When Warren Zevon, who has died aged 56, was in London three years ago to promote his album, Life'll Kill Ya, he quoted me a line from a poem. Characteristically for the eclectic, well-read songwriter, it was in Latin - Timor mortis conturbat me. "It's from a medieval Scottish poem by William Dunbar," he explained. "It means, 'The fear of death just fucks me up'. "
The thought caused him to roar with laughter, and when his own time came, Zevon was able to confront his diagnosis of inoperable lung cancer with the same black irony that ran through his songs. "I want to wear sweaters, a scarf, the overcoat, the whole thing, like a Winona Ryder movie. And I can be this miserable, classic Walter Matthau invalid."
Zevon would have taken gleefully to the role of grizzled, geriatric curmudgeon; his approach to his work always had more in common with a detective or a crime writer than with some flouncing showbiz wannabe.
Born in Chicago, he moved with his family to California as a child, and though he described his father as a gangster and gambler, William Zevon took his parental responsibilities seriously enough to sign his son up for formal tuition in classical piano. He even got to know Igor Stravinsky, then living in the Hollywood Hills.
Despite his lifelong interest in classical music, Warren's first professional involvement was as one half of the boy-girl pop duo, Lyme and Cybelle. He recorded the little-noticed album Wanted Dead Or Alive (1969), but it was signing to Asylum records in the mid- 1970s that lit the blue touch paper on his career.
His Asylum debut, Warren Zevon (1976), bristled with west coast rock deities - including Glenn Frey and Don Henley, of the Eagles, and Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, from Fleetwood Mac - though he seemed hell-bent on sabotaging the hedonistic myth of the golden state. I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, for example, was a saga of booze, guns and suicide; likewise, Carmelita recounted the tale of a junkie on the skids.
On board as producer was Jackson Browne, who became one of Zevon's closest friends and also produced his follow-up album, Excitable Boy (1978), another batch of powerful and alarming songs, outlining the career of a murderous rapist in the title tune and including his only hit single, Werewolves Of London.
Excitable Boy hit the American top 10, but despite several covers of his songs by Linda Ronstadt, Zevon's work was too dark and perverse for mainstream tastes. While 1980's Bad Luck Streak In Dancing School also made the top 20, it signalled the end of its author's period of commercial visibility.
Not that this made his music any less fascinating. Stand In The Fire (1980) was a live album of rare ferocity, while the title song of The Envoy rings as true today as it did 20 years ago - "Nuclear arms in the Middle East/ Israel's attacking the Iraqis . . . Looks like another threat to world peace/ For the envoy."
Zevon's tenure with Asylum lapsed, and the superb Sentimental Hygiene album (1987) came out on Virgin records. The cast of guest stars alone confirmed Zevon's status as the connoisseur's delight, with Neil Young, Bob Dylan and members of R.E.M. and Tom Petty's Heartbreakers queueing up to participate. The disc was arguably his finest, ranging from plaintive ballads and the boxer's yarn, Boom Boom Mancini, to the caustic Detox Mansion, a song inspired by the 25 years of alcoholism he had recently managed to curtail.
Viewing his commercial invisibility philosophically, Zevon continued to make albums that probed, challenged and laughed in the face of political correctness. Any record collection ought to contain copies of Mr Bad Example, Mutineer, Life'll Kill Ya or My Ride's Here, this latter featuring Warren's best buddies Hunter S Thompson, novelist Carl Hiaasen and David Letterman. The compilation album I'll Sleep When I'm Dead (1996) is an excellent survey of his best work.
News of his illness galvanised Zevon into a late burst of creativity. Songs began to pour out of him, and with the blessing of Danny Goldberg, boss of his latest record label Artemis, he recorded his last album, The Wind, released this month. Many of the great names in American rock 'n' roll turned out to lend a hand, with Bruce Springsteen giving a loose and rowdy performance on Disorder In The House, while Jackson Browne, Ry Cooder, Emmylou Harris, the Eagles and actor and songwriter Billy Bob Thornton all clocked in for the sessions.
Browne, who described what Zevon did as song-noir, commented: "He had a very stern moral disposition as well as a willingness to take on this berserk persona. I once tried to introduce him to an audience as 'the Ernest Hemingway of the 12-string guitar'. Afterwards, he said, 'No, no - Charles Bronson'."
Married and divorced twice, he is survived by his daughter Ariel, 27, and son Jordan, 34.
· Warren Zevon, songwriter and musician, born January 24 1947; died September 7 2003
