(From Crystal Zevon's warts-aplenty 2007 portrait of her ex-husband, I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, comes this account of the Zevons' child-custody dispute: “Warren got on the phone; he was obviously drunk. . . . He said, 'I'm to the right of your father and Ronald Reagan and if you think I'm going to let my daughter be raised by some f***ing Communist hippie, you're sadly mistaken.'” But really, who can resist a songwriter who begins a lyric, “I went home with the waitress/The way I always do/How was I to know/She was with the Russians, too?”) Bill Kauffman.
