I just thought right away that I wanted to work. ... This is a good job. It's been a good job. Work is the most effective drug there can possibly be. ... I'm on the periphery of a lot of despair, of course. ... You'd have to be stupid not to be. I have my moments when I'm not too thrilled about this whole deal. But at the same time, the songs have never come like this, so I'd have to feel more gratitude than anything else. I'm probably in the intensest creative period of my life.
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Warren Zevon
Songwriter and musician
United States · 1947–2003
Arts and letters
About
American songwriter, whose records ran from Excitable Boy and Werewolves of London to Life'll Kill Ya and My Ride's Here. Diagnosed in August 2002 with inoperable pleural mesothelioma and told he had three months to live, he refused treatment that might have cost him the strength to work, and instead wrote and recorded a final album, The Wind, which was released two weeks before his death in September 2003.
5 answers
This is a lot harder for you than it is for me. If you had gone to bed as many nights as I did in the old days knowing that you had taken so much stuff that could kill you and not knowing if you would wake up, this is not as shocking as you think.
Somebody who won't go to the doctor for a normal checkup is fearful and nervous. ... But once you find out what it's like on the other side, you can go beyond fear.
The songs aren't all written. ... You don't know where they're going to go. That's the fun of the job. There's the usual malarkey, the usual gags, the usual stuff. And also a few songs written by way of kind of being farewells to people, goodbyes to people, gratitude to people. Expressions of, you know, this was a nice deal, life. But I don't think it's exactly weighted with sentimentality.
I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years. ... It's one of those phobias that didn't pay off. ... How much you're supposed to enjoy every sandwich.
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