Jackson Browne

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Jackson Browne stood on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame stage in 2004 while Bruce Springsteen paid him a compliment that cut two ways. Springsteen reminded the room that the Eagles had been inducted first, then told Browne, "You wrote the songs they wished they had written." It was a striking thing to say about a man who has sold more than 30 million albums in the United States. In 2015, Rolling Stone placed him 37th on its list of the 100 greatest songwriters of all time. Yet Browne's name has never carried the same instant recognition as the artists who recorded his early work. This documentary follows a songwriter who began by handing his songs to other people and later became a voice that audiences wanted to hear directly. It asks how a Los Angeles teenager ended up writing for some of the best-known singers of his era. It asks why a record made on buses and in hotel rooms became his signature. And it asks what happened when a private, personal writer turned his attention to nuclear plants, foreign policy and the plastic in the oceans.

  1143

• 2. Abbey to Greenwich Village

  ›

  Jackson Browne was born on the 9th of October 1948 in Heidelberg, Germany, where his father, Clyde Jack Browne, was stationed with the Stars and Stripes newspaper. His mother, Beatrice Amanda Dahl, came from Minnesota and was of Norwegian ancestry. He had an older sister, Roberta, known as Berbie, born in Nuremberg in 1946, and a brother, Edward, born in Frankfurt in 1949. A younger sister, Gracie, arrived a number of years afterward.

  When Browne was three, the family moved into Abbey San Encino in the Highland Park district of Los Angeles. His paternal grandfather, also named Clyde Browne, had built it. In his teens he sang folk songs at local venues, including the Ash Grove and the Troubadour Club. He attended Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton and graduated in 1966.

  Right after school, Browne joined the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band for a stint at the Golden Bear in Huntington Beach. The group opened there for the Lovin' Spoonful. The Dirt Band went on to record several of his songs, among them "These Days," "Holding" and "Shadow Dream Song." He also spent a short time in Gentle Soul, the band of his friend Pamela Polland.

  Browne left the Dirt Band after a few months and moved to Greenwich Village in New York. Before turning eighteen, he was a staff writer for Nina Music, the publishing arm of Elektra. With friends Greg Copeland and Adam Saylor, he wrote reports on the city's musical events. Through the rest of 1967 and all of 1968 he played behind Tim Buckley and Nico, the singer associated with the Velvet Underground.

  Browne and Nico were romantically linked in 1967. He became a major contributor to her debut album, Chelsea Girl, writing songs and playing guitar on several tracks. One of them was "These Days." After they split in 1968, he returned to Los Angeles and formed a folk band with Ned Doheny and Jack Wilce. That is also when he first met Glenn Frey.

  The list of artists who recorded his early songs grew long. It included Tom Rush, Steve Noonan, Gregg Allman, Joan Baez, the Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, the Byrds and Iain Matthews. Rolling Stone called him a "new face to look for" and praised his "mind-boggling melodies." Browne did not put out his own versions of these songs until years later. One of them, "The Birds of St. Marks," dated to 1967 and later appeared on his 2005 album Solo Acoustic, Vol. 1.

  2361364

• 3. The Asylum Years

  ›

  In 1971, Browne signed with Asylum Records, the label run by his manager, David Geffen. His self-titled debut followed in 1972, produced and engineered by Richard Orshoff. The piano-driven "Doctor, My Eyes" reached the Top Ten of the US singles chart. "Rock Me on the Water" also earned heavy radio play. "Song for Adam" was written about the death of his friend Adam Saylor. Together with "Jamaica Say You Will," it helped build his name. To promote the record, he toured on bills shared with Linda Ronstadt and Joni Mitchell.

  For Everyman, released in 1973, drew good reviews but sold less than the debut. It still sold a million copies. It carried his own version of "Take It Easy," which he had written with Glenn Frey of the Eagles and which the band had already turned into a major success.

  Late for the Sky arrived in 1974 and reached number 14. Critics noted his memorable melodies, his personal and perceptive lyrics, and his skill at arrangement. Martin Scorsese used the title track in Taxi Driver. Around this time Browne also began a fractious working relationship with Warren Zevon, producing Zevon's first two albums for Asylum.

  Life on tour was unusually domestic. Browne traveled in a converted Greyhound bus with his wife and their infant son. In 1975 he toured at different times with the Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, and Toots and the Maytals.

  The Pretender came out in 1976 and climbed to number 5, continuing the pattern of each album outdoing the last. Its singles included "Here Come Those Tears Again," co-written with his mother-in-law, Nancy Farnsworth, which reached number 23 on the pop singles chart. The record that followed would be recorded in a very different way.

  256913

• 4. Running on Empty

  ›

  Running on Empty, released in 1977, was recorded entirely on tour. Browne broke the habits of the live album. He used only new material instead of a greatest-hits set. The songs mixed concert performances with recordings captured on buses, in hotel rooms and backstage. The result was both a live record and a concept album about the life of a touring musician.

  The record rose to number 3 on the album chart. According to the source, it stayed there for over a year. It became his biggest commercial success. Two singles reached the Top 40, the title track and the paired "The Load-Out" and "Stay." Many other tracks became staples of album-oriented rock radio.

  "The Load-Out" has a particular job on the record. Browne wrote it as a send-off to concert audiences and as a tribute to his roadies, the crew who haul the equipment night after night. The song turns the end of a show into a goodbye from the people who made it possible.

  At the Grammy Awards of 1979, Running on Empty earned two nominations, for Album of the Year and for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male. Over his career Browne has been nominated for Grammys eight times. His three-album run that followed would take him from road songs to something more political.

  1167688

• 5. Protest Songs

  ›

  In the spring of 1978, Browne appeared near a nuclear reprocessing plant in Barnwell, South Carolina. He played a free concert the night before a civil disobedience action. He did not take part in the action itself. In June of that year he played on the grounds of the Seabrook Station Nuclear Power Plant construction site in New Hampshire, for 20,000 people opposed to the reactor.

  The Three Mile Island accident in March 1979 pushed him further. Soon afterward he joined musician friends to found Musicians United for Safe Energy, known as MUSE. His co-founders were Bonnie Raitt and John Hall. He also joined the Abalone Alliance and Alliance for Survival, and he was arrested while protesting at the Diablo Canyon Power Plant near San Luis Obispo. Years later, in 2007, the No Nukes group recorded a video of a new version of the Buffalo Springfield song "For What It's Worth."

  His albums moved along with him. Hold Out, in 1980, is his only number 1 album. In 1982 he released "Somebody's Baby" for the film Fast Times at Ridgemont High. It peaked at number 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 and became his biggest hit. Lawyers in Love, in 1983, included the hit "Tender Is the Night" and shifted his lyrics from the personal toward the political. In 1985 he sang "You're a Friend of Mine" as a duet with Clarence Clemons.

  Lives in the Balance, in 1986, openly condemned US policy in Central America. It used new instrumental textures and delighted his fans, though it connected less with the mainstream. Journalist Bill Moyers used the title track at several points in his 1987 PBS documentary The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis, which won awards.

  Throughout the 1980s Browne played benefits for Farm Aid, for Amnesty International on its 1986 A Conspiracy of Hope tour, for post-Somoza Nicaragua and for the Christic Institute. In 1988 he joined Roy Orbison, Bruce Springsteen and k.d. lang, among others, for A Black and White Night. His 1989 album World in Motion includes a cover of Steven Van Zandt's "I am a Patriot."

  Browne sang "I Am a Patriot" again in 2000 at several rallies for presidential candidate Ralph Nader. In 2004 he played the Vote for Change tour, organized by MoveOn.org to rally voters behind John Kerry. In 2006 he performed with Michael Stanley and JD Souther at an Ohio fundraiser for Democratic candidates. In 2008 he first backed John Edwards for the Democratic nomination, then supported Barack Obama once Obama won it.

  That same year the campaign trail turned on him. He sued John McCain, the Ohio Republican Party and the Republican National Committee for using "Running on Empty" in an ad against Obama without his permission. The case was settled in 2009 for an undisclosed sum, along with an apology from the McCain campaign and the other parties.

  In 2011 Browne performed at the Occupy Wall Street camp at Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan. In 2012 he joined David Crosby and Pete Seeger in backing Ben Cohen's Stamp Stampede, which aimed to stamp messages on American currency to get big money out of politics. In January 2016 he endorsed Bernie Sanders for president.

  1617531520

• 6. Green Living and Benefit Stages

  ›

  Environmentalist Ed Begley Jr. once described Browne's ranch this way: "He's got this big wind turbine, and his ranch is completely off the grid." He added, "He's done all of it himself." Browne also campaigns against single-use plastic water bottles and works to cut their use on tour. He belongs to the movement known as Plastic Free Backstage. In 2008 the Surf Industry Manufacturers Association named him Environmentalist of the Year.

  In 2010 he received the Duke LEAF Award for Lifetime Environmental Achievement in the Fine Arts, which recognized his activism and his effort to make tours greener. On the 23rd of February 2011, the group Save Our Shores gave him its Ocean Hero Award. Ryan Coonerty, the mayor of Santa Cruz, declared that day Jackson Browne Day. He also appeared at the TEDx Great Pacific Garbage Patch conference, where he performed a new song, "If I Could Be Anywhere."

  Benefit work fills much of the rest of his résumé. In 1991 he recorded the Beatles medley "Golden Slumbers" and "Carry That Weight" with Jennifer Warnes for For Our Children, an album for the Pediatric AIDS Foundation. On the 8th and the 9th of November 1992 he played Honolulu with Bonnie Raitt and Crosby, Stills & Nash for victims of Hurricane Iniki, which had devastated Kauai two months earlier.

  In 1995 he sang the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz in Concert: Dreams Come True, a charity performance at Lincoln Center. Roger Daltrey, Natalie Cole and Nathan Lane were also in the cast. It raised money for the Children's Defense Fund and aired on TNT. In 2007 he covered John Lennon's "Oh My Love" for an Amnesty International album about the crisis in Darfur, and in 2008 he contributed to Songs for Tibet.

  Music education recurs in his schedule. In 2012 he played an Artists for the Arts benefit at Barnum Hall with Glen Phillips and the band Venice, backed by a student orchestra and choir. The sold-out show raised over $100,000, and it was his fifth appearance at that event. In 2013 he played the Troubadour with School of Rock students aged 13 to 17 to support scholarships.

  Other causes range widely. He appeared at the Bridge School Benefit, founded by Neil Young, and at Sanctuary Centers of Santa Barbara concerts in 2014 and 2015. In 2024 he performed at the 10th annual "John Henry's Friends" concert for children and young adults with autism. In March 2025 he joined the 38th Annual Tibet House US Benefit Concert at Carnegie Hall, and later that year he was an honoree at a Music Will benefit supporting music education in public schools.

  5152545570

• 7. Family and Loss

  ›

  Jackson Browne appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone in 1974 holding his six-month-old son, Ethan Zane Browne, who had been born in 1973. Ethan's mother was Phyllis Major, an actress and model, whom Browne married in 1975. She died by suicide in March 1976 at the age of 30, after taking an overdose of barbiturates. The Pretender followed in the wake of that loss.

  Ethan grew up in Los Angeles and became a model and actor. He died on the 25th of November 2025, at the age of 52, from an overdose of fentanyl, methamphetamine and lidocaine. His father had by then outlived both the mother and the son who had once shared that magazine cover.

  In 1981 Browne married the model Lynne Sweeney. Their son, Ryan, was born a year later and has played in the band Sonny and the Sunsets since 2007. Browne and Sweeney divorced in 1983, when he began dating the actress Daryl Hannah. That relationship ended in 1992 after she accused him of domestic violence. In the mid-2000s he dated the artist and environmental activist Dianna Cohen. He has one grandson.

  4142434446

• 8. Late Albums and Honors

  ›

  I'm Alive, released in 1993, was critically acclaimed and sold respectably despite having no hit single. It was more personal in style than his political records. In 1994 he joined Kathy Mattea to redo "Rock Me on the Water" for the AIDS benefit album Red Hot + Country. The next album, Looking East, in 1996, did poorly with buyers. Six years passed before The Naked Ride Home appeared in 2002.

  In 2003 Browne played himself in the Simpsons episode "Brake My Wife, Please," singing a parody of "Rosie" with lyrics rewritten for the plot. That same year Rolling Stone placed three of his albums on its list of the 500 best albums of all time: For Everyman, Late for the Sky and The Pretender. In 2005 came Solo Acoustic, Vol. 1, which was nominated for a Grammy in 2007.

  Time the Conqueror, his thirteenth studio album, was released in 2008. It peaked at number 20, his first top-20 album since Lawyers in Love in 1983. It also reached number 2 on the Billboard Independent Albums chart. Standing in the Breach, his fourteenth, arrived in 2014. A tribute set that year, Looking into You, gathered covers of his songs by Bruce Springsteen, Don Henley, Lyle Lovett and Bonnie Raitt.

  On the 28th of January 2016, the source notes, the Eagles and Browne played "Take It Easy" at the 58th Annual Grammy Awards to honor Glenn Frey, who had died a month earlier. Browne's fifteenth album, Downhill from Everywhere, was set for his 72nd birthday in 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic delayed it, and a tour with James Taylor was pushed to 2021. The record came out that year and earned a Grammy nomination for Best Americana Album.

  Honors have gathered alongside the albums. In 2002 he received the John Steinbeck Award. In 2004 Occidental College gave him an honorary Doctorate of Music for "a remarkable musical career that has successfully combined an intensely personal artistry with a broader vision of social justice." He entered the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2007. In 2018 he became the first artist to receive the Gandhi Peace Award. In 2024 he received the American Music Honors from the Bruce Springsteen Archives and Center for American Music.

  In 2025 the Folk Americana Roots Hall of Fame named him an inductee, citing a career that has run for more than five decades.

  2930313469