When he was just out of high school, Jackson Browne moved to NYC and wrote songs for some of the biggest names of the 1960’s folk scene. Then, when he returned home to Los Angeles two years later, he began singing his own material and set his course to become one of the greatest singer-songwriters of his generation. Today, Jackson Browne’s voice is still strong and political. He talks with Alec about his new album, Downhill From Everywhere, reflections on a life of activism, and the artists he’d still love to sing with.
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I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing from My Heart. Radio must have some thought it's gonna pull them through somehow. Why the Hotter than Hotter but the sisters of the Sister Fever. Jackson Brown released his self titled debut album, and This Song Rocked Me on the Water in early two when he was just twenty three years old. At that point, he'd already been writing songs professionally for seven years. Part of that time he spent in the heyday of New York City's folk scene. He'd written songs for the likes of Joan Bayez, Linda Ronstadt, The Birds, Greg Allman, and Nico. In nine, Brown moved back to Los Angeles and set his course to become one of the greatest singer songwriters of his generation, known for his political activism and his honest, self reflective lyrics. Jackson Brown's fourteen studio albums have sold over eighteen million copies. Bruce Springsteen inducted him into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in two thousand four. Jackson Brown comes from a family of musicians, journalists, and dreamers. His grandfather spent a decade building a stone house in Highland Park, Los Angeles, complete with a huge pipe organ in the basement. My father played organ in silent movies. Actually no, yeah, And there was a pipe organ in the house that I grew up in. It was in the chapel and it was built by the Angels Organ Company. I mean I personally broke the organ when I was a kid, because you could go behind the pipes and play around. It was like a secret passageway. But I must have put my foot through something, a bellows or something. Your grandfather and your father playing the organ, you broke the organ. YEA, be very clear about now. You know I was reading about you. I mean, obviously I knew something about you, and I knew a lot about the songs you've written, but I didn't know about your earliest life where when you were very young you left to go to New York where you were right out of high school. Is that correct? Yeah? Pretty much? Yeah, now we know why? What was what was the calling to go to New York? You know the music I was listening to was all coming from Cambridge and Greenwich Village, you know, the folk meccas where those two places on the East Coast, and even though folk music was from all over the country, the people who were doing it, we're coming out of New York. And I would meet players that were playing in say, Huntington's Beach, you know, and they were from New York. And I just wanted to go, but my friends invited me to go to drive with him to New York. It took us three and a quarter days. We just drove straight from l A to New York with three guys sharing the gas. And there I was in New York in the snow with my Penny loafers and my T shirt. You know. It's like you're a California by birth. Not really, I was born in Germany, but my but yeah, my my grandfather came to California and when he was young, and so my family is from California. You went from Germany to California when you were how old three. Who were some of the people that were influences you in terms of folk music, Well, Joan Bayez and then Bob Dylan, of course he played a lot of folk music as well as you know, writing songs. And Kurnel Ray and Glover and they made a record called Blues reckon Hollers and I like the blues. I listened to a lot of blues records, and that's what I mean. Also, when I say folk music, I mean folk, you know, country blues and Mississippi John Hurt, you know Doc Watson and all these, you know, both white and black country musicians. And when you went to New York, what was that like? Where did it start for you? There? You we're writing music with who? And where? I was writing my own songs. But I wasn't really writing with anybody there. I was there for I wasn't there for very long. Three or four months, Tim Buckley was playing at this club in the village and he was sort of sharing the bill with artists named Nko was and it was Andy Warhol's sort of barring that he's set up to, you know, do installations. And anyway, Tim Tommy Niko was looking for a new company. So I got the job doing that, except Andy didn't want it to seem like folk music, and they wanted her to sing from inside of a plexiglass box. She didn't want to do that. She was not really trying to be a spectacle. She was trying to be a musician. So anyway, that's really all that happened. I lived on the Lower East Side with a friend of mine that was doing his conscious objector or alternate service by working in a head start. And uh we lived down like Clinton and de Lancey and but uh, you know, I was only there for a few months. Why it was New York. Note for you, I got kind of homesick. Yeah, I've thought many times about what I might have done had I stayed there. You know. One of the things that happened was I got robbed buying clothes. I had like been paid and I had a bunch of money and I wanted to Actually it was a close store that famously Bob Dylan had bought a lot of clothes there and stuff. I went in this place, I left my jacket hanging on a hook and the dressing room, and I went to go pay for the clothes. I bought him that my wallet was gone, and so I didn't buy the clothes, and I sort of went home penniless. But about New York, it was interesting to me because people were friendly. I've been living in Orange County, where people were more less hostile to people that looked like me. And if you were a freaking Orange County you had. It was hardcore. You had to be you know, committed, Yeah, committed exactly. We're we're in Orange County. What town were you? Fuller? But I lived all over Orange County because friends of mine would get a house at the beach and they'd be living in Huntington's or they'd be living in Newport. There were a lot of freaks. Now, when you leave New York, you go back to l a driven by work, music, opportunity, songwriting, or you just want to go home. Well, I always wanted to record my songs. As a matter of fact, one of the first things that happened when I got back was I was asked by a friend of mine who was in a band. There was a band that I hung around with a lot called the Gentle Soul, and I hung around on their house and everything was so communal in those days. People just lived together a lot. So anyway, I was invited to audition for that band, and that's where I met Jesse Ed Davis, the great guitar player who played on my first single, Doctor My Eyes. The audition didn't come to anything, and I didn't see how it could because I didn't really know how to be in a band. I wasn't in bands in high school. I just you know, I was just a songwriter. The other guy I met in that audition was Leroy Marinell, who co wrote Where ofs of London Good and Want to Tell Later? So it is an interesting group of people, but in the end none of us joined that band. Dctor my Eyes as your first single you record, and what's the path to writing songs? Because I'm assuming that this a period of your young life before you become the Jackson Brown. We all know you weren't performing and you were only writing songs or you were doing both. Oh No, I sang in clubs. Yeah, I sang my songs, and I really I didn't sing so well. Even though I knew a lot of folks songs, I'm out of sang them all the time. I sang blues and folks songs and traditional songs, and especially learning guitar things like Mississippi John Heard or Dave Van Rock guitar pieces or Doc Watson. I mean, it was part a group of people who were crazy about music, and that was the thing that drove everything for me. But as far as playing, I guess I felt that I had the right to sing these songs since I wrote them. Otherwise, who would listen to me singing? As a man of fact, I remember sitting up singing songs at a party and this friend of mine, a good friend of mine, sort of gently tried to tell me, Look, you know you play really well, but you know you shouldn't. You shouldn't try to sing. The record of the woman who told Jackson Brown I'd cool it on the singing front of the atwork. Who wasn't that said that to Jackson Brown? Well, her name was Ruth and Kendall ruth An. If you're out there, we wanted to introduce you to Jackson Brown, who sold eighteen million records singing. But anyway, Um, when you get back from New York, what's the gap between arriving back in California wherever you are and dr my eyes gets pressed? You go? You you make a record? Years? It was years? Yeah? Was it really four or five years? Yeah? At the time it was, I was eighteen. So I made my first record when I was about twenty two, I guess. So it was about four years before I got anything going. But I I'd go to the true Buddoor and I'd sing on Monday nights in the open mic there, and I would play in little clubs and the beach towns and I had so much time. It was fantastic. And also I didn't even have a car for most of that. I finally got a car when I was about twenty or something, I don't know. I was living in Echo Park for a long time without a car, and my best friend just finally got sick of driving there to get me and bring me back to Hollywood. All I did was play, and I kind of longed for that. And how did Doctor my Eyes get made into a record? Well, that was the one song I had written that was probably up tempo enough and short enough and simple enough to make it on the radio. And it was understood. I mean, at least I understood that it might not be your best song that guts on the radio, but if it was your shortest, fastest song, it might. Actually they're really serious about that. Records had to be not more than three minutes long better fact to fifty two was ideal, and how you say anything in two minutes? But most of my songs were really long, five or six minutes, and dr minus could be made into that kind of a song, and it was you know, you were kind of obligated to try, but it never occurred to me that it would actually work, that we'd get on I'd get on the radio. So you took that song to someone or someone heard you playing in the club. Oh no, no, no, no, it was one of my songs like early on, like for instance, like in New York, I was making demo. I had been signed to a publishing company in high school, so I was given five advanced I was signed, well, I signed away half of the songs to a record company, Elector of Records had a publishing company called Nina Music. And my best friend not only got signed to that publishing company but made a record for Electra. So it was I was sort of in line to maybe get recorded eventually, you know, if I things shaped up. So it's a long and winding road. But there was a record that got made at the Elector, but it it didn't wasn't any good and didn't get released. So okay, so back to singing out the Monday Night hoots at the True Boodoor. And uh, eventually I did start being managed by David Geffin, And you want to know how that happened? And simply sent him a recording and a photograph, and the recording was of my song Jamaica Say you Will, and it was it was recording made in a kind of a publisher's demo with Glenn Fry singing and playing guitar and me playing piano and John David South there playing the drums and singing, and those guys sang really great and that it sounded pretty good. And then eventually I called in to see what was going on and I was invited to come in and talk with David geffin And for those who don't know, David Geffen managed Laura Niro, he managed christ By Sills and Nash, and his partner in his management company managed Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. He's really responsible for making songwriters sort of the focus of music and those at that time it was already happening, but he was the one in the music business that said, look, I think you know this is what really matters. So anyway, so yeah, I met with him and he said, okay, I'll manage you, and I was like, you will, so good. Then he then really the next thing he said was you don't We're not in her, you know, well, you're gonna work on your singing, and which I was, you know, I mean, it was pretty much. It was obvious that I needed to get better, so I spent time doing that. And also he he took me around to a lot of record companies. He took me to Elector, where I had already been. It's hilarious because then I am sitting in the office of Jack Holsman, whom I know, who had already signed me to his label then and I had, like you know, asked to be released after they didn't release the album. But I mean Jack Holsman, he owned the publishing company that owned my music Mina Nina Nina music. Well, Geffen asked him too, and he did give me back my publishing. Have you ever heard of such a thing? It was wild And to this day, I mean, I'm indebted to him. And he he was a kind of as exceptional record man. Well, while he built that record company on the back of a vespa, he literally recorded the artist, he mastered the records, he pressed them, he put him in a box on the back of his vesp and he took him to the record stores all over Manhattan and he built elected records that way, and he was very opinionated about everything music and especially but he was kind of a hero to me. And there I was in his office and he didn't sign me. Then he Geffen walks in with me and he didn't he didn't think I was there yet. But he also took me to see Clive Davis. He took me to you know, he asked Ahmed Ard again to sign me, and none of these people couldn't. He decided to open his own record company. And when you throughout your career, when you're writing music, is there a kind of a a sense that there's a Jackson Brown sound now? If anything, I thought I had some good songs and I was really just trying to learn to sing. And also I had the great, great good fortune to make friends with a drummer named Russell Kunkle. Russ was really cool and he was people were nice to me. I mean, I one time I ran into Jim Kelton, who was also very cool, and he was a drummer on a session that they were doing, Johnny Rivers was recording one of my songs, and they befriended me. They were very very kind. So Russ said, just so you know, if when you get ready to make your record whenever that is, I want to I want you to call me. I want to play on your record. So I did. I called the people that I knew and who had been friendly to me. And that's that's the amount. That's the degree at which I strategized about anything. It's just like, call up some of you knows a good drummer, and you know, call a friend. I don't. I still don't know how to call up somebody I don't know and asked if we can make music together. I still don't. I don't know how to do that. Who's Who's someone you wanted to call? I'm happy to call them for you. By the way, Hello, it's Alec Jackson's feeling a little uptight, you said. Russ Kunkle. Russ Kunkle and lees Clara played on that record and they made sound really. I mean, I listened to it the other day, and you know, I said, I spent years think it was kind of rudimentary and that I was not much of a singer yet, and I was. But really they really imbuted it with a kind of confidence and a kind of they brought the best out of the songs and when I hear it now, I think this is okay, this is pretty good. A matter of fact, Dr Myers comes down, I think, well, this is really good, and by standards that I didn't even have at the time. I mean, there's this piano part that starts the song that goes did und and and and well when I wrote it, I just did that through the whole song, and you it's like something give me a bouncy seat. It was like that, kind of just trying to give you the impression that they were drums, you know. So when we got in the studio with the drummer and we said, well, we can't do that, and which shall I do? And I just said, well, I'll do like the Beatles, you know, bump bump, bump, bump bump, and you know, magically, the great musicians I had, Russ and Lee just made it sound incredible. So did the interesting and thinking about that song as it was recorded with based in conga's not drums, and that the drums were over dubbed. And I don't know if anybody listening knows what the difference would be, because mostly congas get added to something in American music, sort of an added element. Of percussion. But in fact, when there's a conga player in the band and things are based on that groove, when it's like taking it to the streets or little feats, incredible songs, you know, like it makes a huge difference. It's built into the DNA of the song that there's a swing. You know, Russell was playing this gang to get them to take it to doom boom, and it gives it this balance and this swing that I think now is like I really value it. At the time, I thought, well, we're doing the best we can making this song. This a little bit, it's short. I mean, I didn't I didn't think it was my best song. Where do you think is your best song? I'm sure it's impossible to pick one. Oh, well, what's one that comes to mind? What's the song when you wrote the song? Well, we're gonna get back to I'm gonna I'm gonna go to another place, which is that because you do downplay you were singing early on, and was there a period where I mean, and you're a famous singer, so if you're if you're insecure about your singing in the early days, were there songs you wrote where you said to yourself. I'm not gonna sing this, I'm gonna hand it to somebody else. Did you pass it on to somebody else? Well, lots of people still recorded my song before I did. But it wasn't that I had passed them to him that they did me a favorite by recording my songs. I mean, like Tom Rush recorded a song of mine that I still haven't played. I I was a songwriter, and I wouldn't say I was insecure. I just knew very well that I didn't sing well. Where there were some there were their songs you wrote that you thought were better sung by someone else. Yeah, that's always been the case, actually, you know, like Greg Allman's version of These Days. I mean I recorded that I didn't put on my first album, and I've almost forgotten about the song, and he recorded it. But also I gotta say, like that song was recorded by Nico before anybody else recorded it. And I played the guitar part on her record, and she it was so unique, the sound of her voice and her accent, and the fact that in order her to sing the song and for me to play how I played, I mean when I wrote it, I had to play it way up the neck and put a cape book on the guitar so that it sounded very shiny, and the combination of that chiny guitar part and her wonderful deep voice and her German accent, you know, it's a very iconic performance. And I think it's more famous, you know, for her, because of her than it is for me. And I've a lot of people recorded, though, I mean Tom rushed, lots of people recorded these days, Glenn Campbell. And funny, when Glenn Campbell recorded, he basically recorded her version of it. So you wanted other people to record your songs until you were similar to Carol King in that way. Yeah, if I hear myself saying that I was similar to Carol Kake, Carol King some of the greatest songs of all time when she was a housewife, you know. Yeah, the songwriters wrote at home, you know. And when when I met Carol, she told me, I get the kids after school by nine o'clock and then I've got a few hours to work because we're talking about work habits, you know, because I didn't have any, you know, at that time. Her daughter was about sixteen, and she came in the room and you know, she's just dealing with life the way everybody I mean, but that's that's what's great about her music. It's about the fundamentals of life. You know. She was really a big deal to me. But then when she wanted to become a singer songwriter, I think it's because James Taylor had really kind of shown everyone and they were friends, you know, just she really saw that you could you could actually be the person who wrote the song singing this song, and that was there was an added interest there. And I really believe that people should sing their own songs. I used to sing Warren Zevon's songs before I got him recorded, because I wanted people to hear the song. So I would sing a Mohammed's radio. I would sing Warolves of London and my record come and saying well, Warolvers Londen, you're gonna record that right, like no, no, no no, I want Warren to record that. You know the real do Jackson Brown this song my Cleveland Heart is on his new album Downhill from Everywhere. I'm gonna make a future change we really were. I need somebody else who says to see me, we need I expect changes. Star well fun to get clean if you love conversations with pioneering singer songwriters, be sure to check out my interview with Carly Simon. A little over fifty years ago, a show at the Troubadour changed her life. Three of us rehearsed in New York for three days, and then we went out to l a And by that time, I'm hoped for Cats open for Cat six April six, and that changed things for you. That was that. That was a convincing night. We played two shows every night and four shows on the weekend. I met all all kinds of people. It was like the lights you were shining. I couldn't say no at that point. And I and even though I was suffering tremendous stage fright, I had various things that tricked me out of being afraid. Here the rest of my talk with Carly Simon at Here's the Thing dot Org. After the break, Jackson Brown talks about collaborating with a new generation of singer songwriters like Phoebe Bridgers. I'm Alec Baldwin and you were listening to Here's the Thing The singer steps from the beginning and to the vanished into the air, trying to understand how our lives head, let us look at hard. There was nobody at every such an empty surprise long. This song, Late for the Sky, is from Jackson Brown's third studio album of the same name, released in nineteen seventy four. Jackson Brown is on tour with James Taylor this summer. The pandemic delayed the release of his eightist album and tour. Jackson Brown contracted COVID in March of I got it at a show that was being done. We're being very careful, trying to distance and elbow bump and sanitized. And you got it and I got it. How did you feel? What was it like? It wasn't a very bad case. You know, I didn't have any problem breathing and I was I felt well again in a couple of weeks, so, and I could tell I was going to get better. I just didn't get that sick. And your son got it too, correct. Yeah. I came back from New York and we got together, and of course my son and I hugged, and you know, I can't be helped. But that's when everything everything shut down, and here we are still trying to get get it back up and running it. It It looks it looks good now. One of the songs on your new album, it's called My Cleveland Heart, and I wanted you to talk about that, about what what was the genesis of that song. Well, I happened to be in Cleveland and driving by a Billings and what's that and they said that's Cleveland Heart And I said, what's Cleveland Heart? And he said, well, that's where they make the artificial hearts. And I thought, oh, I could use one of those. Why do you feel this this one heart? Yeah, just like one that doesn't break, They don't ache, you know, they don't make mistakes, and um, it's not they're not that much to the song. But it was really fun to make a video of me getting this artificial heart. And it's enormous too. It looks made out of motorcycle parts and sort of put this thing in my chest. It's like, oh I but it's satirical and surreal to and it was. It sort of made a fun video because the doctors that are operating on me, the actual players in my band I mean, and then begin to play. The metaphors are are really abundant there, you know, I mean, they saved my life every night. They saved my life on stage and in a way they do like do a sort of heart transplant. How did Phoebe Bridgers get to become person that's going to eat your heart? Well, that was just that was very spontaneous. We didn't we didn't plan the video for her eat my heart. It's just the way that happened with I know Phoebe and I'm a huge fan of hers, And as a matter of fact, one of the reasons I picked that director was that she had worked with Phoebe and I liked the video that they made. And I had just been working with her because she invited me to sing on her song Kyoto, an acoustic version of that, and she invited me to sing on it. So I think somebody said, oh, you know, Phoebe could be one of the nurses in this video and your surgery. And I said, oh, yeah, great, let let's asked her and she's that she was game. So once I knew that she was going to be a nurse, I thought, you know, maybe, yeah, when they take my heart out, maybe they can glory this, you know, maybe they can hand it to her and she could receive my heart. And then it was somebody else who knows her quite well, who said yeah, and she eats it. It was her producer Tony Bergh said, they're gonna handle the heart and then she's off screen, but then they're gonna go back to showing or just standing off to one side with my heart. And I thought, that's not real. That's what they wouldn't do that, right. I was discussing with Tony and he said, yeah, she eats it or she takes a bite, you know. And apparently it's like, you know, everybody thinks it's really kind of apropos of who Phoebe is. She Phoebe is very Her songs are so dark. One of the things I love about it about her music, you know. And so that's how that happened. And of course that director is so great, her her use of light and location. What is that director's name. Her name is Alyssa torvin In. She also did a great video with Pink But the album, the song is called Cleveland. Heart of the album itself is called Downhill from Everywhere? And what was the genesis of that? Are we downhill now from everywhere? Well, the ocean is downhill from everywhere? And everything in the song is something that winds up in the ocean. Plastic. It's actually about plastic that song. I remember when I lived in l A. And of course you'd see all the storm drains that said, you know, drains to the ocean, And I remember, forget the l A Weekly talked about how twenty year veteran lifeguards in the beach department there in Venice were contracting kidney cancer from all of the pollutants in the bay. I worked with heel the bay, the Bologna wet lands. They were constantly breaching and having these blowouts and during storms and all kinds of untreated sewage going into the bay. And yeah, and when it rains in l A, you gotta stay out of the water because the runoff into the harbor water marks it absolutely toxic. What I wanted to get to is your activism. I just recently they closed the Indian Point reactor here, and I've worked to shut down utility reactors for probably run around twenty five years now with disparate groups. And you, of course had a very very serious relationship with the anti nuclear movement. I believe that three Mile Island happened in March of seventy nine. You helped form Muse that same are, correct, Yeah, and then you perform at the No Nukes concert in September of that same year. Correct, Yeah, we we had formed Muse and we're planning the concert before Three Miles melted down and before the release of that pivotal movie China Syndrome, right, really sort of went into the problems and in a feature film. So all that happened all at once, and that gave a lot of currency and a lot of emphasis. At what point in your life did you decide to take that on. You're writing songs, things start to go well, David Geffen's representing it. When do you decide you wanted to get active publicly? You know, I was raised in the sixties, and so I was a member of Cores of the Congress of Racial Equality, and I would i'd take part in, you know, demonstrations. I didn't really have songs about these things. You know, there was plenty of movement songs. Actually, a lot of the songs that I knew in the civil rights era were actually from the labor movement in the thirties. So there's a lot in the folk music that has a kind of activism component, or it has a social consciousness component, and particularly the early songs of Bob Dylan did so there was a strong call to be involved, to do things that would move society in the right direction. And I think that we, like so many people, we assume that that was always happening, and it was always going to happen, and that the arc of justice and so on and all that was. It was just an assured thing that we were moving forward. Until you know, about five years ago, you didn't worry it was going to hurt your career. No, no, And I didn't really believe that it did. Although I think when you start writing songs about it, that's the question whether or not people want to hear anti war songs or they want to hear songs about nuclear power. It's like, if people are averse to hearing, you know, about society's problems, that they're not going to want to hear it in a song. I'm a songwriter, I talk about life. You know, you want to talk about what's happening in the real world. You can't just barricade yourself off in this entertainment land. Like what's going on was like a huge surprise to everybody. The height of the Vietnam War, that like a singer like Marvin Gay would come out with a song that was considered a protest song. Berry Goorey didn't want to release it, but it was it was too good, it was too true to be denied. And I think that for that matter. John Lennon also, you know the height of the Beatles, you know, as they broke up, he ban singing songs about his personal development. I mean, you know, he famously went through the primal screen therapy and stuff, but he began writing songs like mother, you had me, but I didn't have you. You know, Father, you left me, but I never left you. That was so powerful. That's what songwriting was about from me. And I mean Bob Dylan was you know, right at that sort of crux. If every one of these moments when things doubled down and people were singing about what was really going on in the life and what was really going on in the world, and all these people remind you is that this music has been made all along. I mean there's songs Woody got three songs, and Bob Dylan songs and Pete Seegers songs, Joan Bias. This is a big part of what music has always been. And it was only in Hollywood that you were sort of told, don't try to make any political points here. Maybe it's New York to maybe simply the hierarchy, the financial hierarchy of the country, you know, doesn't want anybody waking up. Singer, songwriter and activist Jackson Brown. When we Return, Jackson Brown talks about the songs that still move him to tears. Follow here's the thing on the I Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. While you're there, leave us a review. I'm Alec Baldwin and you were listening to hear the things. Running on Empty is the title track to Jackson Brown's seven live album, recorded at the Merryweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland. Brown was part of l A's Laurel Canyon music scene in the nineteen seventies. Musicians like Joni Mitchell, Bonnie Rait, Crosby Stills, Nash and Young, and the Eagles often dropped by each other's houses to play music together. Brown still marvels at how he was able to meet some of his heroes from the beginning. I met people that I really had a huge admiration for like David Crosby, you know, sang on my first album. I mean he's sort of it's almost like being knighted or something, you know, Like he like he gave me the accolade of being of singing Army down four or five of my songs. And I really learned so much of how to work, how to get what I get in the studio from him. And there was a concert I did one time where Crosby, Sils and Nash wear there, but Neil wasn't there, and I was on stage that there's a picture of me with Crossil, Nash and Brown. It's like like I thought, well, that's wild, you know. And it was a long time ago. But I gotta say the people that I admire the most are people I'm still very shy about and don't even know how to overcome that my admiration enough to be really really good friends with. I mean, I can't quite get over it, you know, what they mean to me and what the music meant to me. Springsteen inducted you into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. M Is he a friend of yours? And when you admire yeah yeah, yeah, And he and we met We met at a gig that we were both doing at Villanova, and he actually he was opening from me, and I've never seen him. I had met him. We already knew each other because he came into a guest set when I was playing acoustically at this club called the Main Point in Philadelphia, and so we knew each other, and I knew his music and saw me that I was doing this gig with Bruce and that he was you know that, I he said, you're what you were, you were gonna follow Bruce. I don't know, I don't think you should do that. It it really bothered me, pissed me off of it. What do you mean, I'm like, But then I saw this show and it was really I mean, I saw what he was doing and it was just astounding. He's a thing unto himself, and he amplified so much of what he saw in rock and roll to a degree to almost make it into another art form. But I gotta say I feel quite apart from all of that. I mean, I try to learn from everything that I that I love. I try to take it in and learn part of it or something how how to applies to what I want to do. But I feel like what I do is quite different. I mean, I'm always put together with the Eagles, but when I think about it, we really wrote about very different things. And for that matter, like take it easy as a very you know, it's a song that I wrote with Glenn Fry, and so I'm linked in that way forever and I'm very happy about it. But it wouldn't have been that song if Glenn Fry had not done what he did. He wrote about what he writes about. I write about what I write about, and like standing on the corner in Windsory, Arizona, I see an Indian guy. I see it, A tall Indian guy with a white cowboy hat, you know, took hoise shirt, standing on the corner, and I probably would have written about him. Of course, Glenn said, you wrote about this a girl, my lord in a flatbed forward. Yeah, slowing down to look at men, take a look at me. That's pure Glenn Fry. That's like, well, I've always said, you musicians have this beautiful reality. Music is so much more powerful than film and television because you can consume it anywhere in the shower, while you're having sex, while you're jogging, while you're in the car. Music is in our lives in a way that you don't have to make that kind of appointment visually with movies and TV. And how beautiful for you. You can just sit down and write, and you can just sit down and play, and it's all self generated. It's you. It comes from you, and the and and and and the film business that's so collaborative. But who's one example or more of someone you always dreamed of working with and you wish you've been able to work with them, that you just love their music for many generations, Oh god, there are so many. Singing with Phoebe Bridges was was a big deal for me because I love somebody's I mean, maybe I'd like to do something with Lucinda Williams. You know, she's one of my favorites, and I don't know how she does what she does. It's just so mysterious to me that I can't figure out how I bring that to. You know, bring that about, I guess you'd have to write a song together or something. So being invited, you know, it's almost the necessary component for me. So who do I want to call me up and invite to sing with them? Where write a song with Lucinda would be great. Uh. You know, I love women writers, songwriters. I Sean Colvin, but I don't think of it like that. I got to play with some wonderful musicians this last weekend we did a live stream event for organization called Plastic Pollution Coalition, and the lineup it was everybody's sang one song by themselves in one song with somebody else, but it was Ben Harper, keV mo Mandy Moore, Taylor Goldsmith and and are A George who's my god daughter, but it's also who is like the singer and the great group The Bird and the Bee, and she's been in a bunch of bands and as an artist in her own right. But also a group called the Watkins Family Hour, which are Sarah and Shawn Watkins, who I've played with before. So I can't write name them, but I just to show you, I mean, when stuff happens, it happens by accident. It's almost got to be an accident. Like I told you, I can't call people to say I want to write a song with you. A matter of fact, some of those people have invited me to write a song with him, and I don't know how to even I don't even know why that I can accept that offer, you know, like I guess I want to give that phone call. I want to see you at your house and someone you love it in my own calls because you know something, man, it's just time has come. The time has come for you went. How to just do this? Man? We gotta do this song. We you know, we talked about it in London, we talked about it in Rio. I saw you get at the airport in Miami and we talked about it. And now the time has come for us to do that song. And you're like, yeah, I'm gonna call you back. I'll call you back tomorrow. I have tremendous performance anxiety. You still do. Look Carol King and asked me to let's write, get together, write a song. And she came over my house and we spent afternoon. I made a tape of the thing, you know, and we we started hitting an idea there and I'm that was like thirty years ago. I'm still working on that song. I always tell them, Look, I'm the slowest writer you ever. You know, we're gonna say that. Thank you for listening to interview with Jackson Brown The slowest writer in rock and roll history. Is there a song because your songs are so emotional, some of them, they're very powerful emotionally, And is there a song where when you play it it still moves you. Well, honestly, this sound like bragging, but they that's what they do to me. Not every song is that kind of a song, but I mean, there are a number of songs that do that to me. And that's what I learned going out solo acoustic, was that that's the only business I have being there is that those This song still moved me. And it's real because you're pretty much naked when you're up there, just by yourself. But I would say that there was a song on my recent record that I was faving trouble finishing because I kept crying as I was trying to. I mean, there weren't even my lines. I was collaborating with a guy on this song called Love is Love. It's a song that I wrote in Haiti, and we were talking about this guy who is a priest that has built schools and hospitals in Haiti and he rides around on recycle and he's in this song and I said that, I say, Rick writes a motorbike through the worst slums of the city, and I and my friend I said, well, how what would you say about Father Rick? And he says, well, the father and the doctor to the poorest of the poor. And for some reason that just messed me up, because I've seen the work that he's done, and I've seen the people that he helps and ministers too, and it does now it gives me chills to say those words, and I why wouldn't I didn't write them that My my collaborator, David Bell, wrote those words. But every time I'd sing that, I mean, it had and I began laughing about it. But I'm trying to finish the song. But this song has like a very big SOB factor in it. I mean, he's like messing me up to say these lines. There was a line and Late for the Sky that did that same thing when I wrote it. But by the time it's a song, it doesn't make me cry. But you know who does that? Like Bonnie Rate sings Love has No Pride, and she would cry real tears all through the song she liked. Just everybody cried. I mean it's like that she was ding through. It was kind of a miracle. But that just happens to her when she sings that song. And I don't know how she can sing a cry, but but she did. Also when we were at the Hall of Fame Anniversary show and the Cross Bustles and Nash hosted Bonnie and hosted me and hosted James Taylor, She's sang Love has No Pride with David and Graham and she she did it again. She just brings it to that place where that song she inhabits. That song. It's so it's so real that, I mean, she just comes to tears and brings so many of the people to tears too. Are you know what song you sing is so moving to me? I mean the most I'm not gonna see it the most beautiful song. And you have a lot of beautiful songs, but I love Linda Paloma. That's a beautiful song. Wonderful, thank you. What was the inspiration for that song? Well, I wrote that from my wife and my first wife, and we we spent the whole first month we knew each other in Mexican restaurants, listening to mariachi music and drinking. They would always play her this song Kuokoko La Paloma. So I wanted to write her a Paloma song, you know, and they would really sing to her. She was really beautiful and she knew that song. But when I when I wrote it, of course it was some time after that, but it was a tribute to her. Really, that's how the song came about. Well listen, I'm glad you're healthy. Best of luck on the tour with James Taylor. Although you don't need luck when it's the two of you, it sounds like a lock to me. It would be great. And thank you so much for doing this with us. Thanks for having me on. I really enjoyed talking with you. Jackson Brown. This is Linda Paloma from his fourth album The Pretender. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing has brought to you by my Heart Radio. At the moment you think you're darklas started, you were filled with man being love. Scenes from the songs of Love. I was the Less Sky and you were my Man down. And the music that played in your years goes a little bit fair to each day. Can you find yourself looking se