We continue our look back at the music of 50 years ago…..
Songwriters have always fascinated me. It’s a mysterious talent that is hard to understand. The marriage of music and lyric…whether its something simple or profound…or sometimes both….is something that “I’ve never been able to grasp, as hard as I’ve tried”. That last line comes from the pen of Jackson Browne in a much later song. In 1972 we received the first of Browne’s recorded works. His self-titled debut LP (sometimes mis-identified as “Saturate Before Using”) is a stunning collection of song-poems for someone only 23 years old.
The critics had it right. “An auspicious debut that doesnt sound like a debut”….the album “has an eloquent sense of language” and “expresses it’s time and transcends it as well”….”his songs generate a highly charged, compelling atmosphere throughout and sustain that pitch in the listeners mind long after they’ve ended”….”he has the soul of a poet and the stance of a troubadour”…..
Browne had been kicking around LA for sometime…working with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and backing up Nico. He had written some of the songs that would appear on this record and some had been done by others. But he could not get a record deal. David Geffin who worked for Warner Brothers was trying to get the label to sign him. He reportedly told the head of the company that Browne would make them millions. He was told by the WB honcho, “I have millions, why don’t you sign him? So Geffen did, and started what became Asylum Records.
The music is professionally played by the likes of Craig Doerge, Russ Kunkel (some nice conga work on Doctor My Eyes and Under the Falling Sky”), Lee Sklar. And some solid guest spots for Albert Lee, Clarence White, Sneaky Pete Kleinow, Jesse Ed Davis, Jimmie Fadden , Graham Nash and David Crosby.
But the music is only a background for the words. And what words they are. Like John Prine and others before him, the ability to write “old” at such a young age is a true talent. Doctor Mye Eyes, Jamaica Say You Will and Rock Me On The Water are the songs you are most familiar with and they are as solid as it gets. But some of the lesser known tunes on the LP have alot going for them. Browne deals with the suicide of a friend in “Song For Adam”, not the last time he would revisit the topic. Songs of leaving have always been in his ouevre. My Opening Farewell contains the line “Sad eyes are reaching for the door, still she spares me the word Goodbye”.
In the song “Looking Into You” he writes, “And the house that grows older and finally crumbles, that even love cannot rebuild, It’s a hotel at best, you’re here as a guest, You oughta make yourself at home, while you’re waiting for your rest”. It’s not very many 23 year olds that will write about aging and death so proficiently.
In the same song he writes to his lover “Well, I looked into the sky for my anthem, and the words and the music came through, But the words and the music will never touch , the beauty that I’ve seen, looking into you”.
He also has tapped into his beginnings over the years in a few songs. He left home in hit teens to make it in LA and those years of frightening freedom have been fertile soil for his pen.
Browne has had his share of pain and loss over his life. He also has had demons to wrestle with. That he is able to channel that stuff into song-poems for our entertainment and enlightenment is a constant delight and mystery to me.
Here it begins…..
Comments