Philosophical Bunting VII
Jackson Browne trailed only Van Morrison in Swag Above Replacement during the 1970s
Glenn Frey of Eagles fame lived below Jackson Browne of Jackson Browne fame in Echo Park, California at the beginning of the 1970s.
Browne practiced. Practice. Not a game — we’re talking about practice. Have you ever stood in a mostly empty apartment and played the same lick on piano dozens of times to make sure 1) You’ve got it down and 2) You didn’t miss any room for an interesting choice?
One day when their friend Don Henley scooted over to Frey’s, Browne was at it again. He’d play one bar of a song he was working on a few times. Then he’d add the next bar and play that. Then the next bar. And the next. I wonder how many times he started over.
From Far Out UK: “I used to sit and listen to Jackson,” Frey once recalled. “Jackson was very pragmatic. He wrote every day. That blew my mind. Every night, he would be working on a song of his.”
It went on for hours. Henley and Frey sat there, listening, wondering how he made himself do it. Both wanted to make it in the music industry and were working on a debut album with their new band. Browne worked on a solo debut of his own.
All at once, it hit Frey: that is what it takes. That is what it is going to take. If we want to make it, if we want the big time, that’s the work. Every day.
They took it to heart. The more famous part of the story involves Frey and Browne collaborating over a song. Browne loved it but couldn’t quite finish it in time for his debut, which already featured “Doctor My Eyes”. Frey fiddled with it for a little bit — there was something missing at the end of the second verse.
Browne had, “I’m standing on a corner in Winslow, AZ” as he started writing the song during a road trip of the western US. When Browne asked him about it Frey worked with it some and came up with — “Such a fine sight to see / it’s a girl, my lord / in a flat bed Ford / slowing down to take a look at me.”
You listen to a guy write songs night after night and eventually you start to see outlines.
Nobody will ever know exactly how it went down from here. I imagine Browne throwing a capo across the room and dropping a fairly legendary “JFC Glenn” before laughing and eventually saying yes, you guys can use the song on your debut album.
It became a concert favorite and hit song before the Eagles even recorded it. “It was their first single,” said Browne, “And what those guys did with it was incredible.”
Browne did not need to worry about his own career. One, he shared songwriting credits which, I mean, come on, royalties. Royalties.
Two, Browne went on to have a fairly successful and distinguished career after inspiring and helping Eagles lift off. You may recall such hits as “Running on Empty,” “Late for the Sky,” and Warren Zevon.
I am thinking about it this morning in relation to baseball — yes, it only took 500 words to get here — because of the recent snag that the team has hit. It is difficult to remember in times like this that it is all part of the process. It really is. You don’t get to skip progress plateaus; they are pushed through because that’s what it takes to earn what comes next.
You want to fly? Flap. Nobody said you’d lift off the first time and anyone who told you the skies were calm lied. You want to win the whole dang thing? Practice the way you are supposed to practice. Be present. Set intention. Play the same four bars dozens of time until there is no thought behind the action.
Some guys want the easy path. Others see or hear it done the right way and realize, “Oh — that’s what it takes.”
Not everybody has what it takes to give what is necessary.