Episode 1234 - Jackson Browne
Marc: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
Marc:Jackson Brown.
Marc:I talked to Jackson Brown.
Marc:This is yet another Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member to be on the show this year.
Marc:We've had quite a few already.
Marc:Rolling Stone listed him as one of the greatest songwriters of all time.
Marc:He's got a new album coming out this summer, and I got the opportunity.
Marc:It's been on the books for a while.
Marc:We did do it on Zoom.
Marc:But Jackson Brown has been around a long time.
Marc:He's seen a lot.
Marc:He's been through a lot.
Marc:No matter what you think of your music, his life is actually a little more incredible, I think, than...
Marc:Look, the music is great.
Marc:Jackson Brown is Jackson Brown.
Marc:I love some Jackson Brown songs.
Marc:That first Jackson Brown record was, you know, an amazing record.
Marc:But I was also sort of curious about the Velvet Underground Nico connection.
Marc:Why did Nico and how did Nico do the first version of these days?
Marc:And he played on it.
Marc:How did that happen?
Marc:How does Jackson Brown end up on Nico's first record?
Marc:What the fuck is that about?
Marc:So I had some questions.
Marc:I had some sort of specific questions, L.A.
Marc:scene questions, and it turned out to be a pretty great conversation.
Marc:I've always heard he's a great guy.
Marc:I don't know what I was expecting, but people I trust and know in music and in life love the guy.
Marc:And the reason is, is because he's one of the guys, man.
Marc:And, you know, and he's seen it all.
Marc:And there's apparently some stuff.
Marc:Obviously, you know, after I talked to him, my buddy Flanagan gets in touch with me and he's like, did you ask him about the Hendrix thing?
Marc:I'm like, no, man.
Marc:How?
Marc:No, I didn't.
Marc:I didn't know.
Marc:I can't do everything.
Marc:And the people when I mentioned I'm going to talk to people, I've already talked to them.
Marc:So I wasn't I couldn't.
Marc:Doesn't matter.
Marc:There's plenty here.
Marc:So Jackson Brown is on the show, which is exciting.
Marc:Quick cat update.
Marc:Sammy's relentless.
Marc:Fucking relentless.
Marc:Does not take no, will not fucking, but it's a cat.
Marc:He's a cat.
Marc:But what an aggressive little fucker.
Marc:I think he's going to be a stout little mother too.
Marc:A stout little dude.
Marc:You know, he's not going to be lanky.
Marc:He's going to be, he's going to have that, you know, that kind of almost a bulldoggy kind of a cat thing.
Marc:Like Fonda was like that.
Marc:Just a little muscle.
Marc:Just a little not, a little muscle man.
Marc:But I'm having a good time.
Marc:There's literally a thousand cat toys all over my house.
Marc:And now for the rest of my life, I will find them under things, squeezed into things, in between things.
Marc:You know, some places that you never really thought a cat toy could get to.
Marc:I lost the top of a Liberty drinking bottle that I know Buster was playing with weeks ago.
Marc:And in my aggravation, I went and ordered like three or four bottles and an extra top.
Marc:And then like two days ago, out of nowhere, and my house has been cleaned several times since, he's playing with the top.
Marc:I don't know where he was hiding it.
Marc:I don't know what happened to it.
Marc:But now it's back.
Marc:But I like the bottles.
Marc:So it's not terrible.
Marc:But I do the spite-driven purchases, too.
Marc:It's crazy, man.
Marc:I get mad at myself and I buy...
Marc:That doesn't matter.
Marc:I'm just trying to breathe, man.
Marc:I'm just trying to breathe.
Marc:I'm just trying to exist.
Marc:Oh my God.
Marc:I talked to you guys about that painting.
Marc:that the Lynn Shelton painting, and figuring out that it probably wasn't the Lynn Shelton that I knew and loved, it was this other guy.
Marc:Well, if you're following the story, I'll just bring you up to speed.
Marc:I sat to my IG crew on a research project, and some of them found a piece of art from 1965 in an auction, an abstract painting by Lynn Shelton from 1965.
Marc:Then some others found this Carl Springer furniture, some of which was,
Marc:Painted by a painter named Lynn Shelton, New York Times article.
Marc:He referred to him as a he was an engineer.
Marc:He went to engineering school and then did this interesting abstract work on on paper, large pieces painted on paper and then enameled onto furniture.
Marc:There was just a passing bit of information that he was a teacher of some kind in California.
Marc:But there's just no all the leads die out.
Marc: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.
Marc:It does look a bit like the painting.
Marc:And but 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.
Marc:But I reached out to them to ask them if they had any information about this Lynn Shelton that used to paint.
Marc:On paper, that was put on to some of Carl Springer's furniture and enameled on there.
Marc:A guy got back to me immediately and called me.
Marc:He said, yes, they did that collaboration years ago.
Marc:He said that he doesn't know what happened to that guy.
Marc: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.
Marc:It's just gone.
Marc:Alive, dead, don't know.
Marc:Relatives, don't know.
Marc:So we just hit a dead end.
Marc: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.
Marc:I have no information.
Marc:It's kind of odd, given the Internet and given the fact that he did some stuff.
Marc:But that's where that goes.
Marc:I've pursued it as far as I can.
Marc:And that's where we're at with that.
Marc:I do guess I can tell you this.
Marc:I can.
Marc: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 and being in it.
Marc:And it was a small screening room.
Marc:Brought my friend Kit, my manager, and his wife were there.
Marc:And some other lady whose son works at the production company or something.
Marc:And we watched the movie.
Marc:And it's a big movie.
Marc:And everybody's pretty great in it.
Marc:It's Forrest Whitaker and Jennifer Hudson and Marlon Wayans, Mark Maron, and some other people in Mark Maron.
Marc:And Mark Maron's in it with Jennifer Hudson.
Marc:Mark Maron and Jennifer Hudson are in it.
Marc:Forrest Whitaker.
Marc:I don't want to...
Marc:There's a lot of great people in it.
Marc:This isn't a plug for the movie yet.
Marc:I'm sure that will happen.
Marc:But I was impressed with the movie.
Marc:It looked great.
Marc:She sounded great.
Marc:I did pretty good.
Marc:I thought I was good.
Marc:All the stuff that I shot is really in the movie, except for like one line.
Marc:It's like four or five scenes.
Marc:And it really takes on Aretha Franklin's entire life up until like 72, until she goes back and records that gospel record.
Marc:And Liesl Tommy did a great job.
Marc:The movie looks great.
Marc:And it's quite an undertaking.
Marc:And I'm excited for it to come out.
Marc:I'm excited for you to see it.
Marc:And I just thank God that I liked it.
Marc:Does that make sense to you?
Marc:Does it?
Marc:It's great to be involved with something that you can honestly say is great.
Marc:I'll tell you more about it during the sanctioned period of promotion.
Marc:But that was my experience with it the other day.
Marc:Jackson Brown is here, as I mentioned.
Marc:And I didn't know what to expect.
Marc:And I wasn't expecting a lot, necessarily.
Marc:You know, I know about as much about Jackson Brown as anyone does.
Marc:You know the songs.
Marc:You know...
Marc:That there's some darkness there, but I didn't know what to expect.
Marc:And as I said before, so many people I know love the guy.
Marc: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.
Marc:It was just a fun talk.
Marc:I don't know if I've got the details that you want, but I had a good time talking to him.
Marc:So this is me talking to Jackson Brown.
Marc:His new album, Downhill from Everywhere, comes out on July 23rd.
Marc:Are you at your studio that I played at once?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I'm actually in the room next door to where you played.
Marc:That place is great, man.
Guest:It is.
Guest:It is.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:And we're having the best time.
Guest:This place runs so well.
Guest:All kinds of great people coming through here.
Guest:Ben Montent just mixing his album next door right now with Jonathan Wilson.
Marc:And it sounds really great.
Marc:But how long have you had that place down there?
Marc:Where was it?
Marc:It's in Venice?
Marc:Is it in Venice or Santa Monica or Long Beach?
Marc:It's in Santa Monica.
Marc:And I've had about 30 years.
Marc:30 years?
Guest:30, yeah.
Marc:30.
Marc:And do you just rent it out or how does it work?
Marc:Well, actually-
Guest:no i own it i own the building but i i i used to rent it the landlord was so cool he just said 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 had to we have to have the studio the way we you know we built it you know we built it out it had been a machine shop he was really cool and then he stopped charging us increase of living uh you know on the rent and stuff and
Marc:So yeah, we've been here for a long time.
Marc:But do you like, in terms of people recording there, is that something that, do they pay for studio time?
Marc:Is that a source of income?
Marc:Yeah, if they have the money, they do.
Guest:A lot of my friends have recorded here without paying because not everybody's got a budget or they need to spend it on the players or something.
Guest:I mean, it's not booked all the time, you know?
Guest:So my best friends know that it's a dark part of the time, so that's the time they want.
Guest:That time I'm not going to sell.
Marc:I like the new record, by the way, and I think that downhill from everywhere, that title track, that's got a little edge to it there, Jackson.
Marc:It's got a little...
Marc:A little punch to it.
Marc:Yeah, thank you.
Marc:Who's that guitar player?
Guest:Who's making that dirty noise?
Guest:That's Greg Lease.
Guest:Well, there's two guitar players on that track.
Guest:Well, there's three, but you don't count me.
Guest:I'm playing the really simple stuff underneath, but that's Greg Lease and Val McCallum.
Guest:They're in my band, but they're also extremely in demand all over the place.
Guest:I mean...
Guest:Yeah, that evolved out of another song, and I wanted to sort of turn the corner, yeah, and be something that was really fun to listen to without having to listen to, if you know what I mean.
Marc:But definitely there's a menacing message to it, right, under there?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, you talk about the ocean, but maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're saying, but it sounds like, are you aware that...
Marc:All the garbage is going into the ocean.
Marc:Is that what's happening in that song?
Guest:Yeah, that's it.
Guest:It was based on a remark by this oceanographer named Captain Charles Moore, the guy who discovered the Great Pacific garbage patch, as they call it.
Guest:The circle?
Guest:The collection.
Guest:The garbage swirl?
Guest:Yeah, the garbage swirl in the middle.
Guest:Well, there are actually five of them now.
Guest:They're in all the oceans.
Guest:But he's the first guy that found himself in the middle of it and said, what is this?
Guest:What's going on?
Guest:And began to document it.
Guest:And that was not that long ago, about 10 or 15 years ago.
Guest:And everybody said, whoa, what's happening here?
Guest:But yeah, he simply said the ocean's downhill from everywhere.
Guest:So it's going to get everything that humanity does is going to collect there.
Marc:And it is.
Marc:and and that's where that's yeah i mean you can feel it in the song because like yeah it's sort of a a list of things you know but uh but i i think that the guitars and and the sort of tone of it you know as catchy or as as driving as it is you're sort of like oh this is a little dark that's good yeah dark is good dark it's good about now yeah
Marc:But I didn't realize, you know, looking back at some of this stuff about you, like, I mean, I know the old house.
Marc:You know, I lived in Highland Park for years.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And a woman I was seeing lived right there on Echo.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And they used to be like, you know, that's like Jackson Brown's family's house.
Marc:I'm like, really?
Marc:And then there was like a couple of people like, yeah, I think that they rent it out for porn now.
Marc:I'm like, is that true?
Well,
Guest:My brother lives there.
Guest:And he does rent it out to film companies.
Guest:I don't know if they do porn.
Guest:He might have rented out to a couple of porn.
Guest:I really don't know.
Guest:And I'm not around there when they're filming.
Guest:That's kind of a describing thought, really.
Guest:Because, you know, this house has a chapel.
Guest:And a dungeon.
Guest:A dungeon?
Guest:Yeah, it's got a... Who built the house?
Guest:My grandfather built it.
Guest:With a dungeon.
Guest:What was up with him?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's what we wanted to know.
Guest:What was up with Grandpa?
Guest:No, there was a cell in the dungeon with this very small, it 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.
Guest:There was a one-armed bandit in there, like a slot machine from early days of slot machines and had a couple of dimes in there.
Guest:I was trying to figure out how to get those dimes because we thought they might be worth a lot of money.
Guest:And we played, everybody played in our yard.
Guest:It was the place to play.
Marc:But that's where you grew up from what age?
Marc:Like, you know, when did you get there?
Marc:From three till I was about 13.
Marc:So it was your grandfather's house, but your parents lived there too?
Guest:My grandfather passed away before I was born.
Guest:My parents met in Germany, or no, my parents met in Alaska, but they were living in Germany when they had us kids, the three of us.
Guest:Military?
Guest:Yeah, my father worked for the newspaper, Army newspaper.
Guest:He'd been in the military, but he wasn't in the military when he had the family.
Guest:He was working for the Stars and Stripes newspaper.
Guest:And it was after the war and they were just living in Europe and actually having a pretty grand time.
Guest:We lived in a house that we were sort of billeted by the army in a place which were shared by several other families with this massive staircase.
Guest:I think it had been the mansion of some industrialist or something and the house was requisitioned or like were given to these three different families.
Guest:to live in, and they called it Chateau Maux.
Guest: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.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Django's playing guitar.
Guest:My father's playing the piano in the background.
Guest:I think he had told my mother, get the camera, get the camera, because he could find Django Reinhardt.
Guest:which was not always that easy, and hire him for these parties.
Guest:So yeah, they had a lot of parties.
Guest:My father told me when I was growing up, he said that being in the army was the best time, best years of his life, and that they were his best years because he didn't have to think.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was, you know, like 14 and thinking, that's not good.
Guest:What are you saying, you know?
Marc:You just told me what to do.
Guest:I didn't need to think.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, maybe he was young and he needed that.
Guest:Well, I get it now.
Guest:I understand now.
Guest:At the time, it 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.
Guest:He didn't need the discipline, not one of those kids?
Guest:No.
Guest:When he did steal a sailboat and sail to Catalina when he was 16, this is one of the things he was very proud of.
Guest:It was during Prohibition.
Guest:I mean, he didn't explain anything else about it.
Guest:He said he stole a sailboat.
Guest:And I went, well, and I think he didn't look like the kind of person who would steal anything.
Guest:But he did.
Guest:He didn't make off with somebody's boat and go play in bars and, well, in speakeasies.
Guest:Piano?
Guest:Piano.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So he was a real musician.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:My father could play.
Guest:And he always had a band.
Guest:We had jam sessions in that house that, you know, where there were, you know, just 30 or 40 people and the entire top of the piano was covered, I mean, just solid bottles.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, he was a drinker, but they all drank.
Guest:That was really the, I think the clarion call of the day was to drink.
Guest:They didn't call them alcoholics.
Guest:They said they could hold their liquor.
Marc:Yeah, but it sort of sets the stage in your mind for whatever L.A.
Marc:became, I would imagine, in the late 60s.
Marc: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.
Marc:Yeah, I think so.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think rock and roll is founded on sort of, you know, on just keeping going, on sort of taking it beyond the limits and seeing what's there, see what you got.
Guest:And there were some years where I didn't sleep very much, you know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was... You were young and you could do that, you know?
Guest:And it didn't really... It came out of your hide, but there was lots of hide to go.
Guest:You know, you had lots left.
Guest:I wouldn't do it now.
Marc:No, I don't know how the hell there's... I mean, I'm 57.
Marc:I don't know how old you are, but there's a few guys that I think are still at it occasionally, but not the way they used to.
Marc: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?
Yeah.
Guest:The last time I was offering to Coke, I was like, no, we don't want to open that door.
Marc:I can't even imagine it.
Marc:I don't want to let myself imagine it too much.
Marc:Yeah, it was a lot of time wasted in a way, but there were some good times.
Guest: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.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, it's not, it doesn't have the same effect.
Marc:Well, it's just interesting to me, like, you know, you're going to tour with James Taylor, right?
Marc:Right.
Marc:I mean, I talked to that guy.
Marc:I mean, out of all the guys in the world that you wouldn't think would be driven by being strung out or jacked on blow, it's you two.
Marc:And it turns out, you guys did your time, that's for sure.
Marc:Everybody did, yeah.
Guest:well james is uh yeah yeah 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 well he got well he was strung out with the first generation yeah dope guys right right yeah yeah bad too like he was he was hardcore man
Marc:Well, I could see his music is a little more, like I could see where that comes from, the darkness.
Marc:But yours is like, I mean, some of your stuff's pretty kind of, you know, fun.
Marc:And I guess the others, that first bump is pretty fun.
Guest:Well, actually, yeah, I always thought that music should be really, it should be fun to listen to without even listening to the lyrics.
Guest:You know, the music should be fun to listen to.
Marc:No, I think, like, I was surprised, though, like, so you grew up in Highland Park for, you know, until you're a teenager, and then what'd you do, man?
Marc:You split?
Marc:My father realized that I was carrying weapons.
Guest:You were carrying weapons?
Guest:Weapons.
Guest:What do you mean?
Guest:I mean, like, his straight-edge razor.
Guest:I don't know what I was doing with his weapons, except that it was tough.
Guest:Highland Park was tough.
Guest:I think it still is tough in parts.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So the kids I was running around, I was 13 or 14, I mean, I wasn't cutting anybody, right?
Guest:And he just, 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?
Guest: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
Guest:And later I moved back there around the time I had my first child.
Guest:Actually right at that time, yeah I went and lived there.
Guest:So I was a father in that house where I was a child.
Guest:What year?
Guest:Let's see, 73 maybe?
Marc:Oh, so later.
Marc: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.
Marc: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.
Marc:Hmm.
Marc:I mean, like, how did you hook up with those?
Marc:Because you're right in it in like when she's just getting done with the Velvet Underground.
Marc:I mean, like those two paths.
Marc:I mean, and you definitely crossed them.
Marc:I mean, what was the story behind that song and being on that record?
Guest: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.
Guest:They were on their way to find a cheap tramp steamer, you know, the legendary sort of, you know, tramp steamer to Europe.
Guest:And they had already tried finding one in Veracruz, and it didn't work out.
Guest:So they invited me to go with them.
Guest: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, and this friend of mine who 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 Francisco,
Guest:And when I say played together, I mean, he played the club.
Guest:He had the paying gigs at these clubs.
Guest:We were just hung around.
Guest:We were like part of this folky crowd in Orange County.
Guest:But he played all over the place.
Guest:So anyway, after that gig, and he opened for Nico or she opened for him.
Guest:I'm not sure how it went exactly.
Guest:But she was playing.
Guest:And you get a picture of her sitting behind a bar.
Guest:with Sterling Morrison accompanying her.
Guest:Sterling Morrison was one of the guys in the Velvet Underground.
Guest:And what I was told was that they were taking turns accompanying her while she got.
Guest:And so sometimes Lou would do it and sometimes John Cale would do it.
Guest:But she needed an accompanist and Tim Buckley called me like a couple days after we saw him play with her and said that she had asked him to accompany her.
Guest:And he kind of cracked up.
Guest:He said, I don't think she realizes that I have gigs, you know, that there's like, that I have, you know.
Guest:And so.
Guest:He's a working guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So do you want to do this?
Guest:And I went and played for her and it worked out great.
Guest:So she hired me.
Guest:She hired you for that record?
Guest:No, as an accompanist.
Guest:And how old are you, like 18?
Guest:Yeah, 18.
Guest:So, yeah, and so I'd play it for her at the Dom, and then they said, okay, we're gonna have some recording sessions, and you'll play on the songs of hers that, and then she started doing some of my songs.
Guest: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, passing through.
Guest:By this time, they had split, I think.
Guest:They had already gone, but
Marc:But so you had, how many songs did you have at 18?
Marc:I mean, had you landed, like you'd written songs for other people at that point already?
Marc:Did you have a hit?
Guest:No, actually, but my friend Greg, the guy I just mentioned, had a, we'd been assigned by Electra's publishing company.
Guest:So we literally had a publisher and I was making demos for those songs with one of their producers on a Nagra in his apartment, you know, and then on another occasion in the studio.
Guest:But they were sort of, and I had about 30 songs, you know, so.
Guest:And they decided to make this into a publishing demo, but normally they would just put whatever song they wanted to get to the artist on an acetate, which is a kind of, it's just temporary, it's like a recording that's cut on a lathe, it's not pressed, and eventually it wears out.
Guest:You've got maybe several, couple dozen playing, and it gets scratchier and scratchier, and then
Guest:But it's how they got songs to artists.
Guest:And then they decided, well, you got so many, and we want to get them to a lot of people.
Guest:So they just pressed this thing up.
Guest:So there are still some copies of this thing floating around.
Guest:I've personally defaced quite a few of them.
Guest:Because I sang, and I didn't sing well.
Guest:And for a long time, I thought, no, I don't really want these to fall into the wrong hands.
Guest:Of course, they are.
Guest:You can find them.
Guest:They're out there.
Guest:They're out there.
Marc:But that song, like these days, like that's such a beautiful song.
Marc:And it's like, and it was on that record.
Marc: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 kind of life.
Marc:Did you guys date it briefly or?
Marc:Well, I wouldn't call it dating.
Guest:All right.
Yeah.
Guest:But, you know, it was everybody, as far as I know, everybody slept with everybody, but it was like, just briefly, yeah, very briefly.
Guest:She was amazing in that she was this very beautiful and very sort of Arctic, sort of aloof kind of presence.
Guest:Largely because she felt that way a lot around people.
Guest:She was not that, she was not.
Guest:But she had a son and Ari was really young, maybe two, maybe two and a half or something.
Guest:She had a son with Alain Delon and not a relationship with him and she was a single mother.
Guest:She was working at night.
Guest:She had a babysitter and
Guest:I don't know, she was, but she was wonderfully, she was fun, you know, she was that sort of, if you see her in La Dolce Vita, you know, it's that fun kind of hat, it's like a very girlish, beautiful young girlish kind of quality that she had.
Guest:And she was smart.
Guest:She was really smart, and she had very accelerated taste in music.
Guest:She hung around with Ornette Coleman.
Guest: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.
Guest:The anti-birds?
Guest:They weren't anti, but I just think they just assumed they knew that they just sort of, I think they were dismissive of most things California, but people in California didn't care.
Guest:I mean, actually, but I mean, she liked the birds because of
Guest:Roger McGuinn's solo in Eight Miles High.
Guest:She thought it was like really avant-garde and really... Oh, wow.
Guest:And of course it was influenced by John Coltrane, you know, and the birds were very progressive, so... And she dug that.
Guest:She was just sort of...
Guest: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 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
Guest: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, you know, collection of songs.
Guest:And it was a lot like, you know, also Linda Ronstadt did that later and Bonnie Raitt.
Guest:But Judy Collins was sort of 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.
Guest:So...
Guest:Nico's, there was a song that no one had ever heard that Bob Dylan wrote called I'll Keep It With Mine.
Guest:There was a Tim Harden song called Eulogy for Lenny Bruce.
Marc:What was that guy like?
Marc:Did you know Harden?
Guest:I met him a couple times.
Guest:Yeah, man.
Guest:Heavy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I met him.
Guest:The second time I met him, I didn't particularly, you know.
Guest:He was being an asshole.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I didn't understand why he would be.
Guest:I had actually met him before that, and this is unbelievable, but my sister brought him to our house in Orange County.
Guest:She had met him at a club.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:and kind of came to our house to wake up my little brother to get a condom from him.
Guest:This is at 2 in the morning or something.
Guest:The stores are closed, and my sister comes.
Marc:At your house.
Guest:At my house.
Guest:And Tim, they were in the company of Monty Dunn, who was a, I don't know if you know who Monty Dunn was, but a legendary guitar player from the East Coast.
Guest:These guys are both East Coast people, and they're playing the Golden Bear, which is amazing.
Guest:like you know 30 miles away it's at the beach right so they go inland to find a kind of 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
Guest:And he's saying it's Tim Harden singing.
Guest:You kiss me and call me Johnny when you know my name is Tim.
Guest:And he's really good.
Guest:Like my father just sees the whole situation.
Guest:My father is abiding jazz era wisdom.
Guest:Just sort of stands in the doorway listening.
Guest:Sees as my sister bolts back out the door with her two East Coast friends and her girlfriend.
Guest:And, you know, everybody goes back to sleep.
Yeah.
Guest:That was the first time you met Tim Harden.
Guest:Yeah, but I didn't meet him.
Guest:I was just like, you know, in my pajamas at the end of the hall and watching.
Guest:But, you know, later this record of his comes out.
Guest:with You Look To Me Like Misty Roses and Reason To Believe was the great song that everybody went nuts for.
Guest:Right, right, Reason To Believe.
Guest:Yeah, and I noticed that like a couple years later was that people like that, I mean, he was such a stylist and he sang the way he sang.
Guest:I mean, there was just him, you know, channeling all this great blues music that he'd sang and he was undeniably great, but...
Guest:like 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
Marc:Those two.
Marc:I like Johnny Cash's and June's version of that.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But you are a singular singer as well.
Marc:So that New York period was just a kind of part of the evolution, right?
Marc:So you're already writing songs.
Marc:And these days, I mean, a lot of people covered these days, I think, didn't they?
Marc:Didn't?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But she was the first to record it.
Guest:She wasn't well-known.
Guest:She wasn't nearly as well-known at that time as she became later because that record sort of endured.
Guest:The reason she didn't like Chelsea Girls was because after everybody recorded these songs,
Guest:I mean, with her.
Guest:And it really happened in one or two days.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I mean, the day I was recording, Lou Reed was there doing his stuff, too.
Guest:And what they did then is they called in a string arranger and put strings on everything.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they're great, strings.
Guest:I mean, they're really... The guy... I used to know his name.
Guest:Every couple years, I look his name up because I want to try to remember.
Guest:But he was not... I mean, he had done some other things.
Guest:But this is, it kind of gave a longevity to it.
Guest: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...
Guest:that I think really affects people to this day, just without knowing her story or anything about her.
Guest:But her story, of course, is really interesting too.
Guest:But without knowing any of that, it really appeals to people.
Marc:I always felt like she had, there's something about her phrasing that reminds me of Astrid Gilberto.
Marc:Like the jazz singer, the Brazilian jazz singer.
Marc:I know it's German, but there's a slight dissonance to it, and her phrasing is very interesting.
Marc:It's kind of unique.
Marc:But it also feels detached because it's German, but it's very romantic somehow.
Marc:I'm not sure how.
Marc:It's unique, you know?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Well, she was from Kong, and they don't really speak.
Marc:They have their own dialect of German.
Mm-hmm.
Marc:So what was it like meeting Lou Reed at that moment?
Marc:I mean, that was a scene then.
Marc:Did you go to the factory?
Marc:I want to know if Jackson Brown hung out over at the factory.
Marc:No, I didn't go to the factory.
Guest:And Lou, I met Lou at that session.
Guest:And as a matter of fact, that night, we went to go see the Murray the K show.
Guest:at the RKO, and it was, I mean, and every now and then I also have to look up this just to make sure I'm not making this up or I'm remembering it in some idealistic way, but it was Wilson Pickett, Cream, The Who.
Guest:Blues Project.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Jim and Gene.
Guest:It was this wild bill.
Guest:It was just incredible.
Guest:Kind of everybody possible on this bill.
Guest:He went with Lou?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And Nico?
Guest:No.
Guest:She didn't go.
Guest:He just said he had tickets to this thing.
Guest:Did I want to go?
Guest:And we went.
Guest:It was great.
Guest:He had also...
Guest:He had also been at the first be-in.
Guest:We called him, I guess in LA we called him love-ins, but it was the first gathering of the tribes, as it were, and it was in Central Park.
Guest:And he had been there like a couple days before.
Guest:It was, I'm trying to picture Lou Reed at a love inn, but really, you know.
Marc:Can't do it.
Guest:He said it was incredible.
Guest:He said it was, you know, I think it was, it had never happened before.
Guest:This is kind of thing that was, had begun happening.
Guest:And a few months later in Monterey, they had the Monterey Pop Festival and there were these sort of gatherings that were in a way a show of force, a show of strength, you know, in the counterculture that was really, really notable.
Marc:Yeah, and it was defining it at the time.
Marc:It's interesting that you say about the birds and just about L.A.
Marc:and New York that there were definitely two different approaches to psychedelic that were happening.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So when did you come back to L.A.
Marc:to sort of become part of this crew out here?
Guest:Well, I had friends that were signed to a record deal.
Guest:I had...
Guest: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 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 it would have been a whole different what do you think would have happened
Guest:Well, I think similar to what did happen, but with a whole different set of coordinates.
Guest:Like in L.A.
Guest:Because you already had the songs.
Guest:You were going.
Yeah.
Guest:You know, I thought so, but it was a long time before anything happened.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When I say I thought so, I mean, I did expect something to happen.
Guest:That's why I didn't go to Europe with my friends.
Guest:I thought, wow, I would have done that.
Guest:That's the other thing I think about.
Guest:What had I gone to Europe when I was 18?
Guest:Because that's so interesting, and that's so full of information.
Guest:They got as far as Afghanistan.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And one of them eventually got to India.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And word got back that he had died in India, you know, and that was one.
Guest:And by that time I was living in Echo Park and I wrote a song for him called Song for Adam.
Guest:So how did he die?
Guest:I think he jumped from the top of a building.
Guest:Oh, in India.
Guest:Mm hmm.
Guest: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.
Guest:He was a little alone, you know, a bit alone in his world.
Yeah.
Guest:I tell you, what I think would have happened is I probably would have had a band sooner had it been in New York.
Guest:Maybe.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I think so.
Guest:Because what happened in L.A.
Guest:was that, and in Orange County, I mean, I was...
Guest:Right around that time, when I came back, my mother had moved to Silver Lake, and so I didn't have to make that.
Guest:I mean, I could live at home, which I did.
Guest: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.
Guest:Out in Orange County, it was...
Guest:Also, borrow your mom's car and drive to Hollywood, but it was always, you know, drive back, too.
Guest:So, no, so all this stuff that happened.
Guest:So she moved to Silver Lake?
Guest:Yeah, she lived in Silver Lake.
Guest:Your parents split up?
Guest:Yeah, my parents had split up out in Orange County.
Marc:Oh.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So then, okay, so you got a car, you're in Silver Lake, you're what, 19, 20 years old?
Marc:You got a packet full of songs?
Marc:It's 19, what, 69, 70?
Guest:You know, trying to remember this, I just had sort of a jog in my memory.
Guest:I'm thinking of that image of my dad standing in the house, and it's like...
Guest:with tim hardin yeah it's the wrong house i'm thinking what the hell is he doing there two in the morning why 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 record and i so i took part in a in a record uh i got i was on electro you know i mean i would yeah
Guest:I wasn't assigned to Electra until this project, but it was a project that a bunch of us decided we would write a, like figure 1968, right?
Guest:The band had released, um,
Guest:The band, by the way, I'm rocking my band shirt.
Marc:Oh, great.
Marc:What's the music from Big Pink?
Guest:Yeah, that T-shirt is up on Cripple Creek.
Guest:But yeah, right around the time Big Pink is released, we think we need to record in the woods.
Guest:We need a house.
Guest:We need to be in a house.
Guest:And we convinced Elector Records to do this, to let us...
Guest:And we went all over the place looking for a likely place to become a sort of recording band in the world.
Guest:Who's we?
Guest:A producer for Elektra, a guy named Fraser Mohawk, who was a really good producer.
Guest:He'd produced the first Kaleidoscope records.
Guest:And actually, he produced Nico's second album called Marble Index.
Marc:Is that how you met Lindley, through him?
Yeah.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:I was just a huge, I just loved the kaleidoscope, but I didn't meet any kaleidoscope through him.
Guest:But you worked with David Lindley, didn't you?
Guest:No, I met him eventually at a, yeah, I met him through another colorful character, a guy named Chesley Millikan.
Guest:who was also dating my sister.
Guest:But, you know, Lindley was great because when I met him, he's so cool to younger people.
Guest:I mean, he's a couple years older than me, but I've seen it through the years to be really, really accommodating.
Guest:He asked me a bunch of questions about my songs and how I play.
Guest:And Chesley was...
Guest:Chesley later went on to manage Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Guest:He was good friends with the Rolling Stones.
Guest:He was really colorful guy, an Irish guy.
Guest:He ran a racetrack in Austin.
Marc:So what transpired?
Marc:So you're looking for this house to be like the band and you don't have a band or you do have a band.
Guest:We became a band, like everything.
Guest:Who?
Guest:Well, there were three songwriters.
Guest:Eventually, there was a guy from Canada, Peter Hartson, playing bass, and we got this guy, Sandy Konikoff.
Guest:But eventually what we told them we wanted to do was to 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 support each other in making the solo records.
Guest:We were all interested in making our own records, of course.
Guest:And so they let us do this thing.
Guest:And it didn't really come to anything.
Guest:A bunch of records got made there.
Guest:I mean, a Lonnie Mack record got caught up there.
Marc:A later Lonnie Mack record?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And a record of Spider John Kerner and a Dave Ray record.
Guest: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.
Guest:Lonnie Mack was incredible.
Guest:He was like a...
Guest:He was touring with a trailer on the back of his car and he just played road houses and bars and stuff.
Guest:He had an organ player with him.
Guest:Everybody showed up with a player of some kind.
Guest:And they were all really talented people.
Guest:We learned a lot from those guys, but not enough so that we then turned around and made this really great record together.
Guest:For one thing, Elektra wanted us to make a record together
Guest: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.
Marc:And you're just writing songs, writing songs?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I had a lot of songs, and I wrote songs, yeah, those days I probably wrote all the time, but.
Marc:Well, Glenn Frey talks about living, like, did you have an apartment beneath you or something?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, my apartment was beneath his.
Guest: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.
Marc:Where was this?
Guest:Where was it?
Guest:That was in Echo Park.
Guest:So after this recording thing I was describing about Electra, we came back to town, and I lived in Echo Park and started playing at the Troubadour Monday nights and trying to...
Guest:Once again, just trying to get recorded, get a record due.
Marc:Just you?
Marc:Just with the guitar or you got guys?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So I never played with anybody except for Lindley, briefly.
Guest:No, actually, not even Lindley.
Guest:I didn't play with Lindley.
Guest:Well, I had never played with a band, you know, until my first record.
Guest:And that's the sort of thing that kind of amazes me now when I listen to that record.
Guest:And because I hadn't listened to it until, you know, I just hadn't listened to it for years until recently when I had to approve a test pressing.
Guest:I had to sit there and pay close attention through the whole record.
Guest:What was that like?
Guest:I thought it was amazing because it was so much better than I thought it was at the time.
Guest:Yeah, you know there's a couple hits on there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I thought it was pretty good.
Guest:And at the time, I wasn't sure it was very good.
Guest:I don't think I knew it.
Guest:Because you're immersed in what you're doing.
Guest:You're certainly aware of the flaws.
Guest:You hear every mistake.
Guest:Not that there are big, obvious mistakes, but things that you wish were better.
Marc:But you didn't play with any bands before that?
Guest:No.
Guest:Before that curve?
Guest:That's the other thing.
Guest:I was in an abandoned high school.
Guest:That was the other thing I wish I had done.
Guest:I wish I'd gone ahead and been in a garage band and played Gloria, you know, like everybody else, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But you didn't.
Guest:No, I didn't.
Guest:I was kind of a... I played in my room, you know.
Guest:I played songs in clubs.
Guest:I played...
Marc:and other people sang my songs you know so that i was pretty confident you can still do a garage band man you got a studio just go get put 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
Guest:I see getting my friends together and say, okay, now we're going to play Gloria.
Guest:Call up Crosby and have him come over.
Guest:Actually, when I met Dawes, that's what we did.
Guest:These kind of things happen, jam sessions.
Guest:That's what's so great about LA right now is you get together with people and you don't know who you're going to meet.
Guest:You might meet...
Guest:I met Mike Viola at Inara George's house.
Guest:That guy, he's a wizard.
Guest:He's an incredible, incredible musician and great writer and producer.
Marc:I like his records.
Guest:Yeah, he makes great records.
Guest:So I met Dawes before they had made their first album.
Guest:And then later I...
Guest:And it was at a jam.
Guest:I guess it was a benefit.
Guest:A bunch of surfers were going to go to Chile and were personally taking earthquake aid down to Chile.
Guest:They'd surfed Chile and had made a bunch of friends.
Guest:And they just went to, after the earthquake, decided to raise a bunch of money and go back there and do as much good as they could.
Guest:And this benefit was it had...
Guest:Perry Farrell was there from, you know.
Guest:That guy's a character.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, that's what brought it to mind is like I was meeting Dawes for the first time and I had to split and get on a plane later that night.
Guest: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.
Guest:But everybody can play those three chords, you know.
Guest:Sure, man.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, but so when you got those guys together, I guess they became known as the section at some point, some of them, right?
Marc:Yeah, they became, well, yeah.
Marc:Well, Korchmar's not on your first record.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:It was actually, but Craig Durge and Russ Kunkel and Lee Sklar were the rhythm section, and that's why it sounded so confident.
Guest:That's why it was so well played.
Guest:Those guys had played together a lot.
Guest:And Russell was the guy that a lot of people who played acoustically would go to to get drums on their record because he had such an incredible touch.
Guest:And I mean, I tried it before.
Guest:I'd play with a drummer and be playing electric guitar, and it was not good.
Guest:My touch on the electric guitar was way off.
Marc:But it seems like there was a community around, like, I mean, I don't know what your relationship with Glenn was or with Ronstadt at that.
Marc:I mean, did you know Ronstadt when she was in the Stone Ponies or no?
Guest:Yeah, that's when I met her.
Guest:She was in the Stone Ponies.
Guest:I think I got to go to one of their sessions.
Marc:What a great little outfit they were, man.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:She was amazing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She was incredible.
Guest:And they were being produced by this guy named Nick Vinay at Capitol.
Guest:but that was the scene right that was no but i mean that it wasn't the scene yet you know it became that troubadour scene became it was a little bit later but i think that's that's they they were they kind of got to la before me and they they it's interesting to me when she talks about those years because um and she does talk about it in her autobiography and
Guest:And in her movie, I mean, she's interviewed about it.
Guest:And because even then, I mean, L.A.
Guest:was really a draw for musicians who wanted to make something happen because this is where the record companies were and where the producers were and the musicians.
Guest:Right.
Marc:And there was all those great studio guys around here.
Guest:Yeah, there was this great bass player named Harold Batiste who also was on Dr. John's first record.
Guest:They were amazing studio musicians.
Guest:And all those guys, 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.
Guest:how people made these things, made songs into records was like alchemy.
Guest:I didn't know how it was done.
Guest:I couldn't figure out.
Guest:So Russell, I met Russell because... Kunkel.
Guest:Russ Kunkel, yeah, because he was in a band with one of my best friends, Ned Doheny, and Dave Mason and Cass Elliott.
Guest:And he was just really... Again, he's one of those guys that's really kind to younger cats coming up.
Guest:And he said, look, I...
Guest:just so you know i mean when you go to make your record you know you i hope you call me i want you to call me because i want to play with you and 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 those for like on the second record too it looks like everybody was on it
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I got the hang of it, you know, but that wasn't like, yeah.
Guest:So in the second record, I started calling people.
Guest:I asked other fans and who to call.
Guest:You say, you know, who do you get to play on bass on this song?
Guest:And he's saying, you might try Wilton Felder.
Guest:And who's that?
Guest:Oh, Wilton Felder?
Guest:Wilton Felder played bass on I Want You Back by the Jackson 5.
Guest:I'm thinking...
Guest:Oh, that guy.
Guest:I love that guy.
Guest:I love that.
Guest:But he's the saxophonist.
Guest:He's like the horn player from the Jazz Crusaders, the Hollywood Jazz Crusaders.
Guest:And incredibly musical guy.
Guest:And I said, well, do you want to play sax on my record too?
Guest:And he said, no, no, I just do that with the Crusaders.
Guest:But he's a session player.
Guest:So all those guys support their jazz passion, you know, by working for whoever calls them.
Marc:But by the time you do the second album, I mean, that first album seemed to establish a sort of Jackson Brown tone.
Marc: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.
Guest:Yeah, and the odd thing about that first record is David Lindley's not on it because he was still in England playing with Terry Reid.
Guest:And so even like the viola part that David Campbell plays on Song for Adam is a part that David had devised.
Guest:I had played it with him on an earlier attempt to record in England.
Guest:I'd gone to England and looked him up and tried to get something going with him in a session.
Guest: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.
Guest:The lost tapes?
Guest:That's how I found out he wasn't going to produce my record is he just didn't show up.
Guest:Lily and I eventually, we played the song about a hundred times and then went across to the bar across the street.
Yeah.
Guest:We bonded in that situation.
Guest:When I got back to Southern California and when he was back, it was after my first record.
Guest:And 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.
Guest:But he was so much better than the band was.
Guest:The band was a little bit, it wasn't Lee Sklar and Russ Kunkel.
Guest:It was, you know, a couple guys that played with Linda, but they weren't nearly as, you know, they didn't have as light a touch.
Guest:They weren't nearly as ingenious as Russ Kunkel and Lee Sklar.
Guest:If I'd had them, that would have been a great band.
Guest:Russ Kunkel, Lee Sklar, and David Lindley.
Guest:Holy shit.
Guest:That would have been amazing.
Guest:But they weren't available to me for many years because they were becoming the go-to guys in the studio world.
Marc:But it's just sort of interesting to me.
Marc:So Lindley's on two, the second album.
Marc:Is that the house in Highland Park on the cover of that?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then the third record, you know, he's on that record.
Marc:But you got all these people of the time that eventually went on to these huge solo careers, right?
Marc:I mean, Dan Fogelberg, Henley, you know, like J.D.
Marc:Souther.
Marc:Like, I don't...
Marc:I've got a bunch of that guy's records, and I feel like I should talk to him, but I'm not that familiar with him as much as I should be.
Marc:But he seems to have been part of that songwriting thing.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:That community.
Guest:We were all really good friends and lived near each other.
Guest:I met JD.
Guest:He was in a duo with Glenn Frey.
Guest: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 um they recorded a song or two of mine and um what'd they do take it easy and what was it take it easy and then they did a song called nightingale on the first album too a song that um that that's the song that jesse had didn't want to play on
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Funny.
Guest:That was the one he said.
Guest:It was too major.
Guest:It was too much of a major kind of song.
Guest:I don't know why they did it.
Guest:They needed songs.
Guest:They didn't have that many songs.
Marc:Take It Easy was a huge hit.
Marc:Was that your first huge hit, or was that after your song?
Guest:That was after Dr. My Eyes was a huge hit, but I'd say it was a bigger hit and more lasting.
Guest:Odd because... Yeah, Dr. Myers was... See, I... So... 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.
Guest:Then it became a pathway into illuminating all these songs and not necessarily playing as a band.
Guest:I mean, I like...
Guest: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 arrangement.
Guest:And I didn't have any arrangement skills at all.
Guest:How are you going to duplicate what you do in the studio with all of these?
Guest:I mean, it's crazy how many people.
Guest:I always thought the only thing to do is bring the same people that played in the studio.
Marc:Like 30 people?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, so you switch from song to song.
Guest:You switch from Jim Gordon to Jeff Beccaro to Jim Keltner.
Guest:No, you could call these guys because that was the scene.
Guest:And if you knew to call them, you'd say, who do I call for this?
Guest:And they'd say, well, try Milt Holland or Jim Keltner.
Guest:I learned more about...
Guest:I mean, well, I was going to say I learned more about drumming, but I mean, I, I didn't learn anything about drumming because they were all so good.
Guest:I didn't know how they did what they did, but I knew who to call, you know, so.
Marc:But like the Pretender, that was a huge album for you.
Marc:It seems like the first album, the second album all had big hits and the Pretender.
Marc:I mean, I like that you use Albert Lee a few times.
Marc:That guy's a wizard.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He's great, man.
Marc:But on The Pretender, it's like, holy shit, there's like 90 people on that record.
Marc:Lowell George came in, played some swine guitar.
Marc:Was it a party situation when you were in the studio?
Guest:What was happening?
Guest:Sometimes, but everybody knew each other.
Guest:Everybody was friends.
Guest:I met Lowell once again before I even made my first record.
Guest:And he told me that I should get Richie Hayward to play.
Guest:And Richie Hayward's a great, great, great, great drummer.
Guest:but there I was in my apartment with like a drummer and a drum kit and acoustic guitar and like 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 you know slide in under things and be supportive and play the quietest parts you know
Guest: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?
Guest:It just didn't sound right.
Marc:It's like, it didn't.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now, are you still friends with these cats?
Marc:You know, like, I mean, like Crosby, do you talk to Crosby?
Guest:No.
No.
Marc:Did I pick the wrong name out of the hat?
Guest:Yeah, you picked the only one that would have been a no.
Marc:But who's playing drums on this new record?
Guest:I've got about four different.
Guest:So look, there's
Guest:Two ways of working sort of evolved for me.
Guest:One was to have a self-contained band, which is like the first album and like my third album.
Guest:It seemed like every other time I'd go to the other mode, which is to not have a self-contained band, but to call everybody you could...
Guest:It's called 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 to Late for the thoughts 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 Luwak
Guest:playing on a lot of songs about half yeah but the but i also have pete thomas playing on a cut and um and i've got jay bellarose playing on a cut and i've got um uh so la still like that because i talked to uh uh uh flanagan the other night he's like there's everyone wants to play and no one's playing they're ready to go you know what i mean yeah
Marc:Because I'm trying to put a combo together to do something like with my shitty guitar playing.
Marc:And he's like, I can get you any, what do you want?
Guest:Well, Flanagan, Flanagan can.
Guest:He can get you anybody to play.
Guest:He's a magical character.
Guest:I mean, we were talking about him yesterday.
Guest:I thought he was going to show up at this party that I was at yesterday and a bunch of people that he has.
Guest:He sort of mentored the Sean and Sarah Watkins from the Watkins Family Hour and sort of gave him a place to play.
Guest:And their hang, that hang, I met so many great musicians, and they just make such a great welcoming environment.
Guest:And their shows there at the Largo are just legendary, and anybody would want to play there.
Guest:I think about it all the time.
Guest:I think, I just want to go play The Little Room.
Guest: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 there's 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
Guest:Leslie Mendelsohn, yeah.
Guest:The one who I co-wrote the song A Human Touch with.
Guest:Her and her writing partner, Steve McKeown.
Marc:Did Bonnie Raitt record any of your songs?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She did, right?
Guest:Bonnie, this always would happen.
Guest:I'd sit down with...
Guest:It happened with Linda, too, and I'd say, I got a song for you, and I'd play it for them.
Guest:They'd go, okay, what else you got?
Guest:And I would play them a bunch of other stuff, and then they'd pick something.
Guest:And Bonnie picked a song of mine called, first she did a song of mine from my first album called Under the Falling Sky and completely fixed that song.
Guest:I mean, that song was one of the ones I thought was not so good.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Even now, I mean, I just thought that it just had too much.
Guest:Again, we did it with congas, and I thought Leap overplayed.
Guest:Now I think I can see why he did that, but he played this.
Guest:Which is kind of a place that some people would go to and jams, you know, and acid rock and stuff.
Guest:I mean, just go way out on a, you know, it just didn't need to be lightweight.
Guest:Bonnie did it and put a swing in it and played it more bluesy and kind of the way she... And that was it?
Guest:That was so great.
Guest:And I mean, in many cases, the songs that people have done of mine have then like...
Guest:Just taking that final turn and become something really great.
Guest:Whether it was Take It Easy, where they 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.
Guest:But they just, by their arrangemental sense and their ability to play as a band.
Guest:And Bonnie had that too.
Guest:She did Under the Falling Sky.
Guest:She did a song called...
Guest:I thought I was a child, beautifully.
Guest:Again, 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, John Prine, and just make them, just amplify them in such a great way.
Marc:What's the process, man?
Marc:I mean, because like, you know, obviously, you know, you're you're one of the great songwriters.
Marc:So all that stuff, I guess what makes a great song is its ability to be interpreted in in many ways.
Marc:And 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 terms of how any artist is going to to feel it.
Guest:Interpret it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:I think that's true at this song But there's two events.
Guest:There's this there's the writing the song and then there's making a record out of it or making yeah interpreting as you say and and I always
Guest:I always learned from how other people did my songs.
Guest:Even Nico.
Guest:I mean, as distinctly as 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...
Guest:I realized that she was singing the song the way I showed it to her.
Guest:Like I oversang everything.
Guest:So she really actually sounds like me, even though she's, it's coming through this.
Guest:Cause I'm going, I've been out walking, you know, like I overpronounce everything when I saw all this, anybody listening to these old demos would say like, why is he doing that?
Guest:Well, because as a kid, my mom said, Jackie, no one can understand you and no one can understand what you're saying.
Guest:Would you really pronunciate, you know?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I'd overpronounce my words and I'd sound like Richard Dyer Bennett or some Elizabethan, you know.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But no, the the thing is that your melody, it's your melody.
Guest:Yeah, and also I had to make it simpler for her.
Guest:She couldn't sing.
Guest:She wasn't gonna swing it like that.
Guest:It had to be made simple.
Guest:But in a way, what happens when somebody
Guest: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.
Guest:And these things are kind of lucky.
Guest:I mean, like if Bonnie... So, I mean, I just... This happens again and again.
Guest:Like Bonnie did, I thought I was a child, and I thought, oh, that's so good.
Guest:Oh, that's so much better than I did.
Guest:And I just adapt their version.
Guest:It happened with Greg Allman's version of these days.
Guest: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's just almost like it being co-written by him because of the way he changed it.
Guest:It's like it filtered through his sensibilities and then...
Guest:Great singer.
Guest:Amazing singer.
Guest:And he slowed it down and he played it.
Guest:And so by the time I recorded it, I wanted it to sound more like his version.
Guest:So I didn't play it the way I played it for Nico.
Guest:I played kind of my version of Greg's version, but it was not even close.
Guest: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.
Guest:Like that's what occurred to me the other day.
Guest:Michael McDonald just has just recorded a version of one of my songs.
Guest:And I was playing it for my singers the other day.
Guest:I mean, he recorded... Which one?
Guest:The Barricades of Heaven.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Just on piano, vocal, just voice and piano.
Guest:And it's so good.
Guest:And it takes the... Again, that song just takes another turn.
Guest:One more revolution, and that song is now like... A Mike McDonald song?
Guest:It's a Mike McDonald song.
Guest:I don't know how...
Guest:I'm going to go around saying that I wrote that.
Guest:It'll be like, oh, yeah, sure.
Guest:You know, because, you know, and it's so good.
Guest: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 Michael McDonald's version of this?
Guest:That's what's going to happen.
Guest:I don't need to see that, but...
Marc:I don't know, man.
Marc:I mean, it's a nice problem to have, I think.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, like, and also, like, the way you sing is so specifically you and the way you Bray sings.
Marc:It's kind of, and you do all right.
Marc:You know, you do all right with your songs.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:Thanks.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, the reason I became a singer is because these were the songs that I had a right to sing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I wrote them.
Guest:I like them.
Guest:You know, like I wrote it.
Guest:I can sing it.
Guest:But really, other than that, why would, you know, I wasn't really a singer.
Guest:I wasn't a singer.
Guest:I don't.
Guest:And I liked singing.
Guest:I really loved singing.
Guest:Matter of fact, I was in.
Guest:I liked singing.
Marc:Well, I mean, what is it?
Marc:But you sound like you.
Marc:So what the what fucking difference does it make whether you think you're a singer or not?
Marc:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And what happens is, I mean, well, I worked at it.
Guest:I've tried to improve my singing my whole the whole time I've been doing it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Work with, you know, 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.
Guest:Yeah, I bet.
Guest:That's when you really find out what to do in a song, whether you need to do that or not.
Guest:You know, I had this one teacher, and I said, I wanted him to come see me playing.
Guest:He said, oh, I don't want to hear you sing, you know.
Guest:The other thing, I said, but you know, but I want to sing like, you know, I mean, I said, have you ever heard, he was an operetta guy, you know.
Guest:I said, have you ever heard Ray Charles sing?
Guest:He says,
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, and Sammy Davis Jr.
Guest:And I went, oh, no, no, no, not Sammy Davis Jr.
Guest:Ray Charles, and I had some specific ideas.
Guest:No, I mean, no one can really show you how to feel.
Guest:You have to become comfortable with what you got, and then if you're gonna 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.
Guest:If you try to sing in a way that you can't pull off.
Guest:So I became a great editor.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And when I say great, I mean, I became more of an editor than of a singer.
Guest:So I would just try anything and try pulling stuff off.
Guest:And a lot of it, some of it would sound really mawkish and like, oh, don't do that.
Guest:You know, I listen back and think, okay, you know, and now you pick the parts that work and eventually you've got some sort of a version of the song that you can, that's passable, you know.
Marc:So when you go out with James, are you guys going to just do the hits?
Marc:How does that work?
Marc:I think I should... When you put together a new set.
Guest:I think for this show, I would definitely try to put together my better known songs.
Guest:I mean, I like playing songs that people have never heard, but that's if they come to see... If they've all come to see me, I really kind of have that kind of, you know...
Guest:But if they're there to see, if you're opening for somebody else, I think I want them to come.
Guest:I might do one or two of the new songs and the rest of the movies.
Marc:You're opening?
Marc:What do you mean?
Marc:It's a co-headline thing, isn't it?
Guest:I think, well, I'm going on first, so I'm opening.
Guest:I mean, I don't know that it's co-headline.
Guest:Hey, James is the most, he's the coolest, he's the most gentlemanly person I've ever gotten to work with.
Guest:He's so welcoming and accommodating.
Guest:But he's, come on, he's James Taylor.
Marc:You're Jackson Brown.
Guest:He's making me feel welcome.
Marc:Come on, you guys have got to have about the same number of hits, dude.
Guest:Oh, I don't know.
Guest:What kind of hits, though?
Guest:James, look, you go see James in a baseball stadium, and you can hear a pin drop.
Guest:You can think about that.
Guest:You're in Wrigley Field, and it's absolutely quiet, and he's playing his acoustic guitar.
Guest:It's like he's got kind of a command that...
Guest:And musical.
Guest:And then he's got the best band in the world, you know, and my band is certainly my best band.
Guest:And and and I've I'm looking so forward to these tours, you know, I mean, these shows with him.
Guest:It's one of the best gigs.
Guest:I mean, I did a couple of baseball stadiums with him a few years ago and it was really so much fun.
Guest:A lot of his bandmates are best friends with my bandmates, too.
Guest:Michael Landau.
Guest:Luis Conte used to play with me.
Guest:I mean, Steve Gadd's one of the great drummers of all time.
Guest:And Larry Golding.
Guest:They're all people that you go see in their own bands.
Guest:And they're like kind of a band of assassins.
Guest:They're all the baddest guys in the world.
Guest:And my guys, too.
Guest:Like Greg Lees and Val McCallum.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You think...
Guest:I think of it as like a really, it's going to be 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 we'll do something together too.
Guest:But, um, yeah.
Guest:How are you feeling?
Guest:Uh,
Guest:We are so excited to go at it.
Guest:I've got to say, I'm feeling great.
Guest:I've been doing these virtual recordings of songs in this room here, actually, just a few feet over that way.
Guest:And I'm really enjoying it, singing.
Guest:And I get to play with one or two people at a time.
Guest:And it's really kind of informed what I think I'm going to do.
Guest:Because I have a full band to play the songs in the full arrangements.
Guest:I think that there's something about what I said about James having that incredible command with just a few pieces and really quiet.
Guest:I want to try to do that.
Guest:I want to try to do justice to my people who will show up.
Guest:They'll show up in time.
Guest:They're not going to wander.
Marc:I'm sure you share a few people.
Guest:oh yeah that's what i think too yeah i think a lot of people are you know we have 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 and i'm really strong i'm good how about you man thank you i'm all right yeah did you get it yeah
Guest:No.
Guest:I got the vaccine, though.
Guest:Did you get the vaccine?
Guest:Yeah, I've got the vaccine.
Marc:Yeah, I didn't get it.
Marc:I guess I got lucky.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's good talking to you, man.
Marc:Thank you.
Guest:Thanks for having me on the show, man.
Guest:Really a pleasure.
Marc:It was fun.
Marc:It was fun, man.
Marc:It was really good to talk to you.
Marc:It was exciting for me.
Marc:I appreciate it.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:Hey, let me know.
Guest:I keep my eyes peeled for any gigs you've got coming up.
Marc:Yeah, well, I'm back.
Marc:I'm working it out.
Marc:I'm down at the Comedy Store again.
Marc:I'm trying to figure out what the next big chunk is and see what I've got to say and whether anyone gives a shit, including me.
Marc:You know how it goes.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:But I'm going to work on something with Flanagan.
Marc:Maybe do something with Largo with a little music and a little comedy.
Marc:I'll let you know.
Marc:That would be great.
Marc:I'd love to see you in that setting.
Marc:I'll let Tal know, and I'll figure out how to get to you.
Marc:You should get Tal to come play with you.
Marc:She does.
Marc:She's done a couple of shitty gigs with his comedian bands, but I...
Marc:If I'm going to play, I play okay, but if I'm going to really do it, I need someone like her and the pros behind me.
Marc:Because you get a bunch of amateurs going, it turns into chaos.
Guest:Yeah, don't hesitate.
Guest:Get the first stringers in there.
Guest:Yeah, I'll see if they want to.
Marc:Thanks, man.
Marc:All right.
Marc:All right.
Marc:That was it.
Marc:Jackson Brown.
Marc:A lot there.
Marc:A lot of stuff.
Marc:Knows everybody.
Marc:The new album, Downhill From Everywhere, comes out July 23rd.
Marc:Dark Fonzie 3 is up on iTunes with the other two with me and Dean Del Rey.
Marc:And I'm going to rock out here for a minute, man.
Marc:I'm going to rock out like an old man.
Marc:Man.
.
.
Marc:Boomer lives!
Marc:Monkey!
Marc:LaFonda!
Marc:Cat Angel is fucking everywhere, man.
Marc:They're fucking everywhere, man.
Thank you.