#375 - Jackson Browne - Late for the Sky (1974)

MUSIC HISTORY WRITTEN BY HEAD WRITER DJ MORTY COYLE:

Released on September 13th in 1974 on Asylum Records and produced by Jackson Browne and Al Schmitt this is the third album by the American singer/songwriter.

As this is our third Jackson Browne record and we previously had the album before this and then the album after this let’s just catch you guys up to what was going on for this album and if you want more Jackson history you can check out the Judd Apatow and Bob Saget episodes.

A quick refresher was that Jackson was a teenage singer/songwriter in Los Angeles and people were soon having hits with his songs, making him a popular fixture of the new laid-back, mellow, California Rock, scene.

Now it’s said that you have your whole life to write your first album and then six months to write your second. We talked about how his second album had to add earlier written songs to a few new ones to complete.

For this he would need to write all new material.

After those first two popular and mostly critically well-received albums Jackson was back to living in his childhood family home in Highland Park, Los Angeles called Abbey San Encino, a recreation of a California Mission that was built by his grandfather Clyde Browne and featured on the cover of the previous album.

Jackson’s family lived there from when he was three to about twelve and he moved back with his girlfriend, Phyllis Major and their infant son, Ethan.

All the songs for this album were written in the miniature chapel area of his family home and with his baby there playing where he played as a baby it all felt like a sort of life cycle.

As that previous album, “For Everyman” cost way too much and took too long Asylum Records founder David Geffen told Jackson he had to do this one cheaper and quicker.

So this record was completed in about a month and a half with his touring band of David Lindley on guitar and fiddle, Doug Haywood on bass, Jai Winding on keyboards, and Larry Zack on drums. He also had friends from the scene singing harmonies and background vocals including Dan Fogelberg, Don Henley, Terry Reid, and J.D. Souther.

Although there are only eight songs on this most of them are over five minutes long with the record coming in at over 40 minutes.

It reached #14 on the Pop Albums chart which was about thirty places higher than the previous album and forty higher than his debut.

At the time it was critically acclaimed as his most mature and conceptually complete album so far.

And when Jackson was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, by Bruce Springsteen in 2004 Bruce called this album Jackson’s "masterpiece.”

He’s made 11 records since and sold over 18 million in the U.S. alone.