Bob Dylan’s favourite Jackson Browne song
There’s something very irksome and peculiar about a teenager whose talents are already fully formed. Both folk icons Bob Dylan and Jackson Browne seemed to emerge with a sagacious worldview and mature authority well beyond their years. In fact, they both produced some of their finest work when they were barely old enough to get served.
The official story goes that Browne wrote ‘These Days’ when he was merely 16 years old. However, the stirring welter of experiential wisdom and world-weariness contained within the ethereal remembrance of things past points towards one single pet theory: it was actually written by one of his parents in the manner of a guardian helping their child out with some homework.
Tracks like ‘Masters of War’ and ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ by a 20-year-old Dylan also set the mind racing down a conspiratorial path, simply because it takes majesty that we mere mortals can’t grasp. And mind-boggling maturity paired with youthful vigour is not the only tie that binds these two folk heroes.
For starters, they’ve also been huge influences on each other. “He changed everything,” Browne told the Grammys before a tribute night in Dylan’s honour. “I’ve been listening to him pretty much my whole life.” That night, Browne chose to cover ‘Blind Willie McTell’, which he said was “full of mystery, it’s full of all kinds of historical references.”
He continues: “And then there’s also the fact that he revised it. The version that everybody knows, and that everybody is familiar with is from a demo that he did and didn’t even put out at that time.” Adding: “He actually went on writing it and revising it.” This is typical of the way he never sits on his work and is always searching for greater depth, greater refinement.
This can be said of Browne’s own work, too, and Dylan has long been an admirer. In his recent book, The Philosophy of Modern Song, he pores over the lyrics to the 1976 hit from his peer, ‘The Pretender’. In doing so, he perhaps extracts depths that Browne wasn’t even aware of himself. However, that just showcases the power of being personal and specific with your songs; paradoxically, it opens them to wider corroborations from listeners, encouraging them to empathise.
Thus, Dylan eulogises his favourite Jackson cut, stating that it is also “arguably one of Jackson Browne’s greatest songs.” It also seems fitting that it arrived at a time when people were also tearing apart the lyrics to Dylan’s own tale of despair in Blood on the Tracks. In this regard, the songwriters have mirrored each other, too, openly discussing the pitfalls that their careers have presented. Above all, signposting that there’s a whole lot more than the sum of the parts when it comes to four chords and the truth.
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