Weekend Song – Jackson Browne
Jackson Browne stayed relatively unknown in the UK, perhaps ending up as a footnote in the Great Folk Explosion of 1972. You had Neil Young, Crosby Stills and Nash, Carol King, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor and everyone. A lot of good came from it, but often one side of a penny is invariably shitty and this came in the shape of Jethro Tull and The Eagles.
You could do worse that to buy the For Everyman album on which this song appears, ending with Sing My Songs To Me and the title tune For Everyman, but on my CD there is a track split between them even though there is no break, so it’s a pain to post them both up together without a break.
But this one’s a good tune, and my god there’s a line in this that is so heartwrenchingly honest, it’s more staggering to know he wrote it when he was sixteen:
Don’t confront me with my failures,
I had not forgotten them.
Listen: These Days
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Related pages
Weekend Song archive
June 14th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
man alive, i love this song. i have many versions of it on my ipod. jackson browne’s coolness is forever sealed in my mind, since he was nico’s boy toy, and hung out with the velvet underground and warhol around the time he wrote this song for her. i have a version of her singing it, too.
June 14th, 2008 at 6:20 pm
So the Eagles and Jethro Tull suck?
June 14th, 2008 at 7:39 pm
Oh god how I hate The Eagles. Jethro Tull is pompous cod-English tripe prog posing as classic rock.
Thanks Franko - The arrangement on this song was done by Gregg Allman, southern rock legend and all round dude. I’ve never heard the Nico or the Allman version, but I’d very much like to one day.
June 14th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
The Eagles were the biggest selling act of my time. From around 1972 or 1973 until around 1979 or 1980, not a single day went by that I didn’t hear at least three different Eagles songs.SOMEBODY liked them.
And as for Jethro Tull- you got it all wrong. They were classic rock posing as cod-English tripe prog. Or minstrels.
While we called them Jethro Dull when they played live, I still lost my virginity to ‘Thick as a Brick’.
June 15th, 2008 at 9:14 am
Did you know that Jackson Brown was 17 when he wrote those lines?
Pretentious? Lui?
June 15th, 2008 at 9:18 am
OK - I’m a prat, I hadn’t read your post properly, but I still think it’s pretentious for a 16/17 year old to write them, but I suppose we all were at that age.
June 16th, 2008 at 8:50 am
No, not a prat at all. Hey - and thanks for the comment and for throwing open a wider debate about pretention (see today)
June 16th, 2008 at 9:05 am
Well, as they say, pretention is better than a cure.
June 16th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
hey, cliff — you can hear nico’s version easily. it’s on her album “chelsea girls”: http://tinyurl.com/4kma3p.
for the record, i don’t think jackson’s lyrics are “pretentious”, even though he was 17 when he wrote them, any more than i think that ben gibbard’s lyrics on the death cab’s “plans” album are, even though he is (by my standards) quite the youngster. i prefer the terms “worldly” or even “wise beyond his years”.
June 17th, 2008 at 12:31 am
Did David Lindley play on this track? I9e been trying to find out what gear he used on ‘That Girl Can Sing’ for years.
June 17th, 2008 at 9:18 am
Yes. Yes he did. Sleeve notes say: David Lindley - acoustic guitar, fiddle, guitar, violin, electric guitar, steel guitar, slide guitar, electric fiddle.
Franko - thanks, that’s brilliant. I love this blog.
June 17th, 2008 at 11:18 am
He said, modestly.
June 17th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
No no no. I mean, I love what happens here. I like that it’s a communication thing and that I get a lot out of it that I wouldn’t get without it, because I wouldn’t be bothered because I am lazy.
Sometimes. Other times I wish it never existed, but I think all bloggers have that.
June 17th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
I did got it, I was merely being facetious, I don’t see you being immodest.
But yes, I love it too, it’s like a village square. And also I can’t think of anything that I want to do with my blog that you haven’t done already - you’ve set the bar beyond which imagination cannot venture, you’ve created a world in which things cannot exist without it, and for that I salute you. Possibly with two fingers, but the sentiment is there. Don’t wish it never existed, because one day it won’t and you shall sit wistfully poring over the days when you had a vent and a muse in one, and people to enjoy it with.
June 18th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Not to mention the Village Idiots like me to make everyone else look good;)
June 18th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Sam - first of all, bollocks, because you put that better than I ever could, so if you’re saying the bar has been set, maybe you’ve set and and you’re blaming it on someone else.
Second of all, thanks. I’d like to see some fresh voices in here, but that’s how it goes and I like enjoying the banter with you all.