Jackson Browne

Early life

Clyde Jackson Browne was born on October 9, 1948, in Heidelberg, Germany, where his father, Clyde Jack Browne, was an American serviceman working for the Stars and Stripes newspaper. His mother, Beatrice Amanda Dahl, came from Minnesota and had Norwegian ancestry. Browne had three siblings: Roberta, born in 1946 in Nuremberg; Edward Severin, born in 1949 in Frankfurt; and a younger sister, Gracie. When he was three, his family moved to Abbey San Encino in Los Angeles’s Highland Park district. As a teenager, he performed folk songs at venues like Ash Grove and the Troubadour Club. He graduated from Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton, California, in 1966.

Career

After graduating from high school, Browne joined the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, performing at the Golden Bear in Huntington Beach, California, where they opened for the Lovin' Spoonful. The band recorded a number of his songs, including "These Days," "Holding," and "Shadow Dream Song." He left the Dirt Band after a few months and moved to Greenwich Village, New York, where he became a staff writer for Elektra's publishing company, Nina Music, before he was eighteen.

For the remainder of 1967 and also 1968 he was in Greenwich Village, where he backed Tim Buckley and singer Nico of the Velvet Underground. In 1967, Browne and Nico were romantically linked; he became a significant contributor to her debut album, Chelsea Girl, writing and playing guitar on several of the songs (including "These Days"). In 1968, following his breakup with Nico, Browne returned to Los Angeles, where he formed a folk band with Ned Doheny and Jack Wilce.

This is when he first met Glenn Frey. In 1971, Browne signed with his manager David Geffen's Asylum Records and released Jackson Browne (1972), which included the piano-driven "Doctor My Eyes," which entered the Top Ten in the US singles chart. His second album, For Everyman (1973), sold a million copies and included his version of "Take It Easy," co-written with Eagles' Glenn Frey. Late for the Sky (1974) peaked at No. 14. The Pretender (1976) peaked at number 5 on the album chart and included the hit singles "Here Come Those Tears Again" and "The Pretender." Running on Empty (1977), recorded entirely on tour, became his biggest commercial success, rising to number 3 on the album chart. Hold Out (1980) was his only number 1 album.

The non-album single "Somebody's Baby" (1982) became his biggest hit, peaking at number 7 on the Billboard Hot 100. Lawyers in Love (1983) included the hit single "Tender Is the Night." Browne has released two compilation albums: The Next Voice You Hear: The Best of Jackson Browne in 1997, and The Very Best of Jackson Browne, released in conjunction with his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2004. As of 2026, his most recent studio album is 2021's Downhill from Everywhere.

Personal life

Jackson Browne has been married twice and had two children. His first wife, actress and model Phyllis Major, gave birth to their son Ethan Zane Browne in 1973. A year later, Browne and his six-month-old son appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone. The couple married in 1975, but Major died by suicide in March 1976 at age 30 from a barbiturate overdose.

Ethan died on November 25, 2025, at 52 from an overdose of fentanyl, methamphetamine, and lidocaine. In 1981, Browne married model Lynne Sweeney; their son Ryan was born in 1982. The marriage ended in divorce in 1983 when Browne began a relationship with Daryl Hannah, which lasted until 1992 after she accused him of domestic violence. He later dated artist and environmental activist Dianna Cohen through the mid-2000s.

Browne has one grandson. A longtime anti-nuclear activist, he co-founded Musicians United for Safe Energy in 1979 with Bonnie Raitt and John Hall, and was active in the Abalone Alliance and Alliance for Survival. He campaigns against single-use plastic water bottles and participates in the Plastic Free Backstage movement. In 2008, the Surf Industry Manufacturers Association named him Environmentalist of the Year.

He received the Duke LEAF Award for Lifetime Environmental Achievement in the Fine Arts in 2010. Save Our Shores gave him their Ocean Hero Award on February 23, 2011, and the mayor of Santa Cruz declared that date Jackson Browne Day in the city.

Awards and honors

Jackson Browne has received eight Grammy nominations over his career. These include nods for Album of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male for Running on Empty in 1979; Best Rock Vocal Performance, Male for Boulevard in 1981; Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical for I'm Alive in 1995; Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals for Kisses Sweeter than Wine with Bonnie Raitt in 1999; Best Contemporary Folk Album for Solo Acoustic, Vol. 1 in 2007 and Love Is Strange: En Vivo Con Tino in 2011; and Best Americana Album for Downhill from Everywhere in 2022.

In 2002, he was given the John Steinbeck Award. Bruce Springsteen inducted him into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 14, 2004. That same year, Occidental College awarded him an honorary Doctorate of Music. The Peace Abbey presented him with the Courage of Conscience Award.

In 2007, he received the Harry Chapin Humanitarian Award from Chapin-World Hunger Year and was also inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. The following year, he collected the NARM Harry Chapin Humanitarian Award and the Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement, presented by Senator Tom Daschle. In 2010, the We Are Family Humanitarian Award came his way. He was the 2014 recipient of the GRAMMY Museum Jane Ortner Education Award.

In 2018, Promoting Enduring Peace made him the first artist to receive the Gandhi Peace Award. In 2024, the Bruce Springsteen Archives and Center for American Music honored him with the American Music Honors.

Activism

In spring of 1978, Browne appeared near a nuclear reprocessing plant in Barnwell, South Carolina, to perform a free concert the night before a civil disobedience action; he did not participate in the action. In June 1978 he performed on the grounds of the Seabrook Station Nuclear Power Plant construction site in New Hampshire for 20,000 opponents of the reactor. Shortly after the Three Mile Island nuclear accident, during March 1979, Browne joined with several musician friends to found the antinuclear organization Musicians United for Safe Energy.

He was arrested while protesting against the Diablo Canyon Power Plant near San Luis Obispo. During the 1980s, Browne performed frequently at benefits for causes he supported, including Farm Aid, Amnesty International (making several appearances on the 1986 A Conspiracy of Hope tour), post-Somoza revolutionary Nicaragua, and the Christic Institute.