Warren Zevon occupies much of The Wind looking the other way. His closest acknowledgment of the fatal lung cancer that’s numbered his days is a poignantly straight reading of Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door”; clearly, his wry humor will be the last thing to go.
Not unlike Joey Ramone’s posthumous Don’t Worry About Me, Zevon’s The Wind only mildly suggests a final wave goodbye. It continues his late-period work, refined on 2000’s Life’ll Kill Ya and 2002’s My Ride’s Here — acoustic minimalism made beautiful by detailed grace and elegance, and made rowdy by caustic wit and observation.
An unusually large guest list lends support. Billy Bob Thornton and Dwight Yoakam provide Bakersfield harmonies to the classic country-blues “Dirty Life & Times”. Bruce Springsteen chimes in on the foursquare rocker “Disorder In The House”. Three Eagles — Don Henley, Timothy B. Schmit and Joe Walsh — also appear; Walsh makes the most distinctive mark with slide guitar on the paved-over Delta moan of “Rub Me Raw”.
No one overshadows Zevon, who relishes this chance to make one last run. He draws upon a wealth of career choices, including a love of foreign languages (bassist/co-writer Jorge Calderon’s lilting Spanish on the romantic “El Amor De Mi Vida”), a Tin Pan Alley predilection for wringing emotion from cliches (“She’s Too Good For Me”), and a hopeful pessimism (“For The Rest Of The Night”).
Hope gives The Wind an elegiac lift. All through its eleven songs, Zevon seeks out love, throws a party, and tries to outrace the thing steadily gaining on him. He knows he won’t win, but as a musician he remains interested in life, not obsessed with death.
