Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Jackson Browne

Transcript

Jackson Browne · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. In the nineteen seventies, Jackson Brown was known as
0:26
Speaker 1: one of the originators of the care free California classic
0:29
Speaker 1: rock sound, with hits like Doctor My Eyes and Running
0:33
Speaker 1: on Empty Looking. As his career progressed, Jackson Brown's knack
0:50
Speaker 1: for writing soul searching lyrics turned more political. He began
0:53
Speaker 1: to write protest songs that addressed weighty issues like environmental
0:57
Speaker 1: degradation in US foreign policy. Brown continues to use his
1:01
Speaker 1: music as a vehicle for change today. His latest album,
1:04
Speaker 1: Downhill from Everywhere, was inspired by a documentary about the
1:08
Speaker 1: Pacific garbage back and our impact on the planning. On
1:12
Speaker 1: today's episode, Bruce Headlam talks to Jackson Brown about how
1:15
Speaker 1: he is able to turn catastrophic headlines into palatable songs.
1:19
Speaker 1: Brown also talks about moving to New York City when
1:21
Speaker 1: he was eighteen and writing songs for the Velvet Undergrounds Nico.
1:26
Speaker 1: Brown also remembers the time his former label boss, David
1:29
Speaker 1: Geffen shut down his attempt to quote the Black Panthers
1:31
Speaker 1: Bobby Seal and a song. This is broken record liner
1:39
Speaker 1: notes for the digital Age. I'm justin Richmond. Here's Bruce
1:47
Speaker 1: Headlam and Jackson Brown. I want to talk about your
1:51
Speaker 1: new album. Of course, First of all, where did the
1:54
Speaker 1: title come from? It comes from an oceanographer named Captain
1:58
Speaker 1: Charles Moore, the guy that discovered the North Pacific gyre
2:03
Speaker 1: and all the plastic squirreling and the jar has become
2:06
Speaker 1: known as the Pacific garbage patch. He's the guy that
2:09
Speaker 1: sort of discovered it and sort of brought out to
2:12
Speaker 1: attention of the rest of the world. And in talking
2:15
Speaker 1: about the ocean and our impact on the ourc change
2:17
Speaker 1: says that's the ocean is downhill from everywhere, and that's
2:21
Speaker 1: where the title comes from. And it's really at the
2:23
Speaker 1: heart of what the song is talking about us humans
2:27
Speaker 1: impact on the planet. You know, this album it has
2:30
Speaker 1: political songs like that one the Dreamer. It's got other
2:34
Speaker 1: songs that deal with current issues. And this surprised me.
2:38
Speaker 1: It seemed like a very optimistic album to me. The
2:41
Speaker 1: personal song seemed very optimistic, which is not always something
2:46
Speaker 1: I associate with your music. It wasn't wistful or valedictory.
2:52
Speaker 1: Were you in a good mood when you when you
2:54
Speaker 1: wrote this album? Were you in a good place? This
2:57
Speaker 1: album got written over a period of years, so I
3:00
Speaker 1: think that that maybe I have a desire to be
3:03
Speaker 1: optimistic or to be be hopeful. Not optimistic, but to
3:07
Speaker 1: be hopeful. The act of writings song, I think I
3:10
Speaker 1: reflectively want to leave things in there'll be some light,
3:13
Speaker 1: some possibility for a positive outcome, you know. In still
3:18
Speaker 1: looking for something, Looking for Love, you're you know, minutes
3:22
Speaker 1: from downtown. There are the songs of somebody who's kind
3:26
Speaker 1: of in the game and enjoying it. The whole album
3:30
Speaker 1: has a sense of dealing with things that are interminable.
3:33
Speaker 1: They things that are going on and on and on,
3:35
Speaker 1: problems where they're before and are there now. Yeah, it's
3:39
Speaker 1: about moving forward, and it's about trying to find find
3:41
Speaker 1: your way, you know forward. As far as being in
3:44
Speaker 1: the game, you know, you got to think that you are,
3:47
Speaker 1: even if you're not, come on, you must be in
3:52
Speaker 1: the game. Please give us hope here to want to
3:57
Speaker 1: make music, you know, you have to have that's the thing,
4:00
Speaker 1: just that that you want to. You know, they still
4:03
Speaker 1: want to. I mean, it'd be easy to get tired
4:06
Speaker 1: of it. But I think I think that probably the
4:08
Speaker 1: reason I don't is I I don't do it all
4:10
Speaker 1: the time. I'm not I'm not releasing album after album,
4:12
Speaker 1: and you know, releasing an album every year or two.
4:15
Speaker 1: You know, it's just I mean, the song the Dreamer.
4:18
Speaker 1: I've been trying to write that many years ago, and
4:21
Speaker 1: it just sort of took a turn. I met this guy,
4:24
Speaker 1: Eugene Rodriguez, and showed him this old song idea I had,
4:28
Speaker 1: which began with the you know, like the Minutemen being
4:30
Speaker 1: down on the border enforcing you know, trying to you know, vigilantism,
4:34
Speaker 1: and it just turned into a song about about a
4:37
Speaker 1: young person come into this country and giving her future
4:40
Speaker 1: to this country, and that is so optimistic. There's so
4:43
Speaker 1: much hope in that in the in the midst of
4:45
Speaker 1: the debacle that is our immigration policy and the years
4:50
Speaker 1: of trying to deny you know, access to people who
4:52
Speaker 1: are fundamentally here before we were, and you know, to
4:55
Speaker 1: a great extent. You know, people have been coming from
4:58
Speaker 1: Mexico to California or Arizona, you know, since before they
5:01
Speaker 1: were in the Union. It's just like they're the best
5:03
Speaker 1: among US immigrants. My grandmother came here when she was sixteen,
5:07
Speaker 1: so there's a lot of there's a lot about this
5:09
Speaker 1: country that are the optimism that people have when they
5:12
Speaker 1: come here. Folded together with the difficulties they endure. But
5:17
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's a mixture of both, you know, hardship, optimism,
5:21
Speaker 1: you know, struggle in each all of these songs. I
5:23
Speaker 1: think you mentioned the Dreamer, and I'm wondering when you
5:26
Speaker 1: when you do write a song that way, you know,
5:29
Speaker 1: because your personal songs, people relate to them because the
5:32
Speaker 1: sort of commonality of emotions that people have and the
5:36
Speaker 1: dilemmas they face in life. When you're approaching a more
5:39
Speaker 1: political song, do you say, I want to write something
5:42
Speaker 1: about immigration because it's wrong? I mean, how do you
5:44
Speaker 1: get from there? How do you get from this sort
5:46
Speaker 1: of high level New York Times headline to the emotional
5:51
Speaker 1: heart of a song like that. Yeah, that's a good
5:54
Speaker 1: question because the thing that I've tried, I've tried to
5:58
Speaker 1: do in the past sometimes to try to broach a
6:01
Speaker 1: subject strategically and try to draw people into the subject
6:06
Speaker 1: and taught what matters to each of us. And there's
6:09
Speaker 1: the problem with anything political is if you're too oblique,
6:13
Speaker 1: they won't know what you're talking about. And if you're
6:15
Speaker 1: too direct, they run the risk of making people feel
6:18
Speaker 1: that they're being sort of scolded or lectured. Also, I
6:21
Speaker 1: told myself, look, I want this to sound like the
6:23
Speaker 1: way it would sound like if you and I were
6:25
Speaker 1: drinking in a bar and we're just talking about what's
6:28
Speaker 1: going on in the world, not that as if you're
6:31
Speaker 1: some sort of elevated place and lecturing people about something
6:34
Speaker 1: that should know about but dount or that they should care.
6:37
Speaker 1: But you know, you have to make people. You have
6:39
Speaker 1: to get to people where where they do care and
6:41
Speaker 1: where what they do know about. In the case of
6:44
Speaker 1: Downhill from Everywhere, it's not exactly it's not exactly political
6:47
Speaker 1: because there's no polemic. There is just like a bunch
6:50
Speaker 1: of compounding and sort of contrasting images, you know, the prison,
6:54
Speaker 1: the mall, factory, farming, the hospital. And the fun of
6:58
Speaker 1: it was to make it flow out of it so
7:00
Speaker 1: that these seem like extreme consciousness, and sometimes it was.
7:04
Speaker 1: But you have to make those words sound good with
7:08
Speaker 1: rock and roll. And if what I really wanted was
7:10
Speaker 1: a song that you don't have to listen to the
7:11
Speaker 1: words to at all, you would just listen. You might
7:13
Speaker 1: hear some of them going by while you're listening to
7:15
Speaker 1: the guitar part, or the or the drum based and
7:18
Speaker 1: the drums, and I just wanted to feel good. I
7:21
Speaker 1: decided not to talk. I mean, I had like a
7:24
Speaker 1: verse that was gonna you know, it wasn't like going
7:26
Speaker 1: to name Trump. I just didn't want a song with
7:29
Speaker 1: his name in it. I wasn't going to refer to him,
7:31
Speaker 1: but I was gonna be talking about like, you know,
7:33
Speaker 1: downhill from the White House, downhill from the dump, downhill
7:36
Speaker 1: from that's something, or the downhill from the biopsy and
7:39
Speaker 1: that suspicious lump and yeah, right, but that's I don't
7:43
Speaker 1: think that's the editor in me that said, Okay, you
7:47
Speaker 1: can put that aside. Keep looking. Do you think as
7:51
Speaker 1: a result of this last year, when you go back
7:53
Speaker 1: out in the road, are there songs of yours from
7:55
Speaker 1: your catalog? You say? You know, suddenly this makes sense
7:58
Speaker 1: now if I if I take this out in a
8:01
Speaker 1: way it might not have two years ago. I'm not
8:04
Speaker 1: sure the process of deciding what you're gonna play is
8:07
Speaker 1: a really involved saying. I'd say I'm more involved in
8:12
Speaker 1: with which of my old songs the audience wants to
8:15
Speaker 1: hear after having been shut down for this amount of time,
8:18
Speaker 1: In which of my new songs I can you know,
8:21
Speaker 1: I can I can expect to get a real, real
8:24
Speaker 1: strong listening to. You know, there were times when I
8:27
Speaker 1: went out and tried to play every every new song
8:29
Speaker 1: on an album in a set, and you wind up playing,
8:31
Speaker 1: you know, more than half the songs would be these
8:33
Speaker 1: new songs. And I got sort of chided by some
8:36
Speaker 1: of my friends, like, and people really come to hear
8:39
Speaker 1: you what they already know, and you might want to
8:41
Speaker 1: just like cut that down to two or three songs.
8:43
Speaker 1: And at the same time, I think that this is
8:45
Speaker 1: a really important time where people do want to know
8:48
Speaker 1: what's what's transpired. And these a lot of these songs
8:53
Speaker 1: were you know, written before and the pandemic, and they're
8:56
Speaker 1: about the last several years or their or their culminations.
9:01
Speaker 1: Some of the songs go back a lot longer than that.
9:03
Speaker 1: And Man of Fact, Downhill from Everywhere was the song
9:06
Speaker 1: I was writing for a long time. And what I think,
9:09
Speaker 1: it's probably not going to be apparent to anybody, you know,
9:11
Speaker 1: but how would anybody know? But I mean, I've got
9:13
Speaker 1: on my laptop screener, I've got like all these sound
9:16
Speaker 1: checks from trying to play that song. I play these
9:20
Speaker 1: things back and there are moments when, like I thought, Okay,
9:22
Speaker 1: that's the way the drums have to play this song. Well,
9:25
Speaker 1: that's or the time that Greg Lea's played this incredible
9:28
Speaker 1: like dang dann't get that deck out, this really great
9:32
Speaker 1: guitar leg. He figured it out all these sound checks
9:36
Speaker 1: where something happened and I go, oh yeah. And then
9:39
Speaker 1: there was the time where I cut the song and
9:43
Speaker 1: and I say, look, I'm I'm screwing us up. Let
9:45
Speaker 1: me just try to play my guitar black Jeff, you
9:47
Speaker 1: sing it and he's singing my keyboarders. The guy was
9:50
Speaker 1: singing this line down here from the water. Well, he's
9:54
Speaker 1: swinging in a certain way. He just hears things that way.
9:57
Speaker 1: He goes like don godd dump. So he's swinging the
10:03
Speaker 1: track that way with his la la laws whatever. He's
10:06
Speaker 1: singing to lead the band, whereas the melody really goes
10:11
Speaker 1: all got data and it's against the beat, which provides
10:15
Speaker 1: a kind of tension and you can get away with it,
10:17
Speaker 1: but it's not as in the I tried to convert
10:21
Speaker 1: all the phrasing to his phrasing, and that really didn't work,
10:24
Speaker 1: throwing off the words again and then coming back to Minka.
10:26
Speaker 1: I gotta go back to my Then I just realized,
10:28
Speaker 1: I said, just I can have him answer it. I
10:30
Speaker 1: can have him reaffirmed that rhythm with his vote Downhill
10:35
Speaker 1: from the fat from the band in the room, Downhill
10:38
Speaker 1: from the you know, so I gave. I wrote a
10:40
Speaker 1: bunch of lines for him to sing too, and Downhill.
10:43
Speaker 1: I thought, as cool as like getting my getting my
10:46
Speaker 1: singers to sing Downhill from the Anthropascene. I was gonna
10:50
Speaker 1: have one of us say, look it up downhill. You
10:54
Speaker 1: know it's fun because I'm writing for a band like
10:57
Speaker 1: I called in writing that song, I really called the
10:59
Speaker 1: guitar part from Greg and a vocal phrasing from Jeff.
11:03
Speaker 1: I mean a moment where Fritz was kind of channeling
11:06
Speaker 1: the Stones and trying to play this thing. Just make
11:08
Speaker 1: the song about music first, you know, And so do
11:13
Speaker 1: most songs. For you to start with lyrical ideas, it's
11:16
Speaker 1: usually some piece of lyric and music at the same time,
11:19
Speaker 1: I feel, or a little little bit of music at
11:21
Speaker 1: the same time. But it's usually a phrase. Yeah, but
11:24
Speaker 1: you're still you're a slow writer, aren't you. You've noticed, Yeah,
11:29
Speaker 1: what's the fastest you've ever written a song? One of
11:32
Speaker 1: the fast songs was on this album A little soon
11:35
Speaker 1: to say, came up pretty quickly. What's a little quickly
11:38
Speaker 1: for you? That I had this idea and a month
11:41
Speaker 1: later I really started to write it. And then in
11:44
Speaker 1: a matter of about a week or so, I had
11:46
Speaker 1: kind of you know, wow, yeah, stuff happens. I got
11:49
Speaker 1: a phone call in the middle of writing this verst
11:51
Speaker 1: and I got a phone from a friend of mine
11:52
Speaker 1: who's who I worked with, like my production guy, like
11:55
Speaker 1: I ever told him to do, but had that conversation
11:58
Speaker 1: with him. I just led me into this whole reassessment
12:01
Speaker 1: of my whole you know, like I didn't find much
12:03
Speaker 1: wisdom when I was when time was on my side.
12:06
Speaker 1: That verse came from like a feeling I had from
12:08
Speaker 1: a conversation on the while writing the song. It's not
12:11
Speaker 1: like I set out to say something. It's just you.
12:14
Speaker 1: It's a process of uncovering things that in you. You know,
12:17
Speaker 1: within you. We'll be right back with more from Jackson
12:20
Speaker 1: Brown after this break. We're back with more from Bruce
12:27
Speaker 1: Headlam and Jackson Brown. You are associated with Los Angeles
12:32
Speaker 1: in a way that few people are associated with places.
12:34
Speaker 1: You know, maybe Kurt Cobain and Seattle, or Willie Nelson
12:38
Speaker 1: in Austin, but you are this Los Angeles character. So
12:42
Speaker 1: I'm interested in that early part of your career when
12:45
Speaker 1: you left, when you went to New York to work.
12:48
Speaker 1: Can you tell me a bit about that, because it
12:50
Speaker 1: was Dylan who inspired you to a certain extent. And
12:53
Speaker 1: what was it like for you're very young a kid
12:57
Speaker 1: to leave LA and go to New York. Well, I
13:00
Speaker 1: grew up in LA until I was about thirteen. But
13:03
Speaker 1: then at the time that I went to New York,
13:05
Speaker 1: I've been living in Orange County. My family had moved
13:07
Speaker 1: out to Fullerton. You know. I kicked myself that I
13:11
Speaker 1: didn't go somehow get a job at Defender Factory and
13:13
Speaker 1: like have like a stash of sixties you know, stratocasters
13:18
Speaker 1: to show for it. But I was really, yeah, I
13:21
Speaker 1: was really immersed in folk music and Dylan, and continue
13:26
Speaker 1: to be immersed in roots music and folk music after Dylan.
13:29
Speaker 1: Sort of. See, there's a thing about folk music is
13:32
Speaker 1: that you learn a song and you make it your own.
13:34
Speaker 1: You either combine maybe you've combined Dave Van Rogg's version
13:38
Speaker 1: of stagger Lee with Mississippi John Hurt's version of Staggerly.
13:42
Speaker 1: You take the best of those versions and you put
13:45
Speaker 1: them together and to put it in your own. In fact,
13:47
Speaker 1: I wrote a verse a version of stagger Lye that
13:50
Speaker 1: in which I'm combine those versions and I'm quoting Bobby Seal,
13:56
Speaker 1: you know, the Black Panthers, you know, like Bobby Seals says,
13:59
Speaker 1: stagger Lee was the brother off the block whose actions
14:02
Speaker 1: had to had to speak for him because he couldn't
14:05
Speaker 1: relate to talk. Listen, all you millionaires is something you
14:08
Speaker 1: should know. He's his ship together. So I'm you gonna
14:11
Speaker 1: have to go? Is that a political song? The fact
14:16
Speaker 1: is that David Geffen heard that an he went, huh, women,
14:19
Speaker 1: what's wrong with millionaires? What's wrong? We wanted to be
14:22
Speaker 1: a millionaire And it didn't make my album to make
14:25
Speaker 1: the first album. But just so you know, like what
14:28
Speaker 1: I was referring to is that the fact that you
14:30
Speaker 1: made these folk songs speak for you and it wasn't
14:34
Speaker 1: just like summoning up an arcane song and rendering it
14:38
Speaker 1: faithfully from you know, we made have started with that.
14:41
Speaker 1: I always Joan Baena's incredible songs that she curated on
14:46
Speaker 1: her albums, you know, but she did something to them.
14:48
Speaker 1: She cast a spell on them that was brand new
14:51
Speaker 1: and traditional and ancient at the same time. So that's
14:55
Speaker 1: what we started happening. And Dylan, Dylan did it, you know,
14:58
Speaker 1: and they did it so well that you sort of,
15:01
Speaker 1: you know, led the whole procession off into like a
15:04
Speaker 1: brand new direction. And I always living in Orange County
15:08
Speaker 1: by the time that start happening, and when I got
15:10
Speaker 1: involved in folk music. Before that, I listened to my
15:12
Speaker 1: father's music in Dixie Land, so some of the great
15:15
Speaker 1: singers Eelaphus Gerald and man. In fact, we saw Dylan
15:19
Speaker 1: on the television one time. It was before first I
15:22
Speaker 1: ever saw him, and I was it was like a
15:24
Speaker 1: very short show and it was Dylan sitting on the
15:27
Speaker 1: edge of a stage somewhere. It's maybe one of the
15:28
Speaker 1: first appearances of him in in TV. And he was
15:31
Speaker 1: I said, wow, what is this? You know? My dad says,
15:34
Speaker 1: and he wasn't into folk music, but he said, this
15:37
Speaker 1: is the real thing. This is the real thing. He said.
15:40
Speaker 1: I knew guys in the army that sounded like this.
15:43
Speaker 1: This is he was stationed in Mississippi for a WI said,
15:46
Speaker 1: this sound reminds me of that guy sitting on the
15:48
Speaker 1: edge of his bed playing the guitar. In the barracks.
15:50
Speaker 1: You know this is like this is, And so he
15:53
Speaker 1: sort of validated Bob Dylan very early on for me
15:56
Speaker 1: at a time when and what happened to meeting, of course,
15:58
Speaker 1: is that all these songs that he had written were
16:02
Speaker 1: learned by everybody. And the thing is that the job
16:05
Speaker 1: still was to make it your own. So I started
16:09
Speaker 1: writing songs at that right around that same time. And
16:12
Speaker 1: what you write about what you know? You know? Your
16:14
Speaker 1: dad he what instrument to be playing. He played piano,
16:18
Speaker 1: but he loved horns, He loved the trumpet, and he
16:21
Speaker 1: loved the trombone. He played a lot of Jack Teagarden,
16:26
Speaker 1: and he would walk around the house playing the trombone, saying, listen,
16:28
Speaker 1: there's only three positions. Can you check out how many
16:31
Speaker 1: notes he's playing. But he's only never forget having like
16:33
Speaker 1: combinations of thin of keys and fingering you only they
16:36
Speaker 1: have that, that and that and then it's your lip.
16:40
Speaker 1: And so he's walked. He's fascinated with how the trombone
16:42
Speaker 1: is played. He's not he's not good at it. But
16:44
Speaker 1: he actually did one one time get to play with
16:47
Speaker 1: Jack Teagarden and he went up with Teagarden's tie and
16:51
Speaker 1: Tea Garden. Evidently Tea Garden like typed his tie. They
16:55
Speaker 1: left the jack had at six in the morning or something,
16:57
Speaker 1: and like te Garden had a stein. So he wanted
16:58
Speaker 1: him and it was it was like a tallest amount.
17:01
Speaker 1: It was like a for eyes possession of his Also
17:03
Speaker 1: a picture of him playing with Django Reinhard. He was
17:05
Speaker 1: a really good musician and he wasn't in rains band.
17:09
Speaker 1: He actually booked Ryan Hard for these parties and he
17:11
Speaker 1: would get to sit in Wow. So we I grew
17:14
Speaker 1: up with that sort of lore. But when folk music happened,
17:17
Speaker 1: it was taking on all this information about the world,
17:21
Speaker 1: about our history, and about who really is here, you know.
17:25
Speaker 1: So even though I lived in this like really sterile
17:27
Speaker 1: little tract home in Orange County with my family, I mean,
17:30
Speaker 1: the conduit and the lifeline to the to the world
17:33
Speaker 1: outside was music. A lot of musicians I've talked to
17:37
Speaker 1: their their fathers were jazz musicians, and often they didn't
17:43
Speaker 1: like their kids musical choices. My father. I remember my
17:48
Speaker 1: father coming to see my one of my gigs. I
17:51
Speaker 1: vaguely understood that that there wasn't a lot about my
17:54
Speaker 1: singing or my even my my my songs were not sophisticated.
17:59
Speaker 1: You know. It wasn't like he was. He was not
18:01
Speaker 1: going to get to cross the Jordan, you know, and
18:04
Speaker 1: come go off into the future with us. You know.
18:06
Speaker 1: He was like even in jazz, you know, he told him,
18:11
Speaker 1: you like, he said like, yeah, Miles Davis, Wow, you
18:15
Speaker 1: know what I thought? Really? Oh no, I thought, okay, well,
18:19
Speaker 1: you're definitely telling me where you're at. But we we
18:23
Speaker 1: diverged on so many things. He said, you and your
18:25
Speaker 1: friends think you're nonconformist. We didn't really, And then they
18:30
Speaker 1: were to use that where there wasn't the issue. He said,
18:32
Speaker 1: but you're gonna have to cut your hair, and you're
18:34
Speaker 1: gonna have to You're gonna want to raise a family,
18:36
Speaker 1: and then you're gonna have to get a job and
18:37
Speaker 1: cut your hair. And I thought, I don't think so.
18:42
Speaker 1: You know, so there are all ways in which that
18:44
Speaker 1: you don't necessarily have to follow your parents the dictates
18:48
Speaker 1: of their their their view. But at the same time
18:50
Speaker 1: he gave me, he gave me such an incredible love
18:54
Speaker 1: and appreciation for music, jazz, for for and an understanding
18:59
Speaker 1: of who's here terms of you know, racially, you know,
19:03
Speaker 1: the deities in our house were like I say, Ella Fitzgerald,
19:06
Speaker 1: and I vaguely understood that he didn't have that find
19:09
Speaker 1: an appreciation for what I was doing. He'd come to
19:12
Speaker 1: my gig and at the end of the gig he said,
19:14
Speaker 1: I don't lose that drummer. You know about all he
19:17
Speaker 1: could say. And he's right. I mean, like you'd think,
19:21
Speaker 1: you know, he really dug Russconsle's drumming. And but I
19:24
Speaker 1: had him come over and I wanted to send him
19:27
Speaker 1: down and play him the pretender. I mean, there's a
19:29
Speaker 1: song for him in the second half. He was asleep
19:33
Speaker 1: before we got to the second half, you know, and
19:36
Speaker 1: I just went, well, that's just about perfect. You know,
19:39
Speaker 1: he didn't hear he didn't hear Daddy's tune. No, he
19:41
Speaker 1: didn't wow when he talked about like cutting your hair
19:46
Speaker 1: and were those his resentments that he had to he
19:49
Speaker 1: wasn't resentful about it. He just thought that we were,
19:51
Speaker 1: you know, young and so on our wild oats, but
19:54
Speaker 1: that there was he was describing what he had done,
19:56
Speaker 1: which was he said he never thought he was a
20:00
Speaker 1: professional musician. He always thought of himself as an amateur,
20:04
Speaker 1: and that he had never really followed through, or that
20:07
Speaker 1: he'd gotten the job the jobs that he needed to
20:10
Speaker 1: do to have a family. But he also told me
20:13
Speaker 1: really wild stuff, like he enjoyed being in the army
20:16
Speaker 1: because he didn't have to think and to be to
20:19
Speaker 1: be fourteen and to hear that, it was like all
20:21
Speaker 1: I needed to know. That's okay, that kind of disqualifies
20:25
Speaker 1: you as a as an advisor, you know. But he
20:30
Speaker 1: also he'd say the coolest stuff, like one time he
20:33
Speaker 1: said he was over in my house, he was leaving.
20:36
Speaker 1: He said, well, play good. But you didn't have to
20:38
Speaker 1: say he is. He was an English teacher and a
20:41
Speaker 1: metic who correct us every night at the dinner table.
20:44
Speaker 1: We didn't have to learn grammar or any of the
20:47
Speaker 1: rules of because we were just forced to speak correctly
20:49
Speaker 1: all the time, not forced, but just admonished if we didn't.
20:53
Speaker 1: And I said to him, play good. What do you mean, dude,
20:56
Speaker 1: don't you mean play well? He said, yeah, but I've
20:58
Speaker 1: never heard of musicians say play well, play good? So
21:04
Speaker 1: how old were you then when you went to New York?
21:07
Speaker 1: I was eighteen, and you'd been playing around la and
21:10
Speaker 1: then what took you to New York? I've been playing
21:14
Speaker 1: out in Orange County, you know, coffee houses and stuff,
21:17
Speaker 1: and I was living in Orange County. My friends would
21:20
Speaker 1: drive into New York and there was like a they
21:22
Speaker 1: needed a third person to share with the gas and
21:25
Speaker 1: share in the driving. We made that trip in three
21:28
Speaker 1: and a quarter days. You know, it was like just
21:30
Speaker 1: straight through driving around the clock. We were delivering a
21:33
Speaker 1: car to my friend's family up in I think it
21:37
Speaker 1: was up in Niagara Falls that he had to deliver
21:39
Speaker 1: this rambler American station wagon, and so we drove it
21:43
Speaker 1: straight to New York and went to the another friend's
21:46
Speaker 1: house who was living on the on the Lower East Side.
21:48
Speaker 1: So I had a well, yeah, I was from I
21:50
Speaker 1: was from a set of players and that hung around
21:54
Speaker 1: a club called the Paradox in tust And the reason
21:57
Speaker 1: they called it the Paradox was it was traditional music
22:00
Speaker 1: for contemporary minds. Is what the guy's business cards sent.
22:04
Speaker 1: And in a way it was in that guy. The
22:07
Speaker 1: guy that owned the club sang a lot of Hank
22:08
Speaker 1: william and that he and his partner their dream was
22:11
Speaker 1: to have a club where people came and made music.
22:13
Speaker 1: And in that club I heard Sonny Cherry Brown, McGee,
22:16
Speaker 1: Jack Elliott, all these musicians that would come and play
22:19
Speaker 1: the Ash Grove in LA would always be looking for
22:22
Speaker 1: another gig, and there was a gig out in Orange
22:24
Speaker 1: County that they could go play a weekend, you know,
22:28
Speaker 1: the ad and have to fray the costs of coming
22:30
Speaker 1: west in the first place. So there was a really
22:33
Speaker 1: strong folk scene and there were a bunch of songwriters,
22:35
Speaker 1: and these guys hired my friend Steve Noon and two
22:39
Speaker 1: he got a gig there. It was really a big
22:41
Speaker 1: deal that one of us, one of us sort of
22:43
Speaker 1: rug rats, were like, I had a gig, he had,
22:46
Speaker 1: Like we could go hear each other's and Steve sang
22:49
Speaker 1: some songs in mine and sang songs that he had
22:51
Speaker 1: written with Great Copeland. And these are my mentors, you know,
22:54
Speaker 1: guys that were two years older than me, but let
22:57
Speaker 1: me hang with them. But when we went to New York,
23:00
Speaker 1: one of the things that happened in that first week
23:03
Speaker 1: or two that was there is that Tim Buckley had
23:04
Speaker 1: a gig at the at the Dam, and Niko was
23:07
Speaker 1: on the billing and she was being accompanied by Sterling
23:11
Speaker 1: Morrison and apparently sometimes it would be Sterling, sometimes it
23:15
Speaker 1: would be lou Reid, sometimes it would be John Cale
23:17
Speaker 1: but she was leaving the Velvet underground and to be
23:21
Speaker 1: a solo artist. And I think that it was the vibe.
23:24
Speaker 1: I don't really know this for sure, but the vibe
23:26
Speaker 1: was that it was all something that they were all
23:28
Speaker 1: agreed about. I say, she stayed in the Velvets might
23:31
Speaker 1: have been a more mainstream band, you know. On the
23:34
Speaker 1: other hand, I don't think they care that much about that.
23:36
Speaker 1: Webb's mainstream. They were actually like real outliers. But I
23:40
Speaker 1: think that they were helping her along with her transition
23:44
Speaker 1: to a solo artist. So she offered Tim Bucket the
23:47
Speaker 1: job of a company or because I don't think that
23:50
Speaker 1: I don't maybe didn't go well with her that one
23:52
Speaker 1: night it was one guy, one night it was another guy.
23:54
Speaker 1: So she wanted her own accompanies, and he came in
23:57
Speaker 1: and said that there was this shot. He said, I
23:59
Speaker 1: don't think she understands that I have like a career
24:02
Speaker 1: that I'm like, he doesn't know about me and know
24:05
Speaker 1: I've got a gig in Boston next week. I'm not
24:07
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not going to become her accompany. And
24:09
Speaker 1: he knew I was destitute. I came to New York
24:11
Speaker 1: with fifty bucks in my pocket and a Signal Oil
24:17
Speaker 1: credit card that I could use if it was an emergency,
24:20
Speaker 1: my mom's credit card, you know, and without without clothes
24:24
Speaker 1: for winter. It was the snow on the ground, and
24:26
Speaker 1: I was wearing these loafers, you know, and like, I
24:28
Speaker 1: don't know what people thought about us with California, like
24:31
Speaker 1: wearing T shirts and loafers and stuff in the snow,
24:34
Speaker 1: and like what, you know, what are you doing? I
24:38
Speaker 1: had that job for just a little while. It didn't
24:40
Speaker 1: didn't last very long. I wanted wanting to go back home,
24:43
Speaker 1: and but you gave you gave her some songs like
24:46
Speaker 1: these Days, which she made it. Yeah, during that time,
24:49
Speaker 1: that song that that herd Chelsea Girl record was recorded
24:53
Speaker 1: and I was on a session. I mean we recorded
24:56
Speaker 1: what we did. I mean, she had learned three of
24:58
Speaker 1: my songs and they're they're on that record. And I
25:01
Speaker 1: also accompanied her on a Tim Harden song that where
25:05
Speaker 1: Tim Harden wrote a song about Lenny Bruce, a Dylan
25:08
Speaker 1: song called keep It with Mind, which no one had
25:10
Speaker 1: ever heard before. It was like she she was curating
25:13
Speaker 1: songs the way really. I mean, I compare her to
25:16
Speaker 1: Judy Collins, because Judy Collins was the one who would
25:19
Speaker 1: make an album was something before we were coming to
25:22
Speaker 1: New York. I mean a song of her record of
25:24
Speaker 1: her lot was her album in which she had Circle
25:27
Speaker 1: Game and an Obscure Donovan song, a Leonard Collins song,
25:32
Speaker 1: a Jacques Brell song. Judy Collins was really like curating
25:36
Speaker 1: songs and presenting them, you know, and as a singer
25:39
Speaker 1: and as a stylist, and really nobody thinks of her
25:42
Speaker 1: this way, of course, but that's what Niko was doing.
25:45
Speaker 1: She had collected a bunch of songs. She had lou
25:48
Speaker 1: Reed songs, you know, police Kick and Stomp, Young Love
25:52
Speaker 1: plus runs through matted here. I remember these songs. Loui
25:56
Speaker 1: Reid was as that he was on the he was
25:59
Speaker 1: on the session I was on and that when I
26:00
Speaker 1: say on the session, it was just it was just
26:02
Speaker 1: me and him and she recorded the songs that in
26:05
Speaker 1: that day and it was Tom Wilson, the great great
26:08
Speaker 1: Columbia staff producer would produce Bob Dylan. I don't know
26:12
Speaker 1: if he knew what to make of you know, what
26:13
Speaker 1: to do as a producer. But but what one thing
26:16
Speaker 1: they did was they took all these songs that were
26:18
Speaker 1: basically sung that she sang with one person playing guitar,
26:23
Speaker 1: and the day I was there, it was like the
26:26
Speaker 1: song that I accompanied her on, the song that she
26:28
Speaker 1: did with lou Reid. Then later they put strings on everything,
26:32
Speaker 1: which Leco hated. She thought that was like I think
26:35
Speaker 1: she thought it was kind of like an easy solution
26:37
Speaker 1: to like what to do with these songs. It was
26:39
Speaker 1: like a kind of one size fits all. It was
26:41
Speaker 1: a thing that has mastered everything. But I think it
26:44
Speaker 1: resulted some of these songs like These Days and Fairest
26:47
Speaker 1: of the Seasons really benefited by having the strength of string.
26:51
Speaker 1: Arrangements were great. Chelsea Girls has had a kind of
26:55
Speaker 1: longevity and a kind of there was a there's a
26:57
Speaker 1: moment there that was sort of captured. So why didn't
27:00
Speaker 1: you want to stay? I guess that was just all
27:02
Speaker 1: I'm sick, you know. And when I think about it,
27:06
Speaker 1: what would have happened that I stayed isn't intriguing question
27:09
Speaker 1: for me, because I probably would have gotten in a
27:12
Speaker 1: band all the way earlier than sooner than I did.
27:15
Speaker 1: I would have been an East Coast musician. I would
27:18
Speaker 1: have been exposed to more kinds of music. But when
27:21
Speaker 1: I did, though, I mean when I came back, I
27:23
Speaker 1: tried out for this band called the General Soul, and
27:26
Speaker 1: there in that same audition I met Jesse Ed Davis.
27:29
Speaker 1: And also in that same that same sort of audition
27:33
Speaker 1: session was this guy Leroy Marinell who later wrote co
27:37
Speaker 1: wrote Whereols of London with Warren Zevon and a couple
27:40
Speaker 1: other songs. So, I mean, I was I was growing,
27:43
Speaker 1: you know, I just go here, go there. On the
27:45
Speaker 1: way home from the airport, there was a leaked version
27:48
Speaker 1: of Sergeant Pepper playing on the radio. Then it wasn't
27:52
Speaker 1: supposed to be played, but somebody had this I think
27:55
Speaker 1: b Mitchell reads. I mean, he had this copy of
27:58
Speaker 1: that he'd been given by one of the Beatles. Then
28:00
Speaker 1: he just couldn't help himself. He played it on his
28:02
Speaker 1: shofl people going to the Beatles run caft D and
28:07
Speaker 1: a week later the album came out. But I mean,
28:09
Speaker 1: all these momentous things from me to be hearing a
28:12
Speaker 1: day on the life and she's leaving home on the
28:14
Speaker 1: way home from an airport. But it was it was
28:17
Speaker 1: exciting time for me. I was just you know, writing songs,
28:19
Speaker 1: trying to write songs. I like I had started the
28:22
Speaker 1: song a child in these hills when I was in
28:24
Speaker 1: New York because it was out of homesickness. It's like,
28:27
Speaker 1: you know, it's about being from a more pastoral place.
28:31
Speaker 1: You know. We'll be right back with more from Jackson Brown.
28:39
Speaker 1: We're back with the rest of Bruce Headlam's interview with
28:41
Speaker 1: Jackson Brown. It's interesting to think about what kind of
28:44
Speaker 1: songwriter you would have been had you stayed there, right,
28:47
Speaker 1: different influences, different well, you know what I mean. Out
28:51
Speaker 1: in Orange County where my friends and I were, you know,
28:54
Speaker 1: like we're practically a little like squatters. I mean, somebody
28:57
Speaker 1: to rent a house and then there'd be like twenty people,
29:00
Speaker 1: you know. But they were really into the Velvet Underground
29:04
Speaker 1: much more than I was. When I was in New York.
29:06
Speaker 1: They got into the Velvet Underground and played that stuff
29:08
Speaker 1: all the time. So I never really like got the
29:11
Speaker 1: whole LA New York. The differences. The differences are more
29:16
Speaker 1: apparent to me now, but at the time I didn't
29:19
Speaker 1: think that you were you know, and everybody I met
29:21
Speaker 1: in New York wanted to come to California. I you know,
29:25
Speaker 1: they find out that I was from LA and they say, oh, yay,
29:28
Speaker 1: I want to go to la, let's go. I got
29:30
Speaker 1: a car, you want to go. I'll be looking at
29:32
Speaker 1: this girl with a Mustang and thinking, yeah, I want
29:35
Speaker 1: to go. But it was an exciting time. Hey, I
29:41
Speaker 1: was eighteen and there was a lot of world unfolding
29:44
Speaker 1: wherever I went. I'm interested if you could go back
29:47
Speaker 1: and talk to her eighteen year old self about writing.
29:50
Speaker 1: I'd say what Dwayne Aldman eventually did say to me,
29:54
Speaker 1: like this folk music thing, that's okay, and you do
29:57
Speaker 1: it really well. It's okay, but you need to be
29:59
Speaker 1: in a band, brother, Yeah, you need to play these
30:04
Speaker 1: songs with a drummer. Come on, man, you're in the
30:08
Speaker 1: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But you have the
30:11
Speaker 1: single best induction speech I do, even if it did
30:16
Speaker 1: really eclipse me, it right, And I think about me
30:20
Speaker 1: was a clip by that speech? No, no, no, not
30:24
Speaker 1: at all, not at all. Now, everybody remembers the first
30:27
Speaker 1: part of that speech, and it's Bruce Springsteen describing how
30:31
Speaker 1: when he would play with you, you would get all
30:34
Speaker 1: the great looking girls looking at you on stage, and
30:39
Speaker 1: the street band would only get men and, as he said,
30:42
Speaker 1: not very good looking man. But that's the part people remember.
30:45
Speaker 1: But I think the heart of the speech. Do you
30:46
Speaker 1: mind if I just play you a little clip at
30:48
Speaker 1: the heart of the speech? Is that? Okay? Jackson Brown
30:51
Speaker 1: gave us paradise lost. I always imagine what if Brian Wilson,
30:57
Speaker 1: long after he'd taken a bite of that orange that
30:59
Speaker 1: the serpent offered to him. What if you married that
31:02
Speaker 1: nice girl and Caroline no I was figured that she
31:07
Speaker 1: was pregnant anyway. And what if he moved into the
31:11
Speaker 1: valley and had two sons. One of them would have
31:17
Speaker 1: looked and sounded just like Jackson Brown. Kane, of course,
31:22
Speaker 1: would have been Jackson's brother in arms, Warren's Evan. I
31:28
Speaker 1: love your Warren, But Jackson to me, Jackson to me
31:32
Speaker 1: was always the tempered voice of Abel, toiling in the vineyards,
31:37
Speaker 1: here to bear the earthly burdens, confronting the impossibility of love,
31:42
Speaker 1: here to do his father's work. Jackson's work was really
31:46
Speaker 1: California pop gospel. Listen to the chord changes that rock
31:49
Speaker 1: me on the water before the del You just gospel
31:52
Speaker 1: through and through, Okay. Other than he tried to upstage
31:56
Speaker 1: you on your night. I mean, I do think it's
32:01
Speaker 1: one of the great speeches I've ever heard about anything.
32:03
Speaker 1: I'm interested in your reaction to that. I was blown away,
32:08
Speaker 1: it was. It was also so funny, but I was,
32:11
Speaker 1: you know, my reaction, you know, it didn't escape him.
32:15
Speaker 1: My notice that there was a camera on me watching
32:17
Speaker 1: him say this stuff, you know, but it was it
32:20
Speaker 1: was really, it was, it was. It was huge. You know. See,
32:24
Speaker 1: for the longest time, I didn't know how to describe
32:26
Speaker 1: what I did. I don't know. I didn't know that
32:28
Speaker 1: anybody how many people really got what I did, or
32:31
Speaker 1: how to how to describe it or what to say.
32:32
Speaker 1: The idea that someone else was going to stand there
32:35
Speaker 1: and sum it up or say in so many words
32:38
Speaker 1: what it is that I do was really interesting to me.
32:42
Speaker 1: You know, the word genius doesn't mean like that you're
32:44
Speaker 1: smarter than everybody. Means that there's one particular thing that
32:46
Speaker 1: is your genius. You know. One time I told a
32:49
Speaker 1: girlfriend of mine this, you should, oh, don't worry, you're
32:52
Speaker 1: not one. But the thing is that whatever it is
32:57
Speaker 1: that you're particularly good at, I have somebody describe that
33:00
Speaker 1: it's as incredible gift. And that's somebody that I think
33:03
Speaker 1: so much of that and it's meant so much to
33:06
Speaker 1: me that it was just a really overwhelming thing to
33:09
Speaker 1: have happened. At the same time, it was done with
33:10
Speaker 1: such love and such an such an embrace. It was incredible.
33:14
Speaker 1: I find that a little scary. That speech almost not scary,
33:17
Speaker 1: but it puts a huge burden on you to me,
33:21
Speaker 1: like you're the responsible one. You're the guy who was
33:25
Speaker 1: like who you know, witnessing the failure of love, you know,
33:29
Speaker 1: the impossibility of love and trying to put together the
33:32
Speaker 1: fragments of our life. And I thought, oh, man, poor
33:35
Speaker 1: Jackson Brown, Like but you almost I had read recently
33:40
Speaker 1: that you said you were writing songs when you're a kid,
33:43
Speaker 1: but you probably would have had more fun had you
33:45
Speaker 1: just gone out in a garage band and played Gloria
33:48
Speaker 1: for three hours the way every other kid was doing. Yeah,
33:52
Speaker 1: I still want to do that. I've I've had to
33:54
Speaker 1: have some offers after I wherever that was Predator or
33:57
Speaker 1: so Setllite, people say like, hey, we want to play
33:59
Speaker 1: Gloria with you. That's there's something about that. Look, that's
34:02
Speaker 1: just a component that I that got left out being
34:06
Speaker 1: unbanded in high school. But I didn't. I didn't. I
34:09
Speaker 1: liked Gloria, but I didn't really admire that the fact
34:12
Speaker 1: it was really hard place for songs to grow and
34:15
Speaker 1: for lyrics, lyrics to be heard, very hard. So I
34:17
Speaker 1: saw I gravitated to the listening rooms where people really
34:20
Speaker 1: really listen and thought about what they're listening to. And
34:23
Speaker 1: so yeah, the thing is that there's joy. Rock and
34:26
Speaker 1: roll is so full of joy, and it's so full
34:28
Speaker 1: of the need, the desire for freedom and the and
34:31
Speaker 1: the willingness to risk everything for it. You know, there
34:35
Speaker 1: is meaning in the sound of a ride symbol. There's
34:38
Speaker 1: a way in which somebody does a particular rhythmical thing,
34:42
Speaker 1: or like a guitar chord or way in which played
34:44
Speaker 1: that is really more power and there's more there's more
34:47
Speaker 1: meaning in it than in the meaning of the words. Well,
34:52
Speaker 1: there's as much. So which you I want both of those?
34:57
Speaker 1: I want this, I want that's that's also like what
34:59
Speaker 1: I was trying to do in Downhill from Everywhere. I
35:01
Speaker 1: want you to listen to the way these guys are
35:03
Speaker 1: playing this. And we really worked on which just that's
35:06
Speaker 1: my garage band there, you know the thing that I've
35:09
Speaker 1: I fish just to have the words engage you in
35:11
Speaker 1: a place where you care. That's what I want to do.
35:15
Speaker 1: And to do that you have to hear them. I
35:19
Speaker 1: just I'll just ask you one more question about that,
35:21
Speaker 1: because we've determined that you've got a new album that's
35:24
Speaker 1: hard rocking and you're back into game, all all the
35:27
Speaker 1: nice things I want to say about your record. When
35:30
Speaker 1: you write, you do write political songs? Do you start
35:33
Speaker 1: out an anger? Sometimes? Yeah? I met this guy wanted
35:37
Speaker 1: He it's a punk rocker. I can't remember his name now,
35:39
Speaker 1: and he was telling me, you know, I like your music. Okay,
35:42
Speaker 1: you know, I think, but you know, I think it
35:44
Speaker 1: should be a little angrier. You know, I think you
35:46
Speaker 1: should be angrier. I just doug that he was willing
35:48
Speaker 1: to talk to me because it was that's the saying
35:50
Speaker 1: with which all this enables. Days of shoegazing, like introspective
35:55
Speaker 1: songwriters were sort of swept aside by punk music. But yeah,
35:58
Speaker 1: I think that, after all, there's plenty of stuff that
36:01
Speaker 1: I'm angry about. I think that I have something similar.
36:04
Speaker 1: But it's not about getting the anger out, but hope
36:10
Speaker 1: in I want to engage about what's what's going on
36:14
Speaker 1: in this life and and also try to at least
36:19
Speaker 1: chart a course or in some way, you know, direct
36:22
Speaker 1: myself and whoever else is listening to a possibility that
36:27
Speaker 1: things might be could be improved upon, you know, and
36:31
Speaker 1: really that always comes down to improving yourself. And first,
36:35
Speaker 1: you know, are you more hopeful now than you've been
36:37
Speaker 1: in the past? Well, the whole like that. The Haitians say,
36:40
Speaker 1: you know, lespark Feviv, hope makes life. That that's such
36:45
Speaker 1: a simple anguage Haitian creole. But I mean what they
36:48
Speaker 1: mean is like, hope makes life possible. So you know,
36:51
Speaker 1: I'm hopeful as a motherfucker. You know, I'm trying to
36:55
Speaker 1: I'm trying to find it wherever I look. You know,
36:59
Speaker 1: I think we've got your next album title right, hopeful
37:03
Speaker 1: as a MOTIFU listen. Thank you so much for this.
37:06
Speaker 1: It's been just fantastic than the left for the conversation.
37:10
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed it. Thanks to Jackson Brown for talking
37:15
Speaker 1: about his career and the inspiration behind his new album,
37:18
Speaker 1: Downhill from Everywhere. You can check out that album plus
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Speaker 1: all of our favorite Jackson Brown songs at Broken Record
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Speaker 1: podcast dot com. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube
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Speaker 1: channel at YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast, where
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Speaker 1: you can find all of our new episodes. You can
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Speaker 1: follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is
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Speaker 1: produced with help from Leah Rose, Jason Gambrel, Martin Gonzalez,
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Speaker 1: Eric Sandler, and Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering help from Nick Chafen.
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Speaker 1: Our executive producer is mio Leabell. Broken Record is a
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Speaker 1: production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and
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Speaker 1: That a theme musics by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond,
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Speaker 1: h