By Parke Puterbaugh ACKSON BROWNE IS AMONG THE VANGUARD Browne had already been making waves in certain singer/songwriters of the rock & roll era. Over quarters as a singer/songwriter for seven years. the course of three decades as a recording Clyde Jackson Browne was bom on October 9,1948, in artist, he’s established himself as both a cere­ Heidelberg, Germany, where his father worked as an bral, introspective songwriter and a politi­ army journalist. Returning to the States, the family cally attuned voice of conscience. His career moved to Los Angeles when Browne was three and relo­ has unfolded as a series of chapters reflecting personal J cated to suburban Orange County when he was twelve. evolution and changing priorities. In broad outline, he As a well-situated child of the sixties, Browne observed emerged as a soul-baring folksinger whose songs dealt and partook of the sun-drenched, sensual lifestyle that with the riddles of romance and existence. During his made California seem i i golden - and also, at times, lost middle period, he became a more outgoing and extro­ and adrift — thus shaping his wistful, inquisitive song- verted rocker. Later work grew more topi­ wnting from an early age. He fell in with an cal in nature as Browne sang of political estimable crowd of folk-oriented song­ and social realities within and beyond our writers that included Tim Buckley, Steve borders, all the while drawing on a varied musical palette. Noonan and Greg Copeland. Headquarters for their scene was the Paradox, a coffee­ A Southern Californian for most of his house in Orange. In 1967, Browne ventured life, Browne surfaced in the early seventies to New York, where he found himself on the as part of a loose-knit collective of rock- periphery of Andy Warhol’s offbeat scene, minded folkies (and vice versa) that including backing up Velvet Underground included the Eagles; Crosby, Stills and chanteuse Nico. A publishing deal with Nash; Neil Young; J.D. Souther; Warren Zevon; Bonnie Elektra Records led to the recording of thirty demos. Raitt; Lowell George; and others. They’d write songs Browne was also, at age seventeen, briefly a member of together, produce or appear on one another’s records the newly formed Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. and share stages on tour or at benefits. As a result, they All the while, other performers began getting wind of were linked in the public mind as architects of a musi­ his songs. As a teenage songwriter, Browne seemed far cal movement. Browne, though deeply engaged with wiser than his years on such early gems as “These Days” other musicians, stood apart by virtue of his uniquely and Shadow Dream Song.” Both were written when he poetic and somewhat solipsistic stance. He was only was a senior in high school and would, be recorded by twenty-three when his self-titled first album, known the likes of Tom Rush, Nico and Gregg Allman. Browne popularly as Saturate Before Using, was released. It was was signed to David Geffen’s Asylum label in ig^i, in one of the most auspicious debuts in rock history. Yet fact, Geffen’s desire to show Browne’s talent to the world With longtime friend coming of age or trying to recover th e late W arren Zevon their emotional equilibrium in the wake of the sixties’ fitful demise. Along w ith James Taylor’s Sweet Baby fames and Joni M itchell’s Blue, Saturate Before Using was the seventies’ quintessential singer/songwriter album - required listening for sensitive souls wrestling with feelings of doubt and yearn­ ing while reluctantly embracing adulthood. In a 1974 Rolling Stone profile, Cameron Crowe sagely noted Browne’s pen­ chant for writing “songjs] of retrospection, of the man looking back at the child.” Indeed, Browne’s oeuvre has included numerous requiems: “Song for Adam,” “For a Dancer,” “Sleep’s Dark and Silent Gate,” “Of Missing Persons,” “For a Rocker.” The followup, For Everyman, refined his burnished folk- rock approach and added more classics to the canon, includ­ ing “I Thought I Was a Child” and the philosophical title track. It also included Browne’s versions of “These Days” and “Take It Easy,” the Eagles hit he’d cowritten with Glenn Frey. Many regard Late for the Sky, Browne’s third album, as his He is required masterpiece, and it’s certainly his deepest and most allegori­ cal work. Even in a career studded with ambitious state­ ments, Late for the Sky boasts an exceptional number of big listening for songs: “Late for the Sky,” “Fountain of Sorrow,” “For a Dancer,” “The Late Show” and the antinuclear, apocalyptic sensitive souls “Before the Deluge.” Two years passed before the release of The Pretender (1976), a cathartic album that sounded like a personal exorcism - was the main reason Asylum - home to the Eagles, Joni albeit one that carried Browne to a new plateau of popularity. Mitchell, Tom Waits and even, for a spell, the Byrds and Bob There were songs of painful, unflinching autobiography, Dylan - was launched in the first place. including “Your Bright Baby Blues” and “Here Come Those Browne’s first three albums - Saturate Before Using (1972), Tears Again.” Album-oriented radio adopted the title track, a For Everyman (1973) and Late for the Sky (1974) - are of a piece, statement for the ages about the collision between soul and representing his singer/songwriter period at its apex. From commerce in a society where bruised idealists found them­ the outset, Browne arrayed words and music with meticulous selves “caught between the longing for love and the struggle care and craftsmanship. He wasn’t exactly a folk purist, and for the legal tender.” This anthem of discontent, issued dur­ songs like “Doctor My Eyes” rocked out in their own un­ ing America’s bicentennial year, astutely prophesied what lay bridled way, but his early lyrics evinced a more genteel and ahead in the Reagan-led eighties and the stock market run-up erudite approach than the pop-music norm. It is unsurprising o f the nineties, when the nation erred grievously on the side that Browne has cited Leonard Cohen, with whom he crossed of the legal tender. paths during his New York fling, as an early influence. Browne’s next album was the bril- Jamming w ith his Saturate Before Using was rife with thoughtful, lilting liantly conceived Running on Empty L.A. buddies the classics - including “Rock Me on the Water” and “Jamaica Say (1978), which wasn’t a standard live Eagles on The Long You Will” - that touched a nerve in listeners who were either album but an audio-verite tour docu- Run'tour, 1980 mentary consisting of conceit performances and music increasingly politicized, as Browne felt 21st-century made backstage and in hotel rooms. By now Browne had a compelled to Call attention to geopoliti- troubadour fine-tuned band led by his versatile longtime accompanist, cal imbalances and injustices. To those the great David Lindley, and their high-spirited renditions of who fretted about his shift in subject matter from the the title track and Maurice Williams and the personal to the political, he countered that Zodiacs’ "Stay” made this album a multi­ “nothing is more personal than your political platinum phenomenon.. To date, it has sold beliefs.” Besides, he returned to home base with more than seven million copies, and its key a masterwork, I ’m A live (1993), whose artfully songs remain staples of classic-rock radio. Cer­ introspective tone harked back to his begin­ tainly, Browne was among the subtlest musi­ nings. Looking East (1996) took a more varied cians ever to crack that pantheon. Browne’s approach, mingling leftist politics, world profile was further raised when, in 1979, he music, love songs and paeans to his hometown. and Bonnie Raitt organized a series of benefit The twenty-fifth anniversary of Browne’s concerts for MUSE (Musicians United for Safe debut album was marked by the release of The Energy) at Madison Square Garden. Browne’s Next Voice You Hear: The Best ofrjackson Browne run at the top continued with Hold O ut (1980), (1997). The new millennium found him his first Number One album. In 1982, he con­ undertaking solo acoustic tours that returned tributed a cut to the Fast Times at Ridgemont him to intimate settings. In 2002, The Naked High soundtrack; released as a single, “Somebody’s Baby” hit Ride Home tied the various strands of his career into a coher­ Number Seven. ent whole and showed him to be a still-formidable and Subsequent albums in the eighties - Lawyers in Love (1983), gifted songwriter. And fittingly, we now welcome him in Lives in the Balance (1986) and World in Motion (1989) - were join his pèers in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. "He's a very funky guy" Bonnie Raitt on the many talents of her friend of thirty-plus years I fir s t met Jackson a t a gig at the Junction,” this great together than either one o f American poet/activist we did together a t the old Shorty Long hit, as our us could count. JphnTru dell's musical University of Syracuse at a encore, played a lot of Jackson and I started career. He walks the ta lk - little coffeehouse called cards and listened to doing benefits together building a house ta the the Jabberwocky around Richard Pryor's album on around the late seventies, country off the grid years 1970. We became fa st the tou r bus. We had both most significantly the No ago, running it in solar and friends.