Zevon Reissues, Not Much More Expected
With momentum high after a pair of Grammy wins for Warren Zevon’s final studio album, “The Wind” (Artemis), fans may be expecting a full slate of archival material from the late artist’s career would be on the way soon. Not so, according to his son, Jordan Zevon.
“For the most part, [we’re going to] let it ring out,” Zevon tells Billboard.com, adding that he and his sister, Ariel, are not willing to speculate about their father’s wishes.
“You’re starting to delve into what he would and wouldn’t want released, and you can never know,” he says. “He had an MTV concert that came out in the ’80s and you would think, ‘Oh well, that’d be great to get out there,’ and we just happened to discuss it at one point and [in] his opinion, he deemed it unwatcheable.
“So, when you get into the guessing game it’s when you start feeling, ‘Am I doing the right thing?”
On the other hand, reissued versions of the albums his father recorded over the years will likely emerge in time.
“Dad had a couple of records that didn’t make it to CD — {1982’s] ‘The Envoy’ and [the 1981 live album] ‘Stand in the Fire’ — and immediately the thought was that we have to use that momentum and get those CDs out. And I talked to the people at Rhino, and they were already kind of getting into the process of reissuing his stuff.”
Rhino has previously released a pair of career retrospectives, 2002’s “Genius – The Best of Warren Zevon” and 1996’s “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead (An Anthology).”
While admitting there is no timetable set for any projects, Zevon says, “I know that getting those albums out and getting nice remastered and extra tracks versions of the old records would be something that he would approve of and that he would enjoy.”
For now, there’s this week’s Artemis’ release of the DVD “VH1 (Inside) Out: Warren Zevon,” the music channel’s documentary of the making of “The Wind.” Recorded over the final months of his the artist’s life, the set won the best contemporary folk album award, while the song “Disorder in the House,” a duet with Bruce Springsteen, won best rock performance by a duo or group.
“It’s been amazing,” says Zevon, who accepted the awards on behalf of his father before participating in a moving tribute that also included Emmylou Harris and Dwight Yoakam. “It’s really been overwhelming and satisfying and actually even a bit of closure on what’s been a long year-and-a-half.
“A lot of people kept asking if it was bittersweet, and we really don’t tend to feel that way. I think what would make me bitter is if his career didn’t get the acknowledgement, or the album didn’t get the acknowledgement, that would really be a lot worse. As for the fact that it came posthumously, at least it happened.”
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