For Everyman: The Wisdom of Jackson Browne

One of the architects of the Los Angeles folk rock scene in the 1970s is having a birthday in a few weeks.  Jackson Browne, along with the Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, established the quintessential L.A. blend of country, rock and folk that led to decades of influential music and lyrics while inspiring generations of poets with guitars.  Browne will turn a ripe old 71 on October 9^th.  In 2004, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and was given an honorary doctorate of music by Occidental College in Pasadena.  He has been nominated for Grammy Awards but has not won, clearly an oversight that must be rectified.

Born in Germany to an American serviceman father and a mother from Midwestern stock, Browne came of age in Los Angeles and began making an impact on the music scene in historic clubs and venues like The Troubadour.  He wrote songs for other artists like the aforementioned Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and the Eagles before signing with Elektra Records as a songwriter.  More artists, like the Byrds, recorded his music.

In 1971, Browne left Elektra for Asylum Records, and his fame as a singer-songwriter grew.  Classic albums like Jackson Browne (1972), For Everyman (1973), Late For the Sky (1974), and especially, The Pretender (1976) and Running On Empty (1977) set the standard for L.A. folk rock.  He also became an environmental activist, showing up to protest against nuclear power, American policy in Central America, and in support of Farm Aid, Amnesty International and Occupy Wall Street.  His endorsement of Democratic candidates is legendary; he performed in support of John Kerry, Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders.  He successfully sued John McCain for illegally coopting the song, “Running On Empty” which McCain used to suggest that Obama was too young and inexperienced to be president.  The suit was settled with an undisclosed payment but more importantly, the McCain campaign was forced to issue a public apology.  Browne’s last studio album, Standing In The Breach was released in 2014.

I first encountered Jackson Browne and his music in the late seventies when I was in high school.  I was a diehard jazz fan into groups like Weather Report and Return To Forever.  Browne was not on my radar when I took a class in religious studies (it was a Catholic school) with the Dean of Students.  In class, he tried to explain the power of Browne’s album, The Pretender and the influence the music had on his own life.  The record was made shortly after the death by suicide of Browne’s first wife, Phyllis Major.  The couple had one son.  The title track is written in the voice of a man who has lost his soul to commercialism and capitalist greed.  Now, the speaker gets up in the morning and goes to work each day, living a seemingly empty life, longing for change and deeper meaning:

I want to know what became of the changes

We waited for love to bring

Were they only the fitful dreams

Of some greater awakening

I’ve been aware of the time going by

They say in the end it’s the wink of an eye

And when the morning light comes streaming in

You’ll get up and do it again

Amen

Browne is known for his prescient lyrics.  I understood what my teacher was telling us, even if I would not experience that sense of emptiness and longing for something more for years to come.  Browne has always been an old soul, his music aching with wisdom and a touch of melancholy.  He ends the song with a dark request:

Are you there?

Say a prayer for the Pretender

Who started out so young and strong

Only to surrender

I decided I needed to check this artist out, and at the time, his most recent album was a live record:  Running On Empty.  This collection has now become legendary.  Browne eschewed conventional wisdom and recorded all new songs live.  Usually, artists do a live album of their greatest hits.  Here was Jackson Browne performing music with which his audience was not familiar.  Even more ground breaking, not all of the recordings were done during concerts.  He recorded on the tour bus and back stage; drummer Russell Kunkel played a cardboard box with his bass drum petal attached; on one track, the tour photographer sings back up.  The result is a classic album of total, sheer, somewhat improvised magic.

I used to listen to the cassette of the album lying on the floor in my parents’ tiny living room with headphones clamped so tight around my head that I got headaches.  I did not want my conservative Catholic parents to hear what I was listening to, specifically, two songs:  “Rosie” (about masturbation) and “Cocaine (for obvious reasons).

One song that profoundly affected me was on The Pretender album.  “Sleep’s Dark and Silent Gate” is written in the voice of a man moving from youth to maturity, looking at his life and wondering how things became the way they are.

Sometimes I lie awake at night and wonder

Where my life will lead me

Waiting to pass under Sleep’s dark and silent gate

He sings in the bridge his assessment of his life as it stands:

Sitting down by the highway

Looking down the road

Waiting for a ride

I don’t know where I’ve been

Wishing I could fly away

Don’t know where I’m going

Wishing I could hide

Oh God this is some shape I’m in

Browne excels at the world weary troubadour persona.  Songs like “These Days” (believe it or not, written when he was a teenager) and “For Everyman” speak to the battles and scars of life and the wisdom gained.

Well I’ve been out walking

I don’t do that much talking these days

These days

These days I seem to think a lot

About the things that I forgot to do

For you

And all the times I had the chance to

[…]

Now if I seem to be afraid

To live the life that I have made in song

Well it’s just that I’ve been losing

For so long

[…]

Don’t confront me with my failures

I have not forgotten them

In the song, “Sky Blue and Black,” Browne speaks of a lost relationship

You’re the hidden cost and the thing that’s lost

In everything I do

Yeah and I’ll never stop looking for you

In the sunlight and the shadows

Browne resists explaining his lyric choices and adamantly denies a link to his own life events.  Browne will discuss what he was going for in the composition, but he wants the listener to develop his or her own connections to the songs.  He wants them to inform the listener’s history, not his own.  On albums like I’m Alive (1993), one of his more personal records on which “Sky Blue and Black” appears, he lets his lyrics speak and will not elaborate.  In this way, he cements his troubadour status, a bard for our times, and yes, an Everyman.

In the song, “The Barricades of Heaven,” we are again treated to Browne’s reflections on how he came to be where he is.

Running down around the towns along the shore

When I was sixteen and on my own

No, I couldn’t tell you what the hell those brakes were for

I was just trying to hear my song

Hearing the song has taken him around the world and through a kaleidoscope of experiences, all on that “stretch of road running to L.A.”  He goes on to write:

Better bring your own redemption when you come

To the barricades of Heaven where I’m from

It is Jackson Browne’s wish to find the “Hope that never ends” as he continues to turn the pages of his life, “Pages torn and pages burning.”  Jackson Browne is the soul of Los Angeles as well as possessing the wisdom of Everyman.  For those of us who listen, his is a profound and singular gift.