On Monday morning Warren Zevon's new album hit No. 1 on amazon.com's sales list.
It was clear then that he was dead.
Zevon did indeed die Sunday at his Los Angeles home after a year-long struggle with inoperable lung cancer. He was 56.
But that struggle had proven a wonderful career move for the singer-songwriter best known for songs like "Werewolves of London," "Excitable Boy" and "Poor Poor Pitiful Me."
The amazon.com chart is just one indicator.
After he announced his illness last year, Zevon became the object of enormous media attention. VH1 recently premiered a special about Zevon and the making of what was expected to be his last album, The Wind. It will replay the special at 11 a.m. and 6 p.m. EDT Tuesday.
When The Wind hit stores, it sold 48,000 copies its first week, according to music-industry publication Billboard. That vaulted it to number 16 on the Billboard album charts. Billboard's online news said that is Zevon's highest chart position "since (the album) Excitable Boy peaked at No. 8 about 25 years ago."
Facing death for real after years of writing about it, Zevon broke out of the ranks of cult acts - although his cult included the likes of David Letterman (who made a cameo appearance on a Zevon album) and Bruce Springsteen (who played on The Wind).
Early in his career, he had been a backing musician for the Everly Brothers. He then became known as a songwriter thanks in large measure to Linda Ronstadt's covering several of his songs.
Zevon made his first solo album in 1969 but broke through to big success with the top-10 album Excitable Boy in 1976. It boasted the title tune, "Werewolves" and "Lawyers, Guns and Money." "Werewolves'" classic status was cemented a decade later when Tom Cruise put on a pool-playing exhibition to the song in the movie The Color of Money.
But even that commercial success was accompanied by Zevon's often grim sense of humor, some raw content (including a thoroughly unprintable song title on one later album), a lot of hard living and a highly individualistic approach to his craft.
The song "Excitable Boy" put a cheery beat to a tale of murder and necrophilia. The payoff to "Lawyers, Guns and Money" included a word not generally heard on the radio. And another ditty on the album was "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner."
His next album, Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School, had an ode to pitcher Bill Lee - one of several sports-themed songs from Zevon over the years. But more representative of the demands Zevon made on listeners was "Play It All Night Long." As riveting as it is musically, lyrically it offers incontinence, incest, cattle with brucellosis and "Sweet Home Alabama ... that dead band's song."
"I always like to have violent lyrics and violent music," Zevon told the Associated Press in 1990. "The knowledge of death and the fear of death informs my existence. It's a safe, kind of cheerful way of dealing with that issue."
All that writing may have helped prepare him for his own death, which he faced publicly with considerable grace and calm. Zevon also had a sentimental side that showed up in his more tender songs, such as "Keep Me in Your Heart," the final song on The Wind.
As a result, Zevon's albums were sometimes confusing mixes of styles and attitudes. Even among fans there could be divisions about something like his live Learning to Flinch album.
But you could fall under his spell, whether by discovering a single song or - even better - a career overview like the two-disc I'll Sleep When I'm Dead collection. And once you got there, you could forgive the indifferent album for the sake of the occasionally great song.
On my Monday morning walk, I had brought along a CD of songs to keep me moving - and make me smile. Three of those songs were Zevon's.
Reach the reporter at rheldenfels@thebeaconjournal.com.
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