Jackson Browne - C or D?

I've nothing against Browne -- seems to be a nice enough guy. But his music is a little too bland, too Southern California-Seventies for my taste. So I'll just shut up now.

Yes, the music is bland, but that somehow appealed to me today, it was easy, and sweet, and sad. Does this mean I'm getting old ?

"Lawyers in Love": thoroughly underrated anti-Reagan screed with absurd falsetto parts. I think only Dave Marsh takes it seriously, but don't let that put you off.

I'm not that familiar with Jackson Browne beyond the hits, but I think some of the hits are pretty good.

but "The Load Out/Stay" off the Running on Empty album is simply one of the best things I have ever heard, as well as the ultimate "drive home after a long night of drinking" song in my lifetime.

"A thousand miles away from here, people stay just a little bit longer..."

His taking personal offense at Punk and continuing to disparage it is very dud, however.

He dated Nico at age 17 (or thereabouts), you know.

ok wait i think the lines were "you've heard that hollow sound/of your own steps in flight." what a precious-precious line.

my mom has a lot of jackson browne records.. guessing by this thread, i should steal "running on empty." which others are worthwhile?

i am not drunk, unless one can get drunk on turkey and peach cobbler.

Ah, the gang: I knew it well. I'd had an encounter with one of its thugs, see, and in the process got tossed by said mag for telling what was it?, oh yes, the truth. This was '72. After several false starts, Jackson Browne finally had an album out, which seemed a good occasion to bring to light some interesting hokum from his past--I'd known the mutha since '67. So I did the first feature on him for Rolling Stone or anywhere else--a rave, for crying out loud, and he freaking hated it, thought it made him look "too punk." And what might be so wrong with that? Before twelve people knew who the fuck he was, he was like some weird-isn't-the-word cross between the Young Marble Giants, say--or from a later universe: Cat Power--and Byron or Shelley. On his first visit to New York, he backed up (and horizontal-danced with) the fabulous NICO, had a connection to Lou Reed and the Warhol crowd, blah blah blooey. So I talked all this stuff up--what the hey--it was what I thought would make him MOST APPEALING. And he's so upset he gets Asylum Records prez David Geffen to call the Stone and have me booted, good riddance, don't come back.

Four years later, I was eating at South Town Soul Food in L.A. when Jackson walked in with gang-sister number one Linda Ronstadt. Not wanting her exposed to my cooties, he motions for her to stay put, struts over, sits down, and in less than a minute explains to me how it is. "We singer-songwriters"--he always relished being part of something (but imagine calling yourself such hogwipe)--"feel we get a better shake from this Cameron kid...he never challenges us...accepts our side of the story...we don't have to worry what he'll say...no offense, but..." I.e., writers exist to write-about-musicians, bub...so go wash dishes or something.

poor thing.

Lots of comments here on the Jackson songs recorded by Nico on Chelsea Girls, plus Meltzer's comments on Jackson's early songs. There was a double LP acetate album produced in '67 as a songwriting demo album. Jackson has never released the stuff, but it has been bootlegged as the Nina Demos. I think Meltzer's comments are a little over the top--there's a saccharine element to some of these songs--but I swear there are like fifteen or more songs on the thing that are as good as those three songs on Chelsea Girls.

Steve Noonan's Elektra album is worth hearing. Meltzer has some things about it in Aesthetics of Rock.

Cover model Michael J. Pollard!

Second two-page spread of that piece eerily foreshadows Yacht Rock

birdistheword, I do find that attribute (that I might call plain-spokenness) in some of Browne's work, like The Only Child on The Pretender.

I've wanted to read the Paul Nelson compilation/biography, but haven't encountered it yet.

XP ...and the final paragraphs provide a harbinger of Browne's asshole friends.

Ah, okay, here's Noonan, and some stuff about the "Three"'s origins, in Unterberger's liner notes for reissue of s/t debut: he and their high school buddy Greg Copeland wrote "Buy For Me The Rain," Top 40 Nitty Gritty Dirt Band hit. also, Noonan, very extensively quoted here, says that he and Browne wrote things first recorded by Tom Rush etc., attributed to JB only, and he mentions "The Fairest of the Seasons," which I know is on the Nico LP and I think is the one w typo, "Browne-Copland,"confusing me until I heard of Greg Copeland: with all them strings and the melodee, it had me wondering if based on something by Aaron C. Noonan mentions seeing boy Browne as accompanist for Nico and El Cohen (singing together, I hope): http://www.richieunterberger.com/noonan.html

Here is Xgau writeup on Paul Nelson- and Ellen Willis! https://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/bn/2011-11.php

Jackson Browne gets a back-handed swipe.

He was always kinda-sorta on Browne, going by his Consumer Guide takes over the decades. Would still kinda like to hear this, speaking again of Greg Copeland:
Revenge Will Come [Geffen, 1982]
Producer Jackson Browne has gone after absolutely predictable midtempo studio rock, but with a tough edge that's augmented by Copeland, who sounds like (of all things) Jackson Browne with a tough edge. Propitious--if Copeland can move his mentor's personalist millenarianism far enough left to write protest lyrics that surrender neither psychological dimension nor American mythos, I bet other young rock mainstreamers are thinking the same way. B- He also liked some of Browne's 80s protest lyrics, so Copeland did turn out to be a good influence maybe.

Maybe they wrote together again? When Browne eventually did get back into a lot of co-writing.

“Together Again”? Buck Owens?

I had to double check because I was pretty sure Christgau wasn't much of a fan of any Jackson Browne album (except maybe Running on Empty), but it looks like he does have some nice things to say about the '80s political albums. I have a lot of admiration for Browne's activism, but I don't think he's recorded a whole lot of good protest music. Off the top of my head, the best ones I've heard him do were covers, the multi-artist "Sun City" single and the "Lawyers in Love" single which feels a bit like an outlier for being a satire. Maybe it's not something that clicks with him musically, who knows.

Also, while looking him up in CG, I forgot about his great guitarist David Lindley. He actually put out an acclaimed album in 1981 called El Rayo-X (Christgau gave it a B+, Marcus put it on his top ten of the year.) Looks like a Ry Cooder-type project, with some interesting, humorous covers. Will have to check it out, but regardless Lindley is probably the most essential component of Browne's best recordings.

(I see Horace Mann mentioned this upthread way back in 2004: I'll give him props for producing David Lindley's awesome El Rayo-X and providing good back-ups thereon.)

O yeah mad love for David Lindley, the eclectic multi-instrumentalist sideman with the ridiculous hair and sideburns who plays with Jackson Browne.

Also for Mark Stewart, the eclectic multi-instrumentalist sideman with ridiculous hair and sideburns who plays with Paul Simon.

For a while I thought there was only one eclectic multi-instrumentalist sideman with ridiculous hair and sideburns who plays live with various well-known folk-rock singer-songwriters. Turns out there were, and are, at least two.

Also for Mark Stewart, the eclectic multi-instrumentalist sideman with ridiculous hair and sideburns who plays with Paul Simon.

LOL, I do not know the name, but I caught Simon's last show and know exactly who you're talking about.

(last tour stop that is)

This was kind of the hit or "hit" off that David Lindley album iirc:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URm7Ze9a56o

Here is an almost ten minute long live version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAbbgSKUZB4

Lindley was also in the great (American vs. the British or Mexican) psyche band Kaleidoscope pre-Browne and solo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbRcURfROJY

Oh yeah, almost forgot about that.

Yeahhh Kaleidoscope (US) vs Kaleidoscope (UK) vs Kaleidoscope (MX)

...and he's Linda Ronstadt's cousin!

Lindley is great, he put out some “official bootlegs” of live acoustic shows in the 90s that were fun

https://www.discogs.com/master/view/549049

https://www.discogs.com/master/view/549044

& Kaleidoscope were longtime uncredited backing band on Leonard Cohen's debut lp.
Think that only came out over last few years.

Oh yeah there's some pretty great footage of Lindley backing Terry Reid on the Glastonbury Fayre film.
Can't link to it while typing on my phone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElzhsMCVlkQ
is the footage I'm familiar with from the Nicholas Roeg film

Chunks (maybe adding up to most/all) of Browne's Newport Folk 2012 set are on YouTube, and his Tiny Desk Concert is on npr.org.

What got me into him, killer cover

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HzeX_kh9lU

Also!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mx5NkGZr1iQ

not bad
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JfWYHAIp-g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qlPrrVnPbs

Bonnie Raitt's covers are usually great. (FWIW, her "My Opening Farewell" on the 1995 Road Tested is better sung than the studio version she did almost 20 years earlier.) But generally she's a much better interpreter than Linda Ronstadt. I love Heart Like a Wheel but a lot of times her covers seem completely misguided - even when arranged tastefully, she oversings them like a popped balloon that's been inflated too much.

Nico's "These Days" the earliest release and still my fave rave version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhr2MlQd7i0

Elton John getting his inner-Jerry Lee Lewis on in the background of "Red Neck Friend" is hitting all the spots this evening.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPi_ksFoczI

Oh yeah, used to hear that on Collegetown radio quite a bit, thanks.

Bonnie Raitt's covers are usually great. (FWIW, her "My Opening Farewell" on the 1995 Road Tested is better sung than the studio version she did almost 20 years earlier.)
Thanx 4 tip, birdistheword!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6AgpzsnHo8

Man, I just don't get this guy. Yeah, there are a handful of songs I enjoy, and Late for the Sky is a good mood piece. But he doesn't have the teeth of Warren Zevon, or the grand ambition of Springsteen, or even the gross cynicism/careerism of the Eagles. More than anything else, he just always sounds so bored of himself.

Like, this song was reportedly written for James Honeyman-Scott, but it's such a shameless Springsteen rip that gloms onto his most generic qualities (let alone as lazy tribute a guitarist as special as James Honeyman-Scott). In fact, at first I thought it was a parody, a la "Tweeter and the Monkey Man."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGxZplDXhQU

FWIW, when I think about what I like best about his work, it's rarely something I'd equate with any of those three. In fact, as you've pointed out with "For a Rocker," I'd say his work became much less distinctive when it seemed like he was under Springsteen's influence. (Also when I compare his version of "Take It Easy" with the Eagles', the subtle differences really emphasize what I don't like about the band and what I do like about Browne.)

Late for the Sky may be the only album I genuinely love (and without qualification), but there's probably 20, maybe even 30 tracks beyond that album that I do enjoy, mostly from the '70s.

The only two tracks I like from Lawyers in Love is the title track (at least I find it amusing) and "Tender Is the Night."

Actually, here's a homemade comp I have on the shelf (lots of overlap with his official The Very Best of but tweaked a bit for my own purposes) - I basically listen to this or Late for the Sky:

This Side Of Paradise • The Best Of Jackson Browne (1972-1989)

Disc One
1 Jamaica Say You Will 03:24
2 Song For Adam 05:23
3 Doctor My Eyes 03:15
4 Under The Falling Sky 04:09
5 Rock Me On The Water 04:13
6 My Opening Farewell 04:44
7 Take It Easy 03:35
8 I Thought I Was A Child 03:45
9 These Days 04:47
10 Redneck Friend 03:59
11 Ready Or Not 03:35
12 For Everyman 05:58
13 Late For The Sky 05:44
14 Fountain Of Sorrow 06:54
15 The Late Show 05:14
16 For A Dancer 04:49
17 Before The Deluge 06:21

Disc Two
1 Your Bright Baby Blues 06:06
2 Here Come Those Tears Again 03:40
3 The Pretender 05:53
4 Running On Empty 05:03
5 Rosie 03:41
6 You Love The Thunder 03:55
7 Cocaine 04:56
8 The Load Out 05:35
9 Stay 03:22
10 That Girl Could Sing 04:37
11 Boulevard 03:22
12 Call It A Loan 04:50
13 Somebody's Baby 04:23
14 Lawyers In Love 04:21
15 Tender Is The Night 04:55
16 In The Shape Of A Heart 05:40
17 I Am A Patriot 04:04

I'll have to check some of those songs out. Many of them I bet I've heard, but Jackson Browne just evaporates out of my brain.

I should add, if you like Bonnie Raitt, her covers are usually better than Browne's originals. Raitt's "Under the Falling Sky" completely smokes Browne's.

i don’t fw jackson browne much but late for the sky is so much more than a mood piece. the duet between browne’s vocal and lindley’s guitar is straight-up sublime.

those notes aren’t hard to play but I’ve been chasing the vibe for years, and not to get all TGP but if I could cop just one recorded gtr tone, that would be it.

Lindley is awesome in any context.

Lindley's El Rayo-X from 1981 is a good listen.

Yeah mang & "Taxim"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBaYJr_ux4g

It's interesting that you all say Browne is influenced by Springsteen, because as someone who has only heard Late for the Sky, I had assumed the influence was the other way around. "Thunder Road" in particular seems like it started out as Springsteen trying to do Late for the Sky lyrically, between the setting that's basically the last verse of "The Late Show" and the line about trading in wings that comes from "Before the Deluge" and doesn't really make much sense in TR. And that's not even a throwaway line, because the original title of the song was "Wings for Wheels."

I'm not doubting that Browne ended up being influenced by Springsteen, it's just odd that he ended up imitating someone who started out fairly blatantly imitating him.

Oho, interesting--dunno if there was that kind of back and forth with them, but it can happen. On The Million Dollar Quartet, Elvis keeps trying to tell his hopped-up friends about being struck by something in Vegas: how the fella with "Ward and The Dominos" (he means Billy Ward's lead singer, Jackie Wilson) did a takeoff on Elvis's version of "Don't Be Cruel," just slightly exaggerating or emphasizing certain thangs,like "telly-phone"--and I notice on some of Elvis's own live performances, a little later, he makes sure to sing "telly-phone" and so on (screws around likewise on a number of studio outtakes, like a long-ass vamp on "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright," which the cats are playing fine, but he never lets go of the wasted first verse).

Also, Bobby Darin's hit version of "Mack The Knife" seemed
like an imitation of Frank Sinatra, who later recorded it in much the same manner, and Darin's Tim Hardiny original,
"Simple Song of Freedom," was covered by Hardin.

David Crosby based "Guinevere" on a bit of Sketches From Spain, and Miles covered The Croz song.

I thought Love and Theft sounded like the best Tom Waits album ever, and said it in the Voice, so if you think of Waits as influenced by Dylan(who sounded like Waits for quite a while after that, though smoother on My Rough and Rowdy Ways)---

I think Springsteen definitely was influenced by Browne, in some way, though I don't hear any musical similarities. They're peers, almost the same age, both released debut albums at 23 (and Jon Landau later produced "The Pretender"), and I think they met one another before Springsteen released his first album, but the two have pretty different backgrounds. Saw this:

https://estreetshuffle.com/index.php/2021/03/24/matr-jackson-browne-and-bruce-springsteen-running-on-empty/

And of course Bruce later inducted Browne in the rock and roll hall of fame.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YFyC6pnz-k

Bruce had a relationship with Zevon, too, of course. That's surely why he kept crossing paths with them both, showing up on stage/albums, etc, to pay his respects. But I don't hear any of that strain of LA singer/songwriter in Bruce at all, whereas for sure Brown and Zevon (and others) at times tried to recast themselves in Bruce's more (musically) muscular image. Iirc Springsteen is what made Zevon shift from piano to more guitar, and his live shows reportedly (in the oral history, I believe) tried to emulate the more energetic side of Springsteen as well.

Always loved this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACSeVC6umzg

(Gotta admit that Bruce's speech makes me want to give Browne yet another shot.)

I thought Springsteen's influence on Browne really manifested itself with The Pretender. (Probably helps that Jon Landau produced it.) I don't know Browne's history that well, but I got the impression he started off more as an aspiring songwriter whereas being a musician (specifically a guitarist) and a performer was always there from the very start with Springsteen. Years before Browne got the chance to record an album proper, he already had songs recorded by Nico and the Byrds, and of course the Eagles famously laid claim to one before it was even finished (and before they even made an official record of their own).

So with that in mind, it's no surprise that Browne's first three albums seemed to grow out of the Laurel Canyon sound. I wouldn't call them anonymous sounding records - Lindley alone made them distinctive - but they sounded pretty organic to that scene and Browne was very much a part of that. Then comes The Pretender and there's a tougher and lusher sound, more muscular and more polished, and more importantly his singing follows suit as well. Then he makes a bigger leap with Running on Empty where he's singing with more authority than he's ever had, and the band is tighter and more rocking too. With those two albums and the next one, I got the feeling he knew how Springsteen's records sounded and how great the E Street Band were, and he basically used them as a model to update his sound. When he became inspired by the way Springsteen made his sociopolitical conscience work in his music, that set him in another direction with his next three albums (starting with Lawyers in Love) - at least that's how it seems to me, I'm not sure if that's actual fact.

Truth be told, I think his songwriting was at its best on the first three albums. The Pretender was the best sounding record he made at that point, but it came with a weaker batch of songs. Running on Empty is his best work in terms of performance, but it's a much less interesting and original work than any of his first three albums, and I think it says a lot that it's heavy on co-writes with a few covers thrown in - it's as if he was shifting more focus to other things besides the songwriting. The politically-oriented albums are admirable, but what he makes of the subject matter is much less compelling than what he's done before. Except for "Lawyers in Love" (which may be helped by its humor), and two love songs picked as singles, the only other cut I enjoy from those albums is actually a cover, and it gets over more for performance than the lyrics.