I have a stupid style of grieving. When someone tells me something sad I usually let it kick around awhile until it’s well and truly processed and then, sometimes it’s months later, I have a good ol’ session of loud music and crying to purge the sad, like popping a blister of tears. (How sylvia plath 15year old poetry is that line? Ohwell. I’m keeping it.)
So when Levon Helm died a few weeks ago I told Facebook I was sad, because I was. Telling Facebook you’re sad is how my generation raises a glass of good whisky to the sunset in honour of the dead. I prefer the Waking Ned Divine way of actually doing that except a) I do not like whisky–good or bad, it all smells like old men on the train* and b)with as many people I admire dying I’d have to start selling my teeth like Fantine in order to pay for all that Connemara Single Malt.
This afternoon while listening to music my iTunes shuffled around to Mavis singing ‘The Weight’ and I just burst out in tears. Salt tears. I then spent an hour listening to all the highlights of Levon, crying especially when we got to the lines ‘you put the load right on me’ and ‘they should never have taken the very best’. 
I finally shifted out of grief mode when Van and The Band joined in on the chorus of ‘Comfortably Numb’ on ‘Wall: Live In Berlin’. And I listened to some Van for cooldown. I also did this when mourning Zevon. It now occurs to me that I have no prayer of an idea whom I’ll listen to when Van dies. There’s really nobody after Van. Maybe I’ll give Tull a try, because Ian Anderson has a way about him, but still. Van is Van.
And now that things seem better off…
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*Oddly, I DO enjoy the smell of pipe tobacco. Since I don’t want anyone I know dying of cancer I’m thinking of just buying a meerschaum pipe and burning good tobacco in it like incense so that my house will smell like learned old gentlemen. Clearly I like the smell of old men if they are in libraries, but not on Amtrak. Yes, I sat next to some whisky-stink men on a train home from Chicago. Well, not “next to” because I was actually “next to” my brother Dave and hording all the buckeyes in a brown paper sack. But the stank old men were near enough to fumigate our row.
Just Another Pretty Farce 
My husband’s taken to smoking a pipe, but he smokes it outside. The Weight is one of my favorite songs of all time. The Big Pink album is one of my favorite albums of all time. I almost named my eldest child Anna Lee based off the song, but at the last minute, God changed my mind (husband was just willing to go w/ it). Now I’m going to go listen to the album.
Hey Katherine, years ago, about 2 yrs. after “Werewolves of London” came out, I got a job at one of those gas station/grocers out in Rockland County, NY. One of my regulars was Zevon’s first cousin and when, one day, I needed his ID for something, I noticed the name and asked. “Oh – – – my cousin. Ugh.”
“Gee, what do you mean? Is it going to piss you off that it’s one of my favorite albums?”
He didn’t laugh along with me.
“No, I guess his music is okay, I guess. But he’s such a Douche!!”
I paused.
“No, I mean, I’m not jealous or anything like that.. Not of him! But now that he’s got it, he’s just forgotten everyone who helped him get there. He’s forgotten his family and all his friends. He’s just become such an asshole! But hey, I’m not going to lay all that on you. If you like the song, that’s cool.”
“Well, actually, the song I like most is “Like a Martyr. . .”
“Yeah, that’s when he was still like my cousin – – – ”
“Oh”
We never spoke of him again. But everytime I listened to that album after that, even today (I still love that vinyl) I still think of what he said to me. And wonder what could have happened.
It makes me think of that movie, “Powder” and how it came out later that it was written and produced by a guy who had done quite a bit of prison time for child rape. I remember reading about the kid, now an adult, protesting his one-man protest against the film when it was released and how Steenbergen and Goldblum tried to get their names off the film.
I keep remembering when it was the only thing on cable one day, so I figured I hadn’t spent any money on it so it wasn’t too much more harm if I watched it.
And how strange it was to watch this movie, wanting so badly to hate it and finding I couldn’t because the story is beautiful. How did that story come out of that mind?
But I guess the point is how truth, while it’s considered a virtue, can be destructive. Or releasing of a sentimental commitment I hadn’t been aware I’d even made. Or was aware was holding me and now couldn’t any longer. But am I free? Or just regretful?
Zevon is a big thing with me. I love him. I love his music. His songs are the soundtrack of my thoughts.
But he was, by all accounts including his own, a huge festering jerk most of the time. I read his biography by his ex-wife a few years ago and came away just distraught over how utterly terrible a person he was. I mean, he had good qualities, yes. But they were–again, by his own admission–overshadowed by how much of an utter tool he was. Abandoning his children. Using women like disposable paper cups. Betraying friends and leaving debt and grief in his wake.
It’s hard, but I’ve just come to accept that some of these men whose music I find so moving are just really broken in pretty much every other area. (See also: Van Morrison, Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits.)
I’m not at all surprised by his cousin’s account. It sounds pretty par for the course. And it’s incredibly sad.
I understand that by the time he died he was fully embracing Christianity and had spent the last three years of his life mending fences. Still and all, it would have been better if he’d not mowed them down to begin with.
You know how when someone you know and care about in your own life dies, you spend years thinking “I have to tell X about …” or “I wonder what X thinks about …” and each time you remember all over again that X is dead, and each time you grieve again — less and less as time goes on, but still, constantly renewed grief? I think that the same thing has to happen with musicians we have loved. There’s always going to be something we hear that makes us think of them, and makes us grieve. I don’t see any way around it.
I think you are exactly, 100% correct.