In His Time of Dying

In the lobby of the Ed Sullivan Theater, two perky handlers for ''The Late Show With David Letterman'' were giving their nightly pep talk to the people headed for the front rows. They encouraged laughter, the more enthusiastic the better. They warned against whistling, which could overload the microphones. They also had one more caution. ''If you hear sad news, don't make that sympathy sound,'' one instructed. ''You know, 'Awwwwww. . . . ' ''

The audience understood why. The show's only guest would be Warren Zevon, the songwriter known for the twisted humor of songs like ''Lawyers, Guns and Money,'' ''Werewolves of London'' and ''Poor Poor Pitiful Me'' and for troubled love songs like ''Hasten Down the Wind'' and ''Accidentally Like a Martyr.'' Zevon, 56, is a dying man.
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Ry Cooder's Sound Judgment
'Buena Vista's' Social Director Makes a Return Trip to Cuba for 'Mambo Sinuendo'

"I'll never forget it."

Ry Cooder is talking about his first encounter with a guitar, more than 50 years ago. The guitar was a three-quarter-size four-string tenor. Cooder was 4 years old, well into a yearlong recuperation from an accident that had cost him his left eye.

"I was lying in bed one night, and the man who brought it over was a violinist who was a friend of my parents," Cooder recalls, and suddenly it's the night before.

"He comes into the bedroom and he sets this thing down on my stomach, as you would if somebody's lying in bed on their back, and he strums the strings . . . and that was all you need to know. Because there's something about a wood box, especially the figure eight . . . You know there's something going on here.

"I couldn't tell you what I thought, but I can remember the feeling of it."
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