My favourite Jackson Browne song is the title track to his third album, 1974’s Late for the Sky. I’ve never fully understood its meaning. There are dark themes throughout the album – the closing track ‘Before the Deluge’ is apocalyptic. It’s also about new fatherhood, with Browne moving back into his childhood home, Abbey San Encino in Los Angeles.
Browne hasn’t elucidated much on the song, telling Mojo that it’s “about a moment when you realize that something has changed, it’s over, and you’re late for wherever you’re going to be next.” An elegy for a failed relationship, it seems unlikely it was about his new marriage and child. It’s more likely that it’s about the end of Browne’s brief relationship with Joni Mitchell.
Now, for me some words come easy
Jackson Browne, Late for the Sky
But I know that they don’t mean that much
Compared with the things that are said when lovers touch
You never knew what I loved in you
I don’t know what you loved in me
Maybe the picture of somebody you were hoping I might be
It’s even possible that ‘Late for the Sky’ is an answer song to Joni Mitchell’s ‘Car on the Hill’, released in January 1974. ‘Car on the Hill’ is written about Browne. According to Sheila Weller, author of Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon – and the Journey of a Generation, ‘Car On A Hill’ “is a veiled description of a night Joni waited and waited for him to show up and he didn’t because he was with Phyllis. Joni then staged what she has called a “suicide attempt,” David Geffen rescued her and, having hit bottom, her healing then began.”
Supporting this answer song theory, Late for the Sky features a car on the cover, resolutely parked outside a suburban home. There are parallels between the second verse of each song – Browne sings “Now, for me some words come easy”, while Mitchell sings “He’s a real good talker”. ‘Late for the Sky’ is a better song title than ‘Late for the Hill’.
He’s a real good talker, I think he’s a friend
Joni Mitchell, Car on the Hill
Fast tires come screaming around the bend
But there’s still no buzzer
They roll on
And I’m waiting for his car on the hill
It always seems so righteous at the start
When there’s so much laughter
When there’s so much spark
When there’s so much sweetness in the dark
Browne’s not an especially strong vocalist, but the moment when his voice cracks on the long note at the end of the final chorus provides an emotional punch. ‘Late for the Sky’ featured in the movie Taxi Driver.
Browne’s 1970s albums featured talented multi-instrumentalist David Lindley. He played fiddle and sang the falsetto vocals on Browne’s cover of ‘Stay’. But it’s his guitar work that’s most striking – he played sensitive lines that injected some extra musicality into Browne’s literate songs. He’s brilliant on ‘Late for the Sky’. Lindley’s guitar features on the introduction of ‘Late for the Sky’, but he’s beautifully restrained. He plays a yearning solo that gathers momentum as it builds into the final chorus and adds gentle fills in the key parts.
David Lindley passed away last Friday. I never realised until I was writing this article, that he was Linda Ronstadt’s cousin. He was also a member of The Section, a group of LA studio musicians.
“They were some of the most creative musicians around,” David Crosby, who hired Lindley in 1975, told Rolling Stone back in 2013. “You never had to tell them what to play. You sang them a song and got the f*** out of the way.”
David Crosby
Lindley’s perhaps best known for his work with Jackson Browne, but he also enjoyed success with his 1981 solo album El Rayo-X, its light-hearted atmosphere contrasting with Browne’s sombre contemplation.
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Is this the album with Doctor My Eyes and Ready or Not? I can’t remember even though I had this album on a cassette tape that I got for a dollar or something a long time ago. Those are my favorite songs by him. I wouldn’t believe anything Joni Mitchell says because she’s a well-known liar and she’s famous for talking shit about other musicians. And blaming all her problems on different men and other people that she doesn’t like. It might be true though about Car on a Hill. The song Trouble Child too is about her being in the psych ward because of that nervous breakdown.. And they’re both great songs. I love that album.
It’s his third album, I think Doctor My Eyes is on the debut.
Mitchell’s other exs like Crosby, Nash, and Taylor seem fine with her, but that Browne breakup seems to have been traumatic for both of them.
Great review. This was my JB gateway and probably still my favourite.
I didn’t now about the Ronstadt Lindley connection either. Fascinating.
It’s my favourite Browne album, I think I saw it on a Rolling Stone list back in the day and grabbed a copy.
I remember all that stuff back in the 90s when she had that song on her album Turbulent Indigo and she said it was about the suicide of Jackson Browne’s wife and how it was all his fault, and they went back and forth in the press about it because the song says that he drove her to suicide and stuff. But all her friends came out and said that’s not true and that she had depression and emotional problems all her life. And Jackson Browne said that Joni Mitchell was just trying to get revenge on him because he broke up with her a long time ago and that’s the kind of person she is and stuff. There’s a lot of stories about Joni Mitchell like that by a lot of her ex-friends. Like what happened with David Geffen and everything. I also read that book by Sheila whatever her name is that you were talking about and I wish I still had it.
I thought the Joni song was about the Daryl Hannah stuff too. Browne’s never seemed that toxic to me.
Gorgeous tune, thanks for highlighting it, Graham, which I had forgotten about. Jackson Browne has written some great songs. Another great tune from that album I recall is “For a Dancer”.
That whole album is pretty great IMO, except Walking Slow, which is just OK.
Great song…it’s been a long time since I heard it.
Lindley was an awesome musician and he had a HUGE instrument collection. I checked it out online before…if it had strings…he owned it. Sad to hear about his death.
Pretty impressive how he could jump from lead guitar to fiddle. Really helped Jackson Browne, who needed him to flesh out his songs.