This 2002 Album by a 1970s Cult Rocker Was an Eerie Foreshadowing of His Terminal Diagnosis Months Later

Death has a strange way of adding new meaning to art after the artist has passed, and Warren Zevon’s 2002 album, My Ride’s Here, is no exception. The cult-favorite rock ‘n’ roller behind the late 70s hit “Werewolves Of London” was in his usually eccentric form for his eleventh studio album, singing about everything from hockey (“Hit Somebody!”) to heartbreak (“Genius”) to the closing title track’s descriptive musings on death and the afterlife.

Videos by American Songwriter

My Ride’s Here wasn’t the first time that Zevon approached mortality with his wily sense of humor. Life’ll Kill Ya came out two years earlier in late January 2000, and one could argue that this title is even more on the nose than the other. This subject isn’t all that surprising, coming from a songwriter who has lived a wild life punctuated with addiction, career trouble, and difficult relationships.

But just a few short months after Zevon released My Ride’s Here, an announcement concerning his health transformed his 2002 album from a tongue-in-cheek tête-à-tête with the Grim Reaper to eerie foreshadowing.

Warren Zevon’s Terminal Diagnosis Came Months After ‘My Ride’s Here’

Warren Zevon released My Ride’s Here on May 7, 2002. Four months and six days later, the Los Angeles Times reported that the singer-songwriter known for wreaking havoc on the Sunset Strip in the 1970s had finally met his match: aggressive cancer in both of his lungs. Doctors gave Zevon only weeks, maybe months, to live after they found mesothelioma in a CAT scan. Zevon had come into the doctor’s office complaining of shortness of breath and chest tightness, which he had attributed, ironically, to his recently improved workout regimen.

“I knew it was bad when the doctor came in with the CAT scan in his hand, closed the door, and gave me a glass of water and said, ‘I need to tell you something,’” Zevon told the Los Angeles Times. Yet, despite this bleak news, Zevon didn’t lose his sense of humor. Sometime after his diagnosis, Zevon met with his doctor over breakfast and gave them two albums: Life’ll Kill Ya and My Ride’s Here. “These are my last two albums,” Zevon told his doc. “Maybe now you’ll understand that eerie acceptance of death you keep asking me about.”

In the end, Zevon managed to make it another year. Almost a year to the day that he spoke with the Los Angeles Times about his inoperable cancer, he died in his Los Angeles home on September 7, 2003. He was only 56 years old. Zevon was cremated, and his ashes were scattered into the Pacific Ocean.

Photo by Barbara Nitke/CBS via Getty Images