Call it a loan (Jackson Browne) (LP 862 - 865)

Jackson Browne  Running On Empty (cassette tape, then CD and Vinyl, Asylum Records, 1977) *****  

Jackson Browne  Hold Out (Vinyl, Asylum Records, 1980) ****

Jackson Browne  Lives In The Balance (Vinyl, Asylum Records, 1986) ****  

Jackson Browne  World In Motion (Vinyl, Elektra/Asylum Records, 1989) ***

Genre: Pop/rock

Places I remember: Spellbound Wax Company (Gisborne); Real Groovy Records (Hold Out - cost me $3.50!); Slow Boat Records 
 
Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: Call It A Loan

Gear costume: Running On Empty

Active compensatory factors: Running On Empty is a great concept album centred on a musician's life on the road (think Rambling Man by The Allmans supplemented and stretched into an introspective album of songs).

The album is a true Wozza classic - it's an album I return to a lot (along with his first two) because it's always rewarding me in different ways and (crucially) it feels like a complete story of burn out, redemption, constant movement, needs, loves and hates of constant travel.

I also like the way he incorporates songs by others (most notably Danny O'Keefe, Rev. Gary Davis and Maurice Williams) and makes them his own. Apart from Stay (Maurice Williams), I thought they were Jackson Browne songs for many years.

Hold Out is close to another 5 star work (every song a masterpiece, remember). It resonates, I think, because it is linked very specifically to a time (1982 during my year at Auckland Secondary Teachers' College) when I lived alone. The only ever time I've lived alone actually. I was keen on a girl in our year at ASTC called Sue. We went out but she had a boyfriend already back where she came from down country so I played her side two and especially Call It A Loan/ Hold On Hold Out - hoping it would turn things around - but alas. It didn't.  

When I play the album I'm back in that awkward situation in 1982, and when I hear Missing Persons/ Call It A Loan/ Hold On Hold Out I'm back in my Windmill Road flat in the half dark - wondering whether I'd ever find true love. Sad, huh?

What happened next? Fate intervened - took me off to New Plymouth and within weeks I met Jacky. True love via love at first sight on February the 26th!

Unlike so many sixties/seventies musicians, the eighties was pretty good to JB.

Lives In The Balance was something of a return to form after Lawyers In Love in 1983 (I bought it at the time, but sold it pretty quickly). It's the start of a more overtly political JB - a movement away from affairs of the heart (and those lawyers) towards songs with more of a social conscience. And the songs stand up because of the tougher rockier sound from the now short haired JB. 

World In Motion continues the transition - not too many love songs on this one!  

Although it all sounds pretty fine, the problem with earnest songs about the state of the world persists - they just don't hit the rock'n'roll spot as the personal love songs do.  

Where do they all belong? We'll see how he did as he moved into the nineties and beyond when we get into the CD collection again.