Jackson Browne
Clyde Jackson Browne is an American rock musician, singer, songwriter, and political activist who has sold over 30 million albums in the United States.
Emerging as a teenage songwriter in mid-1960s Los Angeles, Browne had his first successes writing songs for others. He wrote "These Days" as a 16-year-old; the song became a minor hit for the German singer and Andy Warhol protégé Nico in 1967. He also wrote several songs for fellow Southern California bands the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and Eagles, the latter of whom had their first Billboard Top 40 hit in 1972 with the Browne co-written song "Take It Easy".
In the early 1970s, Browne lived in a small apartment in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. He started writing "Take It Easy" for his first album, but did not know how to finish it. His upstairs neighbor Glenn Frey came to visit and was able to help complete the composition. Frey recalled hearing Browne's persistent songwriting process, including the sound of his teapot and piano, from which he learned about the creative effort involved in finishing a song. Browne gave the completed song to Frey, who recorded it with his new band Eagles, taking the song onto the Billboard Top 40.
Encouraged by his successes writing songs for others, Browne released his self-titled debut album in 1972, which included two Top 40 hits of his own, "Doctor, My Eyes" and "Rock Me on the Water". For his debut album, as well as the next several albums and concert tours, Browne started to work closely with the Section, a prolific session band which also worked with a number of other prominent singer-songwriters of the era. His second album, For Everyman, was released in 1973. His third album, Late for the Sky, was his most successful to that point, peaking at number 14 on the Billboard 200 album chart. His fourth album, The Pretender, continued the pattern of each album topping the previous by peaking at number 5 on the album chart, and included the hit singles "Here Come Those Tears Again" and "The Pretender".
Browne's 1977 album Running on Empty, however, is his signature work; it rose to number 3 on the album chart and remained there for over a year. Both a live and concept album, it explores in its songs the themes of life as a touring musician. The album was recorded both on stage and in places touring musicians spend time when not playing, such as hotel rooms, backstage, and in one case on a moving tour bus. The album produced two Top 40 singles, "Running on Empty" and "The Load-Out"/"Stay", and many of the other tracks became popular radio hits on the album-oriented rock format.
Browne had successful albums through the 1980s, including the 1980 album Hold Out, which was his only number 1 album; the non-album single "Somebody's Baby", which was used in the film Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and 1983's Lawyers in Love, which included the hit single "Tender Is the Night". In 1986, he released Lives in the Balance, which had several radio hits and included the introspective "In the Shape of a Heart", which was inspired by the suicide of his first wife a decade prior. His string of hit albums came to an end at that point, as his next several albums failed to produce a gold or platinum RIAA rating.
He released two compilation albums, The Next Voice You Hear: The Best of Jackson Browne in 1997, and The Very Best of Jackson Browne, released in conjunction with his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2004. His most recent studio album is 2021's Downhill from Everywhere, the follow-up to 2014's Standing in the Breach, which included the first fully realized version of his song "The Birds of St. Marks", a song he had written at age 18. In 2015, Rolling Stone ranked him as 37th in its list of the "100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time".
Life and career
Early life
Browne was born on October 9, 1948, in Heidelberg, Germany, where his father Clyde Jack Browne, an American serviceman, was stationed for his job assignment with the Stars and Stripes newspaper. Browne's mother, Beatrice Amanda, was from Minnesota of Norwegian ancestry.Browne has three siblings: Roberta "Berbie" Browne, born in 1946 in Nuremberg, Germany; Edward Severin Browne, born in 1949 in Frankfurt, Germany; and his younger sister, Gracie Browne, born a number of years later. At the age of three, Browne and his family moved to his grandfather's house, Abbey San Encino which is in the Highland Park district of Los Angeles. In his teens, he began singing folk songs in local venues including Ash Grove and The Troubadour Club. He attended Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton, California, graduating in 1966.
Songwriter for others
After graduating from high school, Browne joined the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, performing at the Golden Bear in Huntington Beach, California, where they opened for the Lovin' Spoonful. Later the band recorded a number of Browne's songs, including "These Days", "Holding", and "Shadow Dream Song". He was in his friend Pamela Polland's band, Gentle Soul, for a short time.He left the Dirt Band after a few months and moved to Greenwich Village, New York, where he became a staff writer for Elektra's publishing company, Nina Music, before he was eighteen. He reported on musical events in New York City with his friends Greg Copeland and Adam Saylor. For the remainder of 1967 and also 1968 he was in Greenwich Village, where he backed Tim Buckley and singer Nico of the Velvet Underground. In 1967, Browne and Nico were romantically linked; he became a significant contributor to her debut album, Chelsea Girl, writing and playing guitar on several of the songs. In 1968, following his breakup with Nico, Browne returned to Los Angeles, where he formed a folk band with Ned Doheny and Jack Wilce. This is when he first met Glenn Frey.
Browne's first songs, such as "Shadow Dream Song" and "These Days", were recorded by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Tom Rush, Nico, Steve Noonan, Gregg Allman, Joan Baez, Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, the Byrds, Iain Matthews, and others. Browne did not release his own versions of these early songs until years later. Soon Rolling Stone mentioned Browne as a "new face to look for" and praised his "mind-boggling melodies".
Classic period
In 1971, Browne signed with his manager David Geffen's Asylum Records and released Jackson Browne produced and engineered by Richard Orshoff, which included the piano-driven "Doctor My Eyes", which entered the Top Ten in the US singles chart. "Rock Me on the Water", from the same album, also gained considerable radio airplay, while "Jamaica Say You Will" and "Song for Adam" helped establish Browne's reputation. Touring to promote the album, he shared the bill with Linda Ronstadt and Joni Mitchell.His next album, For Everyman, garnered good reviews but was less successful than his debut, although it still sold a million copies and included his version of "Take It Easy", co-written with Eagles' Glenn Frey, which had already been a major success for the group.
Late for the Sky consolidated Browne's fan base, and the album peaked at No. 14. He gained a reputation for memorable melody, insightful, often personal lyrics, and a talent for his arrangements in composition. The title track was featured in Martin Scorsese's film Taxi Driver. During this period, Browne began his fractious professional relationship with Warren Zevon, producing Zevon's first two Asylum albums.
Browne was accompanied on tour by his wife and their infant son. They traveled in a converted Greyhound bus. In 1975, Browne toured variously with Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, and Toots and the Maytals.
Browne's next album, The Pretender, was released in 1976, after his wife's suicide. A year later, "Here Come Those Tears Again", co-written with his mother-in-law, Nancy Farnsworth, hit No. 23 on the pop singles chart. The follow-up album, Running on Empty, recorded entirely on tour, became his biggest commercial success. Breaking the usual conventions for a live album, Browne used only new material and combined live concert performances with recordings made on buses, in hotel rooms, and backstage. Running on Empty contains some of his most popular songs, including the title track and "The Load-Out/Stay", Browne's send-off to concert audiences and tribute to his roadies.
Activism and music
In spring of 1978, Browne appeared near a nuclear reprocessing plant in Barnwell, South Carolina, to perform a free concert the night before a civil disobedience action; he did not participate in the action. In June 1978 he performed on the grounds of the Seabrook Station Nuclear Power Plant construction site in New Hampshire for 20,000 opponents of the reactor.Shortly after the Three Mile Island nuclear accident, during March 1979, Browne joined with several musician friends to found the antinuclear organization Musicians United for Safe Energy. He was arrested while protesting against the Diablo Canyon Power Plant near San Luis Obispo. His next album, Hold Out, was commercially successful and his only number 1 record on the U.S. pop albums chart. In 1982, he released the single "Somebody's Baby" from the Fast Times at Ridgemont High soundtrack, which became his biggest hit, peaking at number 7 on the Billboard Hot 100. The 1983 Lawyers in Love followed, signaling a change in lyrics from the personal to the political. In 1985, he duetted with Clarence Clemons on "You're a Friend of Mine".
Political protest featured in Browne's 1986 album, Lives in the Balance, explicitly condemning U.S. policy in Central America. Flavored with new instrumental textures, it was a huge success with fans, although less so with mainstream audiences. The title track was used at several points in the award-winning 1987 PBS documentary, The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis, by journalist Bill Moyers.
During the 1980s, Browne performed frequently at benefits for causes he supported, including Farm Aid, Amnesty International, post-Somoza revolutionary Nicaragua, and the Christic Institute. The album World in Motion, released in 1989, contains a cover of Steven Van Zandt's "I am a Patriot".
Browne also performed alongside Roy Orbison in A Black and White Night in 1988 along with Bruce Springsteen and k.d. lang, among others.