned some of them outside the pub in several rows with some kneeling at the front and Mick McManus looking like the team captain and when we finished a couple of them had to be hoisted to their feet because their knee joints had shattered. It was Wayne Bridges pub. Wayne's other name was Bill. feet because their knee joints had shattered it was wayne bridges pub wayne's other name was bill people have come down from scotland to attend and it turned into the biggest single gathering of wrestlers there had ever been i was told that whenever wrestlers get together they just sit around and lie to each other but it but it wasn't all like that right so that that was straight away right that is that's so good right now? Now, I interviewed Simon about this book.

It's still in print. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It's so funny, this book, and so touching in terms of these guys who were so famous in Britain in the 60s and 70s and then vanished into nothing. World of Sport, 4 o'clock. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And my dad and I used to watch the wrestling. Dickie Davis. The fact that it's even called The my dad and I used to watch The Wrestling. Dickie Davis. The fact that it's even called The Wrestling, because everyone used to say, you're going to watch The Wrestling. It's not wrestling. You're going to watch The Wrestling. And then I found,

so I was talking to, I interviewed Simon about, I was supposed to be an interviewer about his favourite books, but it ended up being an interviewer about my favourite book. I just grilled him for 20 minutes. But going into what we were talking about,

because I was so interested about how he had got certain interviewees to say certain things at certain points, or was it all an editorial sleight of hand? And the answer is, is wrestling fixed? Yes, it's fixed, but it also hurts. It's real, but it's not real, right? It's the same like any book. It's a simulacrum of something real,

which is totally artificial. So here is Simon... Like all of art. Yeah, well, here is the beautiful lie. Here is Simon saying, looking back a few years later about the writing of the book, and Richard, I think this will probably chime with you. He says, I had a terrific time writing the writing of the book and Richard I think this will probably chime with you

he says I had a terrific time writing the wrestling, I attended a wrestlers reunion visited many wrestlers old and new in their homes, the good news was many of them still hated each other being both great athletes and actors they have many fine stories to tell, for a while I had visions

for an exciting ending for the book one which would involve me climbing into the ring and going a few browsing rounds with a pro. I worked out a bit at the local gym where I had some difficulty with the forward roll. I'd practice saying not the ears and ask him ref but no one seemed overly

impressed. I asked Jackie Pallow what I would need to become a good fighter and he said a complete change of DNA. So I chickened out fearing that I would need to become a good fighter and he said, a complete change of DNA. So I chickened out, fearing that I would have ended up in a hospital if not dead. The book closes instead with a nice quote from the painter

Peter Blake, who is part of a famous arena documentary about Kendo Nagasaki, who concluded that we have lost something singularly British, but perhaps we shouldn't regret its passing. It had its day, and it was wonderful. So that book is still, for me, that's still, I think, my favourite,

because I love it when you read a book, and it can be in any genre, when you get the feeling from the writer, which you got from the little bit I just read by Simon there, that they know they've got something good, that the trick is to famously carry the valuable vase across the room without dropping it. And Simon Garfield followed this book, The Wrestling Up, with a book called The Nation's Favourite,

which is an oral history of Radio 1. And as Coen said, we were talking about this just a little bit earlier, and we realised that our producer, Matt Hall, was at Radio 1, or had just left Radio 1, when that book came out, right? Because that book was very, I don't know, popular, but everyone, I mean, it was widely read, wasn't it, at the time? Yeah, well, it just came out at the exact time that a man called Matthew Bannister had taken over, and there was also a documentary called Blood on the Carpet at the same time.

But it was, yeah, it was definitely quite a kind of big thing around the whole discussion about Radio 1 and the BBC. And there were a lot of discussions around the whole corporation at that time. But it was focused quite a lot on Radio 1 because they'd got rid of... Interestingly enough, I was just trying to think that picture of Jimmy Salvo. I presume that Jimmy Salvo's also in The Nation's Favourite as well. Yeah, he's in both. He's in both.

So proceed with care. Yes, precisely. But do you know what people at Radio 1 thought of the book when it came out? favourite as well yeah he's in both so yeah he's in both so proceed with care yes precisely but what did people do you know what people at Radio 1 thought of the book when it came out certainly I

and I think probably quite a lot of people at Radio 1 I was quite kind of used to kind of getting albums where your name was in the kind of

thank you credits and whatever so I do distinctly remember getting hold of a copy of The Nation's Favourite having read the kind of thank you credits and whatever so i do distinctly remember uh getting hold of a copy of the nation of the nation's favorite having read the reviews and seen you know and knowing the time that it was the period that it was talking about and going to the index and issuing a silent thanks to the lord when i realized that my name wasn't in the index that there was going to be no mention of me in this book. My favourite story of all the many brilliant stories

in The Nation's Favourite is the story that John Peel told to Simon Garfield. I think it's the first time that he told it on the record about going... I'm laughing as I say. About going to DLT's house, going to a party at DLT's house and arriving and looking around and saying,

Dave, where are all the records? And Dave's saying, no, I don't have any records. No, dust, the dust, John, the dust. I have cassettes. I listen to those in the car. That's emblematic of Radio 1 being, you know, in the hands, arguably, of people who didn't necessarily love music

but loved being DJs, which was what that book is about, the transition from those people to the next. Yeah, it's that weird thing that Tony Blackburn, who genuinely does know and love music, sort of morphs into kind of DLT and Simon Bates. It's another one. I was aware of it.

I've never read it. It's kind of it it's fantastic it really is a great book right, this is the exciting moment in the podcast where I get to introduce our sponsor Unbound

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Now, here are our sponsors telling you what to do. Now that's safely out of the way. I hope you enjoyed it. We're going to plough on with the main meters of the podcast. Something darker from Zapanga. Something darker. But as you say, California, very much top of the mind. The California sound of the 1970s and Warren Zevon.

So first of all, before I ask Richard the traditional question, I'm just going to say, if listeners don't know who Warren Zevon is, there's a very good chance they might not. Warren Zevon is the kind of sort of connoisseur's literary 70s musician.

Yeah. Right? He never has a big hit with the exception of Werewolves of London, which is entirely unrepresentative of what he was good at. A joke song that they wrote in five years

and didn't take very seriously. And so, I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, before I ask you about it, Richard, we're just going to hear something from the author of Our Sleep When I'm Dead, who is Warren Zevon's ex-wife, Crystal Zevon. And we should just hear from her

how this book came about, because it's very important, I think, to understanding where the book is coming from. So let's just listen to that. Warren charged me with telling the whole story. He asked me shortly after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer to write the book. And we talked about it on and off over the last year of his life. You know, when he first asked me, we were still getting over the shock of the fact that he was going to die. So there's probably nothing I would have refused him.

I didn't think very hard about what that meant. But as the year went on, he'd talk about things that was important that he had included. And then a week before he died, he called me and said, you're going to do this thing, right? And I said, well, I guess so, Warren. And he said, well, you know, if you do it, you've got to tell the whole truth, even the awful ugly parts, because that's the excitable boy who wrote them excitable songs. Those were his exact words. And I said, you know, Warren, I don't think I know what the whole truth is. And he laughed. And he laughed in a way that I hadn't heard him laugh in a while because he'd been pretty sick. And he said, oh,

you'll find out. And I did. There's some understatement, right? So, Richard, when did you first run into this book or when did you first hear of or hear warren zevon well the fan part of it um as a teenager i remember uh a mate of mine who played guitar in a band gave me sentimental hygiene which was an album of in 1987 and said you got to hear this and it was interesting because um rem were basically his backup band on that record and immediately I heard this amazing voice this erudite sardonic character and it was a great record and I was living in Belfast at the time he played live the following year and after that I just wanted to every record of his I looked for keenly as hard as they were to find

because he was not a household name by any means. Around about in the mid-90s, in what was for me the early age of the internet, there was a wonderful woman in Texas called Diane Berger who ran a fan website about Zevon and we connected and I would write the occasional fan column and Diane would send me live tapes because she had this amazing collection of Zevon stuff.

So that was a lovely friendship and a shared enthusiasm. Funnily enough, when I was in Los Angeles doing my book with Sean Penn around 2002, I met Crystal Zevon, who was... We had a mutual friend, a friend being the guy whose couch I would sleep on in Los Angeles. So we had dinner, and it was an interesting thing for me to meet her, obviously. And then, weirdly enough, I found myself at a party, which is pictured in the book, which was the engagement party for Zivon's daughter Ariel,

where the great man himself was there. Little did I know he knew his diagnosis. And it was the night he first took a drink having not had one in 17 years so I mean that much of a little window into the story when I heard that Crystal was doing the book and I was obviously

couldn't wait for it and I certainly thought she did a bang up job I would just like to say something before and we were not going to spend the next however long talking about how much we love Warren Zevon although three of us do so I read this book about ten years ago

it got really good reviews when it came out it's very interesting that I was told when I was doing the prep for this episode that it was published by Dan Halpern at Echo in the States no UK publisher would pick it up because Zevon clearly was not perceived as It was published by Dan Halpern at Echo in the States. No UK publisher would pick it up. Interesting.

Because Seavon clearly was not perceived as sufficiently popular. And yet, you'd have to say, it is a classic of the genre. Yeah, well, you'd not read it before, had you? No, I was sort of vaguely aware of it. It was one of, you know, when people talk about great rock classics, this came up. And because I wasn't really, like most most i suppose most english fans i i knew that one song i had a vague notion that he'd written with other people but once you kind of uncover that that's been the great thing i mean listening to a lot of his music over the last

fortnight and then the book itself is such a brave and kind of... It's a remorseless tale of a very complicated, not altogether happy life. Yeah. But it's as good a portrait of the strange alchemy that produces not just music, but any kind of... I think it's any kind of art. I mean, it reminded me in bits, you know,

of the letters of Van Gogh to his brother Theo in terms of the portrait of... That's very different because it's not... Although Warren's voice is through the book. But you think, how does anyone actually survive at this level of intensity? It's surely the least flattering authorised biography ever published, isn't it? I mean, it's so...

I mean, we're talking warts and all is too small, a too mirror phrase to describe. And we should say that I don't think this book is for everyone. I agree with you, John. I think as a portrait of, let's call it artistic temperament it's hard to beat and also I think as an example what Crystal Zevon has done as an oral history as a sort of a work within a genre, what she's done

I think is beautifully constructed in terms of laying one voice against another just to come back, is it the harshest of all Martin Amis in reviewing Peter Manso's Mela his life and times

called it the most exhaustive character assassination in the history of letters and yet Mela had blessed the book and was alive you do tend to go that way if you're going to go do you think that Zivon would have liked the book

given how thin-skinned he was? No, I think like all of us, he was thinking that the stories of his dirty life and times wouldn't look so harsh on the page. But I think he the man had a very well-turned sense

of his own perversity, I think. And a sense of the secret badness of the world, if you like. We were chatting earlier about how, even at the death, he was crafting a career platform for himself out of his cancer. So I think he... I mean, in no sense does he come out of it as likeable. But what you come out of it is I came out of it with a strange

sense of affection towards him and a much greater understanding I mean the case for the prosecution and forgive me if I paraphrase you here Matt would be he's a self indulgent middle talented American rock star who beat

up his wife and had addiction problems and you know probably won't be remembered for much else other than that one song so what's the big deal? aren't we all just enabling by trying to find reasons to be sympathetic to

this monstrous ego for all the problems that he had, his OCD why bother? is that a fair summation of your views? monstrous ego for all the problems that he had his OCD and his why bother? Is that a fair summation of your views? And yet The interesting thing

I found was that I thought what she does is she obviously no one suffered more at his hands than Crystal I think, possibly his children Yeah, I'd go with them too but somehow they were there, it's very moving

the beginning of the book which starts with his death and then the final, no spoilers there because obviously he's dead but I think it is I did find it moving and I found I just found it fascinating that you could to find sympathy for somebody who has behaved this badly and this self indulgently I just found it fascinating that you could, you know,

to find sympathy for somebody who has behaved this badly and this self-indulgently and this irrationally is difficult. I just want to give you a couple of quotes here that seem to me, they're both very short, but they're from different people who work with Zivon. And I think if you are... If you've worked with artists or writers, or you are an artist or a writer,

you will recognise both sides of this, whether you have chronic substance abuse problems or not. This is a guy called Duncan Aldrich, who was Zivon's driver and his roadie. He's talking about the end of their relationship in about 1996. He says this, Driving around, no matter what he, Warren, what Warren would look at or what would be happening,

he'd just spew discomfort and hate and it was driving me crazy to the point where at the end of the tour I said, this is not a criticism at all, but maybe this will help you. And I gave him the book of the Tao, and I said goodbye. He ended up thinking I hated him or something, but I just didn't want to give an opinion on all the shit that was going down, and it was too hard to be around. I really didn't say anything.

After that, he called by mistake once. I had a couple emails with him in the last year or so, but that was the end. I was with him for 12 years and i know for a fact that was the longest relationship he ever had you know it it's it's someone who found found it incredibly difficult to feel secure with other people be they in long-term relationships or working relationships. And then at the same time, there's this great quote from a guy called Noah Schneider

who was his sound engineer and was his engineer when they were doing this final album, The Wind, when he knew he was dying, which I really... This really sticks with me as a piece of self-knowledge which we could all apply. Noah Snyder says,

one time when we just started recording The Wind, Warren could tell something was weird with me. He says, what's the deal with you today? I said, you've got cameras following you. There are movie stars stopping by. It just seems weird how a year ago it was just me and you doing a record together in your apartment. I wanted to say how all of a sudden people were jumping on the bandwagon and I was the guy who'd been there all along, whatever. It wasn't really true,

but it's how I felt at that moment. What he said was, oh, I see. It's an ego thing. I'm stumbling all over myself. No, no, it's not about my ego warren goes it's all right it's okay if it's about your ego sometimes it's got to be about your ego just know that it is i use that all the time and you know next time i uh go crazy at festival organizer for putting red m&ms in my bowl i so it's ego, but I know it's ego. There's a nice thing towards the end of the book that Michael Ironside wrote, which is, Warren was very proud, proud of his life,

which is a pretty extraordinary statement. I like that. There's that Nelson Mandela thing where he says, we're not afraid of our darkness. What we're afraid of is our lightness. Our job isn't to turn our bulb down to make the person next to us more comfortable. Our job is to turn our bulb up

and give the next person permission to do the same. Warren did that, which seems to me kind of gets close to the truth. Although I'm not sure you could say that he was proud of his life. I think it seemed to me that he was wrapped with guilt about his kids. But he didn't... He was a survivor, although he died young. I mean, he survived what most people would have been snuffed out.

The great quote is, I got to have Jim Marston's life a whole lot longer than he did. Yeah. I mean, speaking of a fan of his, I think his status as a songwriter is copper bottomed yeah there's a live recording of bruce springsteen playing his song my rides here it was played on the night that uh he's even died he said i want to say goodbye to my friend warren he's one of the great american songwriters and well i happen to think that too but i'll i'll

take springsteen's opinion as the one uh should stand but i said all that i mean i read i'd never felt the same about zevon since this book it's one of those things where he wasn't the man i thought he was yeah it doesn't change the work one bit but some of the behavior just i find very tough to take i just want to read this bit a compilation of bits about zevon's behavior towards his now separated wife, Crystal, and their daughter, Ariel. And the first voice is Crystal's dad, Zevon's father-in-law. There were a number of occasions where I probably should have decked Warren, but Ariel's third birthday party was the closest I came.

I was sitting in a lawn chair and Warren and some other men were on their knees reading the assembly instructions for a swing set. Ariel hadn't seen her daddy since he'd moved out several months before, which had to be confusing for her since he'd worked at home and always been around since she was born. The minute he arrived, she left the kid she was playing with and never took her eyes off her daddy. He was down on his knees and she ran over with her arms open wide, wanting a hug. He saw her coming and put out his hand to stop her. It knocked her down, but he didn't even seem to notice. He ignored her. I will never forget that little girl standing up and brushing herself off,

holding back her tears. I was out of my chair, livid. Quite a big lesson for a little girl. And then Crystal takes up the story the next day. At my request, Warren told Ariel he wouldn't be coming home anymore. And he went inside and started stuffing stuff into paper bags. The party was still going on, but he'd done his duty, and he was clearing out. Warren said, Kim is girlfriend Kim, and I would like to pick Ariel up tomorrow and have our own birthday celebration with her. I agreed, even though I knew he was drinking. They were supposed

to pick her up for lunch the next day, and they were about three hours late. I still have this hauntingly beautiful black and white photo of Ariel all dressed up for her daddy, sitting on this big boulder in front of our house, waiting. She stayed there for a full two hours, refusing to come inside. I find that very plaintive as a father of daughters. And when you read the book, from a technical standpoint, as someone who's put these books together

as a writer and an editor what do you think the challenges were when putting this together well you've got to go to everybody and this is I mean John alluded to this before it's a good point memory is a real problem with these books you're relying on your subjects they've got to

say it you can't write it and moreover I found this during my books you ask people books. You're relying on your subjects. They've got to say it. You can't write it. And moreover, I found this during my books. You ask people questions and they know that you already know the answer. And you say, I know. I know. I just need you to tell the story. I mean, what I did, Sean Penn, one of the best people to talk to

was Bono of U2. He said, I think I know what you want here. You didn't want information. You want me to tell your stories and have a shape to them, right? I said, you've got it. And that's what Crystal did. She obviously had the advantage of the life, you know, and she had those doors open. I mean, she said very charmingly, you know, she didn't talk to Bob Dillon because she knew that Dillon wasn't going to say anything on tape that would be any use. I mean, I think the book is brilliant

about the era where most of its witnesses knew and did their best, which is the 70s. I agree, yeah, yeah. And that's a gilded cultural era. And in that place, you find out where the songs come from. What I liked about it is, you know, because I kind of like, unlike you, Matt, Californian rock of the 1970s. I'm sort of... I like the troubadour and all that. There's great stories like, unlike you, Matt, Californian rock of the 1970s.

I like the troubadour and all that. There's great stories of Elton John turning up and playing the troubadour and all those. But I felt Xivonne was a bit of a missing link for me between the Jackson brand. You've got the Joni, James Taylor kind of end, and then you've got the Eagles, and then you've got Jackson Brown. And I sort of felt Xivonne was kind of end and then you've got the Eagles and then you've got Jackson Brown and I sort of felt Zivon was

Zivon was kind of like well he he has the blessing the Randy Newman of that scene he has the blessing and the curse of being the singer songwriter singer songwriters singer songwriter singer songwriter

but he was also I mean it's important one of the things that comes out of the book, he went and hung out with Stravinsky when he was a kid. And he was classically trained. I mean, brilliant musician. Yeah. And that's what everybody said. He knew more, sort of genius level.

I think part of the problem, you can sort of see without speculating, his OCD, had he obviously probably we're going to come on the spectrum kind of you know he was he he had difficulty with empathy but he was he was a kind of a genius and he read he was that he was the most we we should say one of the things that a lot of his mates were writers yeah that Richard was alluding to that he is a very uh his friends were writers he wrote songs with as you were saying paul maldum video so write songs with thomas mcguane and carl

hyacinth he was friends with hunter thompson mitch album steven king you know he preferred hanging out with writers and he loved books and he loved reading in fact we have a a short quote from uh near the End of His Life, which, for copyright reasons, is under the fair use limit of 30 seconds. So... But we just have this from Zevon. So let's hear Warren's voice now.

I have been reading at all lately since my diagnosis. You know... My candy boy, Schopenhauer, said we love to buy books because we believe we're buying the time to read them. Isn't that grand? Isn't that grand? It's also worth noting that when you read the book, you realise he's absolutely loaded on morphine and booze. He was drinking whiskey and liquid morphine. Who wouldn't?

There's one anecdote in this book that I think everyone who reads this book never forgets it. And I want to share it with people because it's so great. So when Zivon cleaned up, he was sober for 17 years. And they say that what happened to him from the early 80s, I think that's right, isn't it, early 80s to the mid-90s, is that his OCD really took off and that maybe the drugs and alcohol had been masking it,

but it became a big problem for him. It's addictive behaviour, isn't it? Anyway, so this is somebody talking about one of the ways in which OCD manifested itself. This is Stuart, a guy called Stuart Ross. Warren was buying only one shirt. Calvin Klein grey extra large t-shirts. He was buying them in every city.

Every time there was a store that sold that exact t-shirt, he would go in and buy them. I figured that he was acting like a rock star and he wore them once and threw them away. No idea. Well, New Year's Day 1991, we're in Grand Rapids, Michigan. We have the night off and we're playing on January the 2nd. On January the 1st he calls me. Is there anything to do? So we rented a car and drove to a mall.

He loved to shop more than any heterosexual man alive. We go into a department store, and he immediately starts buying grey Calvin Klein T-shirts. He's flipping through the rack, and they're all the same size, all the same colour, but he flipped two or three, take that one, flip another, take that one. I don't know how he made his decisions, but some were lucky shirts and some were not lucky shirts. So he buys five or six of these. Later, we're walking

to the car and he notices another department store on the other side of the mall. He says, we haven't gone there yet. I said, why should we go there? He says, to get Calvin Klein t-shirts. I said, Warren, you just got six of them. He says, but not from that store. I said, what does it matter what store they come from? He said, it matters from that store I said what does it matter what store they come from he said it matters to me I said Warren once you take them out of the package you don't know what store they came from and he said and I'll never forget this I don't take them out of the package what do you mean you don't take them out of the package he said look you collect fountain pens right I said yeah he said well I collect grey Calvin Klein t-shirts I said what

are you talking about every one of my fountain pens is different Calvin Klein t-shirts. I said, what are you talking about? Every one of my fountain pens is different. All your t-shirts are the same. And he said, the value is to the collector. I said, that's wrong. The value is to the marketplace, and every one of your t-shirts is identical. Until this time, I thought he was just wearing them and throwing them away because he didn't want to do laundry. But no, he had more grey Calvin Klein t-shirts in their packages than calvin klein had years later we're having lunch

and he says guess what they don't make the same grey calvin klein t-shirts now they're completely different they're made in malaysia now he said you laughed at me when i bought all those shirts now i have the only good grey calvin T-shirts in existence. Footnote. When Warren died, his T-shirts, still bagged, were distributed among family and friends who wear them still. Isn't that brilliant? Sweet. You know that great line at the end of Raging Bull? The quotes from the Gospel, I say,

is that I do not know if he was a good man. All I know, you know, is that... I once was blind and now I see he was some kind of a man what does it matter what you say about people anyway what a perfect note on which to end this

fantastic discussion I've enjoyed hugely thanks to our guest Richard T. Kelly and our producer Matt Hall. Our extensive archive, now 45 shows long, is available on SoundCloud at soundcloud.com forward slash backlisted pod.

And we're on Twitter and Facebook, so come and say hello. Might we ask if you've enjoyed the show, it'd be great if you could leave us five star only please reviews on iTunes. Thank you for listening. See you in a fortnight. Goodbye.

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