I’d have to say that my favorite thing is writing a song that really says how I feel, what I believe – and it even explains the world to myself better than I knew it. – Jackson Browne
It was a great time to be born, because I got to have my own publishing company right from the beginning, so I made more money than somebody would have doing what I did ten or fifteen years before. – Jackson Browne
As far as those kinds of things, I also played at the concert to call for the release of Nelson Mandela when he was a political prisoner in South Africa. We were celebrating his 70th birthday and calling for his release. – Jackson Browne
Right around the end of the fifties, college students and young people in general, began to realize that this music was almost like a history of our country – this music contained the real history of the people of this country. – Jackson Browne
I’ve also gotten to play in front of a million people in Central Park when there was a grass roots movement calling for nuclear disarmament – it was about 1982 – they called it Peace Sunday. – Jackson Browne
And my dad wanted me to play the trumpet because that’s what he liked. His idol was Louis Armstrong. My dad thought my teeth came together in a way that was perfect for playing the trumpet. – Jackson Browne
No matter how close to yours another’s steps have grown, in the end there is one dance you’ll do alone. – Jackson Browne
I get some heat for what English people call ‘overproduction.’ I don’t think my older stuff was overproduced, but I do think that sound has dated. – Jackson Browne
If someone said, ‘You can go live in this little town in Costa Rica for a couple of weeks and all you’ve got to do is sing for us,’ I would do that. That’s more exciting to me than the prospect of going on some national tour, where you’re going to play arenas or sheds every night, because of the crushing repetition of that kind of line. – Jackson Browne
I’m a big fan of British journalists like ‘The Independent’s Robert Fisk, but it’s hard to find voices like his in the U.S. – Jackson Browne
People know more about baseball players’ contracts than they do about the policies that govern the fate of our children’s lives in twenty years. Think about it. People used to say, the whole time I was growing up, ‘Do you want to bring a child into this world?’ That’s pretty dire. – Jackson Browne
I wrote the song For A Dancer for a friend of mine who died in a fire. He was in the sauna in a house that burned down, so he had no idea anything was going on. It was very sad. – Jackson Browne
Music itself is a great source of relaxation. Parts of it anyway. Working in the studio, that’s not relaxing, but playing an instrument that I don’t know how to play is unbelievably relaxing, because I don’t have any pressure on me. – Jackson Browne
So I had a couple of years of playing trumpet. I really enjoyed it, but it was not the kind of instrument you could whip out at a party. Let’s face it. – Jackson Browne
The biggest influence? I’ve had several at different times – but the biggest for me was Bob Dylan, who was a guy that came along when I was twelve or thirteen and just changed all the rules about what it meant to write songs. – Jackson Browne
Also, right at that particular time in the music business, because of people like the Beatles, people began owning their own publishing. I’ll just say this really quickly – they used to divide the money for the music that was written in two, just equal halves. – Jackson Browne
Like, What is the least often heard sentence in the English language? That would be: Say, isn’t that the banjo player’s Porsche parked outside? – Jackson Browne
We have an open society. No one will come and take me away for saying what I am saying. But they don’t have to, if they can control how many people hear it. And that’s how they do it. – Jackson Browne
I told my father I wanted to play the banjo, and so he saved the money and got ready to give me a banjo for my next birthday, and between that time and my birthday, I lost interest in the banjo and was playing guitar. – Jackson Browne
The idea that I wrote something that stood for the way I feel about things, and that it lasts, that’s probably my favorite thing that I’ve done. – Jackson Browne
Very often it’s really inconvenient – who you fall in love with. You can’t really control it. – Jackson Browne
I love to read. I love to stretch. In the morning, I get up, and if I’m not in a hurry, I will lie on the floor on a rug, look through some books and magazines, and maybe listen to music and try to do stretching exercises to tune up. – Jackson Browne
