WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1234 - Jackson Browne

Episode Date: June 10, 2021

Jackson Browne is one of the most prolific singer-songwriters in modern music. He talks to Marc about how a lot of his aptitude comes from his enjoyment of being a solitary player. But that doesn't mean Jackson doesn't have stories about his career collaborations. He does, going back to Nico and the Velvet Underground all the way up to his upcoming tour with James Taylor. Jackson also talks to Marc about his new album Downhill from Everywhere and what it has to do with the Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch.  Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun, a new original series streaming February 27th, exclusively on Disney Plus. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing with cannabis legalization. It's a brand new challenging marketing category.

legalization. It's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. Lock the gates! store and a cast creative all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucksters what's happening I'm Mark Maron. This is my podcast. This is it. How's it going? On today's show, Jackson Brown. I talked to Jackson Brown. This is yet another Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member to be on the show this year. We've had quite a few already.

be on the show this year. We've had quite a few already. Rolling Stone listed him as one of the greatest songwriters of all time. He's got a new album coming out this summer, and I got the opportunity. It's been on the books for a while. We did do it on Zoom, but Jackson Brown has been around a long time. He's seen a lot. He's been through a lot. No matter what you think of your music, his life is actually a little more incredible, I think, than, look, the music is great. Jackson Brown is Jackson Brown. I love some Jackson Brown songs. That first Jackson Brown record was an amazing record. But I was also sort of curious about the Velvet Underground Nico connection. Why did Nico and how did Nico do the first version of These Days? And he played on it.

How did that happen? How does Jackson Brown end up on Nico's first record? What the fuck is that about? So I had some questions. I had some sort of specific questions, LAC questions, and it turned out to be a pretty great conversation. I've always heard he's a great guy. I don't know what I was expecting, but people I trust and know in music and in life love the guy. And the reason is, is because he's one of the guys, man.

And, you know, and he's seen it all. And there's apparently some stuff, obviously, you know, after I talk to him, my buddy Flanagan gets in touch with me. He's like, did you ask him about the Hendrix thing? I'm like, no, man. No, I didn't. I didn't know. I can't do everything. When I mention that I'm going to talk to people, I've already talked to them.

So I couldn't. It doesn't matter. There's plenty here. So Jackson Brown is on the show, which is exciting. Quick cat update. Sammy's relentless. Fucking relentless. Does not take no.

Will not fucking. Well, it's a cat. He's a cat. But what an aggressive little fucker. I think he's going to be a stout little mother, too. A stout little dude. You know, he's not going to be lanky. He's going to have that,

you know, that kind of almost a bulldoggy kind of a cat thing. It looks like Fonda was like that. It's a little muscle, just a little knot, a little muscle man. But I'm having a good time. There's literally a thousand cat toys all over my house.

And now for the rest of my life, I will find them under things, squeezed into things, in between things, some places that you never really thought a cat toy could get to. I lost the top of a Liberty drinking bottle that I know Buster was playing with weeks ago. And in my aggravation, I went and ordered like three or four bottles and an extra top. And then like two days ago out of nowhere, and my house has been clean several times since, he's playing with the top.

I don't know where he was hiding it. I don't know what happened to it, but now it's back. But I like the bottles. So it's not terrible, but I do this spite-driven purchases too. It's crazy, man. I get mad at myself and I buy. It doesn't matter. I'm just trying to crazy, man. I get mad at myself and I buy. That doesn't matter. I'm just trying to breathe, man.

I'm just trying to breathe. I'm just trying to exist. Oh, my God. I talked to you guys about that painting. That, you know, the Lynn Shelton painting. And, you know, figuring out that it probably wasn't the Lynnn shelton that i knew and loved was this other guy well if you're following the story i'll just bring you up to speed i i set my ig crew on a research project and you know some of them found a piece of art from 1965 on an auction an abstract painting by lynn shelton from 1965. Then some others found this Carl Springer furniture, some of which was painted by a

painter named Lynn Shelton, New York Times article. He referred to him as he was an engineer. He went to engineering school and then did this interesting abstract work on paper, large pieces painted on paper and then enameled onto furniture. Uh, there was just a passing bit of information that he was a teacher of some kind in California, but there's just no, all the leads die out. So I've got this, this piece by this Lynn Shelton and I, you know, somebody founded up for auction, some of the furniture that he had done the painting on. It does look a bit like the painting and, um carl springer who has passed away the furniture maker designer he still has

you know a shop or there's you know there's a carl springer collection that they keep making or something a gallery but i reached out to them to ask them if they had any information about this lynn shelton they used to paint on paper that was put on to some of Carl Springer's furniture and enameled on there. A guy got back to me immediately and called me. He said, yes, they did that collaboration years ago. He said that he doesn't know what happened to that guy. The last he heard, maybe it was in the 90s from him or about him. But he's just kind of the Lynn Shelton that probably did the painting I have and definitely did that work on the Carl Springer furniture.

It's just gone. Alive, dead, don't know. Relatives, don't know. So we just hit a dead end so until family members or somebody who knew him i have no idea who lynn shelton the painter was who collaborated with carl springer and most likely did the abstract that is on paper that is hanging in my bedroom right now in 1983 uh no i have no information it's kind of odd given the internet and given the fact that he did some stuff but that's where that goes i've i've i've pursued it as far as i can and uh that's where we're at with that i do guess i can tell you this

i can i went to a screener of respect the aretha franklin biopic that i'm in not knowing anything about the movie, just knowing my experience in being in it. And it was a small screening room. I brought my friend Kit, my manager, and his wife were there, and some other lady whose son works at the production company or something. And we watched the movie. And it's a big movie. And everybody's pretty great in it. It's Forrest Whitaker and Jennifer Hudson and Marlon Wayans, Mark Maron,

and some other people and Mark Maron. And Mark Maron's in it with Jennifer Hudson. Mark Maron and Jennifer Hudson are in it. Forrest Whitaker. I don't want to... There's a and Jennifer Hudson are in it. Forrest Whitaker. I don't want to. There's a lot of great people in it. This isn't a plug for the movie yet. I'm sure that will happen. But I was impressed with the movie. It looked great. She sounded great. I did pretty good. I thought I was good. All the stuff that I shot is really in the movie except for like one line.

It's like four or five scenes. And it really takes on Aretha Franklin's entire life up until like 72 until she gets goes back and records that gospel record and it Liesel Tommy did a great job the movie looks great and it's quite an undertaking and it's I'm excited for it to come out i'm excited for you to see it and i'm and i just thank god that i liked it does that make sense to you does it it's great to be involved with something that you can honestly say uh is great i'll tell you more about it during the sanctioned period of promotion. But that was my experience with it the other day. Jackson Brown is here, as I mentioned.

And I didn't know what to expect, and I wasn't expecting a lot necessarily. I know about as much about Jackson Brown as anyone does. You know the songs. You know that there's some darkness there, but I didn't know what to expect. And as I said before, so many people I know love the guy, and it was actually great talking to him and just kind of letting his brain skip around in the history of music, modern music, that he was involved with and the people he knew. It was just a fun talk. I don't know if I've got the details that you want,

but I had a good time talking to him. So this is me talking to Jackson Brown. His new album, Downhill From Everywhere, comes out on July 23rd. We'll be right back. Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. Be honest. When was the last time you thought about your current business insurance policy? If your existing business insurance policy is renewing on autopilot each year without checking out Zensurance, you're probably spending more than you need. That's why you need to switch to low-cost coverage from Zensurance

before your policy renews this year. Zensurance does all the heavy lifting to find a policy, covering only what you need, and policies start at only $19 per month. So if your policy is renewing soon, go to Zensurance and fill out a quote. Zensurance, mind your business. Are you at your studio that I played at once?

Yeah. I'm actually in the room next door to where you played. That place is great, man. It is. It is. Thank you. And we're having the best time. This place runs so well.

All kinds of great people coming through here um ben montent just mixing his album next door right now with jonathan wilson and uh it sounds really great but how long have you had that place down there it's where was it it's in venice is it in venice or santa monica or long beach it's in santa monica and i've had a life about 30 years 30 years years? 30, yeah. 30. And do you just rent it out, or how does it work? Well, actually, no, I own it. I own the building, but I used to rent it. The landlord was so cool. He came in after about a year and said,

oh, my God, you've made all these leasehold improvements. You don't even own the place. And I said, well, you know, we had no choice. We have to have the studio the way we built it. built it you know we built it out it had been a machine shop he was really cool and then he stopped charging us uh increase of living uh you know on the rent and stuff and so yeah we've been here for a long time but do you like when when in terms of people recording there is that something that do you do you do they pay for studio time is that a source of income yeah if they have the money they do if you're not a lot of my friends have recorded here without

paying because you know that you know not everybody's got a budget or they don't have they need to spend it on the players or something i mean yeah it's not booked all the time you know yeah so my my best friends know that it's dark part of the time so that's the part that's the time they want that time i'm not gonna sell yeah i like the new record by the way and i think that like you know that uh downhill from everywhere that title track that's got a little edge to it there jackson you got it's got a little little little punch to it yeah thank you who's that guitar player who's making that dirty noise that's Lease. Well, there's two guitar players on that track. Well, there's three, but you don't count me. I'm playing the really simple stuff underneath.

But that's Greg Lease and Val McCallum. They're in my band. But they're also extremely in demand all over the place. I mean, yeah, that evolved out of another song, and I wanted to sort of turn the corner, yeah, and be something that was really, you know, fun to listen to without having to listen to, if you know what I mean.

But there's a, definitely there's a menacing message to it, right, under there? Yeah. I mean, you talk about the ocean, but maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're saying but it sounds like uh are you aware that all the garbage is going into the ocean is that what's happening in that song yeah that's it it was based on a remark by this oceanographer named captain charles moore the guy who discovered the great pacific art garbage patch as they call

it the the circle the collection garbage swirl yeah the garbage swirl in the middle well they're actually five of them now they're like they're in all the oceans but he's the first guy that found himself in the middle of and said what is this what's going on and and began to document it and that was not that long ago about 10 or 15 years ago and yeah and everybody said whoa what's happening here? But yeah, he simply said, the ocean's downhill from everywhere. So it's going to get everything that humanity does is going to collect there.

And it is. And that's where, yeah, I mean, you can feel it in the song because like, yeah, it's sort of a list of things, but I think that the guitars and the sort of tone of it, as catchy or as driving as it is, you're sort of like a little dark that's good yeah dark is good dark it's good about now yeah but i didn't realize you know looking back at some of this stuff about you like i mean i know the old house you know i you know i lived in Highland Park for years. Oh, yeah? Yeah, and a woman I was seeing lived right there on Echo. Oh, yeah? Like right on, yeah.

And there used to be like, you know, that's like Jackson Brown's family's house. I'm like, really? And then there was like a couple people like, yeah, I think that they rent it out for porn now. I'm like, is that true? Well, my brother lives there, and he does rent it out to film companies, but I don't know if they do porn. He might have rented it out to a couple of porn.

I really don't know. I'm not around there when they're filming. That's kind of a disquieting thought, really, because this house has a chapel and a dungeon. It's got a- A dungeon? Yeah, it's got a- Who built the house?

My grandfather built it. With a dungeon. What was up with him? Yeah. That's what we wanted to know. What was up with Grandpa? You know, there was a cell in the dungeon with this very small, sort of looked like a Charles Adams door,

like this tiny four-and-a-half-foot door with a grate in the middle of it, and it was a rounded top door, and you'd pull it open. There was a one-armed bandit in there, like a slot machine from early days, the slot machines, and had a couple of dimes in there. I was trying to figure out how to get those dimes because we thought they might be worth a lot of money. And we played. Everybody played in our yard.

It was the place to play. But that's where you grew up. From what age? Like, you know, when did you get there? From three until I was about 13. So it was your grandfather's house, but your parents lived there too? My grandfather passed away before I was born.

My parents met in Germany. No, my parents met in Alaska, but they were living in Germany when they had us kids, the three of us. Yeah. Military? Yeah, my father worked for the newspaper, an army newspaper.

He'd been in the military, but he wasn't in the military when he had the family. He was working for the Stars and Stripes newspaper. And it was after the war, and they were just living in you know living in europe and actually having a pretty grand time they they lived they lived we lived in a house that we were sort of billeted by the army in a place which were shared by several other families yeah with this massive staircase. I think it had been the mansion of some industrialist or something, and the house was requisitioned or given to these three different families to live in.

And they called it Chateau Mo. I don't know where the name came from, but I've got a souvenir of a party where my father's playing piano with Django Reinhardt. Really? Django's playing guitar, and my father's playing piano with Django Reinhardt. Really? Django's playing guitar. My father's playing the piano in the background. I think he had told my mother, get the camera, get the camera. Because he could find Django Reinhardt, which was not always that easy, and hire him for these parties.

So, yeah, they had a lot of parties. My father told me when I was growing up, he said that being in the Army was the best years of his life. And they were his best years because he didn't have to think yeah and i was you know like 14 and thinking that's not good that's what he what he's saying you know you just told me what to do i didn't need to think yeah so um well maybe he was young and he needed that well i think i get it now i understand now at the time i thought sounded to me like it was a bad you know just to take a few years off in the middle of your life and just do whatever they tell you to do he didn't need the discipline not one of

those kids no no and when he did steal a sailboat and sailed to catalina when he was 16 this is one of the things he was very proud of he was doing during Prohibition. I mean, he didn't make it, he didn't explain anything else about it. He said he stole a sailboat. And I went, well. And I think he didn't look like the kind of person who would steal anything. But he did.

He didn't make off with somebody's boat and go play in bars. Well, in speakeasies. Piano? Yeah. So he was a real musician. Oh, yeah. My father could play.

And he always had a band. We had jam sessions in that house where there were just 30 or 40 people. And the entire top of the piano was covered, I mean, just solid bottles. Oh, really? So he was there. Yeah, he was a drinker. But they all drank. That was really the, I think, the clarion call of the day was, you know, to drink.

You know, they didn't call them alcoholics. They said they could hold their liquor. Yeah. Yeah. But it sort of sets the stage in your mind for whatever, you know, L.A. became, I would imagine, in the late 60s. I mean, you know, to sort of like keep drinking all night and keep playing all night was i think a lot of great things came out of that yeah i think so yeah i think rock and roll is founded on sort of you know on just keeping going on on sort of taking it beyond the limits and and

seeing see what's there see what you got and there were some years where i didn't sleep very much you know and uh that was i mean if you were young and you could do that you know and it didn't sleep very much, you know, and that was if you were young and you could do that, you know, and it didn't really came out of your hide. But there was lots of hide to go. You know, you had lots of lots left. I wouldn't do it now. No, I don't know how the hell there's. I mean, I'm 57. I don't know how old you are, but there's a few guys that I think are still added occasionally, but not the way they used to.

there's a few guys that I think are still at it occasionally, but not the way they used to. I think there's a few guys around that'll do a bump here and there just to kind of get ready to do the thing, you know? You know, the last time I was offering to cook, I was like, no, we don't want to open that door. It's like, you know. I can't even imagine it. I can't, like, I can't.

I don't want to let myself imagine it too much. Yeah, it was a lot of time wasted in a way, but there were some good times. Well, like everything that you really do in excess, I mean, the initial, you know, excitement and exhilaration goes, and then you're just doing it to, you know. Yeah. You know, it doesn't have the same effect.

Well, it's just interesting to me, like, you know, you're going to tour with James Taylor, right? Right. I mean, I talked to that guy. I mean, out of all the guys in the world that you would, you know, you wouldn't think would be driven by being strung out or jacked on blow, it's you two. And it turns out, like, you know, you guys did your time, that's for sure.

Everybody did, yeah. Well, James is uh yeah well i can't really say that i spent time getting high with james james no no i just mean that he was he's rehabilitated you know kind of before he kind of went through all that before everybody i know i mean oh yeah yeah yeah he got well he was strung out with the first generation yeah dope guys right right yeah yeah bad too. Well, he was strung out with the first generation of dope guys. Right, right. Yeah, bad, too. Like, he was hardcore, man. Well, I could see his music is a little more, like, I could see where that comes from, the darkness. But yours is like, I mean, some of your stuff's pretty kind of, you know, fun.

And I guess the others, that first bump is pretty fun. you know, fun. And I guess there's that first bump is pretty fun. Well, actually, yeah, I always thought that music should be really, it should be fun to listen to without even listening to the lyrics. You should be able, you know, the music should be fun to listen to. No, I think, like, I was surprised, though. So you grew up in Highland Park until you were a teenager, and then what did you do, man? You split? My father realized that I was surprised though. Like, so you grew up in Highland Park for, you know, till you're a teenager. And then what'd you do, man?

You split? My father realized that I was carrying weapons. You were carrying weapons? Weapons. What do you mean? I mean like, like his straight edge razor. I don't know what I was doing with these weapons, except that it was, it was tough. Highland Park was tough.

I think it still is tough in parts. And, uh. Yeah. So the kids, I was running running around I was 13 or 14 I wasn't cutting anybody right and he just I not just that I think he just see that I mean there were also some parties that you know for my sister's birthday party I mean she was when she turned 14 or 15 there were like 40 vatos in our yard trying to get into the party you know yeah so he just realized it was time to move and they moved us to orange county where he had you know job prospect and my mom i could you know teach she

was becoming a substitute teacher so they just moved us to a sort of you know supposedly wholesome suburban environment and uh we kept the house of course and and rented out to people and and um later i moved back there around the time I had my first child right actually right at that time yeah I went and lived there and was so I was a I was a father in that house where where I was a child and what year let's see 73 maybe oh so later but like what is what is this like how I guess my question is, is, like, that song, you know, These Days, and that whole sort of the Nico connection and Chelsea Girl record.

I mean, that, like, it feels to me like there was a moment there in your life and in your career that it could have went a totally different way. I mean, like, how did you hook up with those? Because you were right in it in, like, when she's just getting done with the Velvet Underground. I mean, like, how did you hook up with those? Because you were right in it in, like, when she's just getting done with the Velvet Underground. I mean, like, those two paths. I mean, and you definitely crossed them. I mean, what was the story behind that song and being on that record?

Well, that was one of my songs, and I sang, I was a songwriter, and I'd gone to New York with friends, too, who were on their way to Europe. They were on their way to find a cheap tramp steamer, you the legendary sort of you know tramp steamer to Europe and they had already tried finding one in Veracruz and didn't work out so they they they invited me to go with them to have a third person to pay for gas and we drove across the country and then I was there I was staying on the floor of the apartment of this friend of mine who was um had also gone to the same high school as me and so there was a gig where

tim buckley was playing with nico and we knew tim buckley because we'd played in these clubs together in san and um well i say played together i mean he played the club he had the paying gigs at these clubs right we were just hung around. We were like part of this folky crowd in Orange County. But he played all over the place. So anyway, after that gig, and he opened for Nico, or she opened for him. I'm not sure how it went exactly.

But she was playing. And you get a picture of her sitting behind a bar with Sterling Morrison accompanying her. Sterling Morrison was one of the guys in the Velvet Underground. And what I was told was that they were taking turns accompanying her while she got. And so sometimes Lou would do it, and sometimes John Cale would do it. But she needed an accompanist, and Tim Buckley called me a couple days after we saw him play with her and said that she had asked him to accompany her.

And he kind of cracked up. He said, I don't think she realizes that I have gigs, that I have, you know. He's a working guy. Yeah, so do you want to do this? And I went and played for her, and it worked out great. So she hired me she hired you for for that record as a tour with her as an accompanist and how old are you like 18 yeah 18

so um yeah and and so i you know i'd play it for her at the dom and then then they said okay we're gonna have some recording sessions and you'll play on the songs of hers. And then she started doing some of my songs. She started doing These Days and she started doing The Fairest of the Seasons, which I had written with Greg Copeland, who was one of those guys that was on his way to Europe and passing through. By this time they had split, I think.

They had already gone. But so you had, how many songs did you have at 18 i mean had you landed like you'd written songs for other people at that point already did you have a hit um no actually but my friend greg the guy i just mentioned had a um we'd been assigned by electra's publishing company so we literally had we literally had a publisher and i was making demos for those songs with one of their producers uh on anagra, in his apartment, you know, and then on another occasion in the studio that they were sort of, and I had about 30 songs, you know, so, and they wanted to get to the artist on an acetate which is a kind of it's just it's just temporary um it's like a record a recording that's that's cut on a lathe it's not pressed so you and eventually it wears out you can you got maybe several couple

dozen planks and it gets scratchier and scratchier and then but they it's it's how they got songs to artists and then they decide well you got so many and we want to get them to a lot of people so they just press this thing up so there are still some copies of this thing floating around i've personally defaced quite a few of them because i sang i said and i didn't sing well you know i and for a long time i thought no i don't really want these to fall into the wrong hands of Of course, they are. They're out there. They're out there. But that song, like these days, like that's such a beautiful song.

And it's like, and it was on that record. It just, you know, and I guess this is a known thing, but it just seems almost that world of the Velvet Underground, of Warhol, and of Nico and her sort of mysterious yeah kind of life did you you guys dated briefly or well i wouldn't call it dating all right yeah but but you know there's this it was everybody as far as i know everybody slept with everybody but it was like uh biz briefly yeah very briefly she had you know she was amazing in that she had she was

she was this very beautiful and very sort of arctic sort of aloof kind of presence yeah and largely because she felt that way a lot around people she was not that she would not right but she had a son and re was really young maybe maybe two maybe two and a half or something she had a son with um elaine delon and not and not a relationship with him and she was a single mother she was working at night you know she had a babysitter and i don't know she was um but she was wonderfully she was fun you know she, she was that sort of, if you see her in La Dolce Vita, you know, it's that fun kind of, it's like a very girlish, beautiful, young girlish kind of quality that she had.

Yeah. And she was smart. She was really smart and she had very accelerated tastes in music. She hung around with Ornette Coleman. She thought the birds were great, by the way, and everybody in New York were sort of against. They sort of had an attitude about California. The anti-birds?

They weren't anti, but I just think they just assumed they knew. I think they were dismissive of most things california but um no people in california didn't care i mean actually but i mean she she like she liked she liked the birds because of roger mcguinn solo in eight miles high she thought it was like really avant-garde and really oh wow and of course it was um influenced by um john coltrane you know and the birds were very progressive so and she dug that she was just sort of um you know she she wanted to do and and for that reason she didn't really like chelsea girls because when they made that record everybody recorded the songs that they had written with her like lou reed played on the songs that he had written i played on the songs that they had written with her like lou reed played

on the songs that he had written i played on the songs that i wrote there were i think i also accompanied her on a couple things like there was a tim harden song what she was doing was very much like what judy collins was doing in that same period which is to say that she was finding great songs by great writers and then curating them into this great collection of songs. And it was a lot like, you know, also Linda Ronstadt did that later and Bonnie Raitt,

but Judy Collins was the master of that and she had put all those songs together of Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell and Jacques Brel or a deep cut from Donovan or something. So Nicos, there was a cut, there was a song that no one had ever heard that Bob Dylan wrote called I'll Keep It With Mine.

There was a Tim Harden song called Eulogy for Lenny Bruce. What was that guy like? Did you know Harden? I met him a couple times. Hey, man. Heavy. Yeah. Yeah. I met him. I didn't, the second time I met him a couple times hey man well heavy i yeah i met him i didn't the second time i met him i didn't i didn't particularly you know he was he was being an asshole but yeah

and i didn't understand why why he would be i'd actually met him before that and this is this is unbelievable but like my sister brought him to our house in Orange County. She had met him at a club. Uh-huh. And kind of came to our house to wake up my little brother to get a condom from him. This is at two in the morning or something. The stores are closed and my sister comes. At your house.

At my house. Yeah. And Tim, and they were in the company of Monty Dunn,n who was a i don't know if you know who monty dunn was but a legendary guitar player from the east coast these guys are both east coast people and they're playing the golden bear which is like you know 30 miles away it's at the beach right so they go inland to find a condom um and so your sister so he could sweep with your sister yeah yeah and so but so there's a piano in the living room and he sits down and starts playing the piano and once again it's like two in the morning my father my father comes out and just stands there listening

to him play and he's saying it's tim harden, you kiss me and call me Johnny when you know my name is Tim. And he's really good. Like my father just sees the whole situation. My father is abiding jazz era wisdom, just sort of stands there in the doorway listening, sees as my sister bolts back out the door with her two East Coast friends and her girlfriend and everybody goes back to sleep.

That was the first time you met tim hart yeah but i didn't meet him i was just like a you know in my pajamas at the end of the hall i'm watching and uh but you know later this record of his comes out with you look to me like misty roses and Reason to Believe was the great song that everybody went nuts for. Right, right, Reason to Believe. Yeah, and I noticed that a couple years later was that people like that, I mean, he was such a stylist and he sang the way he sang. I mean, there was just him

channeling all this great blues music that he'd sung and he was undeniably great, but his singing style would suddenly emerge on a beatle song for one song i'm trying to think of a song now and you think oh there's some okay so the beatles must have heard tim harden because they're they are singing like tim harden for a song but he did if i if i were a carpenter too right right yeah i just heard that the other day on the radio. Those two.

I like Johnny Cash's and June's version of that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But you are a singular singer as well. So that New York period was just a kind of a part of the evolution, right? So you're already writing songs. And these days, I mean, a lot of people covered These Days, I think, didn't they i think didn't they didn't yeah hasn't but she was the first to record it and not you know she wasn't well known she's not nearly she wasn't nearly as well known and at that time as she became later

because that record sort of endured the reason she didn't like chelsea girls was because after everybody recorded these songs i mean with her and it really happened in one or two days, I don't know. I mean, the day I was recording, Lou Reed was there doing his stuff too. And what they did then is they called in a string arranger and put strings on everything. Yeah.

Which is, and they're great strings. I mean, they're really, the guy, I used to know his name. Every couple years I look his name up because I want to try to remember, but he was not, I mean, he had done some other things, but this is,

it kind of gave a longevity to it. That and the fact that she had an indelible, there was a quality in her singing, the lowness of her voice, the deepness of her voice, and her German accent that gave it a very noir kind of you know quality that that i think really affects people to this day just on yeah without knowing her story anything

about her but her story of course is really um interesting too but but without knowing any of that it's just people it really appeals to people i always felt like she had uh uh there there's something about her phrasing that reminds me of uh astrid gilberto like the jazz singer the brazilian jazz singer i know it's german but there's a slight a slight dissonance to it and her phrasing is very interesting it's kind of unique but it also feels detached because it's german but it but it's very uh romantic somehow i'm not sure how it's German, but it's very romantic somehow. I'm not sure how it's unique, you know? Yeah, yeah.

Well, she was from Cologne, and they don't really speak. They have their own dialect of German. So what was it like meeting Lou Reed at that moment? I mean, that was a scene then. Did you go to the factory? I want to know if Jackson Brown hung out over at the factory. No, I didn't go to the factory. lou i met lou at that session and as a matter of fact that night we went to go see the murray the k show at the rko and it was i mean and i every now and then i also have to look up

this just to make sure i'm not making this up but i'm remembering it in some idealism but it was wilson pickett cream the who blues project wow jim and jean it was this wild bill where is it just incredible kind of everybody possible on this bill and and he went with lou yeah and and nico no she didn't go he just said he just said he was he was he had tickets to the thing he didn't did i want to go and we went it was great um he had also um he had also been at the first be in we called it we called him i guess in in la we called him love ins but it was the first you know gathering of the tribes as it were and it was in central park and he had been there like a couple days before it was i mean he's trying to picture lou reed at love in but really you know can't do it he said uh he said it was incredible he said it was you

know i think it was it had never happened before this is kind of thing that was had begun happening and a few months later uh in monterey they had the monterey pop festival and there were these sort of gatherings that were in a way a show of fourth a force a show of strength you know in a in the counterculture that was really notable. Yeah, and it was defining it at the time. It's interesting that you say about the birds and just about L.A. and New York that there were definitely two different approaches to psychedelic, you know, that were happening, you know? Yeah.

So when did you come back to L.A. to sort of like become part of this crew out here well I had friends that I'd already that were signed to a record deal you know I had I always just was like like I'd gone east to to just to see what was there and I always planned to come back so I guess I I was in New York for about three months maybe oh not not very long you know I I often think about what if what would have happened had I stayed and and tried yeah that's what I mean yeah man it would have been a whole different what do you think would have happened well I think similar to what did happen but but but with it a whole different set of coordinates you Like in L.A.

Because you already had the songs. You were going. You know, I thought so, but it was a long time before anything happened. Yeah. When I say I thought so, I mean, I did expect something to happen. That's why I didn't go to Europe with my friends.

I thought, well, I would have done that. That's the other thing I think about. What had I gone to Europe when I was 18? Because that's so interesting, and that's the other thing i think about what what had i had i gone to europe when i was 18 because that's so interesting and that's so full of information they got as far as because they got as far as afghanistan wow and then one of them was on as eventually got to india and word got back that he had died in india you know and that was one and by that time i was living in echo park and i wrote a song for him called song for adam so how'd he die i think he jumped from the top of a building oh in india and i think he was i don't know what was going on with him but he was always kind of a little bit barricaded away in his world.

He was a little alone, you know, a bit alone in his world. But I tell you, what I think would have happened is I probably would have had a band sooner had it been in New York. Maybe. I think so. Because what happened in L.A. was that, and in Orange County, I mean, I was, right around that time, when I came back,

my mother had moved to Silver Lake, and so I didn't have to make that, I mean, I could live at home, which I did. I came back and lived at home, and my friends lived in Hollywood, so I had a car I could live at home, which I did. I came back and lived at home. And my friends lived in Hollywood, so I had a car I could borrow and I could get around pretty well. Out in Orange County, it was...

Also, borrow your mom's car and drive to Hollywood, but it was always, you know, drive back, too. So, no, so all this stuff that happened... So she moved to Silver Lake? Yeah, she lived in Silver Lake. Your parents split up? Yeah, my parents had split up out in Orange County. Oh.

Yeah. So then, okay, so you got a car, you're in Silverlake, you're what, 19, 20 years old? You got a packet full of songs. It's 19, what, 69, 70? You know, trying to remember this, I just had sort of a jog in my memory. I'm thinking of that image of my dad standing in the house and it's like with tim harden yeah it's the wrong house i'm thinking what the hell is he doing there two in the morning why am i so my memory's not all it's not perfect but anyway yeah so what you're saying i was like i got a bunch of songs yeah i always

thought that i was about to make about to make a I took part in a – I was on Elektra. I wasn't signed to Elektra until this project, but it was a project that a bunch of us decided we would – like Figure 1968, right? The band had released – the band, by the way. I'm rocking my band shirt. Oh, great. What's that? The music from big pink yeah

that's that's up that's t-shirts up on cripple creek but yeah right around time big big p um big pink is released we think we need to record in the woods we need we need a house you know we need we need to be in a house yeah and uh when we convinced the lector Records to do this to let us and we went all over the place looking for a likely place to become a sort of recording band in the world. Who's we? A producer for Electra

a guy named Frazier Mohawk who was a really good producer he produced the early the first Kaleidoscope records and actually he produced Nico's second album called Marble Index. Is that how you met Lindley? Through him?

No, no, no. I was just a huge, I just loved the Kaleidoscope, but I didn't meet any Kaleidoscope through him. He just... But you worked with David Lindley, didn't you? By that, no, I met him eventually at the out of yeah i met him through another uh colorful character a guy named chesley millican who was also dating my sister so

but um you know lindley was great because when i met him, he's so cool to younger people. I mean, he's a couple years older than me, but I've seen it through the years to be really, really accommodating. He asked me a bunch of questions about my songs and how I play. And Chesley later went on to manage Stevie Ray Vaughan. He was good friends with the Rolling Stones. He was a really colorful guy, an Irish guy. He ran a racetrack in Austin. managed stevie ray vaughn he was good friends with the rolling stones he was he used he ran a he was really colorful guy an irish guy he ran a racetrack in austin so what what transpires are

you looking for this house to be like the band and you don't have a band or you do have a band we became a band like everything uh well there were three songwriters um there were there eventually there was and there was a guy from uh canada uh peter hartson playing bass and we got this guy sandy konikoff but eventually what we we told them we wanted to do is have a kind of a repertory company like a kind of like a recording place where people could play on each other's songs and make support each other making the solo records we are all interested in making our own records of course and but and so they they let us do this thing and um it didn't really come to anything they a bunch of records got made there i i mean a lonnie mack record got

caught up there a later lonnie mack record Yeah. And a record of Spider John Kerner and a Dave Ray record. So those records got made, but they really had their shit together and they just showed up and made records in a matter of days and borrowed our drummer, say, you know. Lonnie Mack was incredible.

He was like, he was touring, you know, touring with a trailer on the back of his car. And he just played roadhouses and bars and stuff. He had an organ player with him. Everybody showed up with a player of some kind. And they were all really talented people. We learned a lot from those guys, but not enough so that we then turned around and made this really great record together for one thing electra wanted us to make a record together and we all wanted to make our own records and we could have any one of us could have spent all our time making a single record and making that you know

a debut record of our songs but you and you're just writing songs writing songs yeah i had a lot of songs and i and you know, I wrote songs, yeah, those days I probably wrote all the time. Well, Glenn Frey talks about living, like, did he have an apartment beneath you or something? Yeah, my apartment was beneath his. I mean, I moved into the, he moved in next door to me and then I moved out of the place I was in

to a kind of basement below him. Where was this? Where was it? That was in in echo park so after this recording thing i was describing about with electra yeah we came back to town and i and i lived in um echo park and and uh started you know playing at the troubadour monday nights and trying once again just trying to get um get get recorded get a record just you just with the guitar or you got yeah guys yeah so i never played with anybody except for lindley briefly no actually i've not even not even lindley i didn't play with lindley well i i i did i had never played with the band you my first record. And that's the sort of thing that kind of amazes me now when I listen to that record.

Because I hadn't listened to it until, I just hadn't listened to it for years until recently when I had to approve a test pressing. I had to sit there and pay close attention through the whole record. What was that like? I thought it was amazing because it was so much better than i thought it was at the time yeah you know there's a couple hits on there yeah

i thought it was pretty good and i and i and at the time i i wasn't sure it was very good i don't think i knew because you're immersed in what you're doing. You can't really, you know, you're certainly aware of the flaws. You hear every mistake. Not that there are big, obvious mistakes, but things that you wish were better. But didn't you play, you didn't play with any bands before that? No. Before that crew? That's the other thing.

I just almost, you know, I hadn't, I was in a band in high school. That was the other thing i wish i'd done i wish i'd gone ahead and been in a garage band and played gloria you know like with like everybody else you know yeah no i didn't i was a kind of a i played in my room you know i played songs uh in clubs i played and other people sang my songs you know so that I was pretty confident about my songs. You can still do a garage band man you got a studio just go put a roster of songs together get a list

of the songs that you would have played in your garage band and knock them out. That's a good idea that's really a good idea I can see getting my friends together and say okay now we're going to play Gloria. Call up Crosby and have him come over. Actually, when I met Dawes, that's what we did.

These kind of things happen, jam sessions. That's what's so great about L.A. right now is you get together with people and you don't know who you're going to meet. You might meet, you know, I met Mike Viola at Inara George's house. That guy, he's a wizard. He's an incredible, incredible musician and great writer and producer.

I like his records. Yeah, he makes great records. And so I met Dawes before they'd made their first album. And then later, it was at a jam. I guess it was a benefit. A bunch of surfers were going to go to Chile and were personally taking earthquake aid down to chile they'd surf chile and had made a bunch of friends

and they just went to gonna after the earthquake decided to raise a bunch of money and go back there and yeah and and do as much good as they could and this benefit was, Perry Farrell was there from, you know. That guy's a character. Yeah. Well, that's what brought it to mind. It's like I was meeting Dawes for the first time, and I had to split and get on a plane later that night. But we started playing Gloria and called Perry in from the next room, and he jumped into the center of this room and did this version of Gloria that was unbelievable.

But everybody can play those three chords. Sure, man. Yeah. Yeah. But so when you got those guys together, I guess they became known as The Section at some point. Some of them, right? Yeah.

Well, yeah. Well, Kortschmar is not on your first record. Right. Right. yeah they they became they well yeah Korchmar is not on your first record right right it was actually but Craig Durgey and Russ Kunkel and and Lee Sklar were the rhythm section and that's why it sounded so confident that's why it was so well played it was those guys had played together a lot and Russell was the guy that a lot of people who played acoustically would go to to to get drums on their record because he i know he's been around forever had such an incredible touch and i mean i tried it before i'd i i'd play with um a drummer and get up be playing electric guitar and it was it was not good it was not i my like my my touch on the electric guitar was way

way off and but was it but was it it seems like there is a community around like i mean i don't know what your relationship with glenn was or with ronstadt at that i mean how did you know ronstadt when she was in the stone ponies or no yeah that's when i met her she was in the stone ponies i think i got to go to one of their sessions but a great little outfit they were man she was amazing yeah she was incredible and they were being produced by this guy named nick venae uh at capital and um but that was the scene right that was no but i mean that it wasn't the scene yet you know it became yeah that troubadour scene became it was a little bit later later, but I think that's, they kind of got to L.A. before me, and they, it's interesting to me when she talks about those years because, and she does talk about it in her even then I mean LA was really

a draw for musicians who wanted to make something happen because it's where the record companies were and where the producers were and the musicians right

and all that and there was all those great players the studio guys yeah there was this great bass player named Harold Batiste who also was on

Dr. John's first record yeah they were amazing studio musicians and all those guys you know, if you could find your way into that music, musicality, the way people played

and how people thought of making records, because it was a big mystery how people made these things, made songs into records was like alchemy. I don't know how it was done. I couldn't figure out. So Russell, I met Russell because- Kunkel.

Russ Kunkel, yeah, because he was in a band with one of my best friends, Ned Doheny, and Dave Mason and Cass Elliott. And he was just really, again, he's one of those guys that's really kind to younger cats coming up. And he said, look, just so you know, I mean, when you go to make your record, I hope you call me.

I want you to call me because I want to play with you. it's like so i knew him so i could call him so i did and that record is and i booked him for a couple weeks and we we made my songs into into records you know it was amazing well i mean that was for like on the second record too it looks like everybody was on it yeah well. Well, I got to... I got the hang of it, you know, but that wasn't like... So in the second record, I started calling people.

I asked other fans and who to call. You'd say, you know, who do you get to play on bass on this song? And he's saying, you might try Wilton Felder. And who's that? Oh, Wilton Felder? Wilton Felder played bass on I Want you back by the jackson five i'm thinking oh that guy i love that guy i love that and so he's but he's the he's the saxophonist he's like the horn player from the um jazz crusaders the hollywood jazz crusaders uh-huh and um incredibly musical

guy and i said well do you want to play you want to play sax on my record too and he's got yeah he said no no i just do that with the crusaders but he's his session player so all those guys support their jazz passion you know by working for whoever calls them you know but by the time you do the second album and you i mean that first album seemed to establish a sort of jackson brown tone i mean despite the fact of not playing with a band regularly those guys came together and sort of seemed to honor the vision of your songs yeah they they and and the odd thing about that first record is david lindley's not on it because he was still in england playing Terry Reid. And so even like the viola part that David Campbell plays on Song for Adam

is a part that David had devised. I had played it with him on an earlier attempt to record in England. I'd gone to England and looked him up and had tried to get something going with him in a session. And I don't even know where those tapes are now because that's a whole long, bizarre story where the producer actually didn't show up that day. The lost tapes?

That's how I found out he wasn't going to produce my record is he just didn't show up. Lily and I eventually, we played this song about 100 times and then went across to the bar across the street. We bonded in that situation. And when it went across to the bar across the street but we bonded in that situation when i got back to to southern california and when he was back it was after my first record and i i wanted to put together a band and i wanted lindley to play in the band because he was multi-instrumentalist and could play all these different things but he was so

much better than the band was yeah the band was a little a little bit, it wasn't Lee Sklar and Russ Kunkel. It was a couple guys that played with Linda, but they weren't nearly as, they didn't have as light a touch. They weren't nearly as ingenious as Russ Kunkel and Lee Sklar. If I had them, that would have been a great band. Russ Kunkel, Lee Sklar, and David Lind had them, that would have been a great band. Russ Conkle, Lee Sklar, and David Lindley, holy shit,

that would have been amazing. But they weren't available to me for many years because they were becoming the go-to guys in the studio world. But it's just sort of interesting to me, like on the first, so Lindley's on two,

the second album, is that the house in Highland Park on the cover of that? Yeah. lindley's on to the second album is that the house in highland park on the cover of that yeah yeah and then the third record you know he's he's on that record but you got all these people of the time that eventually went on to these huge solo careers right i mean dan fogelberg henley you know like um jd salder like i don't i've got a bunch of that guy's records and i i feel like i should talk to him but i'm not that familiar with him as much as i should be but he seems to uh been part of that songwriting thing oh yeah that no yeah we were all really good friends and live near each other i i met jd he was in a duo with gl Frey. Right. And when it came time, they sang on my,

well, Glenn sang on my second record. I think he sang on Redneck Friend. We were all making records at the same time. And sometimes they recorded, they recorded a song or two of mine. What'd they do, Take It Easy? And what was it? They did Take It Easy

and then they did a song called Nightingale on the first album too. A song that, that's a song that Jesse didn't want to play on. Oh yeah that was when he said there's two major there's too much of a major kind of song but i think i don't know why they did it they did it they they needed songs they weren't they weren't they didn't have that many songs they had which take it easy was a huge hit was that your first huge hit or is that was that was that after your song that i mean like that was after doctor my eyes was a huge hit but was after Dr. My Eyes was a huge hit.

But I'd say it was a bigger hit and more lasting. It's odd because Dr. My Eyes was... There I was trying to put together a band and go out with David Lindley and I just wound up going out. And I was going to be paying clubs anyway, so I just went out with him. And never mind the band then it became a pathway into illuminating all these songs and not necessarily playing as a band I mean I like I like what happens when a band plays a song because it's big but it's not necessarily as interesting from song to song unless you really know what

you're doing unless you really have a lot of experience in bringing that, and I didn't have any arrangement skills at all. How are you going to duplicate what you do in the studio with all of these, I mean, it's crazy how many people. I always thought the only thing to do was bring the same people that played in the studio. Like 30 people?

Yeah, so you switch from song to song. You switch from Jim Gordon to Jeff Porcaro to Jim Kelly. No, you could call these guys because that was the scene. And if you knew to call them, you'd say, who do I call for this? And they'd say, well, try Milt Holland or Jim Keltner. There were all these. I learned more about, I mean, I was going to say I learned more about drumming, but I mean, I didn't learn anything about drumming

because they were all so good. I didn't know how they did what they did, but I knew who to call, you know, so. But like The Pretender, that was a huge album for you. It seems like the first album, the second album, all had big hits. And The Pretender, I mean, I like that you use Albert Lee a a few times that guy's a wizard yeah he's great man but on the pretender it's like holy shit there's like 90 people on that record lowell george came in play some slide guitar like was it a party situation when you were in the studio what was happening sometimes but but all but everybody knew each other. Everybody was friends.

I mean, I met Lowell once again before I even made my first record. And he told me that I should get Richie Hayward to play. And Richie Hayward's a great, great, great, great drummer. But there I was in my apartment with a drummer and a drum kit and this acoustic guitar. And it just sounded like i didn't know what to do with it i didn't and he was used to playing in a band so another again he didn't have that kunkle sensibility of how to make the drums yeah you know slide in under things and be

supportive and play the quietest parts you know so all my attempts at playing with a drummer, I tried a couple times, but it was always involved like one guitar and a drum kit in someone's den, you know. It just didn't sound right. It's like it didn't. Yeah. Now, are you still friends with these cats? You know, like, I mean, like Crosby.

Do you talk to Crosby? No. you know like i mean like cross do you talk to crosby um no did i pick the wrong name out of the hat yeah you picked you picked the only only one that would have been a no no yeah um but but but who's who's playing drums on this new record i got about four different so look there's two two ways of working sort of evolved for me one was to have a self-contained band which is like the first album and like and like my third album like leaf i saw i ever seemed like every other time i'd go to the and the the other mode which is to have not have a self-contained band but to call everybody you could call specifically the people you thought might be great on that song so so my second album

had a bunch of different drummers on it and my my fourth album too late for the thought so and then this latest record is that the last two i've made have been along the lines of that, where I've got my longtime bandmate Fritz Luack playing on a lot of songs, about half of them. But I also have Pete Thomas playing on a cut. And I've got Jay Belarus playing on a cut. And I've got... So L.A. still like that? Because I talked to Flanagan the other night

he's like everyone wants to play and no one's playing they're ready to go you know what I mean yeah because I'm trying to put a combo together to do something

like with my shitty guitar playing and he's like I can get you what do you want well Flanagan Flanagan can he can get you anybody to play

he's a magical character I mean we were talking about him yesterday. I thought he was going to show up at this party that I was at yesterday and a bunch of people that he has. He sort of mentored Sean and Sarah Watkins from the Watkins Family Hour and sort of gave them a place to play. And their hang, that hang, I met so many great musicians, and they just make such a great um

welcoming environment and and their shows there at the largo are just legendary and yeah and anybody would want to play there i think about all the time i think i just want to go play the little room i'll go open i'll play like after some comedian does the big room i'll just go in the front room in the lounge yeah i go play in there just go play there there's no yourself they're not even any mics there's only one mic there's like you barely yeah i would do that i've done that well i've sat in with them a lot doing that and um my good friend judy henske did some shows there um who does who's the female uh singer who's the woman on the new record uh there's one leslie mend yeah. The one who I co-wrote the song

A Human Touch with. Her and her writing partner, Steve McKeown. Did Bonnie Raitt record any of your songs? Yeah. She did, right? Bonnie, this always would happen. I'd sit down with, it happened with Linda too,

and I'd say, I got a song for you, and I'd play it for them. They'd go, okay, well, what else you got? And I would play them a bunch of other stuff, and then they'd pick something. And Bonnie picked a song of mine called, well, first she did a song of mine from my first album called Under the falling sky and completely fixed that song i mean that song was one of the ones i thought was not so good right even now i mean i just thought that also it was just had too much again we we did it with congas and and uh i thought leap overplayed

now i think i can see why he did that but he played this which is kind of a place that some people would go to and jams Now I think I can see why he did that, but he played this which is kind of a place that some people would go to and jams, you know, and acid rock and stuff. I mean, just go way out on a, you know, it just didn't need to be that way. Bonnie did it and put a swing in it and played it more bluesy and kind of the way she. And that was it?

That was so great. And I mean, in many cases, the songs that people have done of mine have then like just taken that final turn and become something really great. Whether it was Take It Easy, where they'd sort of made that song a much better song than it would have been

had I done it, finished it myself and just done it, you know. But they just, by their arrangemental sense and their ability to play as a band. And Bonnie had that too. She did Under the Falling Sky. She did a song called I Thought I Was a Child. Beautifully, you know.

Again, you know, she's one of those people, she wrote great songs herself and then she began to just pick the best songs by various songwriters eric kaz um john prine john prine you know and and and just make them just amplify them in such a such a great way well what's the process man i mean because like you know obviously you know you're you're one of the great songwriters so all that stuff i guess what makes a great song is its ability to be interpreted in in many ways in in a sense like if you're going to put a song out into the world that's got legs i mean it's it's it's sort of up for grabs in in terms of how any artist is going to uh to uh feel it interpret it yeah yeah

right i think that's true this song but there's two events there's this there's writing the song and then there's making a record out of it or making yeah interpreting as you say and and um i always i always learned from how other people did my songs even nico it's i mean as distinctly as she sang as as as she was she sang, when I go back and listen to the demo I made in that same season, in that same period of time I was in New York, I realized that she was singing the song the way I showed it to her.

Like I oversang everything. So she really actually sounds like me, even though it's coming through this. Right, right. Because I'm going, I've been out walking. You know, like I overpronounce everything. Anybody listening to these old demos would say, like, why is he doing that? Well, because as a kid, my mom said, Jackie, no one can understand you.

No one can understand what you're saying. Could you really enunciate, you know? Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. no one can understand you and no one can understand what you're saying would you really pronounce enunciate you know right yeah yeah so i'd over pronounce my words and i'd sound like richard dyer bennett or some elizabethan you know yeah yeah folk singer but no the the thing is that your melody it's your melody yeah and also i had to make it simple simpler for her she couldn't sing well i've been out and she wasn't going to swing it like that. It had to be made simple. Right. But in a way, what happens when somebody takes a song and figures out how they can do it,

there's a certain filter that goes through, their own way of hearing things. And these things are kind of lucky. I mean, like if Bonnie bonnie so i mean i just this happens again and again like bonnie did i thought i was a child i thought oh that's so good oh that's so much better than i did let me and i just adapt their version it happened with greg allman's version of these days see by the time he learned it i mean he actually learned it back when i wrote it but then he remembered it the way he hears everything you know and so it just almost like it being co-written by him because of the way he changed it it's like it is his it filtered through his

sensibilities and then and he also he's an amazing singer and he slowed it down and he played it and so i by the time I recorded it, I wanted it to sound more like his version. So I didn't play it the way I played it for Nico. I played kind of my version of Greg's version, but it was not even close. That's the other thing is I could either, I could either like learn how they did it

and try to inform my own version or I could just stop doing it. Like that's what occurred to me the other day because Michael McDonald has just recorded a version of one of my songs, and I was playing it for my singers the other day. I mean, he recorded... Which one?

The Barricades of Heaven, just on piano, vocal, just voice and piano, and it's so good, and it takes... Again, that, just voice and piano. And it's so good. And it takes, again, that song just takes another turn. One more revolution and that song is now like. A Michael McDonald song. It's a Michael McDonald song. I don't know how I'm going to go around saying that I wrote that.

It'll be like, oh yeah, sure. Because, you know. And it's so good. I can imagine being on stage and singing my song, The Barricades of Heaven, and then seeing an entire audience, like, after about 10 seconds, turn to the person next to them saying, have you heard Mike McDonald's version of this? That's what's going to happen. I don't need to see that, but... I don't know, man.

I mean, it's a nice problem to have, I think. Yeah, yeah. I mean, like, and also, like, the way you sing is so specifically you and the way you grace sings, it's kind of... And you do all right. You know, you do all right with your song. Thank you.

Thanks, yeah. I don't think you should be too. The reason I became a singer is because these were the songs that I had a right to sing. I wrote them. I like them. You know, like I wrote it. I can sing it. But really, other than that, why would, you know, I wasn't really a singer i wasn't a singer i don't and i liked singing i really loved singing

matter of fact i was in i liked singing well i mean what is it but but you sound like you so what the what fucking difference does it make whether you think you're a singer or not right right and what happens is the i mean well i were I've worked at it. I've tried to improve my singing the whole time I've been doing it. I've worked with a couple of teachers along the way at different times and also found out that the best teacher is singing for an audience every night. Yeah, I bet. That's when you really find out what to do in a song and whether you need to do that or not.

You know, I guy this one teacher i said i wanted him to come see me playing he said i don't want i don't want to hear you sing you know the other thing i i said i said but you know but i want to sing like uh you know i mean i said have you ever heard he was an operatic guy you know yes i said have you ever heard ray charles sing he says oh yeah yeah and sammy davis jr and i went yeah oh no no no not sammy davis jr ray charles and i had some specific ideas no i mean you no one can no one can really show you how to feel you have to be you have to become comfortable with what you got and then right and if you're going to tell a story then people will accept who you are in that story you know and as long as you don't try to do something you can't do if you try to sing in a

way that you can't pull off you know so i became a great editor yeah i'm when i say great i mean i i became more of an editor than i of a singer so i would just try anything and try pulling stuff off and a lot of some of it would sound really mockish and like oh jock don't do that you know i listen back and think okay you know like and i really pick the pick the parts that work and eventually you've got some sort of a uh a version of the song that you can that's passable you know so when you go out with uh with james are you guys going to just do the hits what how does that work i think i should when you put together a new set i think for this show i would definitely try to

put together my better known songs i mean i i like playing songs that people have never heard but that's if they come to see they's if they've all come to see me. Right. I really kind of have that kind of command. But if you're opening for somebody else, I think I want them to come. I might do one or two of the new songs and the rest will be... You're opening?

What do you mean? It's a co-headline thing, isn't it? I think I'm... Well, I'm going on first so i'm opening no i i mean i don't know that it's co-headline i guess but hey james is the most he's the most he's the coolest he's the most gentlemanly person i've ever gotten to work with he's so he's so welcoming and accommodating but he's come on he's james taylor he's you're jackson brown making making me feel like welcome you know and i think you guys have got to have about the same number of hits dude oh i don't know what kind of what kind of hits though james look you go see james in in a in a baseball stadium and you can hear a pin drop you can think about that you're in wrigley field and it's yeah absolutely quiet and he's playing his acoustic guitar it's like

he's got a kind of a command that yeah and musical and then he's got the best band in the world you know and my band is certainly my best band and and and I've I'm looking so forward look to these tours you know I mean these shows with him it's one of the best gigs I mean I did a couple baseball stadiums with him a few years ago and it was really so much fun a lot of his bandmates are our best friends with my bandmates too michael landau louis conti used to play with me i mean steve gadds one of the great drummers of all time and larry golding's they're all people that you you go see in their own bands and and they're like kind of a

a band of assassins they're all the baddest guys in the world and so it's it and my guys too my like greg lease and val mccallum and yeah you try to you you think um i i think of it as like a really it's really going to be an incredible time but i have i have an hour to do you know i have i'll have this sort of opening period and hopefully Hopefully we'll do something together too. Yeah. How are you feeling? We are so excited to go at it. You know, I've got to say I'm feeling great. I've been doing these virtual recordings of songs in this room here, actually just a few feet over that way. And I'm really enjoying it, singing,

and I get to play with one or two people at a time, and it's really kind of informed what I think I'm going to do, because while I have a full band to play the songs in the full arrangements, I think that there's something about what I said about James having that incredible command with with just a few pieces and really quiet i want to try to do that i want to try to do justice to my my my people who will show up you know they'll show up in time they're not going to you've got you've got you i'm sure you share a few people oh yeah that's what i think too yeah i think a lot of people are

you know we're some of the same it's gonna be good it's gonna be good how you feeling physically you got through that shit yeah yeah it i didn't have the covet bad it was it was uh like having the flu for me it was not i never had a problem with um with um breathing or anything i just yeah it was okay you know i'm really strong. I'm good. You look good, man. Thank you. I'm all right. Did you get it?

Yeah. No. I got the vaccine, though. Did you get the vaccine? Yeah, I've got the vaccine. Yeah, I didn't get it. You know, I don't, you know,

I guess I got lucky. Yeah. Yeah. It's good talking to you, man. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks for having me on the show, man. Really a pleasure.

It was fun. It was fun, man. It was really good to talk to you it was uh it was uh exciting for me i appreciate it thank you hey let let me know i keep my eyes peeled for any gigs you got coming up if you yeah i'm back i'm working it out you know i'm down at the comedy store again where you know i'm oh yeah i'm doing it i'm trying to figure out what the next big chunk is and seeing what i got to say and whether anyone gives a shit, including me. You know how it goes. Right, right.

But I'm going to work on something with Flanagan, maybe do something with Largo with a little music and a little comedy. I'll let you know. That would be great. I'd love to see you in that setting. I'll let Tal know, and I'll figure out how to get to you. You should get Tal to come play with you.

She does. She's done a couple of shitty gigs with these comedian bands but i like if i'm gonna play i play okay but if i'm gonna really do it i need you know i need someone like her and the pros behind me so i yeah i don't know because you get a bunch of amateurs going it turns into chaos yeah don't hesitate get to get the first the first stringers in there yeah i'll see if they want to thanks man all right that was it jackson brown right there a lot of stuff knows everybody the new album downhill from everywhere comes out july 23rd uh dark fonzie 3 is up on it iTunes with the other two with me and Dean Del Rey. And I'm going to rock out here for a minute, man.

I'm going to rock out like an old man. Man. Thank you. Boomer lives. Monkey. La Fonda. Cat Angel is fucking everywhere, man. They're fucking everywhere, man. guitar solo We'll be right back. Well, almost, almost anything. So no, you can't get snowballs on Uber Eats. But meatballs and mozzarella balls, yes, we can deliver that. Uber Eats, get almost, almost anything. Order now.

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