One of the many benefits of growing up with older siblings in the house was never having to spend my hard-earned birthday and Christmas money on albums. My brothers and sister had pretty much everything a music aficionado could want. But around the time of my 16th birthday, it was time to make my own way musically. Time to buy albums of my own. 1978 was a good year to branch out on my own buying power. Several bands that you may have heard of released debuts records that year - The Cars, Van Halen, The Police, Devo (OK, only I care about the Spud Boys from Akron, but it's my blog). One of my first trips to the record store delivered musical history to my turntable, and I was transformed. I raced home and dropped the needle on Hotel California, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, and the fifth release from Southern California rocker Jackson Browne, Running on Empty.
It was that summer of 1978 when I saw my first Jackson Browne concert. At the tender age of 16, a gangly bundle of awkward potential searching for a poet to give voice to my limited emotional range, I was hypnotized by Browne at the peak of his career arc. The title track from Running On Empty, You Love the Thunder, and The Load Out and Stay earned regular FM airplay. This was before my bitter disappointment at the subsequent Hold Out album, and a few brief years before he (allegedly) got too physical with girlfriend and part-time mermaid, Daryl Hannah. It wasn't getting any better than summer 1978.
I took Natalie Hochstein with me to that first concert at the Garden State Arts Center. She had amazing blue eyes, cascading ringlets of blonde hair, and jeans that were usually so tight...well, my daughter would not be allowed to leave the house in similar attire, let's just say. At the time, I wasn't so concerned with her denim fashion statement. She was, in short, way out of my league, but I was a dreamer, and too hormonal to see that fact clearly. Despite the obvious points in her favor (that line is for you, Tim), Natalie was actually my 3rd choice to share that special summer evening. I really wanted to take Mary Sobon, thinking that Jackson Browne's lyrical genius and David Lindley's haunting lap steel guitar would pry open her heart to me, and simultaneously expose her current boyfriend, Michael, to be the ass that apparently only I could see. She turned me down. I was so crushed, I listened to The Pretender album for an entire day. I can't remember who was second choice, so Contestant #3 Natalie won the concert ticket lottery. I knew in my heart that I had to have a date for this particular show, someone other than Rosie to hold my hand during the slow ballads (see Rosie, song 3, side 1 - Running On Empty). I was going for the music, anyway.
Natalie was aloof and distant on my date - I can't in good conscience refer to it as "our" date, since it was plain early on that I was the only one participating in the "date" portion of the evening - so I focused on the stage and internalized the meaning of the songs. The lyrics spoke to me, as lyrics can when you're 16 and searching for emotional structure within the chaos of the high school years. Natalie was a disappointment, but it was a great show.
I saw JB several times after that. The summer of 1980, my girlfriend (a huge upgrade over Natalie, I might add) and I enjoyed lawn seats at that same Garden State Arts Center, and screamed like crazy Jersey-ites as he brought out every member of the E Street Band for his encore of Stay, up to and including The Big Man, Clarence, only to be deflated by the buzz kill news that Bruce was in LA, mixing The River. There was the show that same summer in Saratoga Springs, when 4 of us had planned to fly in a 4 seat Cessna to the show, only to have that plan blown away by high winds. We drove instead. The most historic Jackson Browne performance I saw had to be his set at the No Nukes benefit in Madison Square Garden, warming up for Springsteen (the 3 album set from the live 4 day No Nukes event is a classic, and includes Bruce's Devil With the Blue Dress medley - yes, I was there). These concerts were long ago, and that 2 year period included evenings with The Allman Brothers, Styx, Boston, Talking Heads, Squeeze, Billy Joel, The Ramones, and God knows who else I can't recall right now. The Jackson Browne shows didn't have the energy of Bruce, the communal love of U2, or the hypnotism of Talking Heads, but they did mean something special to that gangly bundle of awkward potential searching for a poet to give voice to his limited emotional range.
This Sunday night, Wolftrap National Park for the Performing Arts, An Evening with Jackson Browne and David Lindley. I'll be there. I've grown up since the last time I saw him, but some things you just don't outgrow. The music speaks to my past, but lives in my present.
I hope my kids don't grow up with the same gut level connection to the songs of Justin Bieber and Lady GaGa. That would kill the moment, wouldn't it?
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