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Jackson Browne
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Clyde Jackson Browne (born October 9, 1948) is an American rock singer-songwriter and musician. His introspective lyrics made him the poster boy of the Southern California confessional singer-songwriter movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 2004, Browne was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by fellow American musical artist and good friend, Bruce Springsteen. In the same year, Browne received an honorary Doctorate of Music from Los Angeles' Occidental College for "a remarkable musical career that has successfully combined an intensely personal artistry with a broader vision of social change and justice".
ne was born in Heidelberg, Germany, where his father, an American serviceman, was stationed.
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Encyclopedia
Clyde Jackson Browne (born October 9, 1948) is an American rock singer-songwriter and musician. His introspective lyrics made him the poster boy of the Southern California confessional singer-songwriter movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 2004, Browne was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by fellow American musical artist and good friend, Bruce Springsteen. In the same year, Browne received an honorary Doctorate of Music from Los Angeles' Occidental College for "a remarkable musical career that has successfully combined an intensely personal artistry with a broader vision of social change and justice".
Biography
Early life and songwriter for others
Browne was born in Heidelberg, Germany, where his father, an American serviceman, was stationed. Browne's mother, Beatrice Amanda (nιe Dahl), was a Minnesota native of Norwegian ancestry. Browne has three siblings: Roberta "Berbie" Browne who was born in 1946 in Nuremberg, Germany and Edward Severin Browne who was born in 1949 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. His younger sister, Gracie Browne, was born a number of years later. Browne moved to the Highland Park district of Los Angeles, California, at the age of 3 and in his teens began singing folk music in local venues like the Ash Grove. In 1966, he joined the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. He had attended Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton, California.
A precociously gifted songwriter, Browne signed a publishing contract with Nina Music, and his songs were performed by Joan Baez, Tom Rush, the Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, the Byrds and Steve Noonan, among others. After moving to Greenwich Village, New York, Browne was briefly in Tim Buckley's back-up band. He also worked on Nico's Chelsea Girl, playing guitar on Nico's version of Browne's classic song "These Days". After leaving New York City, Browne formed a folk band with Ned Doheny and Jack Wilce. After leaving New York, Browne settled in Southern California.
Classic personal period
In 1971, Browne signed with Asylum Records and released Jackson Browne (1972), which included the piano-driven "Doctor My Eyes", a Top 10 hit 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 as a versatile and original writer with a deep thinking, sometimes downbeat, but always romantic flair. During this period, he also toured with Linda Ronstadt.
His next album, For Everyman (1973) while considered of high quality was less successful than his debut album, although it still sold a million copies. The upbeat "Take It Easy," co-written with The Eagles' Glenn Frey, had already been a big hit for that group, while "These Days" (actually written by Browne and first recorded by Nico in 1967) captured the essence of Browne's youthful, morose angst. The title track, meanwhile, was the first of Browne's studies of personal exploration, soul-searching, and despair set against the backdrop of a decaying society.
Late for the Sky (1974) consolidated Browne's following, with some fans drawn in purely by the record's intriguing, Magritte-inspired cover. Highlights included the searching, heartbreaking title song, the elegiac "For a Dancer" and the apocalyptic "Before the Deluge". The arrangements featured the evocative violin and guitar of David Lindley, Jai Winding's outstanding piano, and the stellar harmonies of Doug Haywood. The title track was also featured in Martin Scorsese's film Taxi Driver. Around this time, Browne began his fractious but lifelong professional relationship with singer/songwriter Warren Zevon, mentoring Zevon's first two Asylum albums through the studio as a producer after browbeating Asylum head David Geffen into giving Zevon a recording contract.
Browne's disaffected, wondering character struck out even more starkly in his next album, The Pretender, which is arguably his darkest and yet musically and lyrically his brightest. It was released in 1976, after the suicide of his first wife, Phyllis Major. The album features stronger production by Jon Landau and a mixture of styles, ranging from the Mariachi-inspired peppiness of "Linda Paloma" to the country-driven "Your Bright Baby Blues" to the near-hopeless sadness and surrender of "Sleep's Dark and Silent Gate". The title track "The Pretender" is Browne's magnum opus, a vivid account of romanticism losing the battle with the realities of day-to-day life. "Here Come Those Tears Again" was cowritten with Nancy Farnsworth, the mother of Browne's wife, after the untimely death of her daughter.
By then, Browne's work had gained a reputation for its compelling melodies, clear, honest, and insightful lyrics, and a flair for composition rarely seen in the world of rock and roll. He was often referred to as "a thinking man's rock star."
Browne began recording his next LP while on tour, and Running on Empty (1977) became his biggest commercial success. Breaking the usual conventions for a live album, Browne used all new material and combined live concert performances with recordings made on buses, in hotel rooms, and back stage, creating the audio equivalent of a road movie. Running on Empty contains many renowned songs, such as the propulsive title track, "Running on Empty", "The Road" (written and recorded in 1972 by Danny O'Keefe), (a non-subtle homage to masturbation) "Rosie", and "The Load-Out/Stay" (Browne's affectionate and knowing send-off to his concert audiences and roadies).
Personal life
Browne has been married twice and has two children. His first wife was actress/model Phyllis Major (1946-1976). The two began their relationship around 1971, as was artistically memorialized in the song "Ready or Not". Their son, Ethan Zane, was born in 1973. Major and Browne married in late 1975. He was devastated when she committed suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills just a few months later, in March 1976, at the age of 30.
Browne was married in January 1981 to Australian model, Lynne Sweeney with whom he had a second son, Ryan Daniel, born in 1982. Browne and Sweeney were divorced in 1983, when he became involved with actress Daryl Hannah. The relationship with Hannah continued until 1992. He has been in a relationship with artist Dianna Cohen since the mid '90s.
Turning political
Shortly after the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in March 1979, Browne joined with several musician-friends to found the anti-nuclear organization, Musicians United for Safe Energy. His next album, Hold Out (1980), was commercially successful his only number 1 record on the U.S. pop albums chart. The following year he released the single "Somebody's Baby" from the Fast Times at Ridgemont High soundtrack, which became his biggest hit, peaking at #7 on the Billboard Hot 100. The 1983 Lawyers in Love followed, signaling a discernible change from the personal to the political in his lyrics.
Political protest came to the fore in Browne's music in the 1986 album, Lives in the Balance, an explicit condemnation of Reaganism and U.S. policy in Central America. Flavored with new instrumental textures, it was a huge success with Browne fans, though not with mainstream audiences. The title track, "Lives in the Balance", with its Andean pan pipes and lines like, "There's a shadow on the faces / Of the men who fan the flames / Of the wars that are fought in places / Where we can't even say the names" was an outcry against U.S.-backed wars in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala. The song was used at several points in the award-winning 1987 PBS documentary, The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis, by journalist Bill Moyers, and was part of the soundtrack of Stone's War, a 1986 Miami Vice episode focusing on American involvement in Central America.
During the 1980s, Browne frequently performed at benefit concerts for causes he believed in, including Farm Aid; Amnesty International (making several appearances on the 1986 A Conspiracy of Hope Tour); post-Somoza, revolutionary Nicaragua; and the Christic Institute. The album, World in Motion, released in 1989 contains a remarkable cover of Steve Van Zandt's "I am a Patriot," a song which he has performed at numerous concerts.
In 1995, he performed in The Wizard of Oz in Concert: Dreams Come True a musical performance of the popular story at Lincoln Center to benefit the Children's Defense Fund. The performance was originally broadcast on Turner Network Television (TNT), and issued on CD and video in 1996.
Living off the grid and environmental activism
According to eco-series, Ed Begley, Jr., Hes got this big wind turbine, and his ranch is completely off the [power] grid, Begley said. Hes done all of it himself..
Recent years
Four years after his previous album, Browne returned with I'm Alive, a critically acclaimed album with a more personal perspective that had no hits but still sold respectably indeed, the ninth track from the album, Sky Blue and Black, was used during the pilot episode of the situation comedy Friends. He also sang a duet with Jann Arden, "Unloved", on her 1995 album Living Under June. Browne's Looking East (1996) was released soon after, but was not as successful commercially. The Naked Ride Home was released in 2002.
In 2003, Browne guest-starred as himself in The Simpsons episode "Brake My Wife, Please", performing a parody of his song Rosie with lyrics altered to reference the plot involving Homer and Marge.
Browne was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004. In his induction speech, Bruce Springsteen noted that while the Eagles got to the Hall first, "You [Browne] wrote the songs they wished they had written". The previous year, three of Browne's albums For Everyman, Late for the Sky, and The Pretender had been selected by Rolling Stone magazine as among its choices for the 500 best albums of all time.
Browne appeared in several rallies for presidential candidate Ralph Nader in 2000, singing "I Am A Patriot" and other songs. He participated in the Vote for Change tour in October 2004, playing a series of concerts in American swing states. These concerts were organized by MoveOn.org to mobilize people to vote for John Kerry in the presidential election. Browne appeared with Bonnie Raitt and Keb' Mo', and once with Bruce Springsteen. In late 2006, Browne performed with Michael Stanley and J. D. Souther at a fundraiser for Democratic candidates in Ohio. For the 2008 Presidential Election, he endorsed John Edwards for the Democratic Presidential Nomination and performed at some of Edwards' appearances.
Solo Acoustic, Vol. 1, was released in 2005 on Inside Recordings. The album consists of live recordings of eleven previously released tracks and "The Birds of St. Marks", a song that does not appear on any of Browne's studio albums. This album was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2007 in the category of Best Contemporary Folk/Americana Album.
Browne is part of the No Nukes group which is against the expansion of nuclear power. In 2007, the group recorded a music video of a new version of the Buffalo Springfield song "For What It's Worth".
Browne's new live album, Solo Acoustic, Vol. 2, was released on March 4, 2008.
Browne's new studio album, "Time The Conqueror", was released in September 2008 via Inside Recordings, his first studio album since leaving longtime label Elektra Records in 2003.
In August 2008, Browne sued John McCain and the Republican Party for using his 1977 hit, Running on Empty, in an attack ad against Barack Obama without his permission.
Other charity
In 2008, Browne contributed to an album called Songs for Tibet, which is an initiative to support Tibet, Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso and to underline the human rights situation in Tibet. The album was issued on August 5 via iTunes and on August 19 in music stores around the world.
Browne also covered John Lennon's "Oh My Love" to benefit Amnesty International's campaign to alleviate the crisis in Darfur. The song appears on the album Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur, which was released on June 12, 2007 and features many other prominent artists performing other Lennon covers, such as R.E.M., Jack Johnson, U2, Avril Lavigne, Green Day, and the Black Eyed Peas.
Awards
For "promoting peace and justice through his music and his unrelenting support for that which promotes nonviolent solutions to problems both nationally and internationally", Browne received the Courage of Conscience Awards from The Peace Abbey in Sherborn, Massachusetts.
Discography
See Jackson Browne discography
External links
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