Warren Zevon: The Wind

Warren Zevon's final, valedictory album provides ultimate proof that those of us who believed him to be one of the greatest songwriters of his generation were not just blowing smoke. In a field increasingly inhabited by moral and intellectual pygmies, his was a singular, idiosyncratic voice that could cut through cant and bullshit with a single, razoring line. That he would almost always manage to do so with a wry humour makes his achievement all the more remarkable, and our loss all the greater. This was a man, let's not forget, whose own comment on the inoperable lung cancer which took his life last Sunday was, "I'm OK with it, but it'll be a drag if I don't make it till the next James Bond movie comes out". How many of us, in similar circumstances, could so drolly downplay our own demise?