THINKING Photo by Nels Israelson.
“I like the idea of stringing images together without trying to hammer a point home trying. It’s there if people hear it.”
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ABOUT EVERYMAN E
veryone is familiar with the trajectory of Jackson Browne’s career over the past half century, from his association with Nico and the The Eagles and the whole Southern California rock scene, a string of great albums to kick off his catalogue, starting with the self-titled album of 1972, For Everyman and Late For The Sky in the two years following and through to his huge Top 5 albums such as The Pretender and Running on Empty in the late ‘70s. It was arguably one of the finest sequences of albums released by any solo artist. Then there was the No. 1 album Hold Out in 1980 and World In Motion and I’m Alive in 1993. Los Lobos have recorded a version of ‘Jamaica Say You Will’, off Browne’s debut album, for their latest recording Native Sons, a reminder of just how good Browne’s song writing was even in his early twenties. “I thought it was really beautiful, really nice,” says Browne when we catch up on Zoom. “They’re a great band. They’re great. Such great musicians and so creative.” A few days before our interview, I found an old Zig Zag magazine from January 1977 with an interview that revealed even more about Browne’s early years: that he started playing the trumpet, he played with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band for six months or so then went to New York where he not only met Nico (who recorded his songs) and took over a bar gig from Tim Buckley. Browne also recorded a demo for Elektra Records (which he says was ‘terrible but which has become a rare collector’s item). Browne also joined a project with two others called Paxton Lodge which Elektra hoped would become something like Crosby, Still and Nash but eventually turned into a group that called itself Baby Browning. “When I came back from New York, we talked Elektra Records into giving us a remote recording situation in the woods in Northern California,” recalls Browne. “The reason we were able to talk them into it was Big Pink, simply the most groundbreaking, the most sort of powerful roots but progressive and really amazing music. [It was] on the basis of the idea that if you got a house in the woods, you might come up with something great. We talked them into it. But we got into all kinds of mischief. That became a recording facility for Lonnie Mack and for Spider John Koerner and Dave Ray. It didn’t really gel. We were all individual players and everybody played the way they played. In our band there were three songwriters or more and two or three really great guitarist, but we didn’t have the acumen. We didn’t have the record-making experience, and there was just a lot of crazy stuff going on, a lot of getting high. Not just us but the producer was the highest of them all.” Eventually, Elektra had Ry Cooder try to salvage an unsuccessful recording project that the label admitted was a mistake. By this time, Browne had moved back to Los Angeles and was living in the community in Echo Park that would eventually lead to his success. I suggest that many songwriters these days don’t have the same extensive apprenticeship in music prior to recording an album. When Browne finally got his first record deal from David Geffen he was famously told to take the entire summer to prepare his songs and just think about making an album! “I don’t know,” responds Browne. “I think all musicians really struggle They do all kinds of things to develop. My going to New York was combined with my being kind of just a freak like a hippie. Going to New York was part of kind of a pilgrimage. It wasn’t really about going to try to make anything happen. I think something might happen at any time but I didn’t know what. It was total luck that I got the job, accompanying Nico.”
After nearly fifty years, Jackson Browne is still writing songs that touch our hearts and guide our lives. By Brian Wise
It was a fertile period but when I suggest to Browne that he could write a memoir, as so many of his contemporaries have done, he laughs and say, ‘I can’t write a postcard.’ “I talk my head off,” he adds. “Over time, a number of times, there have been people who made a case for it and have been very persuasive, but I like writing so much that I would have to become a better writer to do it.” It is surprising that Browne is so self-deprecating about his own writing but while he is not yet prepared to write a memoir he certainly pours himself into his songs, examining the state of his own heart and the world in general. Even in the past decade, when his output has slowed a little, Browne’s albums had a habit of throwing up memorable moments. However, his latest album is what some might call a return to form, if he had been out of form, and one of his finest of the past 20 years. As he approaches his 73rd birthday, Browne has not only spent some time thinking about his own mortality but also about the future of the planet and the human race. Even on his early albums he asked the big questions and he was involved in the No Nukes movement, but now the concern has gone from the potential damage of war but the actual damage we are doing to ourselves. “On the surface, it’s about living in L.A.,” said Browne in a press release about the new album with its intriguing title of Downhill From Everywhere and an ominous inside cover shot. “But it’s really a metaphor for life itself. “I adore this city, but I’ve been trying to leave since around the time I finished my first album. You can love and appreciate and depend on a life as you know it, but deep down you may also long for something else, even if you don’t know what it is.” The new album was completed during the pandemic after Browne suffered a health scare when he and his son caught Covid-19 and had to cancel an extensive national tour with James Taylor. (The rescheduled 29-date tour kicks off again in late July and runs through to November). “What’s happening for everybody, of course, is a huge concern,” he replies when I ask how he is. “My own particular health was not ever so bad. It was not bad. I wasn’t really sick. I could tell I was getting better and not getting worse.” Browne began recording the new album in his Groove Masters Studio in Los Angeles prior to the pandemic but needed to finish it later in 2020. >>> 31
