These Days (Jackson Browne song)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"These Days" is a song written by Jackson Browne. Principally recorded by Nico, Gregg Allman, and Browne himself in three different musical worlds, it has lasted for decades as a classic of morose introspection made even more remarkable by Browne having been only 16 years old when he wrote it.

Contents 1 Origins and Nico version 2 Browne and Allman versions 3 Renewed visibility 4 References

[edit] Origins and Nico version

In the mid-to-late 1960s Browne was a precocious songwriter who was pitching his material to various artists and publishing houses. On January 7, 1967 he made some demo recordings for Nina Music Publishing at Jaycino Studio in New York City.^[1] (An unplanned double album of these recordings was made by Nina Music, with 100 copies issued.) Included in these demos, and the third song on this "record", was " I've Been Out Walking", the earliest manifestation of "These Days". Yet the song was even older than that; Browne would later say he wrote it when he was sixteen years old,^[2] meaning in 1964 or 1965.

German underground legend Nico was the first to record "These Days" for release, on her October 1967 album Chelsea Girl. This was an odd mix of production elements: a fairly fast, almost upbeat fingerpicking electric-sounding-acoustic guitar part of its time by Browne (suggested by Andy Warhol^[3]), combined with strings and flutes (added after the fact by producer Tom Wilson, without Nico's knowledge) combined with the sad, near-desperate tone of the lyrics, all wrapped around Nico's mannered, icy Teutonic vocals.^[4]

While Nico never achieved much commercial visibility, her work caught the attention of other musicians and songwriters. And although Browne was still several years from getting his own recording contract, his wise-beyond-his-years talent was quickly recognized by other performers looking for material. And of Browne's catalogue during this period, "These Days," along with his "Shadow Dream Song," were regarded as his gems.^[5] Thus "These Days" was recorded in 1968 by The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band on their album Rare Junk, by Tom Rush on his 1970 album Tom Rush, by Kenny Loggins' first band, Gator Creek, around the same time, and by Iain Matthews on his 1973 album Valley Hi. ^[6]

[edit] Browne and Allman versions

By 1973, Jackson Browne had become a successful recording artist, and not having raided his back catalogue for the first album, was now more willing to do so for this second, For Everyman. This "These Days" was considerably different in several ways from the Nico effort. Some lyrics were changed or omitted, such as a couple of lines about "rambling" and "gambling". The fingerpicking guitar figure was replaced with flatpicking, and the instrumentation was typical of early 1970s Southern Californian folk rock — drums, bass, piano, acoustic guitar, but most prominently with David Lindley's slide guitar, a trademark feature of Browne's early albums^[4] and one here that laced the song, animating such lines as "I'll keep on moving..." The arrangement itself featured descending chords and bass notes in a series of walkdowns from G to E minor. Emotionally, the sadness and despair were retained, but Nico's ice queen demeanor was replaced by Browne's direct, human perspective, characteristic of the early 1970s singer songwriter movement.^[4]

But this was not all the story. The For Everyman liner notes thanked Gregg Allman for the arrangement. While Allman was most associated with the emerging Southern rock scene, he had spent considerable time in Los Angeles before The Allman Brothers Band came together, he and Browne had become friends, and the brothers' early band The Hour Glass had recorded Browne's "Cast Off All My Fears" on their 1967 album The Hour Glass. Now Gregg was working up another Browne song, "These Days", for his initial solo album Laid Back, released like For Everyman in Fall 1973. Allman's version kept to Browne's revised lyric until the end, when he changed "Don't confront me with my failures / I had not forgotten them," to "Please don't confront me with my failures / I'm aware of them." Rolling Stone praised the treatment, saying Allman "does full justice to the quietly hurting lyrics, double-tracking the vocal over a sad steel guitar," and calling the vocal quality "resigned" and "eternally aching."^[7] From the perspective of 1999, writer Anthony DeCurtis called Allman's version "definitive".^[8]

Many years later, Browne would describe the inspiration he credited: "When [Allman] did it I thought that he really unlocked a power in that song that I sort of then emulated in my version. I started playing the piano. I wasn't trying to sing it like Gregg; I couldn't possibly. I took the cue, playin' this slow walk. But it was written very sort of, kind of — [strums opening to 'These Days'] — a little more flatpicking."^[9]

While not released as a single by either, both Browne's and Allman's "These Days" recordings gained airplay on progressive rock radio stations and became the most-heard interpretations of the song. It was included on both of Browne's "best of" albums, The Next Voice You Hear: The Best of Jackson Browne and The Very Best of Jackson Browne, and on both of Allman's compilations, The Millennium Collection: The Best of Gregg Allman and (in a live version) No Stranger to the Dark: The Best of Gregg Allman. ^[10]

When Allman toured as a solo act, he generally kept "These Days" in his concert repertoire. Browne was a different story. It had appeared in his concerts since before he had a recording contract, and stayed in through the 1970s, usually played on piano in a surprising segue out of his biggest hit single, "Doctor My Eyes". But by 1980 he had graduated from halls and outdoor amphitheatres to arenas, and "These Days" disappeared from his set lists, perhaps because he felt it no longer effective in those settings. Save for the occasional acoustic show or benefit show, the song was not heard again until the late 1990s, as Browne was again playing smaller venues, often solo, and where it began to reappear out of the "Doctor My Eyes" segue again.

Other artists did not quite forget "These Days" during all this time. New Grass Revival gave it a progressive bluegrass workout circa 1976; in 1990, a cover version by 10,000 Maniacs appeared on the Elektra Records compilation album Rubáiyát; the Golden Palominos released an ethereal, drum machine-laced interpretation on their 1993 album This Is How It Feels; and later idiosyncratic indie rocker Barbara Manning included it as the B-side of one of her singles; and power poppers Fountains of Wayne used it as the B-side of their 1999 single "Troubled Times".

[edit] Renewed visibility

In the 2000s "These Days" gained renewed visibility and praise. The key was the appearance of the original Nico recording in a scene in the acclaimed and popular 2001 Wes Anderson film The Royal Tenenbaums. Both the song and the film's characters carried similar themes of regret and fear of missed opportunities.^[4] As Jackson Browne would later describe it, "I forgot that I'd licensed them to use this song. And this is one of those things that comes to you in the mail and you don't know what they're talking about and you simply give them their permission. You're sitting in the movie theater and there's this great moment when Gwyneth Paltrow is coming out of a bus or something like that. I'm thinking to myself, I used to play the guitar just like that. And then the voice comes on and it's Nico singing 'These Days', which I played on."^[9]

Nico's "These Days" was included on both versions of The Royal Tenenbaums soundtrack. Furthermore, a 2002-era Kmart commercial looped the guitar part from the Nico recording,^[4] making it further visible.

There was a new wave of covers of the song; renditions in the 2000s included ones by indie rockers Mates of State, Philadelphia singer/songwriter Denison Witmer, alternative rock icon Paul Westerberg's album Come Feel Me Tremble, Annie "St. Vincent" Clark's EP Paris is Burning, and Ohio singer songwriter Griffin House, in a treatment also heard on the Everwood television series and soundtrack. Approaches to the song varied, with some emulating either Nico or Browne while others reimagined it in other ways.^[11] Additionally, Beth Orton's 2002 song "Concrete Sky" quoted from "These Days".

So given this new attention after The Royal Tenenbaums came out, Browne began playing "These Days" in concert on a regular basis, but now on acoustic guitar and in a new style, starting with the fingerpicking guitar part but then landing sort of halfway in technique and feel between the Nico and Browne recordings.^[2] Indeed he would say, "And now I've learned how to play the Nico version, which we sort of made up for her. [Imitates Nico's version of "These Days"] Fabulous you know..."^[9] It was included on Browne's 2005 live album, Solo Acoustic, Vol. 1, including a spoken humorous introduction about the origins of the song.

"These Days" had been brought full circle. And critical recognition followed; Pitchfork Media's 2006 ranking of The 200 Greatest Songs of the 1960s placed the Nico "These Days" at number 31. But the song's other manifestations were not forgotten either. The Allman Brothers Band themselves would include the song for the first time in their concerts, featuring it on their March 2005 "Beacon run" with Gregg Allman and Warren Haynes both playing acoustic guitar and sharing dual vocals. And Browne's 1973 recording surfaced in the Seventies-set 2006 film Invincible,^[12] presumably used to establish the dour circumstances of the film.

[edit] References