Jackson Browne Continues to Merge His Personal and Political Sides

Jackson Browne's career is often seen as being in two parts: The first is his more personal '70s period, during which he was as prolific and profound as any songwriter in popular music, crafting such enduring classic albums as 'Late for the Sky,' 'The Pretender' and his eponymous debut. The second act in the Browne saga occurred in the more overtly political '80s and '90s, a time marked by such worthwhile hits as 'Lives in the Balance,' 'Lawyers, Guns and Money' and 'World in Motion.' Having just turned 60, Browne is bringing those two aspects together on his new album 'Time the Conqueror.' Of course, to talk to Browne, there is no separating the two. It's clear that the political drives his personal. Spinner talked to the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer about his looking back from age 60 at his career, the hypocrisy of the U.S.'s Cuban embargo and its effect on that country's musicians, as well as his admiration for both Bob Dylan's gift for presenting both the personal and the political and Ben Harper's knack for connecting with an audience.

You just turned 60, which is one of those birthdays that prompts reflection. And one of the things about the new album is that you are looking back in places, and there's a sense of almost wistfulness.

I think if you permit yourself to look back, you really have to have a good reason. That's one thing I really demand from the song: You better have a good reason to take us there. [When] I say us, I mean you and me, and everybody, 'cause a song has to have a good reason for being there. So I require that of writing songs. In the two notable cases of looking back, 'Wonderland' and 'Giving That Heaven Away,' I do take the occasion to sort of examine the values or the idealism that I grew up with and try to make a case for existing in the present as well.


Does it exist for you in the present?

Yeah, I think that there's a tremendous amount of positive action being taken in the world by people with the same energy, the same imperative, to make a difference, to make positive changes in their lives, especially 'cause the technology is there to aid all this. I ran into a guy the other day, I knew him 'cause he was a good friend of a friend, I don't know him very well. But I know he was involved in health food and energy bars and stuff, and he's involved in extracting glass from landfills and making this kind of insulation for homes and improving the global warming situation that way and also getting something productive out of our enormous amount of waste that we produce. And it's not a front-page story, it's just going on all the time. There's a tremendous amount being done; all you have to do is do some of it yourself to be in touch with it. At the same time, things are progressing in a grim way. You need something to give you energy and give you hope and to give you the impetus to move forward and do what can be done.

What do you see the role of music being in creating this positive energy?

Music is like a flag, like a rallying cry. Basically, you can express both your doubts and your most intense desires, so it's really a good focal point for what people really want, whether they want love, that girl, a certain kind of life, to get away. And I know plenty of artists are talking about what's going on in this world. Ben Harper and that song of his, 'I Believe in a Better Way,' that comes out as exciting. I saw him at a festival the other day and it was really intense to have this song come on. It was like a rallying cry and it drew people to that stage; it was amazing. So music is a source of strength, a way of focusing what you believe and identifying what you have to do.

Music has that personal effect as well. What were the early records that had that impact on you?

I remember going to the record store when I was young, I must have been about 13 or 14, and in those days you could take an album up to the front and they would put it on, you could go into a booth and listen to it, and I remember buying my first record. And one of the first records I bought was called 'Blues, Rags and Hollers' ... It was these three young guys that played blues, and it was on Elektra Records, and these guys, their record's still great. And I think there's a lot of roots music going on today that's really a powerful force because people want to get connected to our history, and music is a direct road into the real history of our people. I was just talking to somebody about African music and it's a real direct connection to the history of other people and what it means to be a human being in this life. Every generation reinvents music and reinvents the universal to be distinctly their own, and it's an exciting thing to find stuff that people have totally changed and made their own.

So who are those artists for you who are reinventing the music?

Ben Harper is really somebody I think a great deal of, and from his first album I've been a huge fan of his and I've watched him grow not only from somebody I thought was really cool -- acoustic slide player, great songwriter -- to being able to find this incredible band of his playing all these sophisticated rhythms. I went to go see him open for Polly Jean Harvey and it was like I was seeing someone stand up and grabbing some of the Bob Marley power. And he's continually growing, so I admire him a great deal. Then there's a new guy I just encountered, this guy Benji Hughes opening for Rilo Kiley. He's this incredible writer who sounds a little bit like the Beatles and Brian Wilson, and he's got this really incredible Warren Zevon-esque humor laced in through his songs.

There's a belief that your music is separated into personal and political sides, but Don Henley cited you as an example of someone who melds the two very well. What writers do that for you?

I have to talk about Bob Dylan first because that's probably the first example I can think of in my life. Take a song like 'Ramona.' 'Ramona' is obviously a young, beautiful, black woman, and it's somebody the singer's attracted to. And they're talking about "Your cracked country lips I still wish to kiss." It's an incredible love song, but it takes place in the crucible of the civil rights movement. That song is timeless, but you wind up requiring of yourself you learn a little bit of what's going on in the song. That's true of any song that has political content, like I got this song 'Cuba.' Hopefully, people will catch the infectious spirit of wanting to go down to Cuba and wanting to embrace these people that are great contributors to our own culture, and then to think of them as our friends. But there are [politicians] who say they're the enemy, you're trading with the enemy. They try to starve this whole country into submission, really, and I'm hoping the song will work because it works as music, but that people will also want to know more what's being talked about.

I'm not sure how many Americans know we have an embargo with Cuba and we don't let people travel there freely. It's very hard for Cubans to come to the United States, even if they win the Grammy. Two Cubans in recent Grammys were not allowed to come pick up their Grammys, and why exactly, because it'll somehow prop up the Fidel Castro regime? The questions abound and they keep coming, like why should we be taking this hard line with what we call an oppressive dictatorship that's just a few hundred miles from our shore when we fall all over ourselves trading with China? That's a much bigger dictatorship and much more oppressive and it's very much hypocrisy at play -- like why don't we preemptively bomb North Korea? All these comparisons should be made, especially by people living in a free country, especially by people who are engaged in building a free society. Like Little Steven said, "What's more personal than your political beliefs?"

We talked about looking back earlier. Are there any of your older songs that have changed or you've started to look at differently?

I'll give you a great example: I was being honored by Ascap and they got Shawn Colvin to sing one of my songs at this event, and she chose to sing 'Our Lady of the Well.' The way she sang it, it really sounded like it was being sung from the point of view of a soldier in Iraq. She was singing a song I knew very well and in my mind I hear Mexico, but the way she sang it: Across my home has grown the shadow, of a cruel and senseless hand/Though in some strong heart, the love and truth remains." Wow! "But it's a long way that I've come across the sand." It was like an Iraqi soldier talking to some Iraqi people; it was really very moving.