As much as I can appreciate the work that goes into establishing and maintaining museums that celebrate cultural heritage and birthright, the country clubization of rebel music seems wrong. It would be nice, although the Hall is an oxymoron in violation of the spirit of the unregenerate pose that is rock 'n' roll. I probably wouldn't know who was or wasn't in the Hall of Fame if it wasn't for social media and people being outraged that Kate Bush or Kraftwerk aren't in and/or that ABBA, Madonna and KISS are.Įvery year social media feeds light up with people complaining that Zevon isn't in the Hall of Fame, and I wonder if I'd really like to see him there. While we all know that it's an industry designed to squeeze from us every discretionary dollar, we agree to make believe that there's something important and potentially life-saving about three-chord songs. It embraces freaks and outlaws or people who like to pretend to be freaks and outlaws. Rock 'n' roll (we style the term differently than the Hall of Fame, which sometimes uses "rock 'n' roll" and sometimes employs an ampersand, but usually insists on "and") isn't the sort of culture practice that lends itself to sanctimonious awards banquets. Why do so many people seem to care who is or isn't in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? Craft and Stravinsky soon departed on a concert tour, while Zevon's Mormon mother took him back to Fresno, Calif., to high school. Whatever relationship there was was brief. Stravinsky was probably cordial to a lot of would-be musicians. Zevon didn't mind journalists thinking he'd had a relationship with Stravinsky, but in his own notes he stressed that he was "in no way an intimate friend" of the composer. He was in his house a few times, and given the testimony of others in Crystal Zevon's book, it's unlikely the scotch he sipped there was the first alcohol he'd ever consumed. (Democrat-Gazette file photo)īut Zevon was not Stravinsky's pupil, much less his friend. Zevon betrayed no effects from the liquid and we chose a time to meet again the following week."Ĭomposer Igor Stravinsky applauds at the close of a performance of his "Rite of Spring" by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Paris in this May 1952 photo. Zevon's visits with a later one, but I think that Stravinsky invited his young guest to join him in the nourishment. Part of Stravinsky's late-afternoon work ritual was to drink scotch and eat a piece of Gruyere and some smoked salmon on small squares of black bread.
Zevon, whatever he thought, was in perfect control. "As always, Stravinsky was warm and hospitable, and Mr. Zevon on that first visit reminded me of my own first meeting with Stravinsky, though I was 10 years older and much less intelligent," Craft wrote. Zevon was briefly Craft's pupil and Craft took him to see Stravinsky a few times. Very early on in the book she includes a snippet from the notebooks of Robert Craft, the composer and conductor who went on to become Stravinsky's collaborator and Boswell. It wasn't until much later that I got confirmation of that story in Crystal Zevon's I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, her oral biography of her ex-husband published in 2007, four years after he died from mesothelioma. It's like getting a glimpse of how the world really works. It seems impossible but somehow inevitable in a secret handshake way. You can pack a lot of poetry in that image, it's like that photograph of Boys' Stater Bill Clinton shaking hands with President John F. That house is up a little hill from the Sunset Strip, maybe half a mile from the Viper Room. Thompson-esque of all the Linda Ronstadt constellation of Southern California singer-songwriters hanging out with the great "inventor of music," the Russian who'd scandalized Paris with The Rite of Spring in 1913, getting together in a modest house in the Hollywood Hills a couple of years before anyone had heard of The Beatles. That was a cool image, the kid who'd grow up to be the most outre and Hunter S. It was a long time ago, probably in the 1970s. I heard a story about a 13-year-old Warren Zevon drinking Scotch with Igor Stravinsky. "In the songwriting field, there isn't a section for fiction and a section for nonfiction.
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