“One of the rare cases where I give myself a bit of a break,” Letterman says. But as “ill-equipped” as he claims that he was, he knows that his discomfort was a natural byproduct of the extraordinarily emotional circumstances. Letterman admits that the idea of asking someone he revered questions about his mortality threw him off. “He was kind of on a mission,” says Late Show producer and booker Sheila Rogers. “Selfishly, and of course under the circumstances, why would I think about anything other than myself? That’s all you need to know about what I am.” Zevon, however, seemed to savor the chance to give himself over to Letterman and his audience one last time.
#Warren zevon discography tv#
“If I was dying, I’m not going to go and talk to anybody on TV about me and my impending death,” he says.
Looking back on it now, Letterman can’t believe the send-off happened at all. “Man, if I had only said that in my life,” he says, “I think my life would’ve been worth something.” When Letterman asked his friend how his work had changed after learning that he was sick, he replied, “You’re reminded to enjoy every sandwich.” As soon as he heard it, Letterman’s longtime band leader Paul Shaffer knew the line would become famous. “It was just like two guys bullshitting on a park bench.” “David didn’t make it like a whole long greeting card,” says comedian Richard Lewis, a buddy of Zevon’s and a frequent Letterman guest. Like a classic Zevon track, their conversation was shockingly funny and casually profound. The singer-songwriter’s final hour with Letterman unfolded into one of the most memorable moments of their careers. And again, from my standpoint, do you expect a guy to be good-natured about it? I mean, God. “The other thing is, we guessed maybe that there was some pharmaceutical help. “There are two things at work here, and only one of them I know for a fact: that when people get to be on television, they raise their game because they get to be on television,” Letterman says. He and Letterman chatted, and then he played three songs. There were no Hollywood stars promoting a movie, no musical guests debuting a new single.
#Warren zevon discography full#
To say goodbye to the musician who had graced his stage dozens of times over the previous two decades, Letterman devoted a full episode to him. That summer, he had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.
Warren Zevon appeared on Late Show With David Letterman on October 30, 2002. “I’ve never sat down and talked to anybody on television where we both understood they were about to die.” “It was the only time in my talk show history that I did anything like that,” he says. David Letterman, 20 years later, still thinks about the interview.
0 kommentar(er)
