Lryic of the Day: `Mohammed's Radio'

To mark the long-overdue release on CD of Warren Zevon's live masterpiece "Stand in the Fire" from 1980, here are a few lines from the still timely "Mohammed's Radio."

Everybody's desperate trying to make ends meet
Work all day, still can't pay the price of gasoline
and meat
Alas, their lives are incomplete

RIP, Warren.

Postscript: On Oct. 13, 1987, I saw Zevon in concert at the Holiday Star Theater in Merrillville, Ind. I was working as assistant features editor at the Journal & Courier in Lafayette, Ind., my first job out of college. I was assigned to do a travel story on the northern Indiana resort and pegged my drive, purposefully, to the day Zevon was there on his Sentimental Hygiene tour.

A public relations official for the resort showed me around the grounds and loaded me up with promotional material. (It was the era when the fax machine was the hot, new technology.) We walked backstage, and turning a sharp corner in a hallway, Zevon and I almost ran into each other. He was a short man, acutely intense, lost in deep thought. It wasn't so much our near-collision that shook him. It was when I spoke.

"I really like your work," I said as I extended my hand.

"Thank you," said the clearly distracted Zevon, shaking my hand before quickly moving on.

I didn't want to appear too excited to meet him. I had four or five of his records at that point. An English professor I had had at Miami a few years earlier considered Zevon one of the most efficient poets in popular culture.

Zevon could write with a literary flair. He befriended many authors. He also could rock. He tore it up that night.