Jackson Browne Joins Nile Rodgers On Deep Hidden Meaning

11-02-2024

(DKC) Legendary American singer-songwriter Jackson Browne joins Nile Rodgers on Deep Hidden Meaning on Apple Music 1 this Saturday (2nd November) to mark the 50th anniversary of his 'Late for the Sky' album, which Bruce Springsteen has described as Browne's "masterpiece".

Across the episode they talk about his music including his first hit song 'Doctor, My Eyes' and working with David Crosby and Graham Nash on the recording and how it inspired Nile's work with David Bowie, the 1967 song 'These Days' written by Jackson when he was just 16-years-old and recorded and made famous by Nico, and The Eagles' debut single 'Take it Easy' which was composed by Jackson. They also discuss activism in music and New York club culture. Stream the episode here and see select quotes from the chat below:

Jackson Browne and Nile Rodgers discuss combining music and activism...: Nile Rodgers: For me to talk to you is a really great thing because not only have we been friends for decades, but your music and you as a person, I really respect, you were one of the guys that when I was coming up that we'd look to as heroes. These people are not only making music, but they're on the front lines of social causes, and it didn't have to only be their cause. It was inspirational to me to see artists like you.

Jackson Browne: That's amazing to hear because the whole idea of trying to use your music to get ideas across, I was always teaming up with activists who do their work year in, year out. They're committed to what they're doing, but they need a broader platform where they need to draw people together. You needed to raise money and you do a concert or something. But the real kind of object, of course, was try to communicate those ideas. It took a long time before I was able to write any songs on the subjects, and even then, you don't want to do too much of that because people don't want to see you coming. You don't want people to see you coming and think they're in for a lecture. Like my friend Holly Near said, "People expect me to start singing, and it's like 900 verses about fuel rods." It's got to be about more than that. So yeah, they're strange bedfellows, I think, popular music and activism.

Nile Rodgers and Jackson Browne discuss the Civil Rights Movement and Nile's experiences of a new, inclusive club culture in New York's Greenwich Village...

Jackson Browne: It cracked me up when I found out that you'd been in the Panthers, you were a Panther, because I read about the Panthers and I was reading Bobby Seale and Eldridge Cleaver when I was growing up, and that having been part of the Civil Rights Movement and how it evolved into that, but then to find out you, the sort of linchpin of this incredible dance music movement in New York comes from that as well.

Nile Rodgers: The first time I went to a real disco, I saw something that we sort of pictured what the world would be like. I went to a club and there were gay people, Latin people, Black people, white people, everything. Now, yeah, it was in the village, so that would make sense, but it was even more Greenwich Village than Greenwich Village, if you understand what I mean? It was diversity on steroids. Just everybody was getting along, nobody was criticising anybody. It was just all cool. And I just thought to myself, damn, that's the world I've been trying to build, and here it is right in front of me and it's this disco world. Wow, this is cool. You could be-

Jackson Browne: Well, it was dance, it was physical, it was dancing, it was being together in a very participatory way. Way more participatory than say, standing in place, listening to a band play, that's very sort of passive compared to what happens when people listen to disco or in a disco and dancing.

Nile Rodgers: And at the time the popular dance was called The Hustle and people were actually touching each other. So it was really romantic and it felt like, wow, we haven't had a touchy-feely dance since The Twist. Once The Twist became the dance, everybody danced apart from each other, but prior to that it was all sort of semi-ballroomy looking. Even when they Lindy Hopped, they held hands and jumped over each other and between each other's legs. But when The Twist came about, people separated and it was all about making your individual statement, and all the dancers became about that.

Jackson Browne: That's so interesting.

Jackson Browne on his 1967 song 'These Days' which was written by Jackson when he was just 16-years-old and recorded by Nico...

I was signed to a publishing company and I was making demos of my songs in New York, but I got a job playing as an accompanist for Nico. Tim Buckley is the guy that got me the job playing with Nico. I knew Tim from clubs around L.A. and Orange County and I went to go see him. He was playing at Andy Warhol's bar, The Dom, on St. Mark's Place. She'd asked Tim [Buckley] to become her accompanist and he said to me, "I don't think she realises that I have gigs, she doesn't know anything about me." She just thought, "oh, he's cool, he could accompany me." And he knew I was penniless and living down on Delancey Street, and it was like, "Here's a gig."

So she was the first person to record that song ['These Days'], and that's really the most well-known and enduring version of the song. It's been used in commercials, and a lot of it's the way she sang, the fact that she has this wonderfully strange accent, but it was some folk guitar playing, finger-picking, it was this chiming guitar part on an electric guitar and then they put some strings on it, but that was the first recorded version of it. When you listen to Nico sing 'These Days', she's kind of imitating, "Well I've been out walking." Somebody once gave me a tape that somebody inherited from some family member, and they said, "It's Lou Reed teaching Nico to sing These Days." But it wasn't. It was me teaching Nico, and it was a tape recorder that obviously got left behind somewhere, and that was me showing her how to sing it. And that's the way I sang. I sang like her!

Jackson Browne talks about Elton John's 'Your Song' and his "genius"...

Elton John... He had that song, 'Your Song'. Such an amazing love song in the vein of the kind of music that I love the most. And then, he, of course, immediately went on to be this incredible... He took glam rock and glitter rock, and it just became... But he took that songwriter thing into a realm that incorporated all those things that I wasn't even interested in, but a kind of performance value that I think really appealed to, well, it appeals to every generation. I mean, so much of music is not in the lyrics, it's not. It's in the way people are, in the feel, and the way people present. You know? And dance and the way they inhabit the songs. And most of our iconic images in rock 'n' roll are of those performers, Tina Turner or Mick Jagger or Elton John with... I mean, in my young, solemn heart, I really disapproved of Elton John's rhinestone glasses. I thought, "Man, he doesn't have to do that, he doesn't have to do that. He's got these songs, man." And he's a genius. And of course, I love so many of his songs, but like I say, I just thought I just didn't care about that stuff. But I got to say stuff like that in my songs, and I would say that I thought that people lost sight of our real goals or what was really happening by going for the spectacular.

Jackson Browne on working with David Crosby and Graham Nash on 'Doctor, My Eyes' and how it inspired Nile's work with David Bowie...

Nile Rodgers: They [David Crosby and Graham Nash] sing amazing together.

Jackson Browne: Yeah, they make it a particular sound. They were always so supportive of me. That's one way I got played. That's why that song became a hit, I think. If you're a radio programmer, you've got this thing come across your desk.

Nile Rodgers: No, it's a great song.

Jackson Browne: Yeah, well I think so now too. At the time, I didn't think that was my best song at all. But you had to have something short enough and fast enough to try to have it be on the radio. The thing about that record now is that it was cut with bass, piano and congas. The reason it swings that way is the congas are going (singing). Then we overdubbed the drums to play a kind of shuffle over that, but that was at the base of the whole song.

Nile Rodgers: So I'm going to surprise you. So when [David] Bowie and I were doing Ricochet, the conga part that you just described...

Jackson Browne: Oh, yeah? Oh, really?

Nile Rodgers: Listen to David Bowie's Ricochet on the Let's Dance album. That's all I'm going to say. Your Honour, I rest my case.

Jackson Browne: Fantastic. That's wonderful. I mistakenly believed that percussion was sort of something you added. Later, when I really began hearing percussion, its true uses and its best uses, it's right in there in the inception of the song.

Jackson Browne on 'Take It Easy' recorded by The Eagles....

I actually was almost finished with my first album and I had taken a break, and on that break, I started writing 'Take It Easy'. I went back to the studio to finish the album, and I played this half a song for Glenn Frey, and he said, "Are you going to put that on your record?" And I said, "I don't need it. I don't have room for it. I don't think I have time to finish it." And I made my album right before The Eagles made theirs. And he said, "Well, if you get it finished, let me know, we'd record that song." And he kept after me to finish it, and finally said, "Hey, do you want me to finish it?" And the first time he said that, I said, "No, no, I can finish it. I'll do it. I'll get to it." And the next time he asked me, I said, "Yeah. Yeah, of course. Yeah, you write it, you finish it." And so, he finished that song and it was on their first album rather than on my first album, but then I recorded it. I did my version of it because I don't write so many songs that I can just write anything, and then, not do it myself. But I didn't play it live for many years because I just figured that everybody listened to me singing the song would say, "Then he played an Eagles cover." And I wasn't trying to be known for an Eagles cover.