Jon Pareles’ NY Times obituary: Wry Singer and Songwriter Dies at 56:

Warren Zevon, a singer and songwriter who came up with hard-boiled stories and tender confessions of love, died on Sunday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 56.

The cause was lung cancer, which was diagnosed last summer.

Mr. Zevon had a pulp-fiction imagination that yielded songs like ‘Werewolves of London,’ ‘Poor, Poor Pitiful Me,’ ‘Lawyers, Guns and Money’ and ‘I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead.’ They were terse, action-packed, gallows-humored tales that could sketch an entire screenplay in four minutes and often had death as a punch line. But vulnerability and longing were also in Mr. Zevon’s ballads, like ‘Mutineer,’ ‘Accidentally Like a Martyr’ and ‘Hasten Down the Wind.'”

…

When his cancer was diagnosed, Mr. Zevon was the first to recognize that songs like “My Ride’s Here,” about a hearse, had become self-fulfilling prophecies.

“I keep asking myself how I suddenly was thrust into the position of travel agent for death,” he said last year. “But then, of course, the whole point of why it’s so strange is that I had already assigned myself that role so many years of writing ago.” He allowed a camera crew from VH1 to make a documentary during the recording sessions for his final album.

“The Wind” has death-haunted songs like “Prison Grove” and “Keep Me in Your Heart,” as well as a version of Mr. Dylan’s song about a dying sheriff, “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” But songs like “Disorder in the House” and “Dirty Life and Times” maintain Mr. Zevon’s old sardonic humor.

While he was recording the album, Mr. Zevon said he was planning to write goodbyes to people and to make one other point: that, he said, “This was a nice deal: life.”

Sleep well… Readers can go further (much further) with Craig’s singluar tribute