Cherub In A Trench Coat -- Warren `Mr. Bad Example' Zevon Is Still `Searching For A Heart'

In his 1976 song "Desperados Under the Eaves," a baby-faced Warren Zevon sang:

If California slides into the ocean, like the mystics and statistics say it will, I predict this motel will be standing, until I pay my bill.

Whether that motel still stands is uncertain. But Warren Zevon remains upright, if also decidedly twisted. At 44, he's survived 20-odd years in one of the most merciless of industries and put behind him the consumption of enough vodka to float the Red October. Zevon has more than paid his bills, steadfastly creating weirdly funny, acerbic, cutthroat rock 'n' roll with enough steel-eyed romance rubbed in to acknowledge and even momentarily ease the pain. Zevon's songs always suggest a cherub in a trench coat.

His performance with the Canadian band The Odds at Parker's next Tuesday comes at the tail end of a two-month tour in support of his 11th release, "Mr. Bad Example." When he last played Parker's in 1990, his "Transverse City" had stiffed and he didn't even have a band, although he easily sold out the house.

This time around he's got two songs in Lawrence Kasdan's "Grand Canyon." In a movie that convolutedly mixes hope, nervous laughter and dread, Zevon's panicky "Lawyers, Guns and Money" and the new, guardedly optimistic "Searching for a Heart" are a succinct fit. And music reviewers have been good to "Mr. Bad Example." Even People magazine, which 12 years ago was more interested in chronicling Zevon's glass-by-glass daylong journey into night, has accorded him good ink.

"Yeah, I'm getting attention," he says with a low, bemused growl during a phone stop in Nashville. "But I still don't know how that translates into sales. A few weeks ago someone called telling me we had a day of phenomenal sales, more than respectable by any band's standards. But when I asked how the rest of the week went, she told me those figures weren't available."

Zevon seems equally baffled by his inclusion in "Grand Canyon."

"I had no idea they were going to use the songs. One day I get a call telling me to be at the studio the next morning for a screening. I asked what time and was told 10 a.m. and I said, `What? Who gets up at 10?' She said "Lawrence and Irving (Azoff, Zevon's boss) will be there, so be there.' "

"The next day I'm sitting with these guys watching the movie and Kevin Kline is on the screen singing along to my song ("Lawyers . . ."). And I'm thinking, `You know, this is worth getting up at 10 in the morning.' "

Born in Chicago but raised in Phoenix, L.A. and Fresno, Zevon went from teen garage bands to New York to the San Francisco Bay area. One of his songs landed in the "Midnight Cowboy" soundtrack, but his 1969 debut album, "Wanted - Dead or Alive," rode in strapped across the horse. He wrote Gallo wine jingles and worked for the Everly Brothers as a pianist and bandleader.

His friend Jackson Browne produced "Warren Zevon" in 1976. Critics and performers took immediate notice, but the public lagged. Linda Ronstadt helped by successfully covering "Hasten Down the Wind," "Carmelita" and "Poor, Poor Pitiful Me."

But it was "Werewolves of London," from 1978's "Excitable Boy," that put Zevon's sardonic humor on the map, not to mention his penchant for dark and sometimes disagreeable scenarios. Unfortunately, Zevon was painfully familiar with too many of his thematic harpies. His binges were the stuff of cross-continental legend.

Zevon went through various programs, best documenting the celebrity dry-out experience in "Detox Mansion" from the 1987 "Sentimental Hygiene." But then there was "Transverse City."

"There were these journalists always complaining about how much overdubbing went on in a record," Zevon says. "We're not all Neil Young, you know? So I decided to overdub the whole thing. I locked myself in a room staring at a computer for a year and a half. I was going through my Prince period."

For the follow-up "Mr. Bad Example," Zevon brought on guitarist Waddy Watchel, a longtime friend, as producer.

"I just felt that not only would Waddy know what I was doing there (in the studio), but he'd know what he was doing there."

The album carries a spare but serrated edge. The stories range from the grinding disintegration of a relationship in "Finishing Touches" to the tender and affecting "Searching For a Heart." "Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead" is in a class all its own.

"Who knows where the ideas come from? Usually from mis- heard and misunderstood comments. There's no office; we work at my home on what's called the Sofa of Suffering. When it's time to write, I make a big pot of coffee and we strap ourselves in until the suffering is done."

Although he has often been compared to writers like Raymond Chandler, Zevon says he has no prose aspirations of his own.

"I'd write instrumentals if I were to give up songwriting, although if I had my choice I'd rather write movie soundtracks than anything else. They're the easiest and the most fun."

In the meantime, Zevon works to broaden his audience.

"I was in Fort Lauderdale and a friend, (author and columnist) Carl Hiaasen, told me he saw two of every kind in the audience. I told him that was my problem."

Healthwise, Zevon says he's feeling fine, except for a cold. "The band says the show is much better when I'm sick."

But he insists he doesn't mind touring. "With me, a hit single is an anomaly, not the norm, so I have no choice but to keep going." Yet road work is not considered a necessary evil for the promotion of his record.

"It's the other way around," Zevon maintains. "I have to keep doing all this other stuff so they'll let me have a place to play."