Explore an Uncommon
Approach to Leadership!
Coaching and Family
I've never been a big fan of teams that use the word "family," even though just about everyone does it. First of all, we aren't that close. I've had players ay "these are my brothers right here." Really? You just met 3 of them a month ago. You became brothers because you are good at basketball and you chose the same school?
I love this quote from Todd Monken, the offensive coordinator at Georgia. This is real, despite whether or not it says "Family" on the back of your shorts or your locker room wall.
"Our System Is Our Players"
Ed Cooley on his system at Providence and he how and his staff adjust to his players:
“You’ve got to adjust with your personnel. There are so many coaches who are just based on system. Our system is our players. We as coaches have to adjust to them."
Big Games
Every game counts the same in the standings, but some games are bigger than others. Whether it's a rivalry game, a game to decide the league title, or a do-or-die post-season game, you can feel the difference when preparing for a big game. Let's face it, UConn at Providence is different than when Depaul comes to town, and everyone knows it.
We had a lot of success in March at Rhode Island College and we played in a lot of big games in the regular season. We were won the league six times in nine years, and finished second twice and third once. We were always in contention for the league title, which meant a lot of big games.
The key for us with big games was when things started to feel different, not to do anything different. We had no problem talking about how big the game was - if you play college basketball at an elite program you want to play in big games. You have to recognize it. But the key is not to change what you do. Of course it feels different, and everyone knows what is at stake. That pressure is a good thing. If you acknowledge that pressure it will likely have less of an impact on your approach.
We were picked to win the league every year I coached at Rhode Island College. There was a stretch of six straight years where the winner of our first game against Eastern Connecticut, which for some reason was always played in December as one of the first league games, went on to win the league. Even though it was usually the first or second league game of the year, we always talked about it as a title fight. We knew that the winner of that game usually took control of the league, so we made it a point to recognize that.
What we established at RIC over time, however, that really made a difference in big games was how we practiced every day. We made sure our compete level was elite every day. We didn't have walk-throughs or go half speed. If our guys needed a break we gave them a day off, or we just went with a shorter practice. But we made it a point to talk about the way we prepared every day. No matter what time of year or who our next opponent was, we were preparing to win big games. We were preparing to win games on the road against great teams. We were preparing to win tough games when two starters were out or we got into foul trouble.
We emphasized the way we prepared every day. We talked about big games, adversity, handling everything that goes into winning in tough environments. Our approach to big games was long-term. When we got to a week where we had a really big game, and everyone could feel the pressure and the hype, we just had to be ourselves. We prepared the way we always did, without doing anything different because of the big game. We didn't want have to change to win big games, we just had to be ourselves.
Confrontation and Solitude
Leadership is not always comfortable. In fact, it rarely is for the majority of the group. Leadership is not great chemistry and everyone enjoying each other's company. When things are going well and everyone is happy, impactful leadership generally isn't necessary. Great leadership involves confronting bad behavior, and often leaves those in charge out on their own. Leadership can be very lonely. Great leaders have to be comfortable being alone.
One of my first lessons in leadership as a head coach came in my first year at Rhode Island College. It was maybe a week or two after I had taken the job, and I was still getting to know my players. I would often see them in the recreation center where my office was in the afternoon as they were gathering to play pick-up, and I'd get a chance to talk with them before they played.
On this particular day I had been recruiting the day before, so I hadn't seen them before or after their pick-up games. Our only senior (who would turn out to be my first captain) Kevin Payette came by the office before heading into the gym, and I asked him how the pick-up games yesterday had been. He said "They were crap, coach, to be honest. It was sloppy, guys weren't competing hard, there was a lot of arguing going on. They weren't very good." I replied, only half-serious, "So what are we going to do about that?" Figuring I'd get a quizzical look, I was kind of surprised with what I heard. "We got up this morning at 7 AM and ran as a team, Coach. We took care of it."
I was pretty surprised. I remember thinking "wow, we might have something here." What type of team, especially one that came back to school in September without a coach when their coach took another job in August, gets together to run at 7 AM because their pick-up games were sloppy? That was one of my first lessons in ownership. KP and the rest of the team had taken ownership of the program in the fall when there was a coaching transition. They set their own standards for their team, and when they didn't live up to them their were consequences. Everyone who was a part of the team or who was planning on trying out showed up to run at 7 AM that morning.
The maturity and level of ownership were really impressive. But what really struck me when I had that conversation with KP was the risk he had to take to confront the bad behavior. First of all, confrontation isn't easy for most. Many of just just try and avoid it at all costs. But confrontation is essential to good leadership. If you want to implement change you have to confront bad behavior. And when you do, especially if you don't have a lot of support, leadership can be very lonely. Do you think the 20+ guys who were playing that day felt some sloppy pick-up games were worth getting up at 7 AM for? I'm sure it wasn't a popular decision in that gym, but it was the right one, and it was important. We have standards here, and if we don't live up to them there are consequences.
The right leadership choices don't always feel good. Leadership takes guts. You have to be willing to go against what's popular to do what is right. In fact, many of the most important leadership decisions I have made didn't feel very good. But I knew what I was doing was important, and I was convinced it was right.
Leadership will often lead you to confrontation, and it will be very lonely at times. You have to have the conviction in your beliefs and the mental capacity to handle the way it feels. When it comes to strong leadership, confrontation and solitude often come with the territory. Embrace it.
Expected Standards
"You learn the real standards from each other."
If you want to learn about the culture of a team, don't ask their seniors. Watch the freshmen. What they do is the true culture.
Bill Walsh - 7 "Dont's" After Defeat
- Don't Whine
- Don't Ask 'Why Me?'
- Don't Expect Sympathy
- Don't Keep Accepting Condolences
- Don't Blame Injuries or Officials
- Don't Ignore The Media
- Don't Blame The Team
Landry Fields
Some really good stuff from Landry Fields on the mental side of player development.
Run At The Screen
Don't tell your players to run "off" a screen or to use a screen. Tell them to run at a screen.
When your teammate is trying to screen to get you open, you should run right at your teammate. Don't veer wide around the screen and give your defender a chance to ride you out. There is usually going to be some contact when you are coming off a screen, and on offense you want to force the issue. If you run around a screen or go wide, you give your opponent a lane to beat the screen.
Your mentality when you come off a screen should be to run right at your teammate who is setting the screen for you. The mindset should be to force your defender to foul you. He has to get pretty physical with you to keep you from running him into the screen, and it's likely going to be a foul. If it isn't called, you should be able to rub him into the screen and get open. Keep your hands up in the air so you don't get involved in hand fighting and get called for a push.
When your teammate is screening for you, run right at the screen. Don't widen out and give the defense any kind of angle to beat the screen. You want to be physical when you are coming off a screen. Don't allow your defender to dictate where you go. Run right at the screen, and you'll either get fouled or get open.
Saban - Discipline
"What are you willing to accept from yourself... and what are you willing to accept from your teammates?"
The Last Lesson
What am I doing every day in my life to make sure, when it’s my time, that the guy in my mail room is going to show up for me?
That was the last lesson my father ever taught me.
Fifteen years ago - so hard to believe it’s been that long - on the Monday after Thanksgiving in 2008, I was getting ready to head down to practice at Rhode Island College when my cell phone rang. At RIC my office was in the Recreation Center, across campus from the Murray Center where we practiced and played, so we had to actually get into our cars and drive down to the Murray Center for practice. As I walked out of the Rec Center towards my car, I looked at my phone. It was my Dad calling.
It was odd that my Dad would call at that time, because he knew we practiced late in the afternoon. I had a lot going on getting ready for practice, so I let the call go. I’d give him a call back after practice. I got in my car and started driving down the Rec Center, and my phone rang again. It was my Dad calling again. I figured maybe he just had to ask me a question about something so I picked it up.
It’s hard to describe the feeling you get when your caller ID says “Dad” yet the voice you hear when you say hello is one you don’t recognize. My insides felt hollow. I was sitting at a stop sign waiting to make a right turn when I heard “Detective with the Tampa Police department.” My father had recently bought his retirement home in Tampa. “I’m very sorry to inform you…”
My father had been found by his cleaning lady, dead of a heart attack. He was 63 years old. Just like that, my father was dead. I was too stunned to know how to feel.
I drove down to the Murray Center, parked in the parking lot, and called my brother. I got his wife, who said he was not feeling well and was sleeping. I told her he had to wake him up. When he came to the phone I just said “I just got a call from the Tampa Police department. Dad’s dead.” They had picked up my Dad’s cell phone and looked at his text messages. I had texted him the day before to let him know Providence College was in Anaheim in a tournament, and their game was on TV if he wanted to watch it. He never got the text. The Tampa Police did.
I went inside the Murray Center, totally stunned, and told my AD. I went into the gym and gathered my players who were warming up before practice, and told them. It seemed weird that I told my team before I told anyone else in my family, but I had to let them know I wasn’t going to be at practice. I called my girlfriend – now my wife – and can still hear the shock in her voice.
I went home and called my brother again, and we started calling family and close friends. The feeling is hard to describe, it’s like being in a daze. I was shocked, stunned, empty, yet there was a lot of work to do. We had to let people know, to start thinking about arrangements. Throughout all of it, as bad as I felt, I had this one overriding feeling: Lucky. It’s still hard to explain how I felt that way in that moment. I had a great relationship with my father, and I just felt lucky to have had the relationship I did with him for 36 years. I still feel that way to this day. As stunned as I was, I just kept thinking about how lucky I was, and I guess that helped me get through that day somehow.
My father was very successful. He grew up in Parkchester in the Bronx and had to work hard to get to college. He attended Iona College just North of the City, joining the Marine Reserves to help pay for school, and started a career in business upon graduation. He took a job out of school with KPMG, one of the big accounting firms in New York City, and ended up spending 38 years with the company. By the time he retired he was a senior partner with a big office on Park Avenue. He was very actively involved at Iona College, his alma mater, as the President of their Goal Club, as well as their Alumni Association. He joined a golf club in Westchester and served a stint as the President there. He served on a number of different Board of Directors for different organizations.
My father’s wake was a few days later on Castle Hill Avenue in the Bronx, the neighborhood where he grew up. He was still a working class kid from the Bronx, but he had worked his way into being very well off and connecting with some very successful people. It was overwhelming to see so many people show up to pay their respects. Whenever your in the situation where someone close to you has a death in the family and you feel like your not sure what to do, just show up. That’s what you do. You show up. It really helped my brother and I to see so many people who cared about and had been impacted by our father.
The wake was a who’s who of powerful people. College President’s, executive VPs, high-powered attorneys, wall street millionaires. It made my brother and I feel very good to see so many of my Dad’s friends and associates. The line was long and it took a couple of hours to see everyone.
Towards the end of the night a man walked in who looked a little out of place. He was wearing a baseball cap and a pair of khakis with a golf shirt and a rumpled jacket. He had a work ID badge hanging around his neck, looking very blue collar in a white collar crowd. I noticed him as soon as he walked in, and I didn’t recognize him. He didn’t talk to anyone, he just waited on line and made his way up to our family to pay respects. He shook my hand and simply said “I’m so sorry for your loss. Your father was a great friend to me.” I said thank you, but didn’t ask him who he was. After he got through the line, he went and sat in the back in a chair by himself. I noticed he said a few words to a few of the people from my Dad’s office. Then he got up slowly, put his cap back on, and started to walk out.
I wanted to talk to him before he left, but I hesitated because I didn’t want to make him uncomfortable. I didn’t want him to think that I was stopping him because I didn’t know who he was. I watched him walk out the door of the funeral home and head back down Castle Hill Avenue – past a number of car service Town Cars ready to take some of the attendees back into Manhattan. He put his cap on and walked back towards the 6 train.
This man was on my mind all night. Before everyone left, I asked one of my father’s work associates if they knew who he was. I thought I had seen him talking briefly with some of the people from my Dad’s office. It turns out he did work in my Dad’s office – in the mailroom. He delivered the mail to my Dad’s floor of his Park Avenue office building. He would sort the mail for my Dad exactly how he wanted it. He would bring my Dad his coffee with the mail in the morning, make sure he had an umbrella when it was raining, call down to make sure my Dad’s car was ready in the garage when he needed it.
My Dad had asked him what his name was, befriended him, and developed a relationship with him. He asked him about his family. He found out he had two young kids in catholic grammar school. He’d buy them Christmas gifts so they had nice toys under the tree. At different times when things were a struggle, my Dad had helped out by paying the tuition for his kids so they could stay in the school in their neighborhood. He helped out the family whenever they needed something over the years, and he, his secretary and the family were the only ones who knew about it. I had never met the man or his family.
When I learned about this, I couldn’t hold back the tears. This man had gotten on the 6 train in Midtown Manhattan and taken a one hour subway ride to Castle Hill, then walked the six blocks to pay his respects, to say “I’m sorry for your loss” to two sons he had never met. He didn’t know us, and hardly knew anyone at the wake. He certainly looked a little bit out of place. But he knew my father, and considered him a friend.
I still think about him all of the time. I can still see him putting his hat back on and slowly walking up Castle Hill Avenue to the Subway station. He spent at least two hours on the subway and waited at least 30 minutes in line just to pay his respects. I didn’t even know who he was, nor did my brother. We would have had no idea if he didn’t show up. But he made the trip anyway.
I am very lucky to have had the relationship I did with my father, to spend the time with him that I did. I’m also very proud of the way my Dad lived his life. He made a lot of money and traveled in circles of very successful people. But he was always the same person, the kid who had worked his way out of the Bronx. He had no sense of entitlement about him. I learned so much from him, simply from the way he lived his life and how he acted towards others, even those he didn’t know. He treated everyone with dignity and respect and went out of his way to help people who needed help.
That night, that moment, that man who showed up to pay his respects for my father made me think about how I live my own life. Do I treat everyone with the same respect? Am I courteous and genuine to everyone I meet, regardless of their circumstances and what they can do for me? Do I give people the benefit of the doubt if they are struggling with something, not knowing what might be going on in their life? Do I show the right amount of gratitude in my daily routine?
How do I treat the people in my “mail room?” We all have people in the mail room in our life. How do we interact with those people? Do we treat them with respect and go out of our way to make sure they are comfortable? Do we think about what we can do to help them? Or others who might not come from the same background that we do?
What am I doing every day in my life to make sure, when it’s my time, that the guy in my mail room is going to show up for me?
That was the last lesson my father ever taught me.
Great Passers Think Score First
To be a great passer, you have to think like a scorer. The best passers think score first, and it's something you really have to instill in your players.
It seems counterintuitive, but it actually makes a lot of sense. Players who drive to pass are usually pretty easy to read. Players who drive to score draw the help and open up passing lanes to their teammates.
Great passers are obviously unselfish, and thinking score first does not mean you have to be selfish. It actually helps you be unselfish. Thinking score first puts a lot more pressure on the defense and creates more opportunities.
The best passers I've ever coached are scoring threats. You can be a scoring threat and also be unselfish. If the defense can play you as a passer you are going to have a hard time finding open teammates. They are going to close those lanes down and dare you to score. You see a lot of turnovers on penetration and on the fast break when a player knows they are going to pass the ball, and they aren't a threat to score.
Great passers have to think score. Convince your players to think score first when they get into the paint, and they'll become better passers.
Yoda To Luke
More great stuff from Buzz Williams...
"The best leaders transition the fastest..."
https://www.instagram.com/reel/Ck_GRfhOuys/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Wojo on Failure Recovery
I liked this quote from Steve Wojciechowski on what he's learned since he got fired.
“What coaches hear is, you gotta grind, grind, grind. To me, it’s such B.S.,” Wojciechowski says. “You’re told you gotta want it as much as you can breathe. Really? Really? You need to win as much as you need to breathe? Think about what you just said. I talk to young coaches about, what type of failure recovery plan do you have? You’re going to have losses, and not all of those losses are on the court. If you don’t have a plan internally to get you back to a baseline level of clarity, then they pile up. If I had to do it all over again, I’d carve out more space for quiet.”
He is really talking about coaches and how their failure recovery plan as individuals, but it applies to teams as well. And obviously they are connected. How is your team going to handle failure? Because handling failure is a big part of sustaining elite success. And your team's failure recovery plan is going to come from you.
I've always said that elite teams have a good relationship with losing. I learned that from my teams at RIC when I first became a head coach. What is your team's relationship with losing? That will go a long way towards your ability to win.
Warren Zevon Says Goodbye
Just a terrific article on the night musician visited with his friend David Letterman when he was dying of cancer.
“Thank You, and Goodbye”
On October 30, 2002, a cancer-stricken Warren Zevon returned to the ‘Late Show With David Letterman’ stage for one last performance. Twenty years later, Letterman and more remember the gravitas and emotion of that stunning night.
By Alan Siegel Oct 28, 2022, 6:30am EDT
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DavidDavid Letterman, 20 years later, still thinks about the interview. “It was the only time in my talk show history that I did anything like that,” he says. “I’ve never sat down and talked to anybody on television where we both understood they were about to die.”
Warren Zevon appeared on Late Show With David Letterman on October 30, 2002. That summer, he had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Doctors gave him a few months to live. To say goodbye to the musician who had graced his stage dozens of times over the previous two decades, Letterman devoted a full episode to him. There were no Hollywood stars promoting a movie, no musical guests debuting a new single. It was just Zevon. He and Letterman chatted, and then he played three songs.
“There are two things at work here, and only one of them I know for a fact: that when people get to be on television, they raise their game because they get to be on television,” Letterman says. “The other thing is, we guessed maybe that there was some pharmaceutical help. But it was stunning. And again, from my standpoint, do you expect a guy to be good-natured about it? I mean, God. It was weird.”
The singer-songwriter’s final hour with Letterman unfolded into one of the most memorable moments of their careers. Like a classic Zevon track, their conversation was shockingly funny and casually profound. “David didn’t make it like a whole long greeting card,” says comedian Richard Lewis, a buddy of Zevon’s and a frequent Letterman guest. “It was just like two guys bullshitting on a park bench.”
When Letterman asked his friend how his work had changed after learning that he was sick, he replied, “You’re reminded to enjoy every sandwich.” As soon as he heard it, Letterman’s longtime band leader Paul Shaffer knew the line would become famous. “Man, if I had only said that in my life,” he says, “I think my life would’ve been worth something.”
Looking back on it now, Letterman can’t believe the send-off happened at all. “If I was dying, I’m not going to go and talk to anybody on TV about me and my impending death,” he says. “Selfishly, and of course under the circumstances, why would I think about anything other than myself? That’s all you need to know about what I am.” Zevon, however, seemed to savor the chance to give himself over to Letterman and his audience one last time. “He was kind of on a mission,” says Late Show producer and booker Sheila Rogers. “He knew what he was doing. He was almost revitalized a little bit. It was so important, this appearance.”
Letterman admits that the idea of asking someone he revered questions about his mortality threw him off. “I just wasn’t grounded,” he says. But as “ill-equipped” as he claims that he was, he knows that his discomfort was a natural byproduct of the extraordinarily emotional circumstances.
“One of the rare cases where I give myself a bit of a break,” Letterman says. “Because, holy shit!”
WhenWhen Letterman found out that Zevon was sick, he felt optimistic about his friend’s chances. “In the beginning, it seemed like something that he would outlive, that he would get by because it was described as ‘cancer,’” he says. “At some point the idea of lung cancer stopped being a death sentence. … So I think that in that little loophole, there was hope that, ‘Oh, well, he’s a young guy, he’ll still be all right.’”
Then Letterman learned that the 55-year-old Zevon’s illness was pleural mesothelioma, an aggressive disease that affects the lining of the lungs. Yet despite his dire prognosis, Zevon wasn’t yet ready to publicly lapse into sentimentality. “I’m OK with it,” he said in a September 2002 statement. “But it’ll be a drag if I don’t make it till the next James Bond movie comes out.”
The acerbic artist may have turned his death into an ironic joke, but he approached his dual role as a musician and provider with sincerity. Without much time left, he began work on a new album and went on a press tour. He also made a plan to visit the Late Show. Technically it was to promote the release of a new best-of record, but it was really a going-away party. “Warren wanted to do the show,” Rogers says. “There was no question about it. I think the bigger issue was, would he be up for such a big undertaking? And then when we told Dave he was gonna come do the show, Dave said, ‘It should be his show.’”
TV send-offs had happened before—Letterman points out that Johnny Carson interviewed Michael Landon on The Tonight Show in 1991 two months before the actor died of pancreatic cancer—but showcasing an artist who hadn’t had a Top 40 hit since “Werewolves of London” in 1978, even one whose days were numbered, was a fairly bold move in the hyper-topical late-night world. “Like so many nights that ventured from the normal, I sat in my office, watching the taping, worried whether or not we would make it,” Late Show writer Bill Scheft says via email. “And by that I mean: Can we make it through an entire taping? So often, we fall in love with the idea rather than the reality. And the reality, let’s face it, rarely measures up. Of course, it was an inspired idea, but it was so intensely personal to Dave. Could the reality possibly match?”
Letterman had been an obsessive Zevon fan since his girlfriend recommended that he read Paul Nelson’s 1981 Rolling Stone cover story about the singer-songwriter. The profile, published three years after the release of his breakthrough third album, Excitable Boy, is a compendium of the artist’s self-destructive behavior. “I became interested in the guy because the story at the time was crazy and fascinating, not atypical as it turns out of artists,” the host says. “And it was that that caused me to start listening to his music.”
He quickly realized that Zevon’s music was more interesting than his sordid image. His songs could be romantic, angry, self-loathing, political, violent, and funny—or a mix of all those. “I had the good fortune to go see him live in New York,” Letterman says. “I just thought, ‘Now wait a minute, this guy is a poet.’ He’s a historian. His music is unusual. It’s rock ’n’ roll, but nobody talks about these things.”
Letterman is particularly fond of “Desperados Under the Eaves,” the chronicle of a man’s descent into alcoholism while holed up in a Los Angeles hotel, and “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner,” the tale of a Norwegian mercenary who seeks revenge against the man who killed him. “Jesus, I think he’s unique,” Letterman says. “He can take these ideas and sit down at the piano … it’s like a magic trick.”
In the summer of 1982, just months after Late Night With David Lettermanpremiered on NBC, Zevon made his first appearance on the show in support of his album The Envoy. He returned five years later, shortly after getting sober, to promote his next record, Sentimental Hygiene. Zevon started to come back more regularly in the early ’90s, following Letterman to CBS and occasionally filling in for Shaffer as band leader. The host was so fond of Zevon that during one of those stints, he sent a cooler full of steaks to the musician’s hotel room. “Dad gave them all to us because he couldn’t do anything with them in the hotel,” his daughter Ariel says in I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead, her mother Crystal’s biography of Zevon. “So we went back with this enormous quantity of very high end steaks.”
In 2001, Zevon asked Letterman to visit him in his studio. The musician had written a ballad with sportswriter Mitch Albom and wanted the host’s voice on it. That’s Letterman shouting the titular line on “Hit Somebody! (The Hockey Song),” an ode to the game’s goons. “It’s a bad acting job on my part,” Letterman says. “He’s standing in the God-dang room and I had to do it and then I realized years later when I heard it again, ‘Oh, that’s not what he wanted.’ I know exactly what he wanted, and I’m not sure I could accomplish that now. But listening to it after the fact, I realized, ‘Oh, you can tell I don’t know what I’m doing.’”
But even if he wasn’t happy with his performance, Letterman concedes that he’s “pleased to have been in the song.” There was no way he was saying no to Warren Zevon.
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KeepKeep the jokes coming. Before the rehearsal, that was Zevon’s main request. “I don’t want any weird questions or anybody to say, ‘How are you feeling?’” Shaffer remembers him saying on that day in October 2002. “None of that.”
Zevon wanted the performance to feel normal, but Shaffer knew it would be anything but. After all, the musician wanted to play three songs; artists on Late Show usually performed only one. “And it’s hard enough to do one, and sometimes when you finish the rehearsal, you’re almost tired,” says Shaffer, who recalls that Zevon used to fly into New York for Late Show a day early to make sure that he’d have time to clear his inevitable headache. “Forget about being sick with cancer.”
The singer-songwriter’s mood during the warm-up eased Shaffer’s fears. “The band starts, the drums kick in, and he’s no different than any other musician, sick as he was,” he says. “He was getting into it in the rehearsal. And so obviously anybody would’ve been exhausted after that, but he went on and did that amazing show.”
Leading up to the taping, it was Letterman—not Zevon—who was the most nervous person at the Ed Sullivan Theater. “I remember being uncomfortable about it from the very beginning,” he says. His 20-year relationship with Zevon made it difficult for the host to focus. “If I had not known the guy, it would’ve been easier for me to approach, to execute, to take care of,” he says. “But the fact that I knew the guy and knew what he was doing and thinking …”
When the show started, Letterman succeeded in not succumbing to his self-consciousness. After beginning with a traditional monologue that featured jokes about disgraced celebrity publicist Lizzie Grubman and the murder charges against Robert Blake, he sat down at his desk and told the audience about the evening’s guest. With Shaffer’s help, he spoke of his own Zevon fandom, the musician’s history with the show, and the singer’s catalog. “This guy is the real deal,” the host said. “You know, he’s not one of these pretty-faced, phony rock ’n’ roll guys.”
In hindsight, Letterman thinks that the introduction sounded stilted. “On paper, it just couldn’t be more, ‘OK, and your first guest would be somebody who only has a few months to live,’” he says.
Lewis isn’t surprised that Letterman is so hard on himself. “I never would think David would feel good about much of anything,” the comedian says. “As magnificent as he was for such a long stretch, he’s just not the type of guy to go on about himself. That’s why he was so great. He was a perfectionist, and he would never feel that satisfied.”
What Letterman saw as awkwardness came off as admiration. The episode was a tribute to a musician who’d been underappreciated; giving people a primer on his work was appropriate. Following a Halloween-themed Top 10 list, Letterman finally brought out the guest of honor. “A brilliant songwriter and a musician who has been a friend of ours for 20 years, and believe me it’s a thrill to have him here with us,” he said. “Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Warren Zevon. Warren!”
The well-tanned singer, wearing his signature dark glasses and a gray pinstripe suit with an open collar, came out with a smile on his face. After the two friends shook hands, they sat down at Letterman’s desk. “I guess a couple of months ago,” the host began, “we all learned that your life has changed radically, hasn’t it?”
“You mean you heard about the flu?” Zevon joked. Then he let out a laugh that cut through the tension in the room like a machete. “When he laughed, his eyes would almost roll up like in a slot machine just as it’s coming to an end,” Lewis says. “And then each one would stop.”
Letterman served as straight man to Zevon throughout the interview, deftly guiding him with straightforward questions that resulted in poignant (and often funny) answers. “Dave did an amazing job of not making it as awkward as it could have been,” says Shaffer, who during the show played several Zevon songs with his CBS Orchestra. “Warren’s days were numbered and he was here to talk about it. Not ignore it, but talk about it.”
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Zevon told the story of his diagnosis, which came after he experienced shortness of breath for months. “First of all, let me say that I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years,” said the singer-songwriter, whose trusty dentist, “Dr. Stan,” finally convinced him to see a medical doctor.
When Letterman complimented him on looking “remarkably healthy,” Zevon quipped, “Don’t be fooled by cosmetics.” The host still marvels at how on the musician was that day: “He was vibrant, for God’s sake. And he had more energy than did I.”
Eventually, things turned serious. Zevon told Letterman that he wanted to make the most of whatever time he had left. “I really always enjoyed myself. But it’s more valuable now,” he said, before dispensing his most famous piece of advice. “You’re reminded to enjoy every sandwich and every minute playing with the guys, and being with the kids.”
The line was so good that it practically worried Scheft. “My memory is when he said that, I thought, ‘This will not get better,’” the Late Show writer recalls. “That line is positively Zen-like. Nobody can follow that.”
It’s unclear whether Zevon had used it before, but it was perfect for the occasion. “It certainly encapsulates his overall presentation and seemingly upbeat mood about things,” Letterman says. “But yet signaling what he was up against.”
The night confirmed the obvious about Letterman and Zevon: Their admiration was mutual. The singer-songwriter thanked the host for his support over the years, correctly pointing out that “Dave’s the best friend my music has ever had.” As the conversation wound down, Zevon owned up to the reality that having “lived like Jim Morrison” had consequences. “And then,” he said, “you have to live with the consequences.” He also acknowledged that after his diagnosis, the streak of gallows humor running through his work made songs like “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead,” “Mr. Bad Example,” and “My Ride’s Here” feel prophetic.
One of the last things that Letterman asked Zevon was whether he now knew something about life and death that the host didn’t. And once again, the musician responded by talking about savoring every last bite of life. “Not unless I know how much you’re supposed to enjoy every sandwich,” he said.
“I think Zevon probably really appreciated the way that David pursued the truth and how he was feeling,” Lewis says. “He enabled Warren to get all the information out on his terms. He wasn’t feeding him softballs for comments that would be either too dark or too depressing. It was just a mano a mano kind of thing. It was great.”
AsAs moving as the night was, it wasn’t a funeral. Zevon wanted to put on a show, and that’s what he did. With Shaffer and his band backing him, the musician, as promised, played three songs. The first, the title track off his 1995 album Mutineer, was written from the perspective of a romantic rabble-rouser. “I was born to rock the boat / Some will sink but we will float,” Zevon sang, “Grab your coat, let’s get out of here / You’re my witness / I’m your mutineer.”
Zevon’s next song, “Genius”—“modestly titled,” he deadpanned to Letterman—was also the name of his 2002 greatest-hits album. The self-referential cut, which name-checks several cultural icons, features one of Shaffer’s favorite lines: “Albert Einstein was a ladies’ man / While he was working on his universal plan / He was making out like Charlie Sheen / He was a genius.”
“He was a genius, as far as I’m concerned,” Lewis says. “I hate that word. Now it’s thrown around like a rag doll. But he was clearly a genius.”
Though Letterman never convinced him to play “Desperados Under the Eaves,” Zevon closed the show with another one of the host’s favorites, “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner.” The haunting song ends with the titular ghost showing up in conflict zones around the world. “In Ireland, in Lebanon, in Palestine, and Berkeley,” Zevon belted out. “Patty Hearst heard the burst of Roland’s Thompson gun and bought it.”
“At the end, he invokes Patty Hearst,” Letterman says. “And it’s just, I don’t know. It’s like a card trick.”
The moment Zevon played the final note, the host walked to the piano and shouted, “Yes sir! There you go! Warren Zevon, everybody!” Letterman shook the musician’s hand. “Warren,” he said, pulling him close, “enjoy every sandwich.”
He knew that there was no other way to end the evening. “It just seemed like for a lack of anything better to say,” Letterman says, “I will repeat what seemed perfect.”
WhenWhen the taping ended, Letterman and Zevon met in the musician’s dressing room. The host didn’t typically socialize with his guests after a show, but on this night he made an exception. “While we’re talking he just perfunctorily is taking his guitar, taking the strap off, doing whatever you do to a guitar,” Letterman remembers. “He gets out the case, and we’re continuing to talk and who knows what we’re saying. It was small talk. Just fill the air with something while he’s going through the business of putting the guitar in the thing. He puts it in, closes the lid, snaps it closed, hands it to me, and he says, ‘Take good care of this for me.’ And I burst into tears. Uncontrollable. I had no idea that I would be bursting into tears, but I did. And I hugged him and I said, ‘I just love your music.’ And that was it.”
As emotional as Letterman was, it was the most grounded that he felt all day. “The only part of it that felt normal to me,” he says, “was after the show upstairs in his dressing room.”
That was the last time Letterman saw or spoke to Zevon. Zevon outlived his prognosis by 10 months, getting to see the birth of his twin grandchildren and the release of his final album, The Wind. He died on September 7, 2003, almost a year after his last public appearance—on the Late Show.
To this day, Letterman is still the best friend Zevon’s music has ever had. In 2017, he inducted Pearl Jam into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. He ended his speech by stumping for an old pal: “I would just like to say one day I hope to come back here for the induction for my friend Warren Zevon.” When Letterman was being awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor later that year, Eddie Vedder honored him by singing Zevon’s bittersweet “Keep Me in Your Heart.” At the end of the performance, Letterman caught up with the Pearl Jam lead singer. “He says, ‘Thanks for calling Warren to my attention,’” Letterman recalls. “And I thought, ‘You’re kidding me. You’re kidding me!’ Really? Am I the only one that knows about this guy?”
At home, the retired host has a wall covered in guitars given to him by artists who played the Late Show. Gifts from Foo Fighters, U2, and Pearl Jam are all special. But Zevon’s stands apart. “It’s just my favorite,” Letterman says. “The others were sort of, ‘Hey, thanks. Enjoyed the gig,’ kinds of things. This was, ‘Thank you, and goodbye.’”