Don’t confront me with my failures
I have not forgotten them
Sometimes I think those are the most sorrowful, cutting, keenly self-aware lyrics ever written.
These Days, off of Browne’s 1973 album For Everyman, his second, cemented the young singer-songwriter’s reputation as one of the most talented and serious-minded composers then emerging from the West Coast scene. Yet by then it wasn’t new; Browne wrote it, incredibly, back in 1964, when he was only 16, and by the time his own version was released it had already been recorded by a number of other artists, most notably Nico, of Velvet Underground fame, whose take appeared on her album Chelsea Girl in 1967. Browne’s arrangement was largely copied from Gregg Allman’s 1973 rendition, as credited in For Everyman‘s liner notes (many critics, your faithful scribe not among them, think Allman’s version is superior). Since then, it’s been covered again and again, as artists of all stripe have been drawn to the song’s touching humanity and pure emotional honesty.
It’s beyond me where a teenaged kid found it in himself to write such a sad, philosophical meditation on lost opportunities, mistakes, guilt, and chastened acknowledgment of personal failure, particularly one the central theme of which is broken romance. Could he possibly have experienced any of the things he was writing about? What regrettable, irrevocable decisions had he already made? Who’d he already let down? And what does a 16-year-old know about true heartache and regret, the kind that comes from realizing your own fault in the mess you’ve made? Why, for that matter, is any kid still in high school already on the ragged edge of end-stage moral burn-out? What, he tried out for the wrong sport and didn’t make the team? Pops wouldn’t lend him the car keys? Some girl turned down his invite to the prom or something? Where was all this coming from?
Now, if I seem to be afraid
To live the life that I have made in song
Well, it’s just that I’ve been losin’ for so long
Really, son? You’re already a long-time loser, though still several years too young to belly up to a bar and sob into your whiskey? How’s that even possible? Yet These Days sounds utterly genuine, and could easily pass for the self-written epitaph of somebody reaching the end of his days, lamenting, now that it’s too late, what might have been, having finally gained the perspective that eluded him when he was still young enough to have made better choices. You’d expect something along those lines from a latter-day Leonard Cohen, maybe, or an aging Bob Dylan, not an adolescent still looking forward to the day he’s old enough to vote.
In a recent interview with Sam Jones, Browne relates some of the story behind writing what apparently came naturally, despite his youth:
What can you write about when you’re 16? You know, there are deep questions that arrive in a person’s life way before that, whether or not you’re loved, whether or not you’re accepted by your friends, whether you’re good at anything, or can do anything, and whether you’ve made any mistakes.
Perhaps. There can’t be many, though, who could feel so deeply at such a young age, or give voice to adolescent angst with such heart-felt, convincing maturity.
Of all the commentary I’ve encountered, I particularly like a reaction that appeared in the comments section of a YouTube post, of all places:
Yup.
Nico’s cover (to which she brings the same accented, warbling charm characteristic of her performances in Velvet Underground classics like I’ll be Your Mirror) is attached above, as is Gregg Allman’s, and the pitch-perfect version by Fountains of Wayne, which is my favourite.
the needlefish 