From the S&S archives:
Jackson Browne: He's no cowboy

JACKSON BROWNE'S one German date on his current tour was a homecoming of sorts. He played in Heidelberg — where he was born 27 years ago, son of jazz musician and then-Stars and Stripes business manager Jack Browne, a fortunate coincidence that earned me a hearty greeting.

I found the singer/songwriter having preshow dinner with the band across the street from Heidelberg's Stadthalle. He was enjoying the surreptitious stares of some of the other customers in the restaurant, who couldn't quite decide whether the workshirted American was really the Star.

To anyone expecting the jaded darling of the LA rock scene, some kind of desperado's desperado with steel fingernails, given to megalomaniac soliloquies, Browne incarnate will be a disappointment.

HE WAS MILDLY AMUSED by the stares of the other customers, genuinely interested in a very ordinary way in finding out a little about Stars and Stripes, recalled Heidelberg and Darmstadt, said the music playing over the restaurant's PA T reminded him of home and his father's Dixieland bands.

Nor was there a visible caste system operating at the table — dividing the stars from the band from the roadies — although it's reasonable to assume such divisions show up clearly enough when they hand out the money. These are people for whom Ronstadt is Linda, the Beach Boys are Carl and Brian, who have been on the road since October, but the mood was not Hollywood — it was middleclass-dropout-growing-up, relaxing without dark glasses while successfully swimming against the stream.

The conversation ran to stories about the hazards of doing a (hypothetical) gig in Spain, where the band had been and where it was going, the merits of the German restaurant, London was nice, what to do after the show and whether there would be time to look around the Heidelberg area, the press corps camped out at the hotel while the band ate dinner across the street from the hail, the possibility of being ripped off by the hotel if they made a call to California.

There were half a dozen children along on the tour, ranging from Warren Zevon's baby girl to others who looked to be about eight. Browne' son Ethan, just turned three, stood on a chair in the back of the hall during the show and pointed, saying, "There's my daddy!" While the set was being broken down after the show, Ethan got in a few licks on the drums, with very good style for a three-yearold.

"I wouldn't be here if he wasn't here. I'm really glad everybody brought their kids," said Browne after the show. "It's really wonderful, but it's hard. It keeps everything a little bit real — you can't get too out of hand."

The gig was sparsely attended — a slight loss for the promoter — perhaps because of the snow and the hassles involved in trying to park in Heidelberg. Those who came got more than their money's worth.

For openers came Warren Zevon, whose "Hasten Down The Wind" was used by Linda Ronstadt for the title track of her new album.

Zevon seemed, even more than Browne, too real to be a Star. He started alone with a piano bar style approach, gradually picking up a few people in Browne's band for backup and starting to approach rock, but if Zevon is a rocker, new terms will have to be invented for the likes of the Stones. Which is not to say that his stage presence is anything other than compelling; his songs have an intensity that dares you to try to step out for a beer.

Browne was stronger on stage than on his new album, The Pretender, winning furious applause toward the end of the show (three encores) with "Take It Easy" and "Rock Me On The Water," but it's easy to understand why some critics have suggested, often savagely, that if Browne would try harder he would be able to be a superstar instead of just popular.

But he wouldn't necessarily be Jackson Browne anymore. Fed a steady diet of hype and overwhelmed by the gilded trappings of success, many people tend to forget that the best songwriting and performance have more to do with the heart than the checkbook.

Browne, not exactly in poverty, hasn't forgotten and said he's no really interested in changing his music to reach a wider audience than can relate to him as he is. I pushed one of his buttons when I asked him about a recent Village Voice story which urged him to break away from his band of "L.A. cowboys" and go into the wilderness, there to become the new Dylan.

"THESE PEOPLE IN NEW York don't want you to play with your friends," was his angry response. "I'm not a cowboy. I've never written a cowboy song in .my life."

It is true that Browne could be looked at as part of a giant rock orchestra, based in Los Angeles, that performs only as small ensembles. They are always on each other's albums, and the traveling bands overlap quite a bit — fiddle player David Lindley, for example, who was standing right behind Browne, was in Europe earlier this year with Crosby & Nash and has his name all over the backup credits of recent albums out of Los Angeles.

From time to time it might seem they run a risk of losing themselves in some kind of communal glop. But it's their trip, and more than enough satisfied customers keep the wheels turning. Browne's apt suggestion for those that object: "People like that should go out and write their own songs."