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Throughout his recording career, the late Warren Zevon demonstrated a sardonic, sometimes satiristic wit that led many to label him recalcitrant. Or at least grumpy. And surely not the type of guy who cared about honors -- such as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Musical Influence Award that he’ll receive Nov. 8 in Los Angeles. But his son Jordan Zevon assures us otherwise. “There’s this misconception that dad wouldn’t have cared. Not true,” the younger Zevon -- a singer and songwriter himself -- said. “He didn’t scoff at credit or adulation. To be blunt, the later records didn’t sell a million copies; that didn’t mean he hated the industry.” It just meant he was on the fringes because he wasn’t Britney Spears. “Just because he was outside of the mainstream, he didn’t necessarily hate everyone in the world and in the music industry. He would’ve appreciated it. He wouldn’t have been like, ‘Who cares about that?’ It’d be like, ‘Hey, guess what?’!’ It would have been, ‘It’s a big deal!’ It was his business. He wanted to be good at it. You want to win, you know, best plumber of the year,” he laughed. The younger Zevon also finds it “a kind of comedy” that his father -- who was nominated for the Rock Hall in 2023, for the first time ever -- is finally getting his due in this manner. “It seems like the minute that I kinda gave up on it, he got nominated,” Zevon said. “Then after he didn’t get in and I’d gone back to giving up on it, now he’s in. I think that’s kind of perfect.” His sister Ariel, an actress, added that the honor “feels definitely, like, significant. I don’t pay much attention to this stuff... but it feels like a significant moment for the Zevon family.” Warren Zevon has, of course, been held up as one of the Rock Hall’s greatest slights over the years. Social media groups have formed to protest his exclusion, while good friend and Zevon’s early producer Jackson Browne once said to Billboard, “Why the F*** isn’t HE in there? Come on!” Billy Joel, meanwhile, wrote a letter to the Rock Hall that helped lead to that initial nomination two years ago. Zevon’s legacy certainly justifies that support. Born in Chicago and schooled by the likes of musical greats such as Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, he began recording in 1966, as a duo with high school friend Violet Santangelo, wrote a song for the “Midnight Cowboy” soundtrack in 1969 and released his first album, “Wanted Dead or Alive,” in 1970. There would be 11 more, including the platinum “Excitable Boy” in 1978 and its hit “Werewolves of London,” as well as 2003’s Grammy Award-winning “The Wind,” a guest-filled effort written and recorded after his terminal diagnosis of pleural mesothelioma. He died two weeks after its release in August of that year, at the age of 56. Zevon’s sharp songwriting skills, meanwhile, led to covers by many other artists -- most prominently Linda Ronstadt, who turned his “Poor Poor Pitiful Me” into a hit in 1977 and titled her seventh studio album after Zevon’s “Hasten Down the Wind.” He also teamed with members of R.E.M. as Hindu Love Gods, which released an album during 1990. “In the same way you’ll hear Phillip Seymour Hoffman called an actor’s actor, to musicians (Zevon) is a musician’s musician,” said Jordan Zevon. “He was kind of in his own separate box. It’s that Stravinsky influence and classical background he had... that made him think a little different than everyone else. I’ve had instances where I’ve had to cover his songs and you go, ‘Wait, he went to THAT chord? That’s the wrong chord,’ but it works. “When you listen to an artist who does that it makes you think, ‘I should think a little different, too, not use the same four chords and change the melody, as it’s been done throughout history. It makes you think more musically, about going deeper and darker, maybe.” Ariel added that she feels her father’s music belongs in 2025 as much as it did when it was created. “It resonates in a while deeper, broader sense, I think... given where we’re at globally and everything else -- maybe truer than ever, his perspective on the world,” she said. “I would say that’s a good sign of somebody who probably deserves to be recognized for a contribution to the arts.” Zevon was celebrated during April this year with a pair of special Record Store Day releases, including a reissue of the “Hindu Love Gods” album. Record Store Day Black Friday on Nov. 28 will see the release of “Epilogue: Live at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival” -- his final concert, from 2002. And Jordan Zevon says there’s even more to come. “We’re working around a project around (1982’s) ‘The Envoy’ and getting that out,” he reported. “There’s some live stuff that’s been bootlegged here and there, so we’re trying to get official releases to put out. We just want to get everything on real high-quality vinyl and make sure the collection is complete and treated with care.”
