Can't tell my courage from my desperation

Stumbled across this last night, and it reminded me why Jackson Browne is among the most literate and soul searching of all singer-songwriters.

And this song, in particular, continues to strike an exposed nerve with me some 37 years after I first heard it.

I guess it's not a surprise that the artist who helped guide me through my first crush would still be providing timeless adult middle-aged lessons as I seemingly grow more introspective each day. "These Days' is also all about regrets, ending with "don't confront me with my failures, I had not forgotten them," as perfect a closing line as exists in a song about missed chances.

And he wrote this when he was 16 years old.

My old friend Dave Sprout turned me on to Browne. In 1974, I prided myself of being ahead of the new music curve, but "For Everyman" had escaped me. I was still waist deep in the Alice Cooper, Santana and Doobie Brothers waters (not that there is anything wrong with that), and the idea of quiet, reflective ballads free of bombast seemed a little, well, unmanly, for a teenager who liked to drive around with "Frankenstein" blaring from his Torino's 8-track.

But I listened. And I listened some more, and I heard beauty and truth, in spades. And I also heard the wondrous sideman David Lindley, whose elegant accompaniments grace Browne's best work.

I went out and bought Browne's first album, and I've been with him for the ride for all these years. For many, "Late for the Sky," remains his crowning achievement. I prefer "For Everyman" on a personal level, if only for that was my first exposure to his music. But "For a Dancer," "Fountain of Sorrow," and "Before the Deluge" are monumental achievements and drive home the point of how songwriting is too often a lost art today. His melodic exploration of the holy trinity of love, forgiveness and redemption were educational and especially ear-opening for an impressionable youth trying to figure out life, the opposite sex and other unfathomable things.

There was a time when I wore my Jackson Browne fandom on my sleeve with the idea it would show girls how knowledgeable and deep I was in all the ways of love. We all know how that turned out.

Maybe I was hanging out with the wrong girls.

Strictly 100: Number 21 -- Jackson Browne