Jackson Browne - C or D?

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.

FWIW his residency at the Beacon Theater in NYC (which starts tonight) has plenty of seats at every show and they’re much more affordable than they were when they first went on sale. Upper balcony is $35 plus fees and you can get a good seat somewhere in the middle of the orchestra for like $80 or $90.

This is so worth it. The show was nearly three hours with a brief intermission (felt like 5 minutes). He actually played 25 songs instead of the tour's usual 23. Four were from his new album, and they surprisingly held their own with one song sounding like a sequel to "These Days" (which he also played). Four were from Late for the Sky which made me really happy because the last time I saw him at the Beacon, he didn't do any songs from it, and they were amazing - the album was already a favorite, but I couldn't believe how gorgeous those songs can sound live, especially with the subtle additions he made to the arrangements. (IIRC two of them began as solo numbers that carefully built their arrangements up verse after verse.) The lead guitarist was great - David Lindley is a tough guy to replace because he's such a distinctive part of Browne's earlier works, but the guy managed to strike the right balance between being faithful to the original leads and adding his own spin on the solos. The one for "These Days" were just beautiful, I was floored. There was also a comic moment on "Stay" (the show's last number during the second and final encore) where he had to play traditional country licks for the "country & western" reference, and HE COULDN'T DO IT! Browne joked about that, which was fine, it was really the only time during the whole show where he had to go all-out country and that wasn't what he was playing before.

Really, really great, glad I went. It didn't occur to me to buy tickets at the box office - I wish I had tried that to see if that would avoid Ticketmaster fees as they had plenty of seats and weren't going to sell out, but it was still a cheap ticket. I paid probably 3x as much when I saw him in 2019 at the same venue and this show was better.

https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/jackson-browne/2022/beacon-theatre-new-york-ny-23b2c02b.html

*was just beautiful

Hah, shows what I know - the one that sounds like a "These Days" is actually from Standing in the Breach.

there were some good tunes on Standing in the Breach

saw him live 7 years ago and his band was one of the best I had ever heard, would buy tickets again any day

I think Standing In The Breech also includes a or the short version of "You Know The Night," originally on Note of Hope, where various artists put music to the words of Woody Guthrie. It's from a letter or journal entry about the night Woody met his future wife Marjorie, mother of Arlo and Joady and Nora, who instigates these words-to-music projects: JB's original, which he said came from taping Woody's pages up all over the room, was over 14 minutes long, and great; NoH also had a 4-minute radio edit, and I think that's the version he usually or always does live.

Here's the epic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgm1cCfFuOE

Concert version of the edit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgm1cCfFuOE

Oops here's second one I meant to post

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmWYcgjiE0c

Whoah nice! I totally missed Note of Hope. I forgot when they first did Mermaid Avenue, they mentioned they were going to continue creating music for Woody's unpublished words beyond having Bragg and Wilco do it.

Now that you mention it, I just checked, and here's a fairly mind-blogging list of Woody projects to date, in various media, with descriptions---I knew some of them, like the Klezmatics albums, with all songs completed by Woody, I think (got interested in Jewish life via Marjory and her fam)---also, the tribute concert issued in '72 is mentioned here, and I have that LP, with scorching set by Dylan & The Band etc---also have all three volumes of Mermaid Avenue, and some others--but maaan: https://www.woodyguthrie.org/norapress.htm

lol my cousin and her husband are suing Jackson Browne for access to their property.

https://www.newsbreak.com/news/2816497086916/famed-songwriter-jackson-browne-wrestling-property-dispute-in-santa-cruz-superior-court

I hope they have lawyers...

in love