Overview

Known for albums like Late for the Sky, The Pretender, and Running on Empty, Jackson Browne was a master of capturing the counterculture ethos of the 1960s. Cornel Bonca dives deeply into his music, his long fifty-year career, and activism—including environmentalism—within the context of American life, revealing a figure still fueled by certain American ideals like justice, freedom, and equality for all. Browne grew up in Southern California in the early 1960s, greatly influenced by his mother’s progressive politics, the music of Bob Dylan and the speeches of Martin Luther King. Then, drawn to the Laurel Canyon rock scene, he moved to Los Angeles and established himself as a songwriter for The Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, and many others, becoming a fixture of the singer-songwriter movement in the early 1970s. His music in the 1980s was largely political in scope, critiquing America’s conservative turn, its militarism in Central America, its nuclear brinksmanship with the Soviet Union, and its dismantling of Great Society social programs. He only returned to the personal music his fans treasured in 1993 with I’m Alive. Since then, Browne’s music has toggled back and forth between the personal and the political. He’s settled down into a long-term relationship with environmental activist Dianna Cohen and remained astonishingly active in local and national politics. This book dives into his music, life, and political activism in the changing face of America over the last fifty years, and why he still matters today.

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9781538172872

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Reviews

A lyrical, fiercely intelligent book which places Jackson Browne in his proper context. Like all talented writers who venture to write about music, Bonca is unafraid to explore what the music did to him, personally--how it morphed his point of view and introduced him to a faraway world. Through Bonca's ferocious intellect and elegant prose, we see the brilliance of one of the great songwriters of the twentieth century, the fractured America which gave him voice and--most of all--a glimpse of ourselves as we marvel at the beauty wrought from its failures.--Mikel Jollett ""frontman and songwriter, The Airborne Toxic Event; author, Hollywood Park: A Memoir"" Cornel Bonca offers thoughtful insight into the life of the genius singer, songwriter, musician, and entertainer that is Jackson Browne while never forgetting it's all about the music. I highly recommend it.--Dicky Barrett ""frontman and songwriter for The Mighty Mighty BossTones and The Defiant"" In lively, accessible prose, Cornel Bonca explores Jackson Browne's fifty-year career, persuasively demonstrating that Browne's music and political commitments had their roots in the liberal humanism of the California counterculture of the 1960s. In a far-reaching work that is equally about Browne, the author's own fifty-year engagement with Browne's music, and, perhaps more than anything, about the slow-fading reverberations of the 1960s, Bonca depicts Browne and his music as cultivated by a sincere commitment to the universal human values.--Stephen Mexal ""author of The Conservative Aesthetic and Reading for Liberalism""

Author Information

Cornel Bonca is Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative Literature at California State University, Fullerton, where he teaches courses in American literature, critical theory, and rock 'n' roll history. His essays, reviews, and fiction have appeared in two dozen publications, among them Salon, The New York Observer, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Jacaranda, and Modern Language Studies, where he's written on the beat poets, Bruce Springsteen, The National, The Airborne Toxic Event, David Foster Wallace, Philip Roth, and Don DeLillo. His last book was Paul Simon: An American Tune. He lives in Altadena, CA with his wife and daughter.

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