Jackson Browne on His Teenage Songwriting Years and the Origins of “These Days”

Jackson Browne’s early years as a songwriter were shaped by a memorable piece of advice. Before he had released a record, guitarist Monte Dunn — who played with Ian & Sylvia — heard some of Browne’s teenage material and told him: “You know, they already got a Bob Dylan. And a really good one.”

Browne recalled the exchange in a MOJO interview that examined his formative ’70s work. By then he knew the warning was not without foundation. His first attempt at composition, “Happy Woman Blues,” inspired by a track from Dylan’s 1962 debut, was, in his own words, “not very good.” He described much of his early writing as “mawkish, and very derivative.”

But among those early songs was one that would outlast the skepticism. Browne wrote “These Days” at sixteen, a world-weary lament he admits he still cannot fully explain. “I wasn’t a sad kid,” he said. “My entire life – all sixteen years of it!” He speculates the tone may have been drawn from The Beatles’ “I’m A Loser.”

The song’s trajectory proved the doubters wrong. After Browne moved to New York in 1966 and worked briefly as Nico’s backing musician, she recorded “These Days” for her 1967 album Chelsea Girl. A year later, Tom Rush cut his own version. Browne returned to California and built his career from there — not as a Dylan substitute, but as a songwriter with a register entirely his own.