After being feted for most of the decade several major rock acts felt the critical tide turn against them as the 1970s drew to a close.
Through 1979, The Kinks, ELO, the Eagles and Led Zeppelin all found themselves on the receiving end of music press brickbats in relation to new albums judged to be lacking in substance, (not that bad reviews had a detrimental effect on sales of these records). This trend of sticking it to some of the old guard continued into the following year with Bob Seger subjected to a backlash for his ‘Against the Wind‘ set – the irony not lost on anyone, least of all one suspects the artist, when it topped the U.S. charts for six weeks during the spring of 1980.
If it proved a bittersweet year for Seger the same also applied to 30-year-old Jackson Browne. Having recently been described by Rolling Stone, with some justification it has to be said, as ‘The most accomplished lyricist of the Seventies‘ his sixth album HOLD OUT (June 1980) quickly became the most successful of Browne’s career, but on release attracted a slew of negative notices.
Since releasing his self-titled debut album in 1972, Los Angeles raised Browne (born 9/10/48 in Heidelberg, West Germany, his father attached to the press corps of the U.S. military), had made five albums of thought-provoking country rock none of which, give or take, put a foot wrong. Through the period no other songsmith was writing with quite the same degree of lyrical eloquence, his songs studious ruminations on love, loss, death and the place of an individual within society.
His most recent offering had been the audacious live set ‘Running On Empty‘ (December 1977), Browne including none of his previous repertoire in favour of material never heard before, the autobiographical title-track being the most joyously rocking piece he had ever written. Consisting of tracks recorded on stage, in hotel rooms and even aboard the tour bus, Browne created a loose concept album based upon life on the road, in the process conjuring the most original live L.P. ever attempted.
Proving a huge-seller (reaching number three in the U.S.) the near three-year hiatus that followed ‘Running on Empty‘ effectively marked the end of a chapter for Browne, the passing of time steadily building anticipation for his next album.
Yet when it appeared ‘Hold Out‘ was greeted with widespread disappointment and while not savaged to the extent of ‘Against the Wind‘, like Seger he had disparaging reviews to contend with – while at the same time looking on with delight as the record raced up the charts, this latest collection achieving the only number one placing he would ever enjoy.
If there was a sense ‘Hold Out‘ fell below expectations (reflected most notably in a stinging Rolling Stone appraisal, the magazine previously avid admirers of his music), in part it was due to Browne setting extraordinarily high standards given the remarkable consistency of the albums he had so far made.
While there is no doubt that across the seven tracks the lyrics remain as earnest as ever (to the point of being over-wrought on occasion), the heavyweight candour leaves no room for the lightness of touch so prevalent in his finest work to date.
Through a number of songs Browne, still a romantic at heart, addresses his own relationship with romanticism, asking all manner of questions in regard to honesty, commitment and vulnerability. The eight minute closing cut ‘Hold On Hold Out‘ evokes all three sentiments in what amounts to affirmation of faith in his attachment to Lynne Sweeney, who the following year became Browne’s second wife, first wife Phyllis Major having committed suicide in March 1976.
Whether it actually required such a lengthy piece (towards the end Browne delivers a passage of the lyrics in speaking voice), to make clear his feelings is open to question, indeed, like ‘Hold Out‘ as a whole it sounds stiff and somewhat forced, some of the melodies meanwhile also coming across as too rigid for their own good.
In redefining his sound for a new decade, Browne builds most of the songs upon the layered effect of piano and battery of electronic keyboards. The string synthesiser is frequently used but not once an acoustic guitar which for the moment he has banished to history, confirming the shift to a more contemporary ambience.
This change in emphasis is immediately apparent on the opening track, the swirling organ contribution of Little Feat keyboardist Billy Payne providing the basis of ‘Disco Apocalypse.’
Rather than write a song dipped in the dye of dance music, similar to what the Rolling Stones (‘Miss You‘) and Rod Stewart (‘Do Ya Think I’m Sexy‘) had recently done, Browne formulates an observational piece based on those who gravitate toward the dark allure of downtown late-spots, night clubs where the reality of daily life can be escaped on the dance floor:
‘Where the days turn into the nights/People move into the sounds and sights/Like the moth is drawn into the lights/Like the tight-rope walker into the heights.’
Browne offers no criticism or sympathy in relation to how the city populace carry their burdens from day to day, in fact has more in common with those swaying into the small hours than expected, (‘Tonight’s the night I’m gonna make you mine/Gonna dance right out onto the edge of time/When the sound starts pumpin’/And the lights are flashin‘). This smartly arranged effort comes further enhanced by a telling interjection from Rosemary Butler, whose solo vocal segment against the pulsing keyboards and rock solid drums, give things a strobe light essence without making it a ‘disco’ song:
‘It’s in their hearts/It’s in their hips/It’s in their feet/It’s on their lips/A single sound that never ends/They die each night and live again.’
Supported in the main by an ensemble consisting of Russ Kunkel (drums), Bob Glaub (bass), long-serving sideman David Lindley (lap steel/electric guitar), Payne (keyboards), Craig Doerge (keyboards) along with regular background vocal duo of Butler and Doug Hayward – Browne, while co-producing with Greg Ladanyi, featuring on piano and electric guitar – the musicians are heard occupying more familiar rock-ballad territory in the next up title track.
Ruminating on an entanglement that has ended due to his wanderlust (‘And though I must have known/How easily love is thrown/I took some chances, I don’t know why/There’s not much you can do/You wish that I’d been true/Darlin’ so do I‘), the narrator, accompanied predominantly by the melancholic lap steel guitar incisions of Lindley, in accepting the imminent estrangement (‘Ahh you’re right/You can’t forget the way I lied‘), has come to realise one of them deserves better (‘Just walk away and hold out/For what you know love can be‘).
The other, however, for the time being at least can expect comparable eventualities until learning how to commit:
‘Baby I guess you know my story/Maybe there’s not much left to say/You know the more we talk the more we/Turn each other’s hearts away/Now I’ll be leaving in the morning/Leaving half of me behind/To find the pieces life’s been torn in/And take whatever love I find.’
Reportedly written about fellow singer-songwriter Valerie Carter with whom he had shared a brief dalliance, ‘That Girl Could Sing‘ is a busy, up-tempo piece that offers guesswork and gratitude, (‘She was a friend to me when I needed one/Wasn’t for her I don’t know what I’d done‘) as means of evaluating their attachment.
In this instance it is Browne perplexed by the illusiveness of another (‘You could hold her tight/With all your might/But she’d slip through your arms like the wind‘), his confusion resonating in forceful guitar work and several lines where the vocal is double-tracked.
The subject of the song is depicted as a free spirit, but thought none the less of for that, Browne better served by a less cluttered arrangement when being suitably poetic in his musings:
‘The longer I thought I could might find her/The shorter my vision became/Running in circles behind her/And thinking in terms of the blame/But she couldn’t have been any kinder/If she’d come back and tried to explain/She wasn’t much good a saying goodbye/But that girl was sane.’
Side one closer ‘Boulevard‘, a punchy piece that reached number 19 on the U.S. charts when issued as a single, maintains the energy of the previous track, bold electric guitars and cascading drums (played here by Rick Marotta) establishing the framework of a song that in lasting just over three minutes is the shortest on the record.
The razor sharp riffs and resounding percussion place it firmly in Bruce Springsteen/Tom Petty territory, Browne setting the scene with the gritty opening couplet, ‘Down on the boulevard they take it hard/They look at life with such disregard.’
In making observations such as ‘The kid’s in shock up and down the block‘, Browne notes the harsh realities of urban life, no amount of blue skies or L.A. sunshine able to temper the human climate:
‘The hearts are hard and the times are tough/Down on the boulevard the night’s enough/And time passes slow/Between the store front shadows and the street lights glow/Everybody walks right by like they’re safe or something – They don’t know.’
Sequenced to open side two, ‘Of Missing Persons‘ is a heartfelt piano ballad addressed to Inara, the young daughter of Little Feat front man Lowell George (‘Your father was a rounder/He played that rock and roll/A leaper and a bounder/Down to his gypsy soul‘), who had passed away in June 1979 at the age of 34.
Being a close friend of George, whose slide guitar virtuosity was heard in magnificent fashion on ‘Your Bright Baby Blues‘ a track from Browne’s exceptional 1976 L.P. ‘The Pretender‘ (George, Browne and Valerie Carter also sharing the songwriter credits on ‘Love Needs A Heart‘ from ‘Running On Empty‘), the writer has obviously been deeply saddened by the bereavement.
But in using references to songs George wrote for Little Feat – the title ‘Of Missing Persons‘ having connotations attached to a serene piece penned by the guitarist entitled ‘Long Distance Love’ – the poignant intentions sound clumsy rather than comforting. Browne proves far more emotionally resonant when being succinct in expressing his grief, (‘There’s no way I could tell you/What he meant to me‘) and most moving of all, (‘Does it take a death to learn what a life is worth?’) – George, despite his death the previous year, still credited along with Marotta, Danny Kortchmar and Andrew Gold, for their help in arranging the ‘Hold Out‘ album.
Credited to Lindley and Browne, the delicate ‘Call It a Loan‘ covers ground not dissimilar to that of the title-track, the singer sounding tentative in the face of unsettling emotions, ‘What if this feeling becomes hard to part with.’
The lap steel guitar playing of Lindley is uniformly excellent as uncertainty appears to be getting the better of Browne, who as the lyric unfolds becomes increasingly fatalistic in sensing this love affair will reach a melancholy conclusion, the closing lines shrouded in sombre inevitability:
‘If I’d only known/What your heart cost/Oh… can we call it a loan/And a debt that I owe/On a bet that I lost.’
With its second line reference to gambling (‘The money’s in and the bets are down‘) continuing the notion that any romance-based liaison is a game of chance, Browne goes to great lengths through final track ‘Hold On, Hold Out‘ in making his point.
Steered by the dynamic piano lines of Doerge (who receives the other co-write credit of the record), the piece moves at a brisk pace and while Browne keeps the lyrics flowing, unusually for his material no insights of consequence arrive until the mid-section – which offers clearer articulation of the risk involved in loving someone:
‘Give up your heart and you lose your way/Trusting another to feel that way/Give up your heart and you find yourself/Living for something in somebody else/Sometimes you wonder what happens to love/Sometimes the touch of a friend is enough.’
While the energetic melody sustains a feeling of vitality, the lyrical couplets struggle to retain purpose, going around in circles as Browne labours the issue of how baring their soul makes people feel vulnerable. The spoken word over the music section, amounting to confirmation of being prepared to trust another in sharing love, quickly loses impact for being mawkish and overdone – neither facet previously evident in his writing.
Both Rolling Stone and the New Musical Express, each of whom held Browne in high regard, responded with downbeat appraisals of ‘Hold Out‘, while noted New York rock scribe Robert Christgau bestowed a somewhat churlish C+ mark from his A-D ranking system, a rating which in truth said more about his general disdain for West Coast singer-songwriters than the record in question. Indeed, the album reflected the momentum now attached to the artist’s career in making a steady climb up the U.S. charts, Browne securing the number one slot for one week in September 1980.
The social commentary aspect of his songwriting that was all but missing from ‘Hold Out’, (he had already gained repute for political activism), returned on three ensuing ’80s albums, Browne pointedly criticising U.S foreign policy and Reganomics on the highly-charged 1986 set ‘Lives in the Balance.’
Each album through the period would find him back in favour with the critics without ever threatening to repeat his dawn of the decade success – ‘Hold Out‘ representing the commercial high-water mark and lowest critical tide of Jackson Browne’s career.
JACKSON BROWNE – HOLD OUT (Released June 24 1980):
Disco Apocalypse/Hold Out/That Girl Could Sing/Boulevard/Of Missing Persons/Call It a Loan/Hold On Hold Out;
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