Per The New York Times, "Mr. Zevon had a pulp-fiction imagination" which yielded "terse, action-packed, gallows-humored tales that could sketch an entire screenplay in four minutes and often had death as a punchline.

[5] William Zevon worked as a bookie who handled volume bets and dice games for the notorious Los Angeles mobster Mickey Cohen.

[8][9][10] They later moved to Fresno, California, and by the age of 13, Zevon was an occasional visitor to the home of Igor Stravinsky, where he briefly studied modern classical music alongside Robert Craft.

He soon quit high school and, driving a sports car William won in a card game, moved from Los Angeles to New York City to become a folk singer.

Bones Howe produced their first single, the minor hit "Follow Me", which was written by Zevon and Santangelo and reached number 65 on the Billboard pop charts in April 1966.

Zevon's debut solo album, Wanted Dead or Alive (1970), was spearheaded by 1960s cult figure Kim Fowley but received almost no attention and did not sell well.

Though Zevon continued to play occasional live dates as a solo artist, the next several years of his career were dominated by session work with other musicians.

These small successes were not particularly rewarding financially, and Zevon's dissatisfaction with his career (and a lack of funds) led him to briefly move to Spain in the summer of 1975.

[14] Contributors to the album included Nicks, Buckingham, Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, members of the Eagles, Carl Wilson, Linda Ronstadt and Bonnie Raitt.

Zevon's first tour, in 1977, included guest appearances in the middle of Jackson Browne concerts, one of which is documented on a widely circulated bootleg recording of a Dutch radio program under the title The Offender Meets the Pretender.

Representative tracks include the junkie's lament "Carmelita"; the Copland-esque outlaw ballad "Frank and Jesse James"; "The French Inhaler", a scathing look at life and lust in the L.A. music business (which was actually about Marilyn Livingston, his long-time girlfriend and mother of his son, Jordan);[14] and "Desperados Under the Eaves", a chronicle of Zevon's increasing alcoholism.

In 1978, Zevon released Excitable Boy (produced by Jackson Browne and guitarist Waddy Wachtel) to critical acclaim and popular success.

Other songs, such as "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner" and "Lawyers, Guns and Money", used deadpan humor to wed geopolitical subtexts to hard-boiled narratives.

[15]: 427  Rolling Stone record reviews editor Paul Nelson called the album "one of the most significant releases of the 1970s" and placed Zevon alongside Jackson Browne, Neil Young, and Bruce Springsteen as the four most important new artists to emerge in the decade.

The ballad "Empty-Handed Heart" (featuring a descant sung by Linda Ronstadt), is about Zevon's divorce from his wife, Crystal, the mother of his daughter Ariel.

Later in 1980, he released the live album Stand in the Fire, recorded over five nights at The Roxy Theatre in Los Angeles and dedicated to Martin Scorsese.

[17] It was an eclectic but characteristic set that included such compositions as "Ain't That Pretty at All", "Charlie's Medicine" and "Jesus Mentioned", the first of Zevon's two musical reactions to the death of Elvis Presley.

The immediate follow-up to Sentimental Hygiene was 1989's Transverse City, a futuristic concept album inspired by Zevon's interest in the work of cyberpunk science fiction author William Gibson.

Zevon also sang lead vocals on the song "Casey Jones" from the Grateful Dead tribute album Deadicated, with regular collaborator David Lindley.

Owing to his reduced circumstances, his performances were often true solo efforts with minimal accompaniment on piano and guitar;[20][21][22] the live album Learning to Flinch (1993) documents such a tour.

[23] A lifelong fan of hardboiled fiction, Zevon was friendly with several well-known writers, who also collaborated on his songwriting during this period, including Thompson, Carl Hiaasen and Mitch Albom.

The group included Stephen King, Dave Barry, Matt Groening and Amy Tan, among other popular writers; it has continued to perform one benefit concert per year since Zevon's death.

Zevon played on and wrote liner notes for Stranger Than Fiction (1998), a two-CD set attributed to the Wrockers, containing rock covers and originals by many of the Remainders authors plus such notables as Norman Mailer and Maya Angelou.

Zevon oversaw music for the short-lived revival of the NBC series Route 66 (1993), contributing that show's main title theme, "If You Won't Leave Me I'll Find Somebody Who Will".

With record sales brisk and music critics giving Zevon his best notices since Excitable Boy, Life'll Kill Ya is seen as his second comeback.

(The Hockey Song)" (co-written by Albom and featuring Shaffer, the Late Night band and a spoken vocal from David Letterman) and the ballad "Genius", written with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon.

At about this time, he and the actor Billy Bob Thornton formed a close friendship, catalyzed by their common experiences with obsessive-compulsive disorder and the fact they lived in the same apartment building.

After a period of suffering with pain and shortness of breath, Zevon was encouraged by his dentist to see a physician; he was diagnosed with pleural mesothelioma, a cancer (usually caused by exposure to asbestos) that affects the pleura, a thin membrane around the lungs and chest lining.

The album contains five previously unreleased songs: "Empty Hearted Town", "Going All the Way", "Steady Rain", "Stop Rainin' Lord" and "The Rosarita Beach Cafe", along with Zevon's original demo of "Studebaker".

The Wind was certified gold by the RIAA in December 2003, and Zevon received five posthumous Grammy nominations, including Song of the Year for the ballad "Keep Me in Your Heart".