Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing
Speaker 1: from My Heart. Radio must have some thought it's gonna
Speaker 1: pull them through somehow. Why the Hotter than Hotter but
Speaker 1: the sisters of the Sister Fever. Jackson Brown released his
Speaker 1: self titled debut album, and This Song Rocked Me on
Speaker 1: the Water in early two when he was just twenty
Speaker 1: three years old. At that point, he'd already been writing
Speaker 1: songs professionally for seven years. Part of that time he
Speaker 1: spent in the heyday of New York City's folk scene.
Speaker 1: He'd written songs for the likes of Joan Bayez, Linda Ronstadt,
Speaker 1: The Birds, Greg Allman, and Nico. In nine, Brown moved
Speaker 1: back to Los Angeles and set his course to become
Speaker 1: one of the greatest singer songwriters of his generation, known
Speaker 1: for his political activism and his honest, self reflective lyrics.
Speaker 1: Jackson Brown's fourteen studio albums have sold over eighteen million copies.
Speaker 1: Bruce Springsteen inducted him into the Rock and Roll Hall
Speaker 1: of Fame in two thousand four. Jackson Brown comes from
Speaker 1: a family of musicians, journalists, and dreamers. His grandfather spent
Speaker 1: a decade building a stone house in Highland Park, Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: complete with a huge pipe organ in the basement. My
Speaker 1: father played organ in silent movies. Actually no, yeah, And
Speaker 1: there was a pipe organ in the house that I
Speaker 1: grew up in. It was in the chapel and it
Speaker 1: was built by the Angels Organ Company. I mean I
Speaker 1: personally broke the organ when I was a kid, because
Speaker 1: you could go behind the pipes and play around. It
Speaker 1: was like a secret passageway. But I must have put
Speaker 1: my foot through something, a bellows or something. Your grandfather
Speaker 1: and your father playing the organ, you broke the organ. YEA,
Speaker 1: be very clear about now. You know I was reading
Speaker 1: about you. I mean, obviously I knew something about you,
Speaker 1: and I knew a lot about the songs you've written,
Speaker 1: but I didn't know about your earliest life where when
Speaker 1: you were very young you left to go to New
Speaker 1: York where you were right out of high school. Is
Speaker 1: that correct? Yeah? Pretty much? Yeah, now we know why?
Speaker 1: What was what was the calling to go to New York?
Speaker 1: You know the music I was listening to was all
Speaker 1: coming from Cambridge and Greenwich Village, you know, the folk
Speaker 1: meccas where those two places on the East Coast, and
Speaker 1: even though folk music was from all over the country,
Speaker 1: the people who were doing it, we're coming out of
Speaker 1: New York. And I would meet players that were playing
Speaker 1: in say, Huntington's Beach, you know, and they were from
Speaker 1: New York. And I just wanted to go, but my
Speaker 1: friends invited me to go to drive with him to
Speaker 1: New York. It took us three and a quarter days.
Speaker 1: We just drove straight from l A to New York
Speaker 1: with three guys sharing the gas. And there I was
Speaker 1: in New York in the snow with my Penny loafers
Speaker 1: and my T shirt. You know. It's like you're a
Speaker 1: California by birth. Not really, I was born in Germany,
Speaker 1: but my but yeah, my my grandfather came to California
Speaker 1: and when he was young, and so my family is
Speaker 1: from California. You went from Germany to California when you
Speaker 1: were how old three. Who were some of the people
Speaker 1: that were influences you in terms of folk music, Well,
Speaker 1: Joan Bayez and then Bob Dylan, of course he played
Speaker 1: a lot of folk music as well as you know,
Speaker 1: writing songs. And Kurnel Ray and Glover and they made
Speaker 1: a record called Blues reckon Hollers and I like the blues.
Speaker 1: I listened to a lot of blues records, and that's
Speaker 1: what I mean. Also, when I say folk music, I
Speaker 1: mean folk, you know, country blues and Mississippi John Hurt,
Speaker 1: you know Doc Watson and all these, you know, both
Speaker 1: white and black country musicians. And when you went to
Speaker 1: New York, what was that like? Where did it start
Speaker 1: for you? There? You we're writing music with who? And where?
Speaker 1: I was writing my own songs. But I wasn't really
Speaker 1: writing with anybody there. I was there for I wasn't
Speaker 1: there for very long. Three or four months, Tim Buckley
Speaker 1: was playing at this club in the village and he
Speaker 1: was sort of sharing the bill with artists named Nko
Speaker 1: was and it was Andy Warhol's sort of barring that
Speaker 1: he's set up to, you know, do installations. And anyway,
Speaker 1: Tim Tommy Niko was looking for a new company. So
Speaker 1: I got the job doing that, except Andy didn't want
Speaker 1: it to seem like folk music, and they wanted her
Speaker 1: to sing from inside of a plexiglass box. She didn't
Speaker 1: want to do that. She was not really trying to
Speaker 1: be a spectacle. She was trying to be a musician.
Speaker 1: So anyway, that's really all that happened. I lived on
Speaker 1: the Lower East Side with a friend of mine that
Speaker 1: was doing his conscious objector or alternate service by working
Speaker 1: in a head start. And uh we lived down like
Speaker 1: Clinton and de Lancey and but uh, you know, I
Speaker 1: was only there for a few months. Why it was
Speaker 1: New York. Note for you, I got kind of homesick. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've thought many times about what I might have done
Speaker 1: had I stayed there. You know. One of the things
Speaker 1: that happened was I got robbed buying clothes. I had
Speaker 1: like been paid and I had a bunch of money
Speaker 1: and I wanted to Actually it was a close store
Speaker 1: that famously Bob Dylan had bought a lot of clothes
Speaker 1: there and stuff. I went in this place, I left
Speaker 1: my jacket hanging on a hook and the dressing room,
Speaker 1: and I went to go pay for the clothes. I
Speaker 1: bought him that my wallet was gone, and so I
Speaker 1: didn't buy the clothes, and I sort of went home penniless.
Speaker 1: But about New York, it was interesting to me because
Speaker 1: people were friendly. I've been living in Orange County, where
Speaker 1: people were more less hostile to people that looked like me.
Speaker 1: And if you were a freaking Orange County you had.
Speaker 1: It was hardcore. You had to be you know, committed, Yeah,
Speaker 1: committed exactly. We're we're in Orange County. What town were you? Fuller?
Speaker 1: But I lived all over Orange County because friends of
Speaker 1: mine would get a house at the beach and they'd
Speaker 1: be living in Huntington's or they'd be living in Newport.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of freaks. Now, when you leave
Speaker 1: New York, you go back to l a driven by work, music, opportunity, songwriting,
Speaker 1: or you just want to go home. Well, I always
Speaker 1: wanted to record my songs. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: one of the first things that happened when I got
Speaker 1: back was I was asked by a friend of mine
Speaker 1: who was in a band. There was a band that
Speaker 1: I hung around with a lot called the Gentle Soul,
Speaker 1: and I hung around on their house and everything was
Speaker 1: so communal in those days. People just lived together a lot.
Speaker 1: So anyway, I was invited to audition for that band,
Speaker 1: and that's where I met Jesse Ed Davis, the great
Speaker 1: guitar player who played on my first single, Doctor My Eyes.
Speaker 1: The audition didn't come to anything, and I didn't see
Speaker 1: how it could because I didn't really know how to
Speaker 1: be in a band. I wasn't in bands in high school.
Speaker 1: I just you know, I was just a songwriter. The
Speaker 1: other guy I met in that audition was Leroy Marinell,
Speaker 1: who co wrote Where ofs of London Good and Want
Speaker 1: to Tell Later? So it is an interesting group of people,
Speaker 1: but in the end none of us joined that band.
Speaker 1: Dctor my Eyes as your first single you record, and
Speaker 1: what's the path to writing songs? Because I'm assuming that
Speaker 1: this a period of your young life before you become
Speaker 1: the Jackson Brown. We all know you weren't performing and
Speaker 1: you were only writing songs or you were doing both.
Speaker 1: Oh No, I sang in clubs. Yeah, I sang my songs,
Speaker 1: and I really I didn't sing so well. Even though
Speaker 1: I knew a lot of folks songs, I'm out of
Speaker 1: sang them all the time. I sang blues and folks
Speaker 1: songs and traditional songs, and especially learning guitar things like
Speaker 1: Mississippi John Heard or Dave Van Rock guitar pieces or
Speaker 1: Doc Watson. I mean, it was part a group of
Speaker 1: people who were crazy about music, and that was the
Speaker 1: thing that drove everything for me. But as far as playing,
Speaker 1: I guess I felt that I had the right to
Speaker 1: sing these songs since I wrote them. Otherwise, who would
Speaker 1: listen to me singing? As a man of fact, I
Speaker 1: remember sitting up singing songs at a party and this
Speaker 1: friend of mine, a good friend of mine, sort of
Speaker 1: gently tried to tell me, Look, you know you play
Speaker 1: really well, but you know you shouldn't. You shouldn't try
Speaker 1: to sing. The record of the woman who told Jackson
Speaker 1: Brown I'd cool it on the singing front of the atwork.
Speaker 1: Who wasn't that said that to Jackson Brown? Well, her
Speaker 1: name was Ruth and Kendall ruth An. If you're out there,
Speaker 1: we wanted to introduce you to Jackson Brown, who sold
Speaker 1: eighteen million records singing. But anyway, Um, when you get
Speaker 1: back from New York, what's the gap between arriving back
Speaker 1: in California wherever you are and dr my eyes gets pressed?
Speaker 1: You go? You you make a record? Years? It was years? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Was it really four or five years? Yeah? At the
Speaker 1: time it was, I was eighteen. So I made my
Speaker 1: first record when I was about twenty two, I guess.
Speaker 1: So it was about four years before I got anything going.
Speaker 1: But I I'd go to the true Buddoor and I'd
Speaker 1: sing on Monday nights in the open mic there, and
Speaker 1: I would play in little clubs and the beach towns
Speaker 1: and I had so much time. It was fantastic. And
Speaker 1: also I didn't even have a car for most of that.
Speaker 1: I finally got a car when I was about twenty
Speaker 1: or something, I don't know. I was living in Echo
Speaker 1: Park for a long time without a car, and my
Speaker 1: best friend just finally got sick of driving there to
Speaker 1: get me and bring me back to Hollywood. All I
Speaker 1: did was play, and I kind of longed for that.
Speaker 1: And how did Doctor my Eyes get made into a record? Well,
Speaker 1: that was the one song I had written that was
Speaker 1: probably up tempo enough and short enough and simple enough
Speaker 1: to make it on the radio. And it was understood.
Speaker 1: I mean, at least I understood that it might not
Speaker 1: be your best song that guts on the radio, but
Speaker 1: if it was your shortest, fastest song, it might. Actually
Speaker 1: they're really serious about that. Records had to be not
Speaker 1: more than three minutes long better fact to fifty two
Speaker 1: was ideal, and how you say anything in two minutes?
Speaker 1: But most of my songs were really long, five or
Speaker 1: six minutes, and dr minus could be made into that
Speaker 1: kind of a song, and it was you know, you
Speaker 1: were kind of obligated to try, but it never occurred
Speaker 1: to me that it would actually work, that we'd get
Speaker 1: on I'd get on the radio. So you took that
Speaker 1: song to someone or someone heard you playing in the club.
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, no, no, it was one of my
Speaker 1: songs like early on, like for instance, like in New York,
Speaker 1: I was making demo. I had been signed to a
Speaker 1: publishing company in high school, so I was given five
Speaker 1: advanced I was signed, well, I signed away half of
Speaker 1: the songs to a record company, Elector of Records had
Speaker 1: a publishing company called Nina Music. And my best friend
Speaker 1: not only got signed to that publishing company but made
Speaker 1: a record for Electra. So it was I was sort
Speaker 1: of in line to maybe get recorded eventually, you know,
Speaker 1: if I things shaped up. So it's a long and
Speaker 1: winding road. But there was a record that got made
Speaker 1: at the Elector, but it it didn't wasn't any good
Speaker 1: and didn't get released. So okay, so back to singing
Speaker 1: out the Monday Night hoots at the True Boodoor. And uh,
Speaker 1: eventually I did start being managed by David Geffin, And
Speaker 1: you want to know how that happened? And simply sent
Speaker 1: him a recording and a photograph, and the recording was
Speaker 1: of my song Jamaica Say you Will, and it was
Speaker 1: it was recording made in a kind of a publisher's
Speaker 1: demo with Glenn Fry singing and playing guitar and me
Speaker 1: playing piano and John David South there playing the drums
Speaker 1: and singing, and those guys sang really great and that
Speaker 1: it sounded pretty good. And then eventually I called in
Speaker 1: to see what was going on and I was invited
Speaker 1: to come in and talk with David geffin And for
Speaker 1: those who don't know, David Geffen managed Laura Niro, he
Speaker 1: managed christ By Sills and Nash, and his partner in
Speaker 1: his management company managed Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. He's
Speaker 1: really responsible for making songwriters sort of the focus of
Speaker 1: music and those at that time it was already happening,
Speaker 1: but he was the one in the music business that said, look,
Speaker 1: I think you know this is what really matters. So anyway,
Speaker 1: so yeah, I met with him and he said, okay,
Speaker 1: I'll manage you, and I was like, you will, so good.
Speaker 1: Then he then really the next thing he said was
Speaker 1: you don't We're not in her, you know, well, you're
Speaker 1: gonna work on your singing, and which I was, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, it was pretty much. It was obvious that
Speaker 1: I needed to get better, so I spent time doing that.
Speaker 1: And also he he took me around to a lot
Speaker 1: of record companies. He took me to Elector, where I
Speaker 1: had already been. It's hilarious because then I am sitting
Speaker 1: in the office of Jack Holsman, whom I know, who
Speaker 1: had already signed me to his label then and I had,
Speaker 1: like you know, asked to be released after they didn't
Speaker 1: release the album. But I mean Jack Holsman, he owned
Speaker 1: the publishing company that owned my music Mina Nina Nina music. Well,
Speaker 1: Geffen asked him too, and he did give me back
Speaker 1: my publishing. Have you ever heard of such a thing?
Speaker 1: It was wild And to this day, I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: indebted to him. And he he was a kind of
Speaker 1: as exceptional record man. Well, while he built that record
Speaker 1: company on the back of a vespa, he literally recorded
Speaker 1: the artist, he mastered the records, he pressed them, he
Speaker 1: put him in a box on the back of his
Speaker 1: vesp and he took him to the record stores all
Speaker 1: over Manhattan and he built elected records that way, and
Speaker 1: he was very opinionated about everything music and especially but
Speaker 1: he was kind of a hero to me. And there
Speaker 1: I was in his office and he didn't sign me.
Speaker 1: Then he Geffen walks in with me and he didn't
Speaker 1: he didn't think I was there yet. But he also
Speaker 1: took me to see Clive Davis. He took me to
Speaker 1: you know, he asked Ahmed Ard again to sign me,
Speaker 1: and none of these people couldn't. He decided to open
Speaker 1: his own record company. And when you throughout your career,
Speaker 1: when you're writing music, is there a kind of a
Speaker 1: a sense that there's a Jackson Brown sound now? If anything,
Speaker 1: I thought I had some good songs and I was
Speaker 1: really just trying to learn to sing. And also I
Speaker 1: had the great, great good fortune to make friends with
Speaker 1: a drummer named Russell Kunkle. Russ was really cool and
Speaker 1: he was people were nice to me. I mean, I
Speaker 1: one time I ran into Jim Kelton, who was also
Speaker 1: very cool, and he was a drummer on a session
Speaker 1: that they were doing, Johnny Rivers was recording one of
Speaker 1: my songs, and they befriended me. They were very very kind.
Speaker 1: So Russ said, just so you know, if when you
Speaker 1: get ready to make your record whenever that is, I
Speaker 1: want to I want you to call me. I want
Speaker 1: to play on your record. So I did. I called
Speaker 1: the people that I knew and who had been friendly
Speaker 1: to me. And that's that's the amount. That's the degree
Speaker 1: at which I strategized about anything. It's just like, call
Speaker 1: up some of you knows a good drummer, and you know,
Speaker 1: call a friend. I don't. I still don't know how
Speaker 1: to call up somebody I don't know and asked if
Speaker 1: we can make music together. I still don't. I don't
Speaker 1: know how to do that. Who's Who's someone you wanted
Speaker 1: to call? I'm happy to call them for you. By
Speaker 1: the way, Hello, it's Alec Jackson's feeling a little uptight,
Speaker 1: you said. Russ Kunkle. Russ Kunkle and lees Clara played
Speaker 1: on that record and they made sound really. I mean,
Speaker 1: I listened to it the other day, and you know,
Speaker 1: I said, I spent years think it was kind of
Speaker 1: rudimentary and that I was not much of a singer yet,
Speaker 1: and I was. But really they really imbuted it with
Speaker 1: a kind of confidence and a kind of they brought
Speaker 1: the best out of the songs and when I hear
Speaker 1: it now, I think this is okay, this is pretty good.
Speaker 1: A matter of fact, Dr Myers comes down, I think, well,
Speaker 1: this is really good, and by standards that I didn't
Speaker 1: even have at the time. I mean, there's this piano
Speaker 1: part that starts the song that goes did und and
Speaker 1: and and well when I wrote it, I just did
Speaker 1: that through the whole song, and you it's like something
Speaker 1: give me a bouncy seat. It was like that, kind
Speaker 1: of just trying to give you the impression that they
Speaker 1: were drums, you know. So when we got in the
Speaker 1: studio with the drummer and we said, well, we can't
Speaker 1: do that, and which shall I do? And I just said, well,
Speaker 1: I'll do like the Beatles, you know, bump bump, bump,
Speaker 1: bump bump, and you know, magically, the great musicians I had,
Speaker 1: Russ and Lee just made it sound incredible. So did
Speaker 1: the interesting and thinking about that song as it was
Speaker 1: recorded with based in conga's not drums, and that the
Speaker 1: drums were over dubbed. And I don't know if anybody
Speaker 1: listening knows what the difference would be, because mostly congas
Speaker 1: get added to something in American music, sort of an
Speaker 1: added element. Of percussion. But in fact, when there's a
Speaker 1: conga player in the band and things are based on
Speaker 1: that groove, when it's like taking it to the streets
Speaker 1: or little feats, incredible songs, you know, like it makes
Speaker 1: a huge difference. It's built into the DNA of the
Speaker 1: song that there's a swing. You know, Russell was playing
Speaker 1: this gang to get them to take it to doom boom,
Speaker 1: and it gives it this balance and this swing that
Speaker 1: I think now is like I really value it. At
Speaker 1: the time, I thought, well, we're doing the best we
Speaker 1: can making this song. This a little bit, it's short.
Speaker 1: I mean, I didn't I didn't think it was my
Speaker 1: best song. Where do you think is your best song?
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's impossible to pick one. Oh, well, what's
Speaker 1: one that comes to mind? What's the song when you
Speaker 1: wrote the song? Well, we're gonna get back to I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna go to another place, which is that
Speaker 1: because you do downplay you were singing early on, and
Speaker 1: was there a period where I mean, and you're a
Speaker 1: famous singer, so if you're if you're insecure about your
Speaker 1: singing in the early days, were there songs you wrote
Speaker 1: where you said to yourself. I'm not gonna sing this,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna hand it to somebody else. Did you pass
Speaker 1: it on to somebody else? Well, lots of people still
Speaker 1: recorded my song before I did. But it wasn't that
Speaker 1: I had passed them to him that they did me
Speaker 1: a favorite by recording my songs. I mean, like Tom
Speaker 1: Rush recorded a song of mine that I still haven't played.
Speaker 1: I I was a songwriter, and I wouldn't say I
Speaker 1: was insecure. I just knew very well that I didn't
Speaker 1: sing well. Where there were some there were their songs
Speaker 1: you wrote that you thought were better sung by someone else. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's always been the case, actually, you know, like Greg
Speaker 1: Allman's version of These Days. I mean I recorded that
Speaker 1: I didn't put on my first album, and I've almost
Speaker 1: forgotten about the song, and he recorded it. But also
Speaker 1: I gotta say, like that song was recorded by Nico
Speaker 1: before anybody else recorded it. And I played the guitar
Speaker 1: part on her record, and she it was so unique,
Speaker 1: the sound of her voice and her accent, and the
Speaker 1: fact that in order her to sing the song and
Speaker 1: for me to play how I played, I mean when
Speaker 1: I wrote it, I had to play it way up
Speaker 1: the neck and put a cape book on the guitar
Speaker 1: so that it sounded very shiny, and the combination of
Speaker 1: that chiny guitar part and her wonderful deep voice and
Speaker 1: her German accent, you know, it's a very iconic performance.
Speaker 1: And I think it's more famous, you know, for her,
Speaker 1: because of her than it is for me. And I've
Speaker 1: a lot of people recorded, though, I mean Tom rushed,
Speaker 1: lots of people recorded these days, Glenn Campbell. And funny,
Speaker 1: when Glenn Campbell recorded, he basically recorded her version of it.
Speaker 1: So you wanted other people to record your songs until
Speaker 1: you were similar to Carol King in that way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if I hear myself saying that I was similar to
Speaker 1: Carol Kake, Carol King some of the greatest songs of
Speaker 1: all time when she was a housewife, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the songwriters wrote at home, you know. And when when
Speaker 1: I met Carol, she told me, I get the kids
Speaker 1: after school by nine o'clock and then I've got a
Speaker 1: few hours to work because we're talking about work habits,
Speaker 1: you know, because I didn't have any, you know, at
Speaker 1: that time. Her daughter was about sixteen, and she came
Speaker 1: in the room and you know, she's just dealing with
Speaker 1: life the way everybody I mean, but that's that's what's
Speaker 1: great about her music. It's about the fundamentals of life.
Speaker 1: You know. She was really a big deal to me.
Speaker 1: But then when she wanted to become a singer songwriter,
Speaker 1: I think it's because James Taylor had really kind of
Speaker 1: shown everyone and they were friends, you know, just she
Speaker 1: really saw that you could you could actually be the
Speaker 1: person who wrote the song singing this song, and that
Speaker 1: was there was an added interest there. And I really
Speaker 1: believe that people should sing their own songs. I used
Speaker 1: to sing Warren Zevon's songs before I got him recorded,
Speaker 1: because I wanted people to hear the song. So I
Speaker 1: would sing a Mohammed's radio. I would sing Warolves of
Speaker 1: London and my record come and saying well, Warolvers Londen,
Speaker 1: you're gonna record that right, like no, no, no no, I
Speaker 1: want Warren to record that. You know the real do
Speaker 1: Jackson Brown this song my Cleveland Heart is on his
Speaker 1: new album Downhill from Everywhere. I'm gonna make a future
Speaker 1: change we really were. I need somebody else who says
Speaker 1: to see me, we need I expect changes. Star well
Speaker 1: fun to get clean if you love conversations with pioneering
Speaker 1: singer songwriters, be sure to check out my interview with
Speaker 1: Carly Simon. A little over fifty years ago, a show
Speaker 1: at the Troubadour changed her life. Three of us rehearsed
Speaker 1: in New York for three days, and then we went
Speaker 1: out to l a And by that time, I'm hoped
Speaker 1: for Cats open for Cat six April six, and that
Speaker 1: changed things for you. That was that. That was a
Speaker 1: convincing night. We played two shows every night and four
Speaker 1: shows on the weekend. I met all all kinds of people.
Speaker 1: It was like the lights you were shining. I couldn't
Speaker 1: say no at that point. And I and even though
Speaker 1: I was suffering tremendous stage fright, I had various things
Speaker 1: that tricked me out of being afraid. Here the rest
Speaker 1: of my talk with Carly Simon at Here's the Thing
Speaker 1: dot Org. After the break, Jackson Brown talks about collaborating
Speaker 1: with a new generation of singer songwriters like Phoebe Bridgers.
Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you were listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing The singer steps from the beginning and to the
Speaker 1: vanished into the air, trying to understand how our lives head,
Speaker 1: let us look at hard. There was nobody at every
Speaker 1: such an empty surprise long. This song, Late for the Sky,
Speaker 1: is from Jackson Brown's third studio album of the same name,
Speaker 1: released in nineteen seventy four. Jackson Brown is on tour
Speaker 1: with James Taylor this summer. The pandemic delayed the release
Speaker 1: of his eightist album and tour. Jackson Brown contracted COVID
Speaker 1: in March of I got it at a show that
Speaker 1: was being done. We're being very careful, trying to distance
Speaker 1: and elbow bump and sanitized. And you got it and
Speaker 1: I got it. How did you feel? What was it like?
Speaker 1: It wasn't a very bad case. You know, I didn't
Speaker 1: have any problem breathing and I was I felt well
Speaker 1: again in a couple of weeks, so, and I could
Speaker 1: tell I was going to get better. I just didn't
Speaker 1: get that sick. And your son got it too, correct. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I came back from New York and we got together,
Speaker 1: and of course my son and I hugged, and you know,
Speaker 1: I can't be helped. But that's when everything everything shut down,
Speaker 1: and here we are still trying to get get it
Speaker 1: back up and running it. It It looks it looks good now.
Speaker 1: One of the songs on your new album, it's called
Speaker 1: My Cleveland Heart, and I wanted you to talk about that,
Speaker 1: about what what was the genesis of that song. Well,
Speaker 1: I happened to be in Cleveland and driving by a
Speaker 1: Billings and what's that and they said that's Cleveland Heart
Speaker 1: And I said, what's Cleveland Heart? And he said, well,
Speaker 1: that's where they make the artificial hearts. And I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: I could use one of those. Why do you feel
Speaker 1: this this one heart? Yeah, just like one that doesn't break,
Speaker 1: They don't ache, you know, they don't make mistakes, and um,
Speaker 1: it's not they're not that much to the song. But
Speaker 1: it was really fun to make a video of me
Speaker 1: getting this artificial heart. And it's enormous too. It looks
Speaker 1: made out of motorcycle parts and sort of put this
Speaker 1: thing in my chest. It's like, oh I but it's
Speaker 1: satirical and surreal to and it was. It sort of
Speaker 1: made a fun video because the doctors that are operating
Speaker 1: on me, the actual players in my band I mean,
Speaker 1: and then begin to play. The metaphors are are really
Speaker 1: abundant there, you know, I mean, they saved my life
Speaker 1: every night. They saved my life on stage and in
Speaker 1: a way they do like do a sort of heart transplant.
Speaker 1: How did Phoebe Bridgers get to become person that's going
Speaker 1: to eat your heart? Well, that was just that was
Speaker 1: very spontaneous. We didn't we didn't plan the video for
Speaker 1: her eat my heart. It's just the way that happened
Speaker 1: with I know Phoebe and I'm a huge fan of hers,
Speaker 1: And as a matter of fact, one of the reasons
Speaker 1: I picked that director was that she had worked with
Speaker 1: Phoebe and I liked the video that they made. And
Speaker 1: I had just been working with her because she invited
Speaker 1: me to sing on her song Kyoto, an acoustic version
Speaker 1: of that, and she invited me to sing on it.
Speaker 1: So I think somebody said, oh, you know, Phoebe could
Speaker 1: be one of the nurses in this video and your surgery.
Speaker 1: And I said, oh, yeah, great, let let's asked her
Speaker 1: and she's that she was game. So once I knew
Speaker 1: that she was going to be a nurse, I thought,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe, yeah, when they take my heart out,
Speaker 1: maybe they can glory this, you know, maybe they can
Speaker 1: hand it to her and she could receive my heart.
Speaker 1: And then it was somebody else who knows her quite well,
Speaker 1: who said yeah, and she eats it. It was her
Speaker 1: producer Tony Bergh said, they're gonna handle the heart and
Speaker 1: then she's off screen, but then they're gonna go back
Speaker 1: to showing or just standing off to one side with
Speaker 1: my heart. And I thought, that's not real. That's what
Speaker 1: they wouldn't do that, right. I was discussing with Tony
Speaker 1: and he said, yeah, she eats it or she takes
Speaker 1: a bite, you know. And apparently it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: everybody thinks it's really kind of apropos of who Phoebe is.
Speaker 1: She Phoebe is very Her songs are so dark. One
Speaker 1: of the things I love about it about her music,
Speaker 1: you know. And so that's how that happened. And of
Speaker 1: course that director is so great, her her use of
Speaker 1: light and location. What is that director's name. Her name
Speaker 1: is Alyssa torvin In. She also did a great video
Speaker 1: with Pink But the album, the song is called Cleveland.
Speaker 1: Heart of the album itself is called Downhill from Everywhere?
Speaker 1: And what was the genesis of that? Are we downhill
Speaker 1: now from everywhere? Well, the ocean is downhill from everywhere?
Speaker 1: And everything in the song is something that winds up
Speaker 1: in the ocean. Plastic. It's actually about plastic that song.
Speaker 1: I remember when I lived in l A. And of
Speaker 1: course you'd see all the storm drains that said, you know,
Speaker 1: drains to the ocean, And I remember, forget the l
Speaker 1: A Weekly talked about how twenty year veteran lifeguards in
Speaker 1: the beach department there in Venice were contracting kidney cancer
Speaker 1: from all of the pollutants in the bay. I worked
Speaker 1: with heel the bay, the Bologna wet lands. They were
Speaker 1: constantly breaching and having these blowouts and during storms and
Speaker 1: all kinds of untreated sewage going into the bay. And yeah,
Speaker 1: and when it rains in l A, you gotta stay
Speaker 1: out of the water because the runoff into the harbor
Speaker 1: water marks it absolutely toxic. What I wanted to get
Speaker 1: to is your activism. I just recently they closed the
Speaker 1: Indian Point reactor here, and I've worked to shut down
Speaker 1: utility reactors for probably run around twenty five years now
Speaker 1: with disparate groups. And you, of course had a very
Speaker 1: very serious relationship with the anti nuclear movement. I believe
Speaker 1: that three Mile Island happened in March of seventy nine.
Speaker 1: You helped form Muse that same are, correct, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then you perform at the No Nukes concert in September
Speaker 1: of that same year. Correct, Yeah, we we had formed
Speaker 1: Muse and we're planning the concert before Three Miles melted
Speaker 1: down and before the release of that pivotal movie China Syndrome, right,
Speaker 1: really sort of went into the problems and in a
Speaker 1: feature film. So all that happened all at once, and
Speaker 1: that gave a lot of currency and a lot of emphasis.
Speaker 1: At what point in your life did you decide to
Speaker 1: take that on. You're writing songs, things start to go well,
Speaker 1: David Geffen's representing it. When do you decide you wanted
Speaker 1: to get active publicly? You know, I was raised in
Speaker 1: the sixties, and so I was a member of Cores
Speaker 1: of the Congress of Racial Equality, and I would i'd
Speaker 1: take part in, you know, demonstrations. I didn't really have
Speaker 1: songs about these things. You know, there was plenty of
Speaker 1: movement songs. Actually, a lot of the songs that I
Speaker 1: knew in the civil rights era were actually from the
Speaker 1: labor movement in the thirties. So there's a lot in
Speaker 1: the folk music that has a kind of activism component,
Speaker 1: or it has a social consciousness component, and particularly the
Speaker 1: early songs of Bob Dylan did so there was a
Speaker 1: strong call to be involved, to do things that would
Speaker 1: move society in the right direction. And I think that we,
Speaker 1: like so many people, we assume that that was always happening,
Speaker 1: and it was always going to happen, and that the
Speaker 1: arc of justice and so on and all that was.
Speaker 1: It was just an assured thing that we were moving forward.
Speaker 1: Until you know, about five years ago, you didn't worry
Speaker 1: it was going to hurt your career. No, no, And
Speaker 1: I didn't really believe that it did. Although I think
Speaker 1: when you start writing songs about it, that's the question
Speaker 1: whether or not people want to hear anti war songs
Speaker 1: or they want to hear songs about nuclear power. It's like,
Speaker 1: if people are averse to hearing, you know, about society's problems,
Speaker 1: that they're not going to want to hear it in
Speaker 1: a song. I'm a songwriter, I talk about life. You know,
Speaker 1: you want to talk about what's happening in the real world.
Speaker 1: You can't just barricade yourself off in this entertainment land.
Speaker 1: Like what's going on was like a huge surprise to everybody.
Speaker 1: The height of the Vietnam War, that like a singer
Speaker 1: like Marvin Gay would come out with a song that
Speaker 1: was considered a protest song. Berry Goorey didn't want to
Speaker 1: release it, but it was it was too good, it
Speaker 1: was too true to be denied. And I think that
Speaker 1: for that matter. John Lennon also, you know the height
Speaker 1: of the Beatles, you know, as they broke up, he
Speaker 1: ban singing songs about his personal development. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: he famously went through the primal screen therapy and stuff,
Speaker 1: but he began writing songs like mother, you had me,
Speaker 1: but I didn't have you. You know, Father, you left me,
Speaker 1: but I never left you. That was so powerful. That's
Speaker 1: what songwriting was about from me. And I mean Bob
Speaker 1: Dylan was you know, right at that sort of crux.
Speaker 1: If every one of these moments when things doubled down
Speaker 1: and people were singing about what was really going on
Speaker 1: in the life and what was really going on in
Speaker 1: the world, and all these people remind you is that
Speaker 1: this music has been made all along. I mean there's
Speaker 1: songs Woody got three songs, and Bob Dylan songs and
Speaker 1: Pete Seegers songs, Joan Bias. This is a big part
Speaker 1: of what music has always been. And it was only
Speaker 1: in Hollywood that you were sort of told, don't try
Speaker 1: to make any political points here. Maybe it's New York
Speaker 1: to maybe simply the hierarchy, the financial hierarchy of the country,
Speaker 1: you know, doesn't want anybody waking up. Singer, songwriter and
Speaker 1: activist Jackson Brown. When we Return, Jackson Brown talks about
Speaker 1: the songs that still move him to tears. Follow here's
Speaker 1: the thing on the I Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts. While you're there, leave
Speaker 1: us a review. I'm Alec Baldwin and you were listening
Speaker 1: to hear the things. Running on Empty is the title
Speaker 1: track to Jackson Brown's seven live album, recorded at the
Speaker 1: Merryweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland. Brown was part of
Speaker 1: l A's Laurel Canyon music scene in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: Musicians like Joni Mitchell, Bonnie Rait, Crosby Stills, Nash and Young,
Speaker 1: and the Eagles often dropped by each other's houses to
Speaker 1: play music together. Brown still marvels at how he was
Speaker 1: able to meet some of his heroes from the beginning.
Speaker 1: I met people that I really had a huge admiration
Speaker 1: for like David Crosby, you know, sang on my first album.
Speaker 1: I mean he's sort of it's almost like being knighted
Speaker 1: or something, you know, Like he like he gave me
Speaker 1: the accolade of being of singing Army down four or
Speaker 1: five of my songs. And I really learned so much
Speaker 1: of how to work, how to get what I get
Speaker 1: in the studio from him. And there was a concert
Speaker 1: I did one time where Crosby, Sils and Nash wear there,
Speaker 1: but Neil wasn't there, and I was on stage that
Speaker 1: there's a picture of me with Crossil, Nash and Brown.
Speaker 1: It's like like I thought, well, that's wild, you know.
Speaker 1: And it was a long time ago. But I gotta
Speaker 1: say the people that I admire the most are people
Speaker 1: I'm still very shy about and don't even know how
Speaker 1: to overcome that my admiration enough to be really really
Speaker 1: good friends with. I mean, I can't quite get over it,
Speaker 1: you know, what they mean to me and what the
Speaker 1: music meant to me. Springsteen inducted you into the Rock
Speaker 1: and Roll Hall of Fame. M Is he a friend
Speaker 1: of yours? And when you admire yeah yeah, yeah, And
Speaker 1: he and we met We met at a gig that
Speaker 1: we were both doing at Villanova, and he actually he
Speaker 1: was opening from me, and I've never seen him. I
Speaker 1: had met him. We already knew each other because he
Speaker 1: came into a guest set when I was playing acoustically
Speaker 1: at this club called the Main Point in Philadelphia, and
Speaker 1: so we knew each other, and I knew his music
Speaker 1: and saw me that I was doing this gig with
Speaker 1: Bruce and that he was you know that, I he said,
Speaker 1: you're what you were, you were gonna follow Bruce. I
Speaker 1: don't know, I don't think you should do that. It
Speaker 1: it really bothered me, pissed me off of it. What
Speaker 1: do you mean, I'm like, But then I saw this
Speaker 1: show and it was really I mean, I saw what
Speaker 1: he was doing and it was just astounding. He's a
Speaker 1: thing unto himself, and he amplified so much of what
Speaker 1: he saw in rock and roll to a degree to
Speaker 1: almost make it into another art form. But I gotta
Speaker 1: say I feel quite apart from all of that. I mean,
Speaker 1: I try to learn from everything that I that I love.
Speaker 1: I try to take it in and learn part of
Speaker 1: it or something how how to applies to what I
Speaker 1: want to do. But I feel like what I do
Speaker 1: is quite different. I mean, I'm always put together with
Speaker 1: the Eagles, but when I think about it, we really
Speaker 1: wrote about very different things. And for that matter, like
Speaker 1: take it easy as a very you know, it's a
Speaker 1: song that I wrote with Glenn Fry, and so I'm
Speaker 1: linked in that way forever and I'm very happy about it.
Speaker 1: But it wouldn't have been that song if Glenn Fry
Speaker 1: had not done what he did. He wrote about what
Speaker 1: he writes about. I write about what I write about,
Speaker 1: and like standing on the corner in Windsory, Arizona, I
Speaker 1: see an Indian guy. I see it, A tall Indian
Speaker 1: guy with a white cowboy hat, you know, took hoise shirt,
Speaker 1: standing on the corner, and I probably would have written
Speaker 1: about him. Of course, Glenn said, you wrote about this
Speaker 1: a girl, my lord in a flatbed forward. Yeah, slowing
Speaker 1: down to look at men, take a look at me.
Speaker 1: That's pure Glenn Fry. That's like, well, I've always said,
Speaker 1: you musicians have this beautiful reality. Music is so much
Speaker 1: more powerful than film and television because you can consume
Speaker 1: it anywhere in the shower, while you're having sex, while
Speaker 1: you're jogging, while you're in the car. Music is in
Speaker 1: our lives in a way that you don't have to
Speaker 1: make that kind of appointment visually with movies and TV.
Speaker 1: And how beautiful for you. You can just sit down
Speaker 1: and write, and you can just sit down and play,
Speaker 1: and it's all self generated. It's you. It comes from you,
Speaker 1: and the and and and and the film business that's
Speaker 1: so collaborative. But who's one example or more of someone
Speaker 1: you always dreamed of working with and you wish you've
Speaker 1: been able to work with them, that you just love
Speaker 1: their music for many generations, Oh god, there are so many.
Speaker 1: Singing with Phoebe Bridges was was a big deal for
Speaker 1: me because I love somebody's I mean, maybe I'd like
Speaker 1: to do something with Lucinda Williams. You know, she's one
Speaker 1: of my favorites, and I don't know how she does
Speaker 1: what she does. It's just so mysterious to me that
Speaker 1: I can't figure out how I bring that to. You know,
Speaker 1: bring that about, I guess you'd have to write a
Speaker 1: song together or something. So being invited, you know, it's
Speaker 1: almost the necessary component for me. So who do I
Speaker 1: want to call me up and invite to sing with them?
Speaker 1: Where write a song with Lucinda would be great. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, I love women writers, songwriters. I Sean Colvin,
Speaker 1: but I don't think of it like that. I got
Speaker 1: to play with some wonderful musicians this last weekend we
Speaker 1: did a live stream event for organization called Plastic Pollution Coalition,
Speaker 1: and the lineup it was everybody's sang one song by
Speaker 1: themselves in one song with somebody else, but it was
Speaker 1: Ben Harper, keV mo Mandy Moore, Taylor Goldsmith and and
Speaker 1: are A George who's my god daughter, but it's also
Speaker 1: who is like the singer and the great group The
Speaker 1: Bird and the Bee, and she's been in a bunch
Speaker 1: of bands and as an artist in her own right.
Speaker 1: But also a group called the Watkins Family Hour, which
Speaker 1: are Sarah and Shawn Watkins, who I've played with before.
Speaker 1: So I can't write name them, but I just to
Speaker 1: show you, I mean, when stuff happens, it happens by accident.
Speaker 1: It's almost got to be an accident. Like I told you,
Speaker 1: I can't call people to say I want to write
Speaker 1: a song with you. A matter of fact, some of
Speaker 1: those people have invited me to write a song with him,
Speaker 1: and I don't know how to even I don't even
Speaker 1: know why that I can accept that offer, you know,
Speaker 1: like I guess I want to give that phone call.
Speaker 1: I want to see you at your house and someone
Speaker 1: you love it in my own calls because you know something, man,
Speaker 1: it's just time has come. The time has come for
Speaker 1: you went. How to just do this? Man? We gotta
Speaker 1: do this song. We you know, we talked about it
Speaker 1: in London, we talked about it in Rio. I saw
Speaker 1: you get at the airport in Miami and we talked
Speaker 1: about it. And now the time has come for us
Speaker 1: to do that song. And you're like, yeah, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: call you back. I'll call you back tomorrow. I have
Speaker 1: tremendous performance anxiety. You still do. Look Carol King and
Speaker 1: asked me to let's write, get together, write a song.
Speaker 1: And she came over my house and we spent afternoon.
Speaker 1: I made a tape of the thing, you know, and
Speaker 1: we we started hitting an idea there and I'm that
Speaker 1: was like thirty years ago. I'm still working on that song.
Speaker 1: I always tell them, Look, I'm the slowest writer you ever.
Speaker 1: You know, we're gonna say that. Thank you for listening
Speaker 1: to interview with Jackson Brown The slowest writer in rock
Speaker 1: and roll history. Is there a song because your songs
Speaker 1: are so emotional, some of them, they're very powerful emotionally,
Speaker 1: And is there a song where when you play it
Speaker 1: it still moves you. Well, honestly, this sound like bragging,
Speaker 1: but they that's what they do to me. Not every
Speaker 1: song is that kind of a song, but I mean,
Speaker 1: there are a number of songs that do that to me.
Speaker 1: And that's what I learned going out solo acoustic, was
Speaker 1: that that's the only business I have being there is
Speaker 1: that those This song still moved me. And it's real
Speaker 1: because you're pretty much naked when you're up there, just
Speaker 1: by yourself. But I would say that there was a
Speaker 1: song on my recent record that I was faving trouble
Speaker 1: finishing because I kept crying as I was trying to.
Speaker 1: I mean, there weren't even my lines. I was collaborating
Speaker 1: with a guy on this song called Love is Love.
Speaker 1: It's a song that I wrote in Haiti, and we
Speaker 1: were talking about this guy who is a priest that
Speaker 1: has built schools and hospitals in Haiti and he rides
Speaker 1: around on recycle and he's in this song and I
Speaker 1: said that, I say, Rick writes a motorbike through the
Speaker 1: worst slums of the city, and I and my friend
Speaker 1: I said, well, how what would you say about Father Rick?
Speaker 1: And he says, well, the father and the doctor to
Speaker 1: the poorest of the poor. And for some reason that
Speaker 1: just messed me up, because I've seen the work that
Speaker 1: he's done, and I've seen the people that he helps
Speaker 1: and ministers too, and it does now it gives me
Speaker 1: chills to say those words, and I why wouldn't I
Speaker 1: didn't write them that My my collaborator, David Bell, wrote
Speaker 1: those words. But every time I'd sing that, I mean,
Speaker 1: it had and I began laughing about it. But I'm
Speaker 1: trying to finish the song. But this song has like
Speaker 1: a very big SOB factor in it. I mean, he's
Speaker 1: like messing me up to say these lines. There was
Speaker 1: a line and Late for the Sky that did that
Speaker 1: same thing when I wrote it. But by the time
Speaker 1: it's a song, it doesn't make me cry. But you
Speaker 1: know who does that? Like Bonnie Rate sings Love has
Speaker 1: No Pride, and she would cry real tears all through
Speaker 1: the song she liked. Just everybody cried. I mean it's
Speaker 1: like that she was ding through. It was kind of
Speaker 1: a miracle. But that just happens to her when she
Speaker 1: sings that song. And I don't know how she can
Speaker 1: sing a cry, but but she did. Also when we
Speaker 1: were at the Hall of Fame Anniversary show and the
Speaker 1: Cross Bustles and Nash hosted Bonnie and hosted me and
Speaker 1: hosted James Taylor, She's sang Love has No Pride with
Speaker 1: David and Graham and she she did it again. She
Speaker 1: just brings it to that place where that song she inhabits.
Speaker 1: That song. It's so it's so real that, I mean,
Speaker 1: she just comes to tears and brings so many of
Speaker 1: the people to tears too. Are you know what song
Speaker 1: you sing is so moving to me? I mean the
Speaker 1: most I'm not gonna see it the most beautiful song.
Speaker 1: And you have a lot of beautiful songs, but I
Speaker 1: love Linda Paloma. That's a beautiful song. Wonderful, thank you.
Speaker 1: What was the inspiration for that song? Well, I wrote
Speaker 1: that from my wife and my first wife, and we
Speaker 1: we spent the whole first month we knew each other
Speaker 1: in Mexican restaurants, listening to mariachi music and drinking. They
Speaker 1: would always play her this song Kuokoko La Paloma. So
Speaker 1: I wanted to write her a Paloma song, you know,
Speaker 1: and they would really sing to her. She was really
Speaker 1: beautiful and she knew that song. But when I when
Speaker 1: I wrote it, of course it was some time after that,
Speaker 1: but it was a tribute to her. Really, that's how
Speaker 1: the song came about. Well listen, I'm glad you're healthy.
Speaker 1: Best of luck on the tour with James Taylor. Although
Speaker 1: you don't need luck when it's the two of you,
Speaker 1: it sounds like a lock to me. It would be great.
Speaker 1: And thank you so much for doing this with us.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me on. I really enjoyed talking with you.
Speaker 1: Jackson Brown. This is Linda Paloma from his fourth album
Speaker 1: The Pretender. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing has brought
Speaker 1: to you by my Heart Radio. At the moment you
Speaker 1: think you're darklas started, you were filled with man being love.
Speaker 1: Scenes from the songs of Love. I was the Less
Speaker 1: Sky and you were my Man down. And the music
Speaker 1: that played in your years goes a little bit fair
Speaker 1: to each day. Can you find yourself looking se