While identified as an early 70s avenue of rock music, the most preeminent figures of the singer-songwriter movement, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and Carole King had all in fact, been forging careers through the previous decade. Each through varying routes had gravitated to Los Angeles which had become base camp for those artists pairing introspective lyrics with sparse, folk-orientated melodies.
The standard of their recorded output was so high that as early as 1972 each had one (at least) genuine masterpiece in the cannon of great albums, their ruminations on love, loss, self-fulfillment and self-denial finding deep engagement with the Woodstock generation as they saw 60s idealism turn to uncertainty and confusion.
Given they had chronicled the era from a personal and, to slightly lesser extent, political perspective, it may have appeared there was not much left to say on the human condition as the 70s continued to unfold. But that would be to overlook the auspicious debut LP of Jackson Browne, an L.A.-based word wizard whose poetic, resonant lines immediately cast him as a formidable songsmith, his remarkable self-titled first album the initial step on a road that by 1978 would have Rolling Stone magazine declare him ‘the most accomplished lyricist of the 70s.’
For twenty-three-year-old Browne (born October 9 1948 in Heidelberg, West Germany, his father a US serviceman who returned to Los Angeles when son Jackson was three), such praise was in the future – yet even before issuing ‘JACKSON BROWNE’ (January 1972) there had been no shortage of acclaim and activity arising from his songs, several of which were in widespread circulation.
After playing guitar in a couple of local groups, one of whom, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, would become an influential country rock ensemble, Browne left California for New York where in 1967 he contributed guitar to the debut album (‘Chelsea Girl’) of Andy Warhol protégé Nico. On the record she covered three of his songs, including the first of many renditions down the years of ‘These Days’ a work of stunning lyrical maturity for one not yet 18.
On returning to Los Angeles in 1969, a few of his compositions found their way to the repertoire of major rock acts such as The Byrds and Linda Ronstadt along with folk balladeer Tom Rush, but as a singer-instrumentalist in his own right Browne made little headway until coming to the attention of L.A. music scene dynamo David Geffen.
After failing to land Browne a record deal, in 1971 Geffen formed his own label, Asylum, and on putting pen to paper with the fledgling company plans were formulated in regard to making an album. With studio time booked at Crystal Sound in Hollywood, Richard Sanford Orshoff, having recently engineered the Taylor best-seller ‘Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon’ was enlisted as producer, bassist Leland Sklar and drummer Russ Kunkel, known for their work with Taylor, among others, were also hired.
With David Crosby providing harmony vocals and support at different times from four stellar guitarists, great faith was placed in Browne (alternating between piano and acoustic guitar), who repays the trust with a compelling collection, evocative in its candour and poignancy, one that immediately announces him as a significant talent.
For the opening cut he selects ‘Jamacia Say You Will‘ a song already in the public domain after being recorded by The Byrds on their recent ‘Byrdmaniax‘ set, although their string-laden version does not bare comparison to his plaintive piano ballad arrangement that sounds more in keeping with the perceived conception of the song.
The daughter of a sea-faring man, Jamacia and the composer are embroiled in a tender, yet secretive relationship, (‘As we lay in the tall grass where the shadows fell/Hiding from the children so they would not tell’), the first chorus a plea for their love to endure no matter what fate has in store:
‘Jamaica, say you will/Help me find a way to fill these empty hours/Say you will come again tomorrow.‘
This melodic, serene piece features expressive acoustic guitar work from Byrd-Clarence White, who sang lead vocal on their orchestrated take. With Browne opting for a simple but more effective structure, it allows him room to convey without distraction the ultimately sad conclusion:
‘Jamaica was a sweet young woman, I loved her true/She was a comfort and a mercy through and through/Hiding from this world together, next thing I knew/They had brought her things down to the bay/What could I do?’
While they could be taken as inference to those of Hollywood given Browne grew up nearby, ‘A Child in These Hills‘ sounds more from the viewpoint of a figure searching a wilderness (‘I am a child in these hills/And looking for water/And looking for life/Who will show me the river and ask me my name?/Is there nobody here who will do that?’)
With Browne leading the piece on acoustic guitar, top notch session player Albert Lee adds decoration with tasteful electric guitar work, the image of arriving at the water edge, (‘I will come to the river/As I choose to be gone/From the house of my father,‘) creating baptism connotations, the sense of leaving childhood for manhood in beginning a new journey through life, depicted in the closing harmonica refrain of Jim Fadden who simulates a swiftly moving train.
In the deeply personal, painstakingly poignant ‘Song for Adam‘ the metaphor changes from flowing water to a burning candle – this autobiographical composition relaying the possible circumstances in which a friend has died.
Browne has confirmed the song relates to the relatively short life of Adam Saylor who, along with the composer and Greg Copeland, another aspiring singer-songwriter, drove from L.A. to New York in the mid-60s. Narrating the story atop of an acoustic guitar and mournful string section, the matter of how Saylor dies, be it suicide or accident, remains a mystery, ‘Now the story’s told that Adam jumped/But I’m thinking that he fell.’
This haunting track and at almost five and a half minutes the longest on the record, contemplates mortality from a personal perspective, ‘I’m holding out my only candle/Though it’s so little light to find my way/Now this story’s been laid beneath my candle/And it’s shorter every hour as it reaches for the day/Yes, I feel just like a candle in a way,’ but also in the context of Adam and his short life:
‘Though Adam was a friend of mine/I did not know him long/And when I stood myself beside him/I never thought I was as strong/Still, it seems he stopped his singing/In the middle of his song.’
Later, on the uplifting, gospel-tinged ‘Rock Me on the Water‘ he describes the process of dying in a more affirmative way, ‘When my life is over, gonna stand before the Father/But sisters of the sun are gonna rock me on the water now.’ Yet this vibrant cut, built on the sterling piano work of Craig Doerge, is far from an exercise in despair, more an optimistic rallying cry for humanity to bond and serve the greater good, ‘Oh, people, look among you/It’s there your hope must lie‘ – the couplet completed by imagery as stunning as it is instantly memorable, ‘There’s a sea bird above you gliding in one place/Like Jesus in the sky.’
While it might be stretching things to say there is optimism running through the equally upbeat ‘Doctor My Eyes,’ (giving Browne his first hit single on reaching number eight on the U.S. charts in the spring of 1972), there is still stoicism contained within some world-weary observations:
‘Doctor, my eyes have seen the years/And the slow parade of fears without crying/Now I want to understand/I have done all that I could/To see the evil and the good without hiding/You must help me if you can.’
With Browne leading the troupe with some resounding piano chords, (Graham Nash making an uncredited appearance on vocal harmonies), electric guitar ace Jesse Ed Davis contributes a scintillating solo, while Kunkel keeps the propulsion level high with a nice turn on congas, the hardships of life and travails of the world acknowledged but not shied away from:
‘Doctor, my eyes/Tell me what is wrong/Was I unwise to leave them open for so long?‘
Side one closes with the wistful folk ballad ‘From Silver Lake’ the title evoking an east Los Angeles neighborhood close to where Browne lived as a youth. The story, one of sombre reflection on a sibling departing the family home, ‘Did you see our brother?/He was here the other day/But he only came to say that he was leaving,’ the memories tinged with rueful nostalgia:
‘Lately, I remember/Afternoons of smoke and wine/There was nothing we could find but peace and pleasure/And with a smile, he told me/That he wanted just to be/On his way across the sea no man can measure.’
The emotional detail reaches a peak in the counter song that serves as a conclusion, the lines sang by Browne answered by Leah Kunkel (younger sister of Cass Elliot and wife at the time of drummer Russ) in a vocal exchange reminiscent of Simon & Garfunkel – the writer conceivably drawing on personal experience in summoning the moment brother and his partner head out for the future:
‘They’re bound to go (Oh, what do you know?)/And the sun may find me running after them/(Not what I’ve been feeling)/Seeing something far away (The past is healing so slow)/We won’t be back (My tomorrow, gone from sorrow)’
On the utterly captivating ‘Something Fine‘ Browne accompanies himself on acoustic guitar, the melody as subtle as the song in framing a series of personal, yet vivid images:
‘The papers lie there helplessly in a pile outside the door/I’ve tried and tried, but I just can’t remember what they’re for/The world outside is tugging like a beggar at my sleeve/Ah, that’s much too old a story to believe.’
In a mood of relaxed reverie (‘The future hides and the past just slides‘), he looks back with the fondness implied by the title, but can still come up with ‘California’s shaking like an angry child will/Who has asked for love and is unanswered still‘ as a spine-tingling evocation of the locale in which he lives.
Browne again draws on personal experience for the episodic ‘Looking Into You‘, a song of great ambience and affect in which he wanders back through his life both physically and in the mind.
Built on a platform of piano (Browne), the pedal steel guitar of former Burrito Brother ‘Sneaky’ Pete Kleinow and sympathetic bass from Sklar, the author finds himself outside a dwelling he recognises (‘Well, I looked into a house I once lived in/Around the time I first went on my own‘). Browne recalls how he and his friends were unified as a group of people and in the ideals they shared, but is now searching for meaning (‘I’ve come to see where my beginnings have gone‘) in what he has learned. The people who now live there are welcoming, the scene described right down to the observation of ‘their children sat playing on the floor.’
In the parents he discovers kindred spirits (‘Well, we spoke of the changes that would find us farther on/And it left me so warm and so high’), his outlook informed by the standpoint of the most influential modern wordsmith of all, Bob Dylan thus described:
‘Ah, the great song traveler passed through here/And he opened my eyes to the view/And I was among those who called him a prophet/And I asked him what was true.’
The people he met at his previous home, the words of Dylan, the dream of millions in longing for a better world are all acknowledged, yet in the end Browne speaks for himself and those who by 1972 were beginning to lose hope in what peace and love, (Now I’m looking in my life for a truth that is my own‘) had aspired to.
On the positively jaunty ‘Under the Falling Sky‘, Kunkel giving the congas another pummeling while Lee returns with some bouncy guitar lines, Browne describes the mystique of physical attraction (‘Warm and lovely mystery, fire smiling through/Before this moment fades away I want to know you,’). Halfway through he slows the pace to make clear life should be embraced in the present, troubles put aside for the pursuit of spontaneous pleasure:
‘Our shadows wake each day though they don’t know why/They hope and try, live and die/So leave them in their frozen world/Come and be my lover/If only for one stolen moment/We will live forever.’
In contrast, ‘My Opening Farewell‘, the song that closes the record, surveys the ruins of a relationship, the best efforts of those involved unable to prevent an inevitable break-up. The hurt engulfing the room is drawn with cinematic immediacy, he hopeful her intentions will change, she unable to find a change of heart:
‘She turns from her window to me/Sad smile, her apology/Sad reaching to the door/Daylight loses to another evening/And still she spares me the word “goodbye”/And sits alone beside me, fighting her feelings/Struggles to speak, but in the end, can only cry.’
The melancholy is aired through stripped back instrumentation of Browne (acoustic guitar) and Doerge (piano), the male protagonist through the course of the song coming to know his well-intentioned appeals for her to stay will not succeed, ‘But suddenly, it’s so clear to me/That I’d ask her to see what she may never see/And now my kind words find their way back to me.’
It is a downbeat note on which to end, but his supreme turn of phrase attests to an ability, unique in many ways, of already describing personal emotions with more honesty, with the possible exception of Mitchell, than any other songwriter. Indeed, ‘Jackson Browne‘ is such a literate, profound record, it never creates the sense of listening to a debut album.
On release it did reasonable business, climbing to 53 on the Billboard charts (with his widespread success of the late-70s it turned gold, then finally platinum in 1997) and met with a largely positive response from the critics.
In the U.S. Rolling Stone magazine offered praise for ‘songs that are capable of generating a highly-charged, compelling atmosphere,’ while the New Musical Express called it ‘a record crafted with care and purity.’
Noted New York rock scribe Robert Christgau, however, was more ambivalent, awarding the record a ‘B’ in his renowned marking system and while he acknowledged ‘lyrics crafted with intelligence and human decency‘ thought the melodies ‘bland‘ – Christgau, perhaps, less enamored by the artists than the art, having recently disparaged perfectly acceptable albums of West Coast origin from Stephen Stills, James Taylor and David Crosby.
But for those who were and have been moved by ‘Jackson Browne‘ there is barely a word or note that sounds slight or inconsequential – Browne creating high standards for himself while resetting the bar for the singer-songwriter album.
JACKSON BROWNE – JACKSON BROWNE (Released January 20 1972):
Jamaica Say You Will/A Child in These Hills/Song for Adam/Doctor My Eyes/From Silver Lake/Something Fine/Under the Falling Sky/Looking into You/Rock Me on the Water/My Opening Farewell;
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