I'll Sleep When I'm Dead

The Life and Times of Warren Zevon

“One of the most casually insightful rock bios ever.”—Entertainment Weekly

Told in the words of his musical accomplices, fellow-travelers, friends, and lovers, I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead is an intimate and unusual biography of fabled singer–songwriter Warren Zevon, the musical force behind such dark, witty rock and roll classics as Werewolves of London and Roland, the Headless Thompson Gunner.

Compiled by Crystal Zevon, the artist’s former (and only) wife, this oral biography draws on interviews with Jackson Browne, Tom Petty, Emmylou Harris, Linda Rondstadt, Stevie Nicks, Lindsay Buckingham, the Everly Brothers, and a host of other denizens of Southern California’s influential rock scene to tell the story of the original “Excitable Boy”: literary hoodlum, OCD sufferer, brilliant songwriter, and rock–and–roll icon.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

Love the Book, hate the mispronunciation

How lazy do you have to be as a reader to not bother to learn the pronunciation of the name of the person the book is about? Most of the readers were good, but the doofus who started out the book calling him Warren Zeh-von (Hint: it’s pronounced Zee-von) drove me batshit crazy. It’s not like these pronunciations couldn’t be easily verified….the other readers got most things right. In the case of the song “Boom Boom Mancini (Not Manchini 🙄) perhaps try listening to the song for a clue, it’s a good one.

This is a must read book for any Zevon fan and I loved every moment of reading the hard copy. The audio version was so tough to listen to because of the one reader and his nauseating mispronunciations.