Nothing's Bad Luck

CHAPTER ONE

(1903–1966)

WARREN WILLIAM ZEVON WAS BORN ON FRIDAY, JANUARY 24, 1947, in Chicago, Illinois.

It was the city that his father had long considered a spiritual home. As a professional gambler with ties to organized crime, many of William Zevon’s closest associates and business contacts were based there. Although his much younger bride, Beverly, would have preferred to stay near her family in Fresno, California, she had abided by her husband’s wishes. The move was just one of many facets of their relationship that enraged her parents, strict Mormons who had always tried to instill in their daughter the same devout faith and moral dogma by which they lived. Ellsworth and Helen Simmons made no secret of their disapproval in their daughter’s choice of a suitor. But while much of the Mormon doctrine had sunk in, Beverly just couldn’t be persuaded.

In later years, if Warren Zevon displayed signs of duality in both his life and music, one need not look much further for explanation than in the “opposites attract” dichotomy of his parents.

When William was only two years old, his father, Ruven Zivotovsky, had uprooted the family from their home in Kiev for a new start in America. Hopeful at the prosperity that the journey promised, Ruven also sought an escape from the rampant anti-Semitism that plagued the Ukraine. For nearly a century, the Judaic community remained the target of widespread pogroms—bloody riots primarily enacted as retribution for the 1821 death of Greek Orthodox patriarch Gregory V. Many Ukrainians continued to resent the Jews for forcibly carrying out Gregory’s execution, and by the time Ruven could transport his family to America in 1905, there had been over two hundred such riots throughout the country. Although his family would still be poor upon arrival, the New World would, at least, guarantee them their religious freedom. Upon arriving in New York, Ruven attempted to westernize his family as best he could, changing his own name to the less ethnic Rubin and the family’s surname to the more palatable Zevon. They settled in Brooklyn only to find that, while they had successfully escaped the bloodshed of Kiev, their new home presented the obstacles of severe poverty and social indifference.

Violence and desperation would follow the Zevon family for generations, later becoming major recurring themes in Warren Zevon’s music. When Warren was still a child, his father pulled him aside and reminded him of the stigma attached to their family’s humble roots. “You are a Jew,” he told the boy. “Don’t ever forget that.”

In Brooklyn, Rubin Zevon had six mouths to feed: his wife, Sadie, and sons William, Murray, Al, Lou, and Hymie. By his own admission, William Zevon and his family endured the typical immigrant experience—a life of squalor that he would later succinctly deem as “shit.” The five boys shared the same bed, each sleeping along the mattress’s width. William later admitted that his best memory as a child was receiving a cucumber for his birthday.

“Their father—my grandfather, Rubin—was a tough guy,” remembered Murray’s son, Sandford Zevon. “And Uncle Willie was also a tough guy, a pugnacious guy. They called him ‘Stumpy’ because of his height, but he would protect my father if there were any problems in the neighborhood. He worked at the reputation.”

To further his image as a young man not to be trifled with, William countered his small physical stature by taking up boxing. He also made no secret of his aim to escape the poverty in which his family lived. Seeking prosperity elsewhere, he and his brother Hymie left home while still in their teens. They headed to Chicago, where it didn’t take long for the brothers to become enamored with the danger and glamor that the city offered. It was, after all, the home of Al Capone’s criminal empire. Known to law enforcement as the “Chicago Outfit,” Capone’s underground conglomerate included bootlegging, prostitution, gambling, and other nefarious activities. Upon arriving in Chicago, William Zevon befriended two up-and-comers within that network—Mickey Cohen and Sam Giancana.

According to Sandford Zevon, it was Giancana who put the ambitious Zevon boys to work running numbers for the mob. “They both became involved with [Giancana], the mafia boss in Chicago,” he recalled. “Uncle Willie told me much later, when I visited him, that they were so young at the time, Giancana said they could work for him, but ‘no guns.’ They could only do book-working and running kinds of stuff, but only because they were still just kids.”

During World War II, William and Hymie headed to California. In the eyes of the American public, Hollywood was a glamorous juxtaposition to the war abroad. Much like movie moguls, underworld leaders played into the public’s romantic visions of flashbulbs, colorful stucco homes, palm trees, and cool desert winds. The numerous gangsters who had set up camp out west acted as prospectors to an opening market, albeit a criminal one. Arriving in Los Angeles, William reconnected with old friend Mickey Cohen, who was then working under Las Vegas founder Bugsy Siegel. Often portrayed by the media as a sort of criminal “matinee idol,” Cohen’s picture ran in the Los Angeles society pages almost as often as the celebrity glitterati. He soon put William to work running numbers and collecting gambling debts. Over time, the two became close, and when Cohen got married in 1940, William served as his best man. In his jailhouse memoir written years later, the mobster even recalled assigning William the task of keeping his dog, Toughie, at bay during the midnight wedding ceremony.

William and Hymie opened carpet stores in various western towns, including in Arizona and Fresno, California. At one point, Mickey Cohen’s former bodyguard Sam Farkas owned a stake in their Wilshire Boulevard location, fueling rumors of underground dealings happening behind the storefront. Eventually, the brothers had a falling out, leaving William as the chain’s sole owner.

Although William was arrested many times for suspicion of racketeering, he always eluded conviction. In his later years, William even entertained his grandchildren by referring to Capone as “Uncle Al” and telling them the infamous mob leader had actually been “a really nice guy.”

It was while running the Fresno store that William first met the young woman who would become his unlikely bride and mother to his only son.

Beverly Simmons was exactly half William’s age when their courtship began, but being willingly romanced by a fast-talking, forty-two-year-old New York Jewish bachelor was precisely the sort of rebellious act that had been brewing within her. Born on May 30, 1919, she was the product of a strict Mormon upbringing, complete with all its dogmatic tradition. Her parents, Ellsworth Blythe Simmons and Helen Nicholson Cope, were not pleased upon meeting “Stumpy” Zevon, who was easily the most colorful character ever to sit at their kitchen table.

Unlike Jewish immigrant William, Beverly could trace her heritage back decades—a fact that the Simmons family took great pride in acknowledging. All of her great-great-grandparents had either been first-generation American citizens, or were a mere step away from their Anglo-English roots. As practicing Mormons, the Cope-Simmons family tree could even be authenticated to Joseph Smith’s initial founding of the Latter-day Saints movement.

Beverly’s mother, Helen, was a woman who took her spiritual responsibilities and religious practices very seriously, viewing both as cultural moral codes. Like her own parents, her husband, and her daughter, Helen had been born in Salt Lake City. She married Ellsworth the day after Valentine’s Day in 1916. Their first child, Warren, was born the following year. When Beverly was born two years following Warren, it was discovered that she suffered from a crippling congenital heart condition, a fact that fueled her parents’ overprotective natures.

In 1946, while the Simmons family was living in Fresno, Beverly met William Zevon at one of his carpet stores. She was quickly drawn to the smooth-talking older man. To the chagrin of her parents, the blushing Anglo-Saxon Mormon girl quickly agreed to marry the wise-cracking Jewish salesman with rumored ties to the mob. At the groom’s urging—and against the vehement wishes of Ellsworth and Helen Simmons—the newlyweds relocated to Chicago. The honeymoon was short-lived. Beverly had abandoned her parents’ wishes for a traditional Mormon family life, yet the young bride still yearned for a semblance of normalcy to which William never quite related. Years of hard living on the road—drinking, gambling, and fending for himself—had shaped her new husband into a stubborn lone wolf. His personality and unorthodox lifestyle blurred the fine line between self-reliance and selfish bachelorhood. It was the latter which kept him out all night, playing marathon poker games and carousing until the wee small hours of the morning. None of that had changed by the time Beverly gave birth to Warren the following year.

William may have made it a point to instill in his son a self-awareness of his Judaic heritage, but the reverent tradition associated with it never seemed to factor into his roles as husband and father. Instead, young Warren was often subject to the fruits of his mother’s own strict childhood. The theological aspects, however, never truly sank in. “I was brought up with religious beliefs, Christian religious beliefs,” Warren later remembered. “But it’s one of life’s great searches and I don’t like talking about it. And I don’t like talking about it more than I do in my songs.”

In later years, he would be significantly more candid discussing the internal conflicts and personal demons that plagued his adulthood, attributing them to his ancestral namesake: Beverly’s older brother, Warren Cope Simmons, who had been born on the Fourth of July and later gave his life for his country as a member of the 30th Infantry Regiment—killed in action on November 10, 1943, while on a tour in Italy. The elder Warren’s legacy had been immortalized in a painting that hung in Ellsworth and Helen’s home. Like a specter, it had haunted the younger Warren throughout his youth. “Uncle Warren was sort of the dead figurehead of the family, and I was brought up to follow in his footsteps,” he later claimed. “My ideal was supposed to be a dead man—with my name, looks and career intentions. A dead warrior who’d been waylaid by his heroism. I guess that kind of background gave me the idea that destroying myself was the only way to live up to expectations.”

During Warren’s adolescence, his parents separated and reconciled nearly as often as they changed their place of residence. Although born in Chicago, Warren was primarily raised by Beverly in Fresno, where she eventually returned to live on the same street as her parents. Ellsworth and Helen Simmons refused to let their daughter live down the strange life that she had chosen for herself, making Warren witness to the verbal venom often directed toward his mother and absentee father. As Warren later claimed, “They treated him like a vagabond and a roustabout. It must have been terribly uncomfortable for him, so he wasn’t there a lot of the time. I wouldn’t have been either, if I’d had a choice.”

Having already weathered a long string of fights and separations from her husband, Beverly saw the darkest side of William Zevon one Christmas morning when Warren was nine years old. The couple was in the midst of one of their frequent separations and William arrived at the house unannounced to see his son. He had been up all night playing poker and had won Warren a Christmas present—an upright Chickering piano. Reluctant for Warren to be influenced by his father in any way, Beverly was adamant that the piano had to go. But for the child, the piano was a special gift that his father had specifically won just for him. It was the first musical instrument the boy had ever gotten his hands on and he was instantly fascinated by it. As Warren watched, his father ran to the kitchen and, like a circus performer, hurled a carving knife across the room. Missing Beverly’s head by barely an inch, the blade impaled the wall behind her. More terrified than angry, she fled to her parents’ house down the street.

William, however, calmed himself and sat Warren down on the piano bench. “Son, you know I gotta go,” he told the boy. “She’s your mother, so I guess you gotta stay.”

Warren was left behind to be raised in the forced regimentation and cold tradition of his mother and her parents. As irresponsible as he was, William had been Warren’s greatest champion, the parent who envisioned big things for his son’s future. The gift of a piano had proven the faith he had in the boy.

The Christmas episode would always hold a lasting impression on Warren. Not only had that morning ushered in an era of fatherless adolescence, but it had provided him a ringside seat to a first glimpse at real violence. And it had all been over a piano, no less. His piano—the first one he had ever touched.

For Warren Zevon, music and danger would forever be entwined.

Although William wasn’t present during much of his son’s youth, his intuition regarding Warren’s potential rang true. Throughout his elementary school years, Warren sat at the piano every chance he had, displaying a prodigious gift for recognizing and replicating melodies. An imaginative and intelligent child, he was soon using music as an escape from the turmoil of his home life. His passion for the instrument was to the apparent resentment of Beverly, who saw much of her husband’s personality in their young son. Begrudgingly, she slowly learned to accept it. When Warren was old enough to purchase his first guitar, she watched as he mastered that instrument, as well. By the time William could charm his way back into her life a few years later, their son had become an accomplished musician.

Granting William one more chance, Beverly moved into his oceanfront house in San Pedro and enrolled Warren in the local junior high school. There, Warren threw himself into the musical program. Although the piano and guitar were his true extracurricular passions, Warren’s ambition for a well-rounded education in music theory was quickly established; in a group high school yearbook photo of the program’s “Wind and Percussion Section,” a young Warren is posed clutching a clarinet, although his interest in mastering that particular instrument soon waned.

Quickly recognizing the young man’s talent, the school’s band teacher pulled some professional strings and arranged for Warren to visit the West Hollywood home of famed Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. Now thirteen years old, Warren found himself discussing music theory with Stravinsky and his protégé, Robert Craft. In later years, Warren was often asked about this influential encounter by numerous journalists. “[I was brought to a session] by the band teacher at Dana Junior High School,” he claimed. “He was a classical session player, a trumpet player. He took me to a Stravinsky–Robert Craft session, and after that, I corresponded with Robert Craft and he invited me to come and visit them—which I did. So, I met Stravinsky, but I was in no way friends with him or anything.”

Craft, a renowned composer in his own right, also enjoyed young Warren’s precocious nature and maturity. “Though [Warren] seemed much younger than I anticipated,” he later recalled, “he was self-possessed and articulate beyond his years. After some conversation, I played recordings of contemporary pieces, not available commercially and unknown to him. He was keenly attentive and his responses were unambiguous; very young people are always judgmental, of course, but he supported his judgments with acute arguments… Mr. Zevon, on that first visit, reminded me of my own first meeting with Stravinsky, though I was ten years older and much less intelligent.”

Stravinsky and Craft had lasting impressions on Warren. At the time, he had been tempted to drop the piano to devote himself fully to the electric guitar. But the two composers successfully instilled in Warren a new love of classical music equal to his ongoing passion for rock and roll. He dedicated himself to studying advanced music theory, poring over original Stockhausen scores and listening to obscure German radio performances alone in his bedroom. He soon began working on an ambitious symphony of his own, titled simply Symphony No. 1—a project that he would tinker with for decades. Much to his disappointment, however, the visits with Stravinsky abruptly ended when Beverly left William for the final time and dragged him back to Fresno.

As Warren later remembered, “Nobody ever told me anything, and my parents’ marriage has been a mystery to me all my life. They didn’t even let me know that they’d gotten a divorce until long after the fact.”