![]() While Zevon would remain fascinated with classical music, he also developed a passion for folk and rock & roll, and not long after his parents finally divorced, the 16-year-old Zevon quit high school, hopped in a car his father gave him, and headed for New York City, where he intended to become a pop star. Craft in turn introduced the youngster to the noted composer Igor Stravinsky, who befriended Zevon and welcomed him into his home several times. When Zevon was young, his family moved to Fresno, California, and as he developed a precocious interest in music in his early teens and learned to play the piano and the guitar, young Warren became acquainted with the author and orchestra director Robert Craft. Zevon's father, a Russian émigré, was a professional gambler who spent most of his time on the road, while his mother was a devout Mormon who looked after the family. ![]() Warren William Zevon was born in Chicago, Illinois on January 24, 1947, and the facts of his early life read like a picaresque novel. Though he frequently worked with luminaries of the Los Angeles soft rock scene, Zevon was always the odd man out, someone who shared their exacting musical standards but not their smugly satisfied view of the world around them, and he remained a cheerful pessimist right up to the moment he met a fate that could have visited one of his own characters. A singer and songwriter whose music often dealt with outlaws, mercenaries, sociopaths, and villains of all stripes, Zevon's lyrics displayed a keen and ready wit despite their often uncomfortable narrative circumstances, and while he could write of love and gentler emotions, he did so with the firm conviction that such stories rarely end happily. Few of rock & roll's great misanthropes were as talented, as charming, or as committed to their cynicism as Warren Zevon. ![]()
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