When you hear "The Load-Out/Stay" by Jackson Browne...

Bump for Jackson Browne, new thread requested.

I thought "The Load-Out" was overwrought and pretentious and "Stay" was cloying and precious.

But what I'll always think about is that a couple of friends were at Merriweather Post when it was recorded. We were stoned when they told me that, and for some reason, I remember everything I ever heard when stoned.

I hear wife beater in the excuses that make up "In the Shape of a Heart."

JB did not beat his wife or Darryl

Actually, yeah.

Actually no - DH recanted that.

Victims often recant -- here's her stepdad:

"I am Haskell Wexler, Daryl Hannah's uncle. I am, also, a longtime friend of Jackson Browne and admirer of his artistry. I am no longer his friend. Jackson beat Daryl in September 1992. I was with her in the hospital, I saw the ugly black bruises on her eye and chin and on her ribs. The examining doctor reported she had blood in her urine. The doctor was shocked by the severity and noted Daryl as "a badly battered woman." I photographed her at the hospital. It could be that nobody cares about objective truth anymore. Jackson is a "good guy," and good guys don't beat women. Yes, it is hard to listen to Jackson and believe he has a hidden side of violence. I saw the results of the last violent attack on my niece, and there is no spin of fancy which will erase my shock and disdain for someone who would beat her up. Haskell Wexler, Santa Monica, CA"

Sorry, uncle.

I read that he's with Bonnie Raitt now - is that true?

Other witnesses confirm it. It's also been pretty well established from multiple sources that Brown's mental and physical cruelty drove his wife to suicide. But nice try anyway r4 & r6 .

Based on some webpage discussing the allegations,

"Here is a statement made by Lt. John Miehle of the Santa Monica Police Department in November 1992:"The Santa Monica Police Department went to the house where Jackson Browne lives regarding a possible disturbance. We resolved the situation in about five minutes. There was never any assault. There are no charges pending and no prosecution sought by or intended by the District Attorney. It is this department's intention that no citizen, regardless of who she is, suffer any kind of abuse, whether it be domestic violence or any other kind of assault. But in this case, absolutely no assault occurred. Our investigators tell us nothing happened. Nobody has even alleged that Daryl Hannah was even touched. If they had, we'd be investigating. We're not hiding anything. The press is trying to make more out of this than there really is, and it's unfair, not just to Browne, but to us. We did our job, and repeat, no crime occurred here. This whole thing is ridiculous.""

I think I believe Jackson.

Never heard that song.

No, but "You Love the Thunder" sounds exactly like a song a wife-beater would write.

R10 - sorry but I don't know if that is the case. After the death of his wife, Jackson wrote a song (Here Come those Tears Again) with his mother in law Nancy Farnsworth. I met Warren Zevon one drunken night in the spring of 1980. He had lots of praise for Jackson. That was probably 5 years after her death. I hung with musicians in NJ and Los Angeles. I didn't hear anything about abuse.

Joni Mitchell referenced Browne beating up Hannah in a song of hers. She knew Browne and Browne's wife (the one who committed suicide) for many years. The song was about the late Mrs. Browne and Browne being a prick more than it was about Darryl Hannah.

There were photos in the papers of the bruises on Hannah's face. Something or someone hit her. Hannah comes across as a semi-psycho, selfish cunt and who knows what happened there but Joni's nobody's fool. If she says Browne drove his wife to suicide with his beatings and abusive behavior, that's what he did.

So Daryl just bumped into the door, huh?

Joni Mitchell - Not to Blame:

The story hit the news

From coast to coast

They said you beat the girl

You loved the most

Your charitable acts

Seemed out of place

With the beauty

With your fist marks on her face

Your buddies all stood by

They bet their fortunes

And their fame

That she was out of line

And you were not to blame

Six hundred thousand doctors

Are putting on rubber gloves

And they're poking

At the miseries made of love

They say they're learning

How to spot

The battered wives

Among all the women

They see bleeding through their lives

I bleed,

For your perversity,

These red words that make a stain

On your white-washed claim that

She was out of line

And you were not to blame

I heard your baby say

When he was only three

"Daddy, let's get some girls One for you and one for me."

His mother had the frailty

You despise

And the looks

You love to drive to suicide

Not one wet eye around

Her lonely little grave

Said, "He was out of line girl You were not to blame."

There is more back story to Joni's hatred of Browne.

They dated in the 70s and he dumped her. She attempted suicide.

But I still believe that he was/is a beater.

And Joni's song was brutal.

This is a song he wrote about the wife who committed suicide before he met Daryl Hannah:

There was a hole left in the wall

From some ancient fight

About the size of a fist

Or something thrown that had missed

And there were other holes as well

In the house where our nights fell

Far too many to repair

In the time that we were there

People speak of love don't know what they're thinking of

Reach out to each other though the push and shove

Speak in terms of a life and the learning

Try to think of a word for the burning

-- Jackson Browne, in the Shape of a Heart (1986)

Why are you all looking at me?

Phyllis' grave

Joni attended Phyllis Major Browne's funeral in Santa Barbara (Jackson was angry that she'd come)

From Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon by Sheila Weller

From imdb:

Phyllis Major was a popular European model who met singer Jackson Browne at the legendary Hollywood venue the Troubador, just after his split with singer Joni Mitchell. Legend has it Browne got into a fight with an unemployed actor who was also making a play for her. Browne lost the fight but got the girl

(Wuss is not so tough against guys, and uses violence for everything.)

I used to really love Jackson Browne and the evidence is conflicting...I did let all his stuff go in a divorce though and I kept the Nick Cave. We went through our extensive collection artist by artist.

Never had an urge to buy it again either.

People writes about the 1992 incident a week or two later:

I liked Jackson Browne's music starting in 1972, long before I heard about what either did or did not happen to Darryl Hannah. "The Load Out/Stay" is simply part of my '70s soundtrack. I listened to both RUNNING ON EMPTY and THE PRETENDER a lot between 1976 and 1978, and I believed what I heard in 1980 in HOLD OUT, when I thought I'd found love for the first time in my life.

"In the Shape of a Heart" came a few years after the breakup of that relationship. I always assumed Phyllis' fists were the ones that would match the holes in the walls.

Those days, I had little idea of who my music gods were dating. I've never cared to know much about the lives of artists. If this is true about JB, I hate having this knowledge cloud my perception of his music. So I do what I can to ignore it.

Sounds like a song about pooping and then sitting on the John for a while

R21 That link says that "Troubled Child" was bout Browne's wife, but I read that it was about James Taylor, who had gone to a sanitarium.

Yeah r28 -- sorting all this out is a pain.

I would like to hear what Lynne Sweeney (his second wife) has to say about all of this, but I suspect, like the first Mrs. Springsteen, her alimony is tied up with silence.

Since I was around people that knew the Geffen crowd in the mid-70s, I know JB had a bad coke habit around then, and that many of his friends were happy Phyllis was gone.

But I didn't know anything about the domestic abuse until way later (after he divorced Lynne, who was characterized by a college classmate and former Ethan Browne babysitter who lived in Encino at the time Browne did, as "the former nanny.")

[quote] From Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon by Sheila Weller

I've only managed to get 50 pages into that thing. It's reads like a English Lit/Women's Studies essay not a fucking biography. Who cars about obscure plays that have a protagonist allegedly like Carole King and Joni Mitchell at certain ages in their lives.

[quote]Since I was around people that knew the Geffen crowd in the mid-70s, I know JB had a bad coke habit around then

Who didn't?

According to Joni Mitchell, the tour promoter paid them in coke during that time.

[quote].I did let all his stuff go in a divorce though and I kept the Nick Cave.

You won.

People magazine should ask Neil Young if he thought JB beat up Daryl.

R28 I don't know about the answer to the conflicting interpretations of Troubled Child, but Taylor spent some time during his teens (as did two or more of his siblings including Kate) at McLean Hospital in Belmont MA. Allegedly it was due to depression for all of them. I think Kate spoke pretty openly about it years ago. Later Taylor kicked his heroin addiction at Austin Riggs Center, also in MA . Both places were renowned as the go to mental hospital for upper class families. At that time the Taylor kids were all known, at least here in MA, as troubled, and fragile though talented. Maybe the family reputation fed the inspiration for that song?

I understand JT was often violent, but unlike JB, he never left marks.

He killed his first wife and made it look like suicide