Sleep When I'm Dead

Don't get me wrong - Fraters Libertas is one of the best blogs in the Twin Cities. It's on my daily read list. It should be on yours.

But...how do I say this diplomatically? - JB Doubtless is to music what Al Franken is to hockey, as we found yet again in yesterday's slime-job on the late Warren Zevon.

Again, don't get me wrong - JB writes some great stuff, too - as long as he steers clear of music. He made his debut with the Fraters last winter by puking on the grave of Joe Strummer (in a piece I misattributed to the Elder), followed up by condoning Norah Jones' beating Springsteen for the Grammy...and now this:

I’ve been reading quite a bit in the last few days about the death of Warren Zevon and What His Music Meant.

As we all know, he was diagnosed with cancer last summer and told he had two months to live. Knowing his time was almost up, he made a memorable appearance on Late Night where Letterman gave him the entire hour. He then gathered his friends and made one last record, finishing it just months ago. Now he’s dead, proving that doctors don’t really always know what’s going on.

Just like Charles Schultz, who died the day the final episode of "Peanuts" ran; ones life's calling can frequently keep one alive. Many artists and authors have defied the odds of their illnesses to complete one last big work - and thankfully, Zevon's one of them. His final album, "The Wind", is stunning - but more later.

To be sure, he was a gifted musician and songwriter, but I don’t like what is says about our culture when someone this dark, this nihilistic is hailed as a musical saint.

Two things to say, here:

• The darkness and "nihilism" was usually delivered tongue in cheek - unless it really mattered (like Zevon's illuminating but teeth-clenched work after he quit drinking. In any case, ignore Zevon's rip-roaring sense of humor at your own peril. Zevon got tarred, unfairly, with the "dark and tortured" label in the same way Richard Thompson always has; both men are intensely witty men whose humor can run dark, light, sweet, bitter and everything in between.
• Had he not written a wonderful album about death - a topic rock and roll has played with innumerable times, but never lived through - the sainthood would be a lot more hollow. As it is, Zevon's done something very few artists have done; approached a "non-rock" topic and made a wondrous piece of art about it. Sprinsteen's "Rising" was another - both great albums, both good popular art, both about subjects vastly more mature than rock and roll usually gets credit for (death and 9/11, respectively).

Doubtless continues:

But Doubtless, you say, how can you write such things about such a great man? Hey, I Iike the guy too, but this idea of Artist As Suffering Soul has to be defeated and I’m just the guy to do it.

No, Zevon's the one to do it - and he always did. Nobody took the "suffering soul" image less seriously - or poked more holes in it - than Zevon.

Mr. Zevon’s songs paid tribute to murderers, mercenaries, drug dealers, werewolves and assorted other miscreants. Violence, death and suicide were frequent themes, as was love among the desperate and downtrodden.

Sounds great, don’t it?

Sounds simplistic. Zevon's oeuvre was much more varied than that. At his best, he wrote playful songs about violence; hilarious songs about depression; affirming songs about suicide; above all, beautiful and genuinely lovely music about love, both desperate and redeeming.

I’m afraid Zevon suffered from one of the great conceits of his generation; the assumption that there are two groups of people in the world--the squares: suburban, gainfully employed, happy-go-lucky, and the realists: artists, drunks, people that would rather feel pain than what they thought the squares were feeling (nothing). And they felt it was their job as the feeling artists to let the squares know How It REALLY Was.

I'm afraid Doubtless suffers from the conceit of the...er, Doubtless. There may not be an artist anywhere, ever, that has documented more thoroughly the emptiness and self-betrayal of the artistic stereotype. Many artists make the value judgement Doubtless describes; Zevon wasn't one of them.

Although Doubtless tries to pin the rap on him anyway:

Zevon says as much in the song Aint That Pretty At All:

Well, I've seen all there is to see
And I've heard all they have to say
I've done everything I wanted to do . . .
I've done that too
And it ain't that pretty at all
Ain't that pretty at all
So I'm going to hurl myself against the wall
Cause I'd rather feel bad than not feel anything at all

Unstated by Doubtless; the song is as ironic as they come. The song mocks the self-absorbed nihilism of its protagonist.

Better yet, his classic "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead", from "Stand In The Fire", one of the three best live albums in rock history:

So much to do, there's plenty on the farm
I'll sleep when I'm dead
Saturday night I like to raise a little harm
I'll sleep when I'm dead

I'm drinking heartbreak motor oil and Bombay gin
I'll sleep when I'm dead
Straight from the bottle, again and again
I'll sleep when I'm dead

Well, I take this medicine as prescribed
I'll sleep when I'm dead
It don't matter if I get a little tired
I'll sleep when I'm dead

I've got a .44 Magnum up on the shelf
I'll sleep when I'm dead
And I DON'T intend to useit on myself
I'll sleep when I'm dead

Homage to self-destruction? If you read the lyrics in isolation...sure. If you hear them in context - delivered by a guy who was living their hollowness - it makes more sense.

Doubtless continues:

Fusilli goes on to make the point about dark music I’ve heard dozens of times but I still don’t understand:

"Like one of his literary heroes, Ross Macdonald, Mr. Zevon saw the dark side of life on the outskirts of Los Angeles and, chronicling it, revealed universal themes that transcend time and geography."

How? This is never explained. How. How does writing about murder, suicide and wretchedness reveal universal themes? Does jumping into a latrine help one to understand shit? Does sleeping with the homeless help you understand alcoholism and mental illness? And what are the universal themes? Original sin? Hatred?

Read Crime and Punishment lately? For Raskolnikov's redemption to mean anything, one has to understand the darkness, the murder - the sin! - that he's been redeemed from!

Or to put it in Zevon's oeuvre, I'll Sleep When I'm Dead or Carmelita ("Now I'm sitting here playing solitaire with my pearl-handled deck/the county won't give me no more methadone, and they garnished your welfare check/Carmelita, hold me tighter, I think I'm going down/and I'm all strung out on heroin, on the lonely side of town") is a necessary prologue to Accidentally Like A Martyr, where the darkness parts and forgiveness happens:

The phone don't ring, no no
And the sun refused to shine
Never thought I'd have to pay so dearly
For what was already mine
For such a long, long time

{Refrain}
We made mad love
Shadow love
Random love
And abandoned love
Accidentally like a martyr
The hurt gets worse and the heart gets harder

{Repeat refrain}

The days slide by
Should have done, should have done, we all sigh
Never thought I'd ever be so lonely
After such a long, long time
Time out of mind

Doubtless continues:

To me, there’s way more than enough darkness in the world.

And some of us defeat it with art that explores it!

I don’t need it in my pop records, books, movies or personalities. Declaring those who toiled their entire lives in this darkness to be geniuses steers our culture toward a path that is dangerous for our souls.

Doubtless misses the point; Zevon worked in darkness, pushed little corners of it back from his life, poked ribald fun at the rest, and in the end created some art that brought light and dignity and humor to some dark and humiliating and harrowing situations; recovery from addiction, confronting imminent mortality.

I'll take "the Wind" over the entire Frank Sinatra catalogue (and before Doubltess doubtless brands me a musical philistine - I get around on ten instruments, have played classical cello for 30 years now, and have forgotten more music in more genres than most people will ever learn).

And someday when I have the mental energy, I'll address Doubtless' assertion that Norah Jones' upset win over Springsteen at the Grammies wasn't a crime against humanity.

UPDATE: It's not just mortality. Emailer PB writes Zevon was, and is, also great for:

Or just getting through the rain. Since 1976, Zevon has always been the music I turn to on dreary, rainy days. It meets the mist head on, and shows it to be a wispy vapor that is temporarily hiding the bright sunshine a mere mile above. I always feel better after listening to Zevon in the rain, and a bit embarrassed for letting myself accept the dreary viewpoint. Life doesn't have to be dreary. It can be a wacky funfest. Zevon let us know that with both barrels.

PB is right, and I hope JD is getting this.

Posted by Mitch at September 10, 2003 12:49 AM