IN MEMORIAM Warren Zevon, 1947–2003 BY BRETT MILANO

Warren Zevon just made the most graceful exit in the history of rock and roll. Having been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer more than a year ago, Zevon, 56, succumbed during a nap at his Los Angeles home Sunday afternoon. Since his diagnosis Zevon made one of his best albums, played a memorable David Letterman show, reportedly mended fences with friends and family, and lived a good six months longer than predicted — in short, he came as close to getting the last laugh as anyone in his position possibly could. And yes, he even fulfilled the one wish he made at the time of his diagnosis by getting to see the latest James Bond film.

Zevon’s last album, The Wind (Artemis), has understandably picked up the best reviews of his career; according to Billboard it’s vying with 1978’s Excitable Boy (Asylum) as his best-selling disc. Covering largely uncharted territory for rock, the 11 songs find Zevon facing mortality with poignancy and power chords. As usual, his wise-guy streak only served to make the unguarded moments — like the disc’s signoff, the surprisingly tender "Keep Me in Your Heart"— that much more effective.

But the tone on The Wind wasn’t much different from the one he maintained on a long, rewarding string of albums. When Excitable Boy made him the toast of the Los Angeles singer-songwriter circuit, he punctured LA mythology left and right — and once he moved on to a boozier redneck audience, he proceeded to make fun of its Lynyrd Skynyrd fixation (in "Play It All Night Long," from 1980’s Elektra release Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School). When he kicked his long-time drug and alcohol habits, along came songs like "Detox Mansion" (on 1987’s Sentimental Hygiene, from Virgin) that showed equally little mercy to the cleaned-up crowd. (If you want to hear what his drinking years sounded like, just check out the homonymous, all-covers album by the Hindu Love Gods — a boozy side project teaming Zevon with three members of R.E.M., and featuring the definitive trashing of Prince’s "Raspberry Beret").

And soon after his recovery he released Mr. Bad Example (Giant, 1991), whose best song — "Angel Dressed in Black," a hit that should’ve happened — opens with the quotable line "Sittin’ on the sofa, suckin’ a bowl of crack." When I interviewed him for the Phoenix around that time, he noted that "I’m not a very good spokesman for Recovery Nation. Guess I’m just connected to more people to whom shit happens."

Yet Zevon’s romantic streak was also there from the beginning. Over the summer, the collectors’ label Varese released the proof on a disc called The First Sessions, drawn from tracks he recorded in the late ’60s. The best of those was "Like the Seasons," originally a single credited to Lyme & Cybelle, a short-lived folk-rock duo consisting of Zevon and his then-girlfriend. It’s quintessential LA sunshine pop, so wispy and pretty that the Turtles of "Happy Together" fame later covered it. Just play that song back-to-back with any of the wise, tender, and cranky numbers on The Wind, and it leaves no doubt that Zevon did a lot of living in the interim. And that the best way to honor his memory would be to go out and live a little harder.