Time will come when we know what happened here
Change will come in time and make it clear
We learn one thing if we learn at all
In the secret wars we call our lives
Anything can happen
“Anything Can Happen”
–
How long have I been sleeping
How long have I been drifting alone through the night
How long have I been running for that morning flight
Through the whispered promises and the changing light
Of the bed where we both lie
Late for the sky
“Late For The Sky”
–
Keep a fire for the human race
Let your prayers go drifting into space
You never know what will be coming down
Perhaps a better world is drawing near
And just as easily it could all disappear
Along with whatever meaning you might have found
Don’t let the uncertainty turn you around
(The world keeps turning around and around)
Go on and make a joyful sound
“For A Dancer”
–
I’d try to put it into words, but I could never say it as well as Bruce Springsteen did when he inducted Jackson into the Rock’n'Roll Hall of Fame. Here’s what he said:
“I first met Jackson Browne in the early seventies. It was at the
Bitter End. I was brought down there by David Blue, a folk singer,
after a set I did at Max’s Kansas City. On David Blue’s word, Jackson
was kind enough to let somebody he’d just met get up on stage and
play a song during his set. I watched Jackson play. That night he was
accompanied by his great sideman, David Lindley. As I listened that
night I knew that this guy was simply one of the best. Each song was
like a diamond and my first thought was ‘damn, he’s good.’ My second
thought was ‘I need less words.’
….
It’s true that Jackson wrote some of the most beautiful breakin’ up
music, break your heart music of all: Sky Blue and Black, Linda
Paloma, In The Shape of a Heart. I think that what drew women to
Jackson, besides the obvious, was that they finally felt they were
listening to a guy who knew as much about love as they did. And what
drew men to Jackson, besides the obvious, I guess, was that when they
listened to him, they realized they knew more about love than they
thought they did.
In seventies, post-Vietnam America, there was no album that captured
the fall from Eden, the long, slow after-burn of the sixties; it’s
heartbreak, it’s disappointments, it’s spent possibilities better
than Jackson’s masterpiece, Late For the Sky. It’s just a beautiful
body of work. It’s essential in making sense of the times. Before the
Deluge still gives me goosebumps and it raises me to cause. Late For
the Sky, when those car doors slam at the end of the record, they
still bring tears. And there was no more searching, yearning, loving
music made for and about America at the time.
In this and so much of Jackson’s writing, the slow meticulous
crafting of the songs, the thoughtfulness. Jackson was one of the
first songwriters I met who demonstrated the value of thinking hard
about what you were saying, your subject. The Pretender, These Days,
For Everyman, I’m Alive, Fountain of Sorrow, Running on Empty, For a
Dancer, Before the Deluge, now, I know the Eagles got in first, but,
let’s face it, and I think Don Henley would agree with me, these are
the songs they wish they’d written. I wish I’d written them myself,
along with Like A Rolling Stone and Satisfaction.
But, uh, Jackson’s influence and his voice has always been his own.
He’s one of the true activist musicians I’ve ever known. World In
Motion, Looking East, Lives In the Balance, he followed his muse
wherever it took him. Risked his, and he paid whatever the cost. He’s
long put his mouth, his money, and his body where his politics are.
Lives In The Balance sounds more urgent today than it ever did.
The Beach Boys and Brian Wilson, they gave us California as paradise
and Jackson Browne gave us Paradise Lost. Now I always imagine, what
if Brian Wilson, long after he’d taken a bite of that orange the
serpent offered to him, what if he married that nice girl in Caroline
No, I always figured that she was pregnant anyway, and what if he
moved into the valley and had two sons? One of them would have looked
and sounded just like Jackson Browne. Cain, of course, would have
been Jackson’s brother in arms, Warren Zevon. We love ya, Warren.
But, Jackson to me, Jackson was always the tempered voice of Abel.
Toiling in the vineyards, here to bear the earthly burdens,
confronting the impossibility of love, here to do his father’s work.
Jackson’s work was really California pop gospel.
Listen to the chord changes of Rock Me On the Water and Before the
Deluge, it’s gospel through and through. Now I always thought that in
our fall from Eden, besides the strains of physicality and the
bearing of earthly burdens, our real earthly task was that an
unbridgeable gap, or a black hole was opened up in our ability to
truly love one another. And so our job here on earth, the way we
regain our divinity, our sacredness, and our general good-standing is
by reconstructing love and creating love out of the broken pieces
that we’ve been given. That’s all we have of human promise. That’s
the way we prove ourselves in the eyes of God and facilitate our own
redemption. Now, to me Jackson Browne’s work was always the sound of
that reconstruction. So as he writes in The Pretender: We’ll put our
dark glasses on, and we’ll make love until our strength is gone, and
when the morning light comes streamin’ in, we’ll get up and do it
again. Amen.
Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming my very handsome
friend, Jackson Browne into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame.”
