"Warren Zevon's unusual lifestyle was reflected in his music, which talked about dizzying adventures and ironically dark chronicles. Zevon grew up in California, but due to his father's profession (gambler) the family had to move around a lot. At 16 years old, Zevon took off in his father's prized Corvette with his guitar (though he grew up studying classical piano) and headed off on his own to become a folksinger. While that didn't happen, he did join the duo Lyme and Cybelle and started working in the studio meeting great California musicians of the ‘70s like Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt and the Eagles. With his first single ""She Got Me Man"" appearing in the film Midnight Cowboy, he started recording his own material.It wasn't until his 1978 album Excitable Boy that Zevon gained some commercial and critical acclaim. The album went gold and contained several hit singles. His next few albums continued to hit the top of the charts and create more singles that audiences loved, but they never matched the same success that Excitable Boy created. After his 1982 album The Envoy, Zevon took a five-year hiatus before releasing another record. During his time out of the musical spotlight, he went in for alcoholic treatment, lost his record contract with Asylum and toured playing older material rather than creating new stuff.Back in the saddle, Zevon returned sober to the music world with a few new songs and a new record contract, this time with Virgin. With the help of some friends like Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Bill Berry of REM, his 1987 album appeared. But as Zevon chose sobriety over alcohol, he lost his humor. He continued to record into the early '00s before he was diagnosed with mesothelioma, an inoperable form of lung cancer. He decided to record one last album, The Wind, and lived long enough to see the album's release in 2004."