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Clyde Jackson Browne (born October 9, 1948) is an American rock musician, singer, songwriter, and political activist who has sold over 18 million albums in the United States. Emerging as a teenage songwriter in mid-1960s Los Angeles, he had his first successes writing songs for others. He wrote "These Days" as a 16-year-old; the song became a minor hit for the German singer and Andy Warhol protégé Nico in 1967. He also wrote several songs for fellow Southern California bands the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (of which he was briefly a member in 1966) and Eagles, the latter of whom had their first Billboard Top 40 hit in 1972 with the Browne co-written song "Take It Easy". Encouraged by his successes writing songs for others, Browne released his self-titled debut album in 1972, which spawned two Top 40 hits of his own, "Doctor, My Eyes" and "Rock Me on the Water". For his debut album, as well as the next several albums and concert tours, Browne started to work closely with The Section, a prolific session band which also worked with a number of other prominent singer-songwriters of the era. His second album, For Everyman, was released in 1973. While it lacked an enduring single, it has been retrospectively assessed as some of his best work, appearing highly on several "Best Album of All Time" lists. His third album, Late for the Sky (1974), was his most successful to that point, peaking at number 14 on the Billboard 200 album chart. His fourth album, The Pretender (1976), continued the pattern of each album topping the previous by peaking at number 5 on the album chart, and spawned the hit singles "Here Come Those Tears Again" and "The Pretender". Browne's 1977 album Running on Empty, however, is his signature work; it rose to number 3 on the album chart and remained there for over a year. Both live and a concept album, it explores in its songs the themes of life as a touring musician, and the album was recorded both on stage and in places touring musicians spend time when not playing, such as hotel rooms, backstage, and in one case on a moving tour bus. The album produced two Top 40 singles, "Running on Empty" and "The Load-Out/Stay", and many of the other tracks became popular radio hits on the AOR format. Browne had successful albums through the 1980s, including the 1980 album Hold Out, which was his only number 1 album; the non-album single "Somebody's Baby", which was used in the film Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and 1983's Lawyers in Love, which included the hit single "Tender Is the Night". In 1986, he released Lives in the Balance, which had several radio hits and included the introspective "In the Shape of a Heart", which was inspired by the suicide of his first wife a decade prior. His string of hit albums came to an end at that point, as his next several albums failed to produce a gold or platinum RIAA rating. He released two compilation albums, The Next Voice You Hear: The Best of Jackson Browne in 1997, and The Very Best of Jackson Browne, released in conjunction with his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2004. His most recent studio album is 2021's Downhill from Everywhere, the follow-up to 2014's Standing in the Breach, which included the first fully realized version of his song "The Birds of St. Marks", a song he had written at age 18. In 2015, Rolling Stone ranked him as 37th in its list of the "100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time". Biography Early life Browne was born October 9, 1948, in Heidelberg, Germany, where his father Clyde Jack Browne, an American serviceman, was stationed for his job assignment with the Stars and Stripes newspaper. Browne's mother, Beatrice Amanda (née Dahl), was from Minnesota of Norwegian ancestry. Browne has three siblings: Roberta "Berbie" Browne, born in 1946 in Nuremberg, Germany; Edward Severin Browne, born in 1949 in Frankfurt, Germany; and his younger sister, Gracie Browne, born a number of years later. At the age of three, Browne and his family moved to his grandfather's house, Abbey San Encino which is in the Highland Park district of Los Angeles. In his teens, he began singing folk songs in local venues including Ash Grove and The Troubadour Club. He attended Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton, California, graduating in 1966. Songwriter for others After graduating from high school Browne joined the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, performing at the Golden Bear in Huntington Beach, California, where they opened for the Lovin' Spoonful. Later the band recorded a number of Browne's songs, including "These Days", "Holding", and "Shadow Dream Song". He was in his friend Pamela Polland's band, Gentle Soul for a short time. He left the Dirt Band after a few months and moved to Greenwich Village, New York, where he became a staff writer for Elektra's publishing company, Nina Music, before he was eighteen. He reported on musical events in New York City with his friends Greg Copeland and Adam Saylor. For the remainder of 1967 and also 1968 he was in Greenwich Village, where he backed Tim Buckley and singer Nico of the Velvet Underground. In 1967, Browne and Nico were romantically linked; he became a significant contributor to her debut album, Chelsea Girl, writing and playing guitar on several of the songs (including "These Days"). In 1968, following his breakup with Nico, Browne returned to Los Angeles, where he formed a folk band with Ned Doheny and Jack Wilce. This is when he first met Glenn Frey. Browne's first songs, such as "Shadow Dream Song" and "These Days", were recorded by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Tom Rush, Nico, Steve Noonan, Gregg Allman, Joan Baez, the Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, the Byrds, Iain Matthews, and others. Browne did not release his own versions of these early songs until years later. Soon Rolling Stone mentioned Browne as a "new face to look for" and praised his "mind-boggling melodies". Classic period In 1971, Browne signed with his manager David Geffen's Asylum Records and released Jackson Browne (1972) produced and engineered by Richard Orshoff, which included the piano-driven "Doctor My Eyes", which entered the Top Ten in the US singles chart. "Rock Me on the Water", from the same album, also gained considerable radio airplay, while "Jamaica Say You Will" and "Song for Adam" (written about his friend Adam Saylor's death) helped establish Browne's reputation. Touring to promote the album, he shared the bill with Linda Ronstadt and Joni Mitchell. His next album, For Everyman (1973)—while considered of high quality—was less successful than his debut album, although it still sold a million copies. The upbeat "Take It Easy", cowritten with Eagles' Glenn Frey, had already been a major success for that group, while his own recording of "These Days" reflected a sound representing Browne's angst. Late for the Sky (1974) consolidated Browne's fan base, and the album peaked at No. 14, the 84th-best-selling album of 1974. Browne's work began to demonstrate a reputation for memorable melody, insightful, .... Discover the April Browne popular books. Find the top 100 most popular April Browne books.