Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah

An inquiry | Contents | They say…

2015-2024 | 20,100 words | 70 mins | British spelling

Browne and Hannah in 1990 | Photo: Getty Images

Digest

Q: Did Jackson Browne assault Daryl Hannah at the time of their acrimonious separation in 1992?

A: Probably not, but no one really knows apart from them – and they’re not saying.

Then there’s Joni Mitchell sticking her oar in.

For more, start here, browse the Contents or skip to the Conclusion

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah

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Update: March 2020
Wikipedia gagged me!
The bastards

When I started writing this, the Wikipedia entries for Jackson Browne and Daryl Hannah made no mention of the assault allegation. At some point they began mentioning it, and at the time of writing both entries gave links to the same three published references. All three references are covered here but none of them sheds much light. So I signed up as a Wikipedia editor and added a reference from both entries to this post. Those references were then removed. Wikipedia – understandably – regards self-published sources as generally unreliable but they make exceptions. Despite my appeals (including an unanswered email to Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales), they wouldn’t make an exception in this case, even though this blogpost is – if I say so myself – the only reliable source available. Because I argued about it, I’m now permanently and irrevocably blocked from even commenting on a Wikipedia post! Oh well – I still love Wikipedia. (I donate, FFS!)

(Edit: I stopped donating – not because of this, but because I found out Wikipedia’s funding appeals are spurious. But I still love it!)

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah

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They say…
Quotes about this post

Incredibly well researched…all the sources in one place…let me come to my own conclusion – important in this cancel culture

Elizabeth, commenter and law student

Nice presentation and analysis of competing facts and explanations…excellent evidentiary compilation

Jane, commenter and lawyer

You’ve put work into the research

Fred Schruers, Rolling Stone writer (interviewed Browne in 1994 about the incident)

Very thorough and well researched

Alan Nierob, Hannah’s press agent at the time of the incident

Please do not contact Ms Hannah or myself again

Lawrence Kopeikin, Hannah’s entertainment attorney

🌷

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah

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Introduction
What happened
Who did it?
The autism factor
The cocaine factor
The 1992 People article
The 1994 US interview
The three 1994 US ‘uncle’ letters

US letter 1: from Hannah’s uncle
US letter 2: Browne’s open reply and his police ‘statement’
US letter 3: Browne’s reply to Hannah’s uncle – a deal made?

Why didn’t Hannah’s uncle go to the police?
Did the police see Hannah during their visit?
Was there a police investigation?
The 2003 defamation claims
Joni Mitchell’s song, Not to Blame
Browne – a troubled man?
Some peripheral information
Some sources
Conclusion – kind of
Annex: Jackson Browne’s relationship with Joni Mitchell
Afterword: The #MeToo movement
My closing farewell
Afterthought: The real Jackson Browne – a tiny doubt
Sources of help
Comments

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah

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Introduction

A need to know

I’ve loved Jackson Browne’s music since the early 70s, especially his wonderful 1974 album, Late for the Sky. Back in the day, friends who liked the likes of Captain Beefheart scoffed at Browne’s supposed fey lightness, but I liked them both, Beefheart and Browne.

(There’s an excellent account of Browne’s musical career from the early 70s to the mid 00s on PopDose. See also Bruce Springsteen’s brilliant speech about Browne at the 2004 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony.)

I was going to take my (uninitiated) wife to see Browne on his 2014 UK tour, but the rumour of domestic abuse put me off.

I thought I’d check it out. I’ve been doing that – from time to time – for over nine years.

(That’s a long time, I know. But since I ‘retired’, my blog has become my ‘thing’. I just love doing it.)

So… this post is about what I found out. (Summary: a lot of relevant information, but no definite answer. There’s smoke – and mirrors – but no fire.)

At quite a late stage, it occurred to me there was a third party inextricably involved – Joni Mitchell. Her song Not to Blame famously – and very damagingly – put the boot in. I’ve tried to extract it by showing her song was a libellous fit of passion.

In a 1993 interview, Browne said, ‘I’m not going to provide the actual details of what did happen, because it’s not anybody’s business.’ So far, he’s kept his word.

It’s understandable he’d say that – but he’s wrong. Because of his fame, it’s the business of anyone who cares about his music, and who cares about domestic violence. If that’s you, dear Reader, please read on.

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah

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What happened

Just the facts

On 23 September 1992 Jackson Browne and Daryl Hannah were at their house in Santa Monica, California. It was the sad end of their long – if occasionally rocky – relationship.

Browne and Hannah’s Santa Monica house
Photo: Engel Studios

Hannah was leaving Browne for John F Kennedy Jr (whom she’d apparently been seeing since 1988) and had come to collect some belongings. There was a row, some kind of altercation, and Hannah sustained injuries.

Browne called the police at one point, supposedly to report someone ransacking his house. When the police arrived, they spoke to Browne and possibly to Hannah. The police left.

Some time later, Hannah apparently left the house and called her sister, who took her to a local hospital where she was treated by a doctor for injuries reportedly including bruises on her face and ribs, and a broken finger.

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah

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Who did it?

(Not the butler)

Daryl Hannah made no complaint to the police. Jackson Browne wasn’t arrested or charged with any offence. So how did Hannah get those injuries?

Hannah’s press agent told the press on the day of the incident:

‘Daryl Hannah received serious injuries incurred during a domestic dispute with Browne for which she sought medical treatment.’

That carefully worded statement’s a fine example of the dark art practised by a skilled press agent. It might seem to imply Browne inflicted the injuries, but it doesn’t actually say so.

Hannah’s press release said she ‘received’ injuries ‘incurred’ during the dispute. But it doesn’t say how they were incurred.

‘Received’ implies they were given – by Browne. But ‘incurred’ – rather than ‘inflicted’ – is the weasel word. It avoids the risk of explicitly making a false accusation.

As far as I know, Hannah has never publicly repeated or withdrawn that implied accusation.

Browne has strongly denied causing Hannah’s injuries but has never publicly explained what happened.

In a 1994 interview (see below), Browne, apparently referring to Hannah’s long-term fragile emotional state (possibly her autism – see below), said, somewhat Biblically, his reason for not explaining what happened was it’d be ‘a breach of faith in a covenant that is many, many years old’.

I asked Hannah’s then press agent, Alan Nierob, if he still held that position and, if so, if he’d ask Hannah to publicly say what happened. Nierob said he no longer represents Hannah. I asked him what really happened. He hasn’t replied.

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah

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The autism factor

We’re all on the spectrum, but …

Daryl Hannah has revealed she was diagnosed with autism as a child. Doctors recommended medication and institutionalisation but her mother refused.

Adults with autism, including those with high-functioning autism, can go through rage cycles due to a build-up of anger, which can be expressed as destruction of property, self-injury and causing injuries to others. After the episode there’s often a denial of rage and withdrawal into a fantasy that it didn’t happen.

People with high-functioning autism can control their anger and rage in their professions and at social functions and activities outside the home.

If Jackson Browne’s denial is true, perhaps Hannah had an autistic rage episode, and that’s why he didn’t want to explain what really happened.

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah

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The cocaine factor

Danger line?

Jackson Browne has spoken about his use of cocaine. (He even recorded a song about it.) In the 80s and 90s many wealthy creatives had a chronic habit. Perhaps Browne and Daryl Hannah were a user-couple. Perhaps Hannah found cocaine helped with her autistic shyness.

Cocaine’s a very moreish and ultimately addictive drug. It can produce psychiatric symptoms including violence. Perhaps on that sad occasion they had a line or two for old times’ sake, and things turned bad …

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah

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The 1992 People article

The guilty pleasure of celeb tittle-tattle

In October 1992, one month after the incident, celebrity magazine People wrote about it. The article’s opening paragraph referred to Daryl Hannah as ‘reportedly … a battered victim’. Quoting numerous anonymous ‘friends‘, People said:

A press statement made on the day of the incident by Hannah’s spokesman said: ‘Daryl Hannah received serious injuries incurred during a domestic dispute with Browne for which she sought medical treatment.’
A ‘close friend’ of Hannah’s said Jackson Browne caused her injuries.
Browne’s manager, Donald Miller, said the incident couldn’t have happened because he was with Browne at an LA recording studio at the time.
‘Browne supporters’ said he was defending himself against Hannah. Browne’s friend, the singer JD Souther, said, ‘He was getting chased around by her.’
A ‘friend’ said, ‘This has happened before, but never this bad.’
A Santa Monica police officer, Sgt Gary Gallinot, said Browne called the station complaining that someone was ransacking his home.
‘Friends of Hannah’ said Hannah was not ransacking, but hiding in the guest house in fear of Browne. ‘Friends’ said, ‘He goes into blind rages and doesn’t know what he does. He was trying to kick the door down. A ‘friend’ said: ‘He has an explosive personality.’
Gallinot said Browne told the two attending officers, ‘Everything is fine’; they never saw Hannah; and as there were no signs of distress the men left and didn’t file a report.
Hannah’s ‘friends’ said she then left the house and called her sister, who took her to a local doctor to have her injuries treated.
An ‘associate of Browne’ said, ‘He’s not the macho type…it sounds completely out of character.’
Hannah did not plan to press charges.
‘Friends of Browne’ said he’d gone to northern California and was keeping a low profile.
A ‘friend of Hannah’ said she certainly wouldn’t be going back to her home in Santa Monica or to Jackson Browne: ‘We would never let her do that again.’

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah

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The 1994 US interview

Earnest but dull

Over a year after the incident, in February 1994 monthly film and music magazine US (not to be confused with its later trashy incarnation US Weekly) published a long interview with Jackson Browne in which he opened up to music journalist Fred Schruers (better known as a writer for sister publication Rolling Stone).

Browne’s denial in this interview apparently provoked the letter to US from Daryl Hannah’s uncle (see below). In the interview:

Browne strongly denied assaulting Hannah.
He denounced the 1992 People article (see above) as lies orchestrated by Hannah’s publicist.
Schruers wrote that Hannah’s press agent denied this; and that People‘s managing editor said they stood by the story and the publicist had nothing to do with the story’s conclusion.
Browne denied the People article’s claim that the police didn’t see Hannah during their visit. He said the police spoke to them both for ‘a long time’.
Schruers quoted Santa Monica police officer Sgt Gary Gallinot as saying, ‘A male and female officer went to the house. It was an argument, what we call a family disturbance, and when we left, everything was OK. [Hannah] never made indications she was assaulted…if there are any signs of domestic violence, we take a report, but in this instance there were no signs. It could have happened later, but she never filed charges.’[My bolding]
Browne denied he was laying low after the incident as implied by the People report. He pointed out he was gigging regularly at that time.
Browne said he wouldn’t explain what happened because it would be ‘a breach of faith in a covenant that is many, many years old‘. He was apparently referring to Hannah’s autism.
Referring to Jerrold Wexler, stepfather to Hannah since she was eight years old, Browne said that at the time of the incident, ‘Daryl’s father was dying. She was under tremendous pressure, had been caring for him for over a month in hospital. So she was in very fragile shape.’
Referring to Hannah’s family, Browne said since the incident he’d been ‘banished from the kingdom, from the monarchy that her family resembles’

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah

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The three 1994 US ‘uncle’ letters

Sparks fly!

Following the February 1994 interview with Jackson Browne (see above) in monthly film and music magazine US, in April 1994 the magazine published three letters about the incident: a letter of angry accusation by Daryl Hannah’s uncle, Haskell Wexler, and two letters of angry denial by Browne.

Letter 1 | Letter 2 | Letter 3

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah

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Letters intro | Letter 2 | Letter 3

US letter 1 | from Hannah’s uncle

Angry Uncle Haskell

The first of the three letters in the April 1994 US was from Daryl Hannah’s uncle, the late Oscar-winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler. Haskell was the brother of Hannah’s stepfather, Jerrold Wexler, who was seriously ill at the time of the incident, and who died not long after, in 1992.

Wexler renounced his friendship with Browne and accused him of beating Hannah. He wrote:

‘I am Haskell Wexler, Daryl Hannah’s uncle. I am, also, a longtime friend of Jackson Browne and admirer of his artistry. I am no longer his friend.

‘Jackson beat Daryl in September 1992. I was with her in the hospital. I saw the ugly black bruises on her eye and chin and on her ribs. The examining doctor reported she had blood in her urine. The doctor was shocked by the severity and noted Daryl as “a badly battered woman”. I photographed her at the hospital.

‘It could be that nobody cares about objective truth anymore. Jackson is a “good guy,” and good guys don’t beat women. Yes, it is hard to listen to Jackson and believe he has a hidden side of violence.

‘I saw the results of the last violent attack on my niece, and there is no spin of fancy which will erase my shock and disdain for someone who would beat her up.’

In saying ‘I saw the results of the last violent attack on my niece’, Wexler was clearly suggesting there were previous attacks. However, this throwaway accusation apparently has no basis in fact.

There’ve been no other suggestions of previous incidents except for some flimsy accusations from anonymous ‘friends’ of Hannah in a celebrity magazine’s report of the incident.

If Hannah’s protective uncle had known of any such incidents at the time, he’d surely have intervened (and have ended his friendship with Jackson Browne then). If, on the other hand, Hannah had told him at the hospital about previous attacks, he’d surely have insisted on reporting it to the police. No report was made to the police. (See below.)

Perhaps Wexler, angrily convinced Browne attacked his niece, wanted to enhance his case by suggesting – with, apparently, no evidence whatsoever – there were previous attacks.

(Edit: I came across a forum post referring to a previous incident in 1988. Forum rules prevent me from contacting the poster, and I can’t find any other reference. If you know about any such incident, dear Reader, please email me.)

Letters intro | Letter 1 | Letter 2 | Letter 3

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah

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Letters intro | Letter 1 | Letter 3

US letter 2 | Browne’s open reply and his police ‘statement’

(The ‘statement’ is rubbish)

In the same April 1994 edition, immediately after Haskell Wexler’s letter, US published two replies from Jackson Browne repeating his denial. A US preamble said:

‘Jackson Browne asked to respond with two letters. One general response, and one addressed specifically to Mr Wexler.’

In his open letter of general response, Browne denied the accusation. He appended a police ‘statement’. He wrote:

‘It appears that Haskell Wexler has taken exception to your having printed my assertion that much that was said about this affair in the tabloids and in the media is untrue.’

Browne was apparently referring to the February 1994 US interview.

Browne went on to criticise the 1992 People report for saying the police didn’t see Daryl Hannah during their house call.

Browne ended his open US letter by reproducing a defensive and somewhat rambling ‘statement’ by a Santa Monica police officer, with no contextual information other than the officer’s rank and name and the month it was made: Lt John Miehle, November 1992.

This is the police officer’s ‘statement’:

‘The Santa Monica Police Department went to the house where Jackson Browne lives regarding a possible disturbance. We resolved the situation in about five minutes. There was never any assault. There are no charges pending and no prosecution sought by or intended by the District Attorney. It is this department’s intention that no citizen, regardless of who she is, suffer any kind of abuse, whether it be domestic violence or any other kind of assault. But in this case, absolutely no assault occurred. Our investigators tell us nothing happened. Nobody has even alleged that Daryl Hannah was even touched. If they had, we’d be investigating. We’re not hiding anything. The press is trying to make more out of this than there really is, and it’s unfair, not just to Browne, but to us. We did our job, and repeat, no crime occurred here. This whole thing is ridiculous.’

Presumably Browne thought this ‘statement’ supported his case, but it actually raises more questions:

Ending with ‘This whole thing is ridiculous’, it’s clearly not the usual carefully worded press statement made by the police. It sounds like a spontaneous spoken statement which was recorded and transcribed. How did the officer come to make that statement? Was he prompted by Browne’s lawyer?
Did the ‘investigators’ who said ‘nothing happened’ question Hannah and check the medical evidence? Or were those ‘investigators’ the officers who went to the house and ‘resolved the situation in about five minutes’?
Given the events – and the apparent lack of a formal investigation – how could the police be so sure ‘no assault occurred’?
‘Nobody has even alleged that Daryl Hannah was even touched’. It may be true that no allegations were made to the police, but what about Hannah’s spokesman saying she ‘received serious injuries incurred during a domestic dispute with Browne’?
‘If they had [alleged assault], we’d be investigating’. Given the police visit to the house to check out a reported disturbance, and given Hannah’s press statement made later the same day, why didn’t the police formally investigate the incident?
Regardless of the ‘department’s intention’, did male rock stars get a free pass for reported domestic abuse in Santa Monica in the early 90s when no complaint was made to the police, even if the female involved was a film star?

I asked the Santa Monica police department about Miehle’s ‘statement’. They said they had no record of the incident or of any statement made; and Miehle had retired. I asked Miele about this statement. He hasn’t replied.

Letters intro | Letter 1 | Letter 2 | Letter 3

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah

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Letters intro | Letter 1 | Letter 2

US letter 3 | Browne’s reply to Hannah’s uncle – a deal made?

Jackson hits home – silences angry uncle

Jackson Browne’s second letter in the April 1994 edition of US was addressed to Daryl Hannah’s uncle, Haskell Wexler, as a direct response to Wexler’s letter to US.

Browne complained of trial by media, and asked Wexler to let him explain in person.

Browne agreed they were no longer friends. He said Wexler hadn’t allowed him to explain what happened, but had joined the attack on his reputation and character in which many untrue things were said, some of which Wexler must have known were untrue; and Wexler had added his own incorrect and damning assumptions.

Browne said Hannah’s decision not to press charges was not taken out of generosity but for her own reasons. It meant he’d been subject to trial by media, ‘where anything can be said and nothing has to be proven’.

Browne, addressing Wexler, wrote:

Perhaps, faced with that threat of exposure, Wexler allowed Browne to privately ‘describe Daryl’s actions’, and found his explanation plausible.

Perhaps they made a deal: Wexler would drop the accusation and Browne would continue to keep his ‘covenant’ of secrecy.

That would explain why, after all that hot air, they both suddenly and completely clammed up (apart from Browne’s occasional pained – if unexplained – denials).

Haskell Wexler died in 2015.

Letters intro | Letter 1 | Letter 2 | Letter 3

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah

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Why didn’t Hannah’s uncle go to the police?

You’d think he would have …

The police ‘statement’ included in Jackson Browne’s open letter to US (see above) said, ‘no one alleged that Hannah was assaulted’, presumably meaning no assault was reported to the police.

In his angry letter to US, Daryl Hannah’s uncle, Haskell Wexler, said he photographed Hannah’s injuries and he believed Browne to have caused them. He was clearly a high-status resident who wouldn’t have hesitated to make a complaint to the police – so why didn’t he?

The reason must be that Hannah persuaded him not to. Perhaps she told her uncle she couldn’t face the publicity a possible trial would bring, or she wanted to protect Browne.

However, if Browne didn’t assault her, perhaps Hannah’s real concern was to protect herself from the embarrassing or incriminating truth a police investigation might have uncovered.

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah

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Did the police see Hannah during their visit?

A vital piece of the jigsaw

As to whether the police who visited the house saw Daryl Hannah, there are conflicting reports. However, it seems likely they did see her.

The 1992 People report said:

‘Since there were no visible signs of distress – [the police] never saw Hannah, says Gallinot [*] – the men [sic] left and did not file a report.’

*Santa Monica P
olice Department spokesman Sgt Gary Gallinot

In the 1994 US interview with Fred Schruers, Jackson Browne, specifically criticising the People report, said:

‘…the story that I sent the police away, that they never spoke to Daryl, [is] completely untrue. The officers did speak with Daryl, and they spoke with both of us for a long time…They basically said: “Look, you’re having an argument. Just cool it.”‘

Schruers then quoted Gallinot as saying:

‘A male and female officer went to the house – it was an argument, what we call a family disturbance, and when we left, everything was OK. [Hannah] never made indications she was assaulted…if there are any signs of domestic violence, we take a report, but in this instance there were no signs. It could have happened later, but she never filed charges.’

So…

According to the People report, Gallinot said the police didn’t see Hannah when they visited the house.
But in the US interview, Browne said the police did speak to Hannah.
And, also in the US interview, Gallinot was reported by Schruers as saying Hannah ‘never made indications she was assaulted’, implying the police did see her.

In his open letter to US, Browne, apparently referring first to the 1992 People article and then to the 1994 US interview, wrote:

‘…much that was said about this affair in the tabloids and in the media is untrue. Particularly that the police came to our house and I sent them away without their having spoken to Daryl. Further, Fred Schruers actually checked it out with the police, and that’s more than the other writers that I made the same assertion to were able to do.’

I asked Schruers about this. He said he vaguely remembered speaking to the district attorney or possibly the police.

I asked the Santa Monica city attorney’s office about it. They said they have no record of the incident; they only keep closed domestic violence files for 15 years.

I asked the Los Angeles district attorney and Santa Monica police department Sgt (now Capt) Gallinot about their involvement with the incident. The LA DA’s office said they have no record of the incident. Gallinot hasn’t replied.

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah

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Was there a police investigation?

Defund the SMPD

There should have been a full investigation – but it seems there wasn’t one.

According to lawyer, fan and forum contributor ‘Laura’ it was the practice in California at that time (and still is) to investigate – and, if appropriate, to prosecute – cases of apparent domestic violence even if no complaint was made to the police.

(‘Laura’ thinks this proves Jackson Browne’s innocence: there must have been an investigation – which, as no charges were made, must have exonerated Browne.)

The October 1992 People article reported Daryl Hannah’s press release about her injuries, issued on the day of the incident. Presumably the Santa Monica police department (SMPD) would have been aware of that public statement. The call-out to the house and Hannah’s press release made later the same day should have prompted the police to launch an investigation.

However, it looks as though there was no investigation. The People article, apparently relying on information from SMPD press information officer Sgt Gallinot, said the officers who visited the house didn’t file a report.

Also, if there had been a follow-up investigation, the defensive ‘statement’ by SMPD Lt Miehle (made, according to Browne, in November 1992) would surely have mentioned it. But the ‘statement’ didn’t say there was an investigation – it referred only to the ‘investigators’ who ‘resolved the situation in about five minutes‘. It said:

‘Nobody has even alleged that Daryl Hannah was even touched. If they had, we’d be investigating.’

So how come there was no investigation? As ever, cock-up is the most likely explanation but conspiracy is always a possibility.

According to the People report, Browne’s manager Donald Miller gave him a false alibi, saying Browne was with him at a recording studio at the time of the incident. Presumably Miller thought things looked bad for his friend and client and was trying to fix it. Did Mr Fixit then somehow persuade the police not to investigate?

(Donald “Buddha” Miller was production manager for Browne’s 1977 album/tour Running On Empty. He co-wrote with Browne the frustrated roadie’s ode to masturbation, Rosie, an oddly coarse song that was part of that album’s account of life and camaraderie on the road. Perhaps the members of that tour made a pledge of loyalty.)

I asked Miller if it’s true that he gave Browne that alibi, and if so, why? I also asked him if he somehow persuaded the police not to investigate. He hasn’t replied.

I asked the SMPD about their response to the incident. They said they were unable to find any record of the incident. They said if there had been a record, it would presumably have been deleted.

(SMPD case types exempt from deletion apparently include unsolved cases of severe violence. So, if there had been a follow-up police investigation in addition to the five-minute visit, the record might have been deleted, depending on whether the case was considered solved or not; and if not, how severe the alleged violence was considered to be.)

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah

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The 2003 defamation claims

A legal farce = but a fair outcome

Despite the flakiness of the police ‘statement’ included in Jackson Browne’s open letter to US (see above), he was apparently able to use it as the basis of two successful defamation claims in 2003.

Fox Television Studios, makers of a TV movie about John F Kennedy Jr, and the Gurin Company, makers of a documentary about celebrity paparazzi, both agreed to remove scenes referring to Browne and the alleged assault on Daryl Hannah.

Browne then said in a statement:

‘I never assaulted Daryl Hannah, and this fact was confirmed by the investigation conducted at the time by the Santa Monica Police Department.’

Browne, faced with the damaging rumour, seems to have resorted to a delusional faith in the police’s so-called investigation. The powerful and well lawyered Fox company must have seen the holes in Browne’s police ‘statement’, but perhaps decided not to bother with what would have been a difficult and high-profile defence.

Fox and the Gurin Company both added an identically worded apology to the start of their movies:

‘…local authorities have reported to the media that based upon their investigation, the incident previously reported in our program did not occur.’

The two identical apologies must have been agreed or supplied by Browne or by his lawyer Lawrence Iser, or his publicist Michael Jensen.

I asked Fox, Gurin, Iser and Jensen if that’s a reference to Browne’s police ‘statement’, or, if not, which ‘local authorities’ investigated the incident and reported to the media that Browne didn’t assault Hannah.

None of them have replied. It seems safe to assume the film companies’ identical statements are pompously referring to Browne’s rubbish police ‘statement’.

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah

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Joni Mitchell’s song, Not to Blame

A baseless accusation made in anger

The daft and bitter song Not to Blame by 70s-scorned Jackson Browne ex Joni Mitchell from her 1994 award-winning Turbulent Indigo album was supposedly about the rumoured assault.

Not that I’m comparing myself to Van Gogh. Oh, no – actually, I am | Detail of self-portrait by Joni Mitchell (Turbulent Indigo cover artwork)

The song’s misinformed scattergun attack – by a spurned lover who apparently still carried a torch for Browne – implied he was a physical abuser who drove his first wife to suicide but who always claimed he was not to blame.

This smear seems to have been inspired by pure spite with no substance. Browne’s relationship history shows not that he was an abusive man who drove women to suicide, but rather that he was attracted to troubled women. It happens.

This was a low point for Mitchell. I’d like to think she’s better than that. Her best songs have a sublime magic. Her artistry (if not her style) is indeed comparable to Van Gogh’s. However, even geniuses have off-days.

Not to Blame is apparently a baseless accusation – but why would honest Joni have told such a damaging lie?

See my (necessarily detailed) account of Mitchell’s brief 1972 relationship with Browne and its bitter aftermath, below, which tries to answer that question and counter the widespread belief expressed in discussion forums and comments that the song proves Browne’s a wife-beater.

That section includes a (very detailed) analysis of Not to Blame.

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah

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Browne – a troubled man?

Childhood exile from Abbey San Encino – a traumatic event?

Freud believed that events in our childhood have a great influence on our adult lives, shaping our personality. For example, anxiety originating from traumatic experiences in a person’s past is hidden from consciousness, and may cause problems during adulthood.

Simply Psychology, Saul Mcleod

Regarding Jackson Browne’s apparent attraction to troubled women (an alternative to Joni Mitchell’s toxic tale of physical abuse – see above), perhaps sensitive artist Browne is or was himself a troubled person.

Browne was apparently somewhat disturbed as a pre-teen. His behaviour, which involved hanging out with a ‘bad’ crowd, caused his parents to move the family from their amazing bohemian home, Abbey San Encino – hand-built by Browne’s grandfather and featuring a dungeon and a chapel – to an identikit housing estate.

This must have been a traumatic change in the young Browne’s life. When he and Hannah separated, Browne spoke movingly of feeling banished from the kingdom her family resembled. Perhaps he was painfully reminded of that previous exile from the abbey.

In a 1994 interview, Browne unconvincingly made light of this event. Was he – perhaps unconsciously – cloaking a disturbed childhood, as many of us do.

No one ever talks about their feelings anyway
Without dressing them in dreams and laughter
I guess it’s just too painful otherwise

From The Late Show, on Browne’s 1974 album Late for the Sky

Perhaps in his search for a lover, what Browne most needed was unconditional support. Some of the lyrics in Take it Easy (co-written by Glenn Frey, Browne’s neighbour at the time) such as ‘I’m looking for a lover who won’t blow my cover’ and, ‘I gotta know if your sweet love is gonna save me’ sound, despite the song’s carefree and upbeat tone, revealingly desperate.

Perhaps a troubled Browne found not the support he needed, but troubled women who shared that need – women with whom he found co-wounded co-dependency. However, if so, that doesn’t make him abusive.

Happily, Abbey San Encino was kept in the family, and Browne returned there in the early 70s. In 1973 it was pictured on the cover of For Everyman. In 1974 much of Late For The Sky was written and rehearsed in the chapel. Since 1975 Browne’s brother, the singer-songwriter Severin Browne, has lived there.

jackson-browne-for-everyman-e11347ab-7a22-49e1-8ce8-16cb9cdbeb501790964832719831691.jpg

Jackson re-enthroned in his childhood kingdom, rocking it in a rocking chair | For Everyman art direction: Anthony Hudson; Photo: Alan F. Blumenthal

Asylum records (for whom Browne was David Geffen’s first signing) went to some trouble with the original For Everyman cover. The photo frame was die-cut: the photo showing Browne was on the sleeve. With the sleeve removed, there was another photo on the inside back – the same scene, but without Browne. Push the sleeve in – with this record, he was back!

For Everyman cover and sleeve | Photo: eBay

I’d suggest For Everyman‘s elaborate cover with its coded message of triumphal return shows Browne’s forced removal from his wonderful childhood home affected him deeply.

IT TAKES A TROUBLED MAN…

I’ve suggested Browne wasn’t the woman-hating wife-beater portrayed in Mitchell’s Not to Blame, but was, rather, a troubled man attracted to troubled women.

However, since breaking up with Hannah, Browne seems to have sorted himself out, and now apparently has a good relationship with an untroubled woman.

Hannah also seems more sorted, currently apparently happy with folk-rock god Neil Young.

I wish all the best to all of them.

(Joni Mitchell, meanwhile, continues unrepentantly to be… Joni Mitchell. But I wish her all the best, too.)

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah

Contents 🔼

Some peripheral information

Left-over bits

BLUE AND BLACK – BLACK AND BLUE?

Jackson Browne’s beautiful song Sky Blue and Black (on his 1993 album I’m Alive) is supposedly about the ending of his relationship with Daryl Hannah.

Given the yearning sincerity of the lyrics, it might seem unlikely – but is there perhaps an incongruously dark wordplay in Sky Blue and Black‘s title and refrain? ‘Blue and black’ is only a reversal away from ‘black and blue’. Could master wordsmith Browne have been unaware of that?

JFK JR ON HANNAH

A magazine article about the incident included an account of a 1996 TV interview* (see ‘JFK, Jr. Interview’ in the article) in which John Kennedy Jr, Daryl Hannah’s lover at the time of her breakup with Jackson Browne, commented on Hannah’s flakiness, and said he didn’t think Browne hit Hannah.

Kennedy’s comments might seem somewhat ungallant, but Hannah’s reported behaviour at the time of Kennedy’s mother’s death in 1994 might be thought to justify them.

John Kennedy Jr and his wife died in a plane crash in 1999.

* I haven’t been able to find any information about the interview.

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah

Contents 🔼

Some sources

Check it out for yourself

There are some useful sources of information out there:

The surprisingly (to me) in-depth October 1992 news report by US celebrity magazine People, published about a month after the event – hotly contested by Jackson Browne (in the interview listed next) as fake information – but stoutly defended by People as genuine
A scan of the February 1994 interview with classy US film and music magazine US (not to be confused with its later trashy celeb mag version, US Weekly) nicely written by music journalist Fred Schruers, in which Browne opens up on the incident (albeit without saying what happened)
A scan of the three April 1994 ‘uncle’ letters in US
An interesting forum discussion on the subject
Another one – with a post by lawyer ‘Laura’
A 2016 article in the US online OnStage Magazine by assignment editor and stage photographer Larry Philpot, with a good summary of the available evidence (albeit with a pro-Browne bias)
Two Joni Mitchell biographies cover her troubled relationship with Browne and its bitter aftermath: Sheila Weller’s 2008 Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon and the Journey of a Generation; and David Yaffe’s 2017 Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell

The text of the US ‘uncle’ letters and the account of the JFK Jr TV interview (see above) can be found in the forums and the OnStage article.

In his OnStage piece, Philpot wrote that as a long-time friend of David Linley (Browne’s genius-collaborator and close friend, who sadly died in May 2023) and as a stage photographer who’d looked many times into Browne’s (famously soulful) eyes, he didn’t believe Browne could have assaulted Daryl Hannah.

Puss does the big eyes | Image: DreamWorks

The OnStage article said Hannah had denied several times that Browne hit her. I’ve come across this claim elsewhere but I haven’t found any evidence. I asked Philpot if there’s any evidence Hannah has publicly made that denial. He hasn’t replied.

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah

Contents 🔼

Conclusion – kind of

She probably did it

And in the end
The love you take
Is equal to the love you make

From The End by The Beatles on their 1969 album Abbey Road. (No, I don’t know what it means, either – but it seems somehow appropriate.)

Introduction | Who said what | What I think (probably) happened | An appeal to Browne and Hannah

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah
Conclusion 🔼

INTRODUCTION

This is the end, dear Reader

Did Jackson Browne beat Daryl Hannah in 1992? Back in 2014 I couldn’t find a definite answer to that question, so I didn’t take my wife to Browne’s concert. It wouldn’t have felt right, especially as my wife suffered domestic abuse in her previous marriage. I started trying to find the answer, out of casual curiosity at first, then out of full-blown obsession.

I still haven’t found what I’m looking for: a definite answer. Yes, it was all a long time ago, but it still matters to me, 31 years on from 1992. It apparently also matters to the 50,000-plus people who’ve found and read – or, at least, looked at – this post.

When I saw Jackson Browne in Birmingham (UK) in the 90s, the crowd (mainly female – as ever, apparently) called out, ‘We love you, Jackson!’ And we did.

Despite being straight, I had a man-crush on Browne back in the 70s – but mainly I loved his voice and his music. It speaks to something in my soul – but the unresolved rumour makes it a tainted love.

Can we – should we – separate the artist from the art? Maybe not – or not completely. I’d overlook a lot of bad behaviour in an artist whose art I admire, but not domestic abuse – nor, as in this case, a persistent rumour of domestic abuse the artist refuses to resolve.

Separating the life from the art is especially difficult with a singer-songwriter who wears his heart on his sleeve. So I didn’t take my wife to Browne’s 2017 or 2019 UK tours.

In Browne’s defence there is, of course, his social activism. Browne’s decades-long record of committing his talent, fame and much of his wealth to social activism speaks to his good character. Perhaps you can combine domestic violence with dedication to improving the world, but it seems unlikely.

Hannah also has a long record of committed social activism in the course of which she’s been arrested more than once. That speaks to her character and integrity.

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah
Conclusion 🔼

WHO SAID WHAT

Daryl Hannah

Hannah never explicitly accused Browne of assaulting her. Her only public statement was a press release in 1992:

Daryl Hannah received serious injuries incurred during a domestic dispute with Browne for which she sought medical treatment.

Hannah didn’t press charges, and she’s never publicly repeated (or withdrawn) her implied accusation – as far as I know.

Who said what 🔼

Jackson Browne

Browne has frequently denied beating Hannah, but he refuses to publicly explain what happened, citing (in 1994) a promise made during his relationship with Hannah.

Who said what 🔼

Haskell Wexler

Uncle Haskell saw Hannah’s injuries and wrote in 1994 to US magazine accusing Browne of beating her. In his US reply to Wexler, Browne threatened to go public unless allowed to privately explain it. Their subsequent silence suggests Wexler heard Browne’s explanation and found it plausible.

Who said what 🔼

Joni Mitchell

Mitchell’s accusatory 1994 song Not to Blame is thought by some to show Browne’s guilty of being a physical abuser – but it doesn’t. It shows that in 1972 he made a lifelong enemy by not sufficiently returning Mitchell’s love, and then dumping her.

Who said what 🔼

David Geffen

Geffen, Browne’s friend since the early 70s, might be considered partial, but he seems like an honest guy for a multi-billionaire. He told me (in 2020):

Jackson is not violent in any way and the end of relationships are always messy… Jackson never assaulted Hannah.

Who said what 🔼

Summary

Hannah didn’t explicitly accuse Browne but has never withdrawn her implied accusation.
Browne denies it but refuses to explain it.
Uncle Haskell angrily accused him but piped down when Browne said he’d go public.
Joni Mitchell used the rumour to make a baseless accusation in anger.
David Geffen said Browne’s not violent and he didn’t do it.

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah
Conclusion 🔼

WHAT I THINK (PROBABLY) HAPPENED

You know that cartwheeling scene in Bladerunner …

Daryl Hannah as Pris in Bladerunner, 1982 | Photo: Warner Bros

If, as seems likely, Jackson Browne didn’t do it, how did Daryl Hannah get those injuries?

Perhaps Hannah had an autistic rage episode during which either she inflicted the injuries on herself or she attacked Browne and was injured when he defended himself.

Browne seems to have the knack of making some women very angry. (See, also, my account of his relationship with Joni Mitchell. However – again – that doesn’t make him abusive.)

Perhaps it happened like this: They had an argument. Hannah began ‘ransacking’ the place. Browne called the police.

When the police arrived, they apparently saw Browne and Hannah, but saw no ‘signs of domestic violence’. They said, ‘It was an argument, what we call a family disturbance, and when we left, everything was OK‘. The police told them to ‘cool it’. The physical altercation must have happened after they left.

Perhaps, enraged that Browne called the police, Hannah attacked him and he defended himself. At five-ten, Hannah was the same height as Browne. A former gymnast and dancer, she’d done some of her own stunts in Bladerunner. At 32, she was 12 years younger than Browne. She might well have been a match for the skinny ex-high-school wrestler approaching middle age.

According to his own account, in his early twenties Browne punched an unemployed actor defending his first wife-to-be’s dignity – albeit the actor then supposedly knocked him through a barroom door. Allowing for artistic licence with the barroom door slapstick, Browne’s apparently true tale shows that – although by all accounts (apart from Joni Mitchell’s) a gentle man – he was no weakling.

Despite Browne being 20 years older in 1992 than he was that night at the Troubadour, if he was instinctively defending himself against an effective autistic rage attack by Hannah, his fighting spirit might account for her injuries.fple car

We’ll probably never know why there was no proper police investigation – or why Browne’s manager gave him a false alibi – but we should know how Hannah got those injuries.

Browne says it’s none of our business. I disagree. Here’s to truths yet to be known.

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah
Conclusion 🔼

AN APPEAL TO BROWNE AND HANNAH

For heaven’s sake, just tell us …

So I think, probably:

Jackson Browne’s basically a decent chap who didn’t assault Daryl Hannah.
Hannah’s injuries were caused when Browne defended himself against her autistic rage attack.
Hannah felt embarrassed, and kept quiet.
Browne felt bound to keep her secret.

That’s what I think, but I could be wrong – on all counts. There’s only one way to settle it. They should just tell us.

I couldn’t find direct contact information for Browne or Hannah, so I asked their representatives to ask them to say how it happened. I said I’d publish whatever they said.

Browne’s representatives – his lawyer and publicist – haven’t replied. They’ve got form for ignoring such requests. Hannah’s entertainment attorney replied immediately to say, ‘Please do not contact Ms Hannah or myself again’. Rude!

Having got nowhere with their monkeys, I’ll ask the organ-grinders here. (You never know – they might read this.)

If you didn’t do it, Jackson, please explain it. Whatever covenant or deal you made, it’s time to tell the truth and shame the devil. You’ve been self-isolated for too long under a dark cloud of suspicion. The truth will set you free – at last.

It would be even better if Hannah told us what happened that day. C’mon, Daryl – spill them beans. What have you got to lose?

After all this time, such transparency would release the tension. Let it go! Everybody could forgive everybody else, and we could all move on.

It might be wrong to suggest forgiveness when there’s still the possibility of past domestic violence. (There’s no excuse for it and some things can never have closure.)

But it’s always best to be kind to one another – if possible.

Conclusion – kind of 🔼
Contents 🔼
Top 🔼

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah
Who said what 🔼

Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all

Nothing to do with Jackson Browne – it’s a whimsical reference to Widecombe Fair, the well-known traditional folk song from Devon, UK.

The rousing – often drunkenly shouted – chorus consists of a list of all the people the singer wants to go to the fair with…

Wi’ Bill Brewer, Jan Stewer, Peter Gurney, Peter Davy, Dan’l Whiddon, Harry Hawke,
Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all,
Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all!

(And after a few pints, we all want to go with them to Widecombe Fair.)

Get drunk responsibly

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah

Contents 🔼

Annex

Jackson Browne’s relationship with Joni Mitchell

And how it ended up with Not to Blame

Contents – Joni 🔽

Joni and Jackson – a match made in Hell? | Photo: unknown

William Congreve

[A] violent and personal attack
David Yaffe, Mitchell biographer, on Not to Blame

Jackson is not violent in any way and the end of relationships are always messy
David Geffen

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah
Jackson Browne’s relationship with Joni Mitchell
Top – Joni 🔼

Introduction
The relationship
Was it violent?
A rebound relationship?
Browne’s ’emotional immaturity’
How it ended
Phyllis Major
Mitchell on Major’s suicide
Not to Blame
Browne on Mitchell
Mitchell on Browne
Conclusion
An appeal to Joni
Footnote: Old Lady of the Year et al

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah
Jackson Browne’s relationship with Joni Mitchell
Contents – Joni 🔼

INTRODUCTION

Get the popcorn out, dear Reader
Summary | Background | Preamble | Detail | Reference books

Introduction – Joni 🔼

Summary

This annex…

describes the brief 1972 relationship between Jackson Browne and Joni Mitchell in the context of Mitchell’s 1994 song, Not to Blame;
addresses the accusations made in Not to Blame about Browne and Daryl Hannah, and about Browne’s first wife, Phylis Major;
concludes Mitchell’s accusations are baseless – and appeals to her to withdraw them.

Introduction – Joni 🔼

Background

The necessarily detailed account here of what’s known about Jackson Browne and Joni Mitchell’s relationship and its aftermath now amounts to about two-thirds of this post about Browne and Daryl Hannah.

It’s the annex that outgrew its source. It could be a separate post – but it’s an inseparable part of the rumour about Browne and Hannah. Many people condemn Browne solely because they believe Mitchell’s accusatory song Not to Blame.

In forums and comments they say, in effect, referring to Not to Blame, ‘Browne’s an abuser who drove his wife to suicide. Joni Mitchell says so’.

The song’s believability depends on her relationship with Browne. Mitchell, known for her lyrical integrity, had an affair with Browne and knew him well – so it must be true, right?

But what if it’s not true?

Introduction – Joni 🔼

Preamble

70s Joni | Photo: Henry Diltz/Rhino

I love Joni Mitchell’s music. Blue blew my mind, and still does. It’s deeply sad, of course, but can also be deliciously sharp and funny:

Richard got married to a figure skater
And he bought her a dishwasher and a coffee percolator

The Last Time I Saw Richard

I also love a lot of her other work, earlier and later. She’s complex and unique – a genius.

She’s a superstar and I’m a mere fan. I’m not worthy to lace her size 9 dancing shoes, let alone charge her with misusing her art and platform out of anger to make a damaging, baseless accusation – but someone’s got to do it.

Introduction – Joni 🔼

Detail

To fans who heard about their 1972 relationship, Jackson Browne and Joni Mitchell seemed like gods in their Laurel Canyon paradise. They were a match made in that heaven. What could possibly go wrong? Well, quite a lot.

Their relationship and its unhappy ending led eventually to Mitchell releasing her accusatory song Not to Blame, on the award-winning 1994 album Turbulent Indigo.

Mitchell has denied her songs are autobiographical but Not to Blame, released in the wake of the rumour that Browne assaulted Daryl Hannah, is widely understood to be Mitchell’s condemnation of Browne as a wife-beater who drove his first wife to suicide.

In Not to Blame, Mitchell not only repeated the rumour about Browne and Hannah, but – much more damagingly – she also said Browne was responsible for the suicide of his first wife, Phyllis Major.

Mitchell had made a similar but coded accusation about Major’s suicide in Song For Sharon, on her 1976 album Hejira.

Major had long-term mental health issues. She suffered severe postnatal depression before committing suicide in 1976.

Some of Browne’s songs show he and Major had serious relationship problems (see below), but no one apart from Mitchell has made the terrible accusation that Browne drove Major to suicide.

If Mitchell’s accusation is baseless, why would she do that? What went so wrong with her relationship with Browne? Like any relationship, theirs was private – but Mitchell’s accusations made it public.

Only Mitchell and Browne know exactly what went on between them, but there’s some published information . It paints a sad and murky picture not of abuse but of a relationship that started well and ended badly.

Then came the aftermath: Mitchell’s lasting and overwrought hatred of Browne – a hatred vented in Not to Blame.

Introduction – Joni 🔼

Reference books

Same 1968 photo of Joni on both books | Photo of Mitchell: Jack Robinson/Hulton Archives/Getty Images

This annex refers to and quotes from two biographies which cover Jackson Browne and Joni Mitchell’s relationship:

Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon and the Journey of a Generation (2008) by best-selling author Sheila Weller | Page numbers from Washington Square Press paperback, 2009
Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell (2017) by award-winning music writer David Yaffe | Page numbers from Sarah Crichton Books paperback, 2018

Goodreads

Weller interviewed confidantes of her three subjects. Yaffe drew mainly on his conversations with Mitchell, recorded in 2015 shortly before her aneurysm.

Reference books 🔼

Wrong!

The two biographies both get one thing wrong when writing about Mitchell’s Not to Blame. They both wrongly say Daryl Hannah accused Browne of assaulting her.

Weller (P 411):

Browne’s longtime girlfriend, actress Daryl Hannah, accused him of beating her up

Yaffe (P 343):

Hannah claimed that Browne beat her badly enough to put her in a hospital

That’s careless – Hannah made no such explicit accusation. The only public statement she made was a carefully worded press release issued on the day of the incident:

‘Daryl Hannah received serious injuries incurred during a domestic dispute with Browne for which she sought medical treatment.’

That clever wording implies Browne assaulted her but doesn’t actually say so.

(Why not? I conclude she probably got those injuries when Browne defended himself against her autistic rage attack.)

Reference books 🔼

Search for the missing book

There’s not much published information about Browne’s life in the 1970s. Apparently Jackson Browne – the story of a hold out by Rich Wiseman (Doubleday, 1982) is good. But it’s rare: over $100 for a used paperback. My blog’s not monetised and I’m retired – I can’t afford it. If anyone can send me a copy, please let me know.

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah
Jackson Browne’s relationship with Joni Mitchell
Contents – Joni 🔼

THE RELATIONSHIP

Such as it was

In early 1972, while they were touring the US and Europe together, Joni Mitchell and Jackson Browne began their relationship.

Mitchell, 28, was promoting her fifth album, For the Roses. Browne, 22, was opening for her and promoting his debut album, Jackson Browne.

That’s Manchester! I could have gone…

David Yaffe in Reckless Daughter says after Mitchell’s relationship with James Taylor (see below) had ended, she was…

even more harmful

[P 167; my bolding]

Mitchell famously said about her thin-skinned Blue period that she felt ‘like a cellophane wrapper on a pack of cigarettes’.

But Yaffe’s suggestion that Browne was more harmful to Mitchell than Taylor – whilst it matches Mitchell’s vicious character assassination of Browne in Yaffe’s book (see below) – isn’t borne out by accounts of their relationship.

Far from being harmful to Mitchell’s emotional state on the road, Browne apparently lifted it. According to Sheila Weller’s Girls Like Us:

[friend and session guitarist]

[drummer in The Blues Project]

[P 406]

After the tour, back home in LA, they didn’t live together. After a while, their ‘dating’ relationship apparently became turbulent. It ended later the same year.

One possible reason for the turbulence in their relationship was that recently in their neighbourhood of Laurel Canyon, home since the 60s to many LA rock musicians, cocaine had replaced cannabis as the drug of choice.

Moreish cocaine can be addictive, and can cause violence. Did the – possibly cocaine-related – turbulence in their relationship manifest as violence?

There was apparently some violence in both directions (see below), but serious incompatibility seems to have been the main problem. Perhaps they were too different – or too similar.

Weller’s Girls Like Us:

doing so much cocaine

[P 407; my bolding]

Mitchell’s song Car on a Hill from her 1974 album Court and Spark, said to be about her relationship with Browne, described her growing anxiety and prescient feeling of loss:

I’ve been sitting up waiting for my sugar to show…
He said he’d be over three hours ago…
He makes friends easy, he’s not like me
I watch for judgement anxiously
Now where in the city can that boy be?

He’s a real good talker, I think he’s a friend…
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

Around that time, Browne met Phyllis Major, who would become his wife. (See below.) Weller says:

[P 408]

It was Browne who ended his relationship with Mitchell. (See below.) This apparently caused Mitchell to have a nervous breakdown. She spent some time in residential therapy.

However, a scorned Mitchell was also furious. Love turned to hate and rage – and how! Weller:

hatred

really heavy

[P 410; my bolding]

Sad, but evidently true. Hence, 22 years later, Not to Blame.

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah
Jackson Browne’s relationship with Joni Mitchell
Contents – Joni 🔼

WAS IT VIOLENT?

Not really

There was apparently some violence in the relationship between Jackson Browne and Joni Mitchell, but it clearly wasn’t the habitual kind characteristic of an abusive relationship.

According to David Yaffe’s Reckless Daughter:

[P 343]

Sheila Weller’s Girls Like Us claims Browne hit Mitchell on one occasion.

According to Weller (as related in a 2008 news report), Mitchell confided to a friend that Browne disrespected her on stage at LA club The Roxy, and they later had an argument, during which he hit her. [P 407]

Weller assured me her source was good. However, Mitchell cast doubt on the credibility of scenes related in Weller’s book when she vetoed a planned movie based on it.

In a 2014 interview, Mitchell said she told the movie’s producer, ‘It’s just a lot of gossip – you don’t have the great scenes’. She also said, ‘There’s a lot of nonsense about me in books – assumptions, assumptions, assumptions.’

So there’s questionable hearsay evidence that Browne hit Mitchell on one occasion. On the other hand, Browne claimed Mitchell attacked him during their relationship.

In a 1997 interview about his response to Mitchell’s Not to Blame, he described Mitchell as a violent woman who twice physically attacked him.

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah
Jackson Browne’s relationship with Joni Mitchell
Contents – Joni 🔼

A REBOUND RELATIONSHIP?

Possibly – but who was on the rebound?
Introduction | Jackson on the rebound? | Joni on the rebound?

A rebound relationship? 🔼

Introduction

I’ll be your substitute

(Great chorus – sorry about the YouTube ad)

Did Jackson Browne’s relationship with Joni Mitchell turn sour because it was a rebound relationship?

In David Yaffe’s Reckless Daughter, Mitchell said Browne didn’t return her love. (P 167) (See below). Browne may have referred to that in Fountain of Sorrow, from his 1974 album Late for the Sky.

Browne has denied his songs are autobiographical – something, at least, he shares with Mitchell – but Fountain of Sorrow is widely believed to be about Mitchell. In a 2014 interview, Browne was asked about the meaning of these lines:

When you see through love’s illusion there lies the danger
And your perfect lover just looks like a perfect fool

Declining to say who it was about, he nonetheless replied (typically gnomically):

‘It’s about the fact that when you fall in love with someone, when you’re broken-hearted, you don’t see them as a person.’

A rebound relationship? 🔼

Jackson on the rebound?

Something fine

Was Browne saying although he loved Mitchell he was still heartbroken from a previous relationship? Was it his continuing focus on a previous lover that so distressed Mitchell?

According to Sheila Weller’s Girls Like Us, Browne was a romantic who said he kept getting his heart crushed. Weller says in 1971 Browne had a brief love affair in London with actor and photographer Salli Sachse, who’d been official photographer for Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. (P 405).

Sachse and Peter Fonda in The Trip, 1967 | Photo: AIP

Weller refers to Sachse as ‘Jackson’s pre-Joni girlfriend‘. (P 410)

In a 2019 interview, Sachse (now an artist living in California) said she left Browne to go to Holland, where she met and fell in love with an artist.

In the interview, Sachse said Browne’s song Something Fine (from the 1972 album Jackson Browne) was about her. She said, ‘I was always saying I was going to go to Morocco, so he put that in there’.

Now if you see Morocco, I know you’ll go in style
I may not see Morocco for a little while
But while you’re there, I was hoping you might keep it in your mind
To save me just a taste of something fine

Was Browne’s heart crushed again when Sachse left him and fell for another man? Was he on the rebound?

Maybe not. That’s speculation – and it was a short affair, lasting about 10 days. But it would perhaps explain that strange remark of Browne’s:

‘When you fall in love with someone, when you’re broken-hearted, you don’t see them as a person.’

A rebound relationship? 🔼

Joni on the rebound?

Jackson for James

Or was that actually about Mitchell and James Taylor, Mitchell’s pre-Browne lover. Was it Mitchell who was broken-hearted and on the rebound?

Mitchell and Taylor were together from 1970-71. For a while, according to Yaffe, they were very close. (P 127) Then, with Taylor’s growing heroin/opioid addiction and Mitchell entering her thin-skinned Blue period (when, she’s said, she felt ‘like a cellophane wrapper on a pack of cigarettes’), the relationship declined.

James Taylor and Joni Mitchell, 1971 | Photo: Joel Bernstein

According to one account, the relationship was ended by Taylor after Mitchell complained about him flirting with female admirers, and after he’d started seeing Carly Simon.

However, according to Weller, when Taylor and Simon met, Taylor and Mitchell’s relationship had already ended. (P 359) Oddly, neither Yaffe nor Weller describe how it ended, but Weller, writing about Mitchell’s 1972 album For the Roses, said James’ ‘rejection’ got to her. (P 334)

Taylor (in choosing California as his favourite song from Blue) claims Mitchell ended things when she left him in an airport and flew back to California. (Is that what Blue’s This Flight Tonight is ‘about’?)

Who dumped who matters because it’s suggested Mitchell’s lasting anger at Browne stems from him dumping her. But if Taylor also dumped her, how come she’s not angry at him?

Anyhow…was Mitchell broken-hearted when her relationship with Taylor ended? Was Browne – a young, good-looking, cultured singer-songwriter, like Taylor – Mitchell’s rebound substitute? Was Browne referring to Mitchell not seeing him as a person?

Taylor married Carly Simon in November 1972. Did that make the breakup with Browne even worse for Mitchell?

Happy couple: Carly Simon and James Taylor at their wedding, 1972 | Photo: Peter Simon (Carly’s late brother)

However, if Mitchell’s relationship with Browne was a relatively insignificant rebound relationship, why would she remain so intensely bitter towards him 20, 40 years later?

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah
Jackson Browne’s relationship with Joni Mitchell
Contents – Joni 🔼

BROWNE’S ‘EMOTIONAL IMMATURITY’

In his own words

There was a 20s age gap between Joni Mitchell and Jackson Browne – she was 28, he was 22. Browne’s relative immaturity probably contributed to the breakdown of their relationship.

Browne has said he was lacking in emotional maturity at that time. He was talking about his song, Ready or Not (on his 1973 album For Everyman).

Ready or Not is about Browne’s first wife Phyllis Major, who he met around the time of his break-up with Mitchell. The song is funny, honest and slightly flippant.

Two verses refer to Major’s apparently unintended pregnancy and to Browne’s uncertainty about settling down:

Now baby’s feeling funny in the morning
She says she’s got a lot on her mind
Nature didn’t give her any warning
Now she’s going to have to leave her wild ways behind
She says she doesn’t care if she never spends
Another night running loose on the town
She’s gonna be a mother
Take a look in my eyes and tell me, brother
If I look like I’m ready
I told her I had always lived alone
And I probably always would
And all I wanted was my freedom
And she told me that she understood
But I let her do some of my laundry
And she slipped a few meals in between
And the next thing I remember, she was all moved in
And I was buying her a washing machine

The Songfacts page on Ready or Not (click on the ‘artistfacts’ tab) quotes a Mojo interview* with Browne:

But I was not emotionally mature enough

[My bolding]

* The interview date isn’t given, and there’s no online archive for Mojo.

In a filmed interview*, a 1970s-looking Browne described Ready or Not as glib, and said – generously – he learned from Mitchell the need to write deeper songs. (And he did – with his next album, the timeless Late for the Sky.)

* The interview was possibly in a TV documentary about Laurel Canyon. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find it again.

Those comments show Browne considered himself relatively immature at that time. With Mitchell, perhaps this was inevitable given the awkward younger-man 20s age gap.

He was, as he sang in Fountain of Sorrow, ‘one or two years’ – six, actually – and (apparently) ‘a couple of changes’ behind her.

Ready or Not portrayed Browne as torn between settling down and freedom. No doubt the immaturity and commitment-aversion shown in the song and acknowledged in his comments on it – along with the age gap – contributed to his apparent incompatibility with Mitchell.

Browne’s casually entitled sexism, as shown in Ready or Not‘s jokey reference to Major doing laundry and cooking meals can’t have helped.

(There was a lot of that around – despite the proclaimed hippy ideals of equality and liberation.)

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah
Jackson Browne’s relationship with Joni Mitchell
Contents – Joni 🔼

HOW IT ENDED

Badly

Jackson Browne’s relationship with Joni Mitchell was ended by Browne in 1972 shortly before or after he met his future wife Phyllis Major. Apparently Mitchell was incensed it was Browne who ended it.

She was also apparently distraught. According to Sheila Weller’s 2008 Girls Like Us, a confidante of Mitchell said she attempted suicide by taking pills and she threw herself at a mirror, badly cutting herself. (P 408)

Mitchell has denied this. According to David Yaffe’s 2017 Reckless Daughter, the breakup was ‘less eventful than has been reported elsewhere’ (P 167). Mitchell told Yaffe:

(P 237)

Hmm.

After a period in residential therapy, Mitchell moved into the home of her – and Browne’s – friend and manager, David Geffen.

I asked Geffen about Mitchell’s alleged suicide attempt. He replied to say:

‘Everything written about it is either wrong or completely made up … I am not going to talk about Joni’s private life other than to say Jackson is not violent in any way and the end of relationships are always messy.’

(I told Geffen I was asking about Mitchell’s alleged suicide attempt in the course of my investigation into the rumour that Browne assaulted Daryl Hannah. In his reply, Geffen added, ‘Jackson never assaulted Hannah’.)

Yaffe’s Reckless Daughter quotes Larry Klein, Mitchell’s husband from 1982 to 1994, as saying:

anger

[P 167; my bolding]

However, Mitchell’s previous – intense – relationship with James Taylor was also – according to one account – not ended by her – but she seems to have stayed friends with Taylor.

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah
Jackson Browne’s relationship with Joni Mitchell
Contents – Joni 🔼

PHYLLIS MAJOR

Very sad

Phyllis Major | Photo: source unknown

In 1972, around the time he ended his relationship with Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne met the woman who was to become his first wife, Phyllis Major. They met in the LA Troubadour club. Apparently she was being harassed, and Browne intervened.

Browne’s Ready or Not (on his 1973 album For Everyman) included his jaunty account of meeting Major:

I met her in a crowded barroom
One of those typical Hollywood scenes
I was doing my very best Bogart
But I was having trouble getting into her jeans
I punched an unemployed actor
Defending her dignity
He stood up and knocked me through that barroom door
And that girl came home with me

Soon after meeting, they began a serious relationship. Their son Ethan was born in 1973. They married in 1975.

Oddly – apparently for no reason – Browne ends Walking Slow (from Late for the Sky, 1974) with these doleful lines:

I’m feelin’ good today
But if I die a little farther along
I’m trusting everyone to carry on

Tragically, it was, of course, Major who died a little farther along and Browne who had to find a way to carry on.

Major had long-term mental health problems and suffered severe postnatal depression. She attempted suicide in 1975, and committed suicide in March 1976 by taking an overdose of barbiturates.

🌷 🌷 🌷

In Not to Blame, Mitchell said Browne drove Major to suicide. (See below.) That terrible accusation is unfounded and uncorroborated – but Browne and Major were apparently having problems.

As a free-spirited and dedicated musician, no doubt Browne was sometimes an absent husband and parent. And Major had a history of mental health issues.

But – as with the relationship between Browne and Mitchell – no-one else really knows what went on. I haven’t found any published information about their relationship – apart from in songs.

Disregarding Not to Blame’s uncorroborated accusation, three of Browne’s songs refer to difficulties in his relationship with Major.

Walking Slow (from the album Late for the Sky, 1974)
Sleep’s Dark and Silent Gate (from The Pretender, November 1976)
In the Shape of a Heart (from Lives in the Balance, 1986)

1974’s Walking Slow, despite its breezy tone and its opening lines about being happy and feeling good, refers to marital discord:

I got a pretty little girl of my own at home
Sometimes we forget we love each other
And we fight for no reason

Browne added, presciently:

I don’t know what I’ll do if she ever leaves me alone

Things were apparently worse than typical marriage tiffs. Sleep’s Dark and Silent Gate, written soon after Major’s suicide, has a verse about their relationship:

Never shoulda had to try so hard
To make a love work out, I guess
I don’t know what love has got to do with happiness
But the times when we were happy
Were the times we never tried

It took Browne many years to write a whole song about what went wrong. 1986’s In the Shape of a Heart is very moving – and painfully revealing:

I guess I never knew what she was talking about
I guess I never knew what she was living without …
There was a hole left in the wall from some ancient fight
About the size of a fist, or something thrown that had missed
And there were other holes as well, in the house where our nights fell
Far too many to repair in the time that we were there …
It was the ruby that she wore, on a stand beside the bed
In the hour before dawn, when I knew she was gone
And I held it in my hand for a little while
And dropped it into the wall, let it go, heard it fall …
Speak in terms of a life and the living
Try to find the word for forgiving

Browne’s reference to ‘a hole left in the wall from some ancient fight about the size of a fist, or something thrown that had missed‘ implies him hitting the wall in frustration or her throwing something at him.

The reference to ‘other holes as well in the house where our nights fell, far too many to repair in the time that we were there‘ is clearly metaphorical.

Browne’s not confessing to domestic violence. He’s expanding Walking Slow’s ‘we forget we love each other, and we fight for no reason’ and Sleep’s Dark and Silent Gate’s ‘had to try so hard to make a love work out’ to In the Shape of a Heart’s account of his struggle to cope:

You keep it up, you try so hard
To keep a life from coming apart
And never know
The shallows and the unseen reefs
That are there from the start
In the shape of a heart

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah
Jackson Browne’s relationship with Joni Mitchell
Contents – Joni 🔼

MITCHELL ON MAJOR’S SUICIDE

Very bad
Introduction | Song For Sharon | Not to Blame

Mitchell on Major’s suicide 🔼

Introduction

Jackson Browne met his first wife, Phyllis Major, around the time he ended his relationship with Joni Mitchell in 1972. Tragically, Major committed suicide in 1976. (See above.)

In two of her songs, Mitchell has accused Browne of driving Major to suicide.

The epic Song For Sharon on the album Hejira was released in 1976 soon after Major’s suicide. In one of the song’s ten verses, Mitchell implied Browne drove Major to it.
The accusatory Not to Blame on the award-winning album Turbulent Indigo was released in 1994 in the wake of the rumour that Browne beat Hannah. In addition to boosting that rumour, Mitchell repeated her smear about Major’s suicide more openly – and with spurious detail about Browne and Major’s three-year-old son.

(Not to Blame is analysed in detail in the next section.)

Mitchell was apparently acquainted with Major before Browne met her. In David Yaffe’s Reckless Daughter, she described Major as ‘a sensitive, artistic, beautiful girl, who was passed from guy to guy to guy‘, and said when she learned Major was with Browne, she thought:

The very worst one

[P 238 – Yaffe’s italics; my bolding]

(In Yaffe’s book, Mitchell harshly criticised all her exes, but was especially – gratuitously – vicious about Browne. See below.)

Mitchell on Major’s suicide 🔼

Song For Sharon

According to Sheila Weller’s Girls Like Us, Mitchell angered Browne by attending Major’s funeral. Weller says Mitchell saw a parallel with her own suicide attempt and included a coded implication in Song For Sharon that Browne was responsible for Major’s suicide. (P 411)

At the time of writing, Wikipedia‘s description of Song For Sharon – in its entry on the album Hejira – cites Weller’s claim that the song alludes to Major’s suicide. Wikipedia relates Weller’s observation that the song asks if the suicide was a means of ‘punishing someone’.

Mitchell’s beautiful Song For Sharon is a long and rambling autobiographical catch-up (nominally – as it were – addressed to an old friend, Sharon). However, the song’s poetic and sonic beauty conceals an ugly bitterness. Verse five (of ten) is a coded account of Mitchell’s vengeful response to the news of Major’s suicide.

Although Major died from a barbiturate overdose, the verse refers cryptically to a woman who ‘just drowned herself’. It says she was ‘just shaking off futility’ – ie of life with Browne – ‘or punishing somebody’ – ie Browne, presumably for his supposed mistreatment of her:

A woman I knew just drowned herself
The well was deep and muddy
She was just shaking off futility
Or punishing somebody
My friends were calling up all day yesterday
All emotions and abstractions
It seems we all live so close to that line
and so far from satisfaction

In Yaffe’s Reckless Daughter there’s no comment from Mitchell about the coded accusation in Song For Sharon. Nevertheless, Yaffe, perhaps referring to unpublished parts of his conversations with Mitchell, describes her emotional compulsion to make that accusation:

Major

Browne

Mitchell

bitterness

angry

settling scores

[P 236-7; my bolding]

Mitchell on Major’s suicide 🔼

Not to Blame

(Not to Blame is analysed in detail in the next section.)

The bitterness in Song For Sharon was coded and muted. However, 18 years later Mitchell was still bitter – and she let rip.

Mitchell’s song Not to Blame (on the award-winning album Turbulent Indigo), released in 1994 in the wake of the Browne-Hannah rumour, openly and angrily repeated her accusation that Browne drove Major to suicide.

The first two verses of Not to Blame were about Browne and Hannah, but the last verse, cruelly padded with spurious detail about Browne’s son, addressed Major’s suicide:

I heard your baby say
When he was only three
‘Daddy let’s get some girls
One for you and one for me’
His mother had the frailty you despise
And the looks you love to drive to suicide
Not one wet eye around
lonely little grave
Said ‘He was out of line girl
You were not to blame’

The spurious detail (‘I heard your baby say …’) referred to Browne and Major’s three-year-old son. Interviewed about Not to Blame in 1997, Browne said:

‘It was abusive to employ that image of my son as somebody who treated his mother’s death light-heartedly. I mean, he was a three-year-old baby, you know. This is inexcusable.’

Major took her own life after apparently suffering long-term mental health issues and extreme postnatal depression.

Browne’s songs Walking Slow, Sleep’s Dark and Silent Gate and – especially – In the Shape of a Heart refer to the difficulties they had in their relationship. (See above.)

Those difficulties may have been known to Mitchell – theirs was a small world. However, no one apart from Mitchell (and forum contributors who believe Mitchell’s accusation) has suggested Browne mistreated Major and drove her to suicide.

There’s no corroboration for the nasty accusation Mitchell made in those two songs and – despite Yaffe’s empathic explanation for Song For Sharon‘s coded accusation – no excuse.

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah
Jackson Browne’s relationship with Joni Mitchell
Contents – Joni 🔼

NOT TO BLAME

A sextual analysis of sour revenge
Intro | Verse 1 | Verse 2 | Verse 3 | Outro

💔💔💔

Not to Blame 🔼

Intro

Song of hate

In 1994, in the wake of the Jackson Browne-Daryl Hannah rumour – 22 years after her relationship with Browne had ended – Joni Mitchell released her accusatory song Not to Blame (on the award-winning album Turbulent Indigo).

This section offers a detailed analysis of the song, the part it’s played in the rumour about Browne and Hannah, and its reference to the suicide in 1976 of Browne’s first wife, Phyllis Major.

(Mitchell’s twisted take on Major’s suicide in Not to Blame and in the earlier Song For Sharon is also separately addressed above.)

Not to Blame is often invoked in discussion forums and comments as proof Browne’s a wife-beater.

It’s no such thing, but some people seem to think Mitchell’s condemnation of Browne trumps Browne’s protestation of innocence – perhaps because of Mitchell’s stronger reputation and her ‘weaker’ sex.

It doesn’t help, of course, that Browne refuses to explain what happened with Hannah.

Not to Blame offered no proof Browne assaulted anyone or drove them to suicide. Mitchell repeated and embroidered the gossip about Hannah, and she accused Browne of causing Major’s suicide. But the song provided no hint of corroboration or evidence.

For instance, she made no reference to her brief relationship with Browne 20 years previously, despite that being the last time she’d known him.

(Mitchell did talk about their relationship in David Yaffe’s 2017 autobiography, Reckless Daughter. She was highly critical of Browne – see below – but she notably didn’t mention Not to Blame; nor did she repeat her accusations about Hannah’s injuries or Major’s suicide.)

If Not to Blame reveals any truth, it’s not that Browne’s a wife-beater, it’s that Mitchell’s a grudge-holder – and that there’s no rage like love turned to hate.

Not to Blame is beautifully sung over sparse piano chords and sexy bass, with a light, slightly breathless, beguiling purity. Mitchell’s lyrics sound utterly convincing. She doesn’t sound angry or bitter – she sounds like, say, a Norwegian ice-maiden crooning light jazz.

But the song’s dulcet beauty belies its ugly theme: banal vengeance with a poisonous sting.

Not to Blame was released in 1994, when the rumour that Browne beat Hannah was still in the news. The US ‘uncle’ letters about Hannah (see above) had been published that year.

Despite Mitchell’s flimsy pretence that Not to Blame wasn’t about anyone in particular, it was clearly about Browne – and was perfectly timed to twist the knife.

The first verse repeated and embellished the rumour of abuse. The second verse addressed domestic abuse in general (and obscurely accused Browne of ‘perversity’). Then, after that banal bluster, came the madness.

The venomous spite of the third verse was openly aimed at Mitchell’s real target: Browne and Major – albeit cloaked with fake sympathy for Major.

Browne left Mitchell for Major in 1972. Mitchell apparently never got over it.

Major committed suicide in 1976. In the same year, in Hejira’s Song For Sharon, Mitchell implied that Browne caused it.

18 years later, in Not to Blame’s final verse, Mitchell returned to Major’s suicide, accusing Browne of despising women’s frailty and loving to drive them to suicide.

Why did she do that?

In David Yaffe’s autobiography, Reckless Daughter, Yaffe often apparently channels Mitchell in order to explain without quoting. (See, for instance, Yaffe’s explanation for Mitchell’s comment on Major’s suicide in Song For Sharon.)

In that spirit, here’s my channelled explanation for Not to Blame’s third verse:

Stab! Stab! Stab!

Or something like that. But however you slice it, Not to Blame’s third verse is quite the Psycho scene.

*Major wasn’t an airhead – her reported response to Browne’s Ready or Not shows that – but Mitchell apparently thought she was. In Yaffe’s book, she said Major was ‘passed from guy to guy to guy’ [P 238].

💔

Not to Blame 🔼

Verse 1

Kick!

Jackson Browne had already been damaged by the gossip about Daryl Hannah. Now Joni Mitchell put the boot in by repeating – and embroidering on – the rumour.

The first verse got right to it: the media said Browne beat Hannah; his philanthropy was hypocritical; she had his fist marks on her face; but his friends said it was her fault and he was not to blame:

The story hit the news from coast to coast
They said you beat the girl you loved the most
Your charitable acts seemed out of place
With the beauty, with your fist marks on her face
Your buddies all stood by
They bet their fortunes and their fame
That she was out of line
And you were not to blame

In Yaffe’s Reckless Daughter there was no comment from Mitchell on Not to Blame, but Yaffe misleadingly implied the song was Mitchell’s revenge for Browne’s alleged violence against her:

violence of some kind

and

Not to Blame

[P 343; my bolding]

Allegations of violence in a relationship must be taken seriously, but the alleged occasional two-way violence in their relationship (see above) was clearly not the persistently repeated one-way assault typical of domestic abuse.

In 1994, Mitchell’s 20-year grudge resulted in Not to Blame‘s accusation that Browne was a physical abuser. The grudge, however, can’t have been about physical abuse in their relationship – because the infrequent two-way violence in their relationship clearly didn’t amount to that.

Mitchell’s fiercely derogatory comments on Browne in Yaffe’s book (see below) revealed a long-held grudge (over 40 years by that time) but in the book, she notably – perhaps advisedly – didn’t repeat Not to Blame’s physical abuse smear.

Yaffe was wrong to suggest Mitchell’s grudge was about ‘violence of some kind’ in her relationship with Browne. More accurately, Yaffe went on to describe the song as a ‘violent and personal attack‘. (P 344)

💔💔

Not to Blame 🔼

Verse 2

Slice!

The second verse of Not to Blame was less directly accusatory:

Six hundred thousand doctors
Are putting on rubber gloves
And they’re poking at the miseries made of love
They say they’re learning how to spot
The battered wives among all the women
They see bleeding through their lives
I bleed for your perversity
These red words that make a stain
On your white-washed claim
That she was out of line
And you were not to blame

However, the second verse seemingly gave a coded explanation for the damning accusation in the third verse – that Jackson Browne despises women’s frailty and habitually makes them suicidal.

In the second verse, Joni Mitchell said, ‘I bleed for your perversity‘. That apparently referred to Browne’s obstinacy in insisting he wasn’t to blame. But was wordsmith Mitchell also implying sexual perversity?

Was Mitchell suggesting Browne was secretly gay and his hiding it was a perversion? Was she saying his secret gay misogyny made him despise women’s frailty and beauty and want to drive them to suicide?

Yaffe’s Reckless Daughter openly suggested Browne was secretly gay. According to Mitchell, Browne’s mother said to her:

(P 167)

Explaining that gnomic comment (a family trait?), Yaffe, apparently channelling Mitchell, said:

something off

more giddy with his male friends

This guy had issues

[P 167-8; my bolding]

Yaffe told me he got most of the people involved to tell their side of the story, but Browne’s management didn’t respond.

However, it seems likely that whatever Browne’s mother was on about, whatever was ‘off’ in Browne’s relationship with Mitchell, and whatever ‘issues’ he had, he’s not secretly gay.

Perhaps Mitchell was pursuing her vendetta against him by slinging any mud that came to hand.

Whether or not Mitchell subtly loaded all that onto the word ‘perversity’, her accusation that Browne loved to drive beautiful women to suicide couldn’t be justified in any case – it was clearly absurd.

Another accusatory element in the second verse was the phrase ‘battered wives’.

Not to Blame implied Browne beat Hannah, but it didn’t imply he beat Mitchell or any other women. The song’s reference to ‘battered wives’ was ostensibly a general comment about doctors not recognising domestic abuse.

However, ‘battered wives’ might also have been a subtle dig at Browne. A few months before the release of Not to Blame, Daryl Hannah’s uncle, Haskell Wexler, in his much-publicised angry letter to monthly film and music magazine US, said:

badly battered woman’

[My bolding]

In his reply to Wexler, Browne threatened to go public unless allowed to privately ‘describe Daryl’s actions’. Wexler’s subsequent silence suggests he heard Browne’s explanation and found it plausible – but that wouldn’t have fitted with Mitchell’s bitter preconception.

(Also, Wexler or the doctor may have been exaggerating. According to a contemporaneous People report, although Hannah was seen in New York days after the incident with a bandaged hand and a black eye, 10 days after the incident, the ‘badly battered woman’ was pictured in a paparazzi video ‘smooching’ with JFK Jr in Manhattan.)

Perhaps Mitchell, having seen Wexler’s letter, felt entitled to subliminally enhance her anti-Browne message with the phrase ‘battered wives’.

💔💔💔

Not to Blame 🔼

Verse 3

Stab! Stab! Stab!

In Not to Blame’s third verse, Joni Mitchell finally thrust home the poisoned point: her hatred for Jackson Browne after he left her for Phyllis Major in 1972. In this verse, Mitchell got well and truly Psycho on Browne’s ass.

After Major’s suicide in 1976, Mitchell gatecrashed the funeral. This verse was her twisted account of it, and her even more twisted explanation for Major’s suicide:

I heard your baby say when he was only three
‘Daddy let’s get some girls
One for you and one for me’
His mother had the frailty you despise
And the looks you love to drive to suicide
Not one wet eye around her lonely little grave
Said ‘He was out of line girl
You were not to blame’

In two crazy and vicious lines, she suggested not only that Browne despised his wife’s frailty and drove her to suicide but also that he made a habit of it:

[She] had the frailty you despise
And the looks you love to drive to suicide

Major took her own life after apparently suffering long-term mental health issues and extreme postnatal depression.

Browne and Major apparently had relationship problems. (See above.) That may have been known to Mitchell. But no one apart from Mitchell has suggested Browne drove Major – or any other women – to suicide.

Mitchell’s vengeful accusation was a cheesy, melodramatic lie. Such is art made to serve congealed rage.

Mitchell also callously referred to Browne and Major’s three-year-old son:

I heard your baby say when he was only three
‘Daddy let’s get some girls
One for you and one for me’

If Mitchell, the unwelcome guest at Major’s funeral, heard those words, they were clearly the foolish words of a baby.

Using those words, whether true or invented, to suggest Browne was a womaniser and his three-year-old son was aware of that and was colluding with it at his mother’s funeral was bizarre. It showed the twistedness of her anger.

Interviewed in 1997, Browne said:

💔💔💔

Not to Blame 🔼

Outro

Fade to grey

Joni Mitchell should withdraw Not to Blame’s very damaging baseless accusation. It’s not too late for her to put it right. (See my appeal to Mitchell, below.)

In his 1997 interview, Jackson Browne expressed frustration at not being able to talk to Mitchell about Not to Blame.

He said it was inexcusable for her to believe the tabloid gossip, and he was tired of people assuming she was an authority on his life despite not having known him for 20 years.

He said he wrote to Mitchell after hearing the song, but she didn’t reply. He’d tried not to conduct a public defence against Mitchell’s song, but was tired of having to accept her bitter attack.

So Browne had his say – but the song continued to damage him.

In Not to Blame Mitchell used her poetic artistry and her beguiling voice to create the baseless impression of a man who mistreats women, who despises their frailty and loves to drive them to suicide.

The angry and personal tone of the third verse will have convinced some that Browne must be guilty of something terrible. Such is the power of a baseless accusation made by someone of stature.

Mitchell’s reputation – sealed with her unparalleled album, Blue – as the foremost truthful songwriter of her generation, together with her brief but intimate knowledge of Browne, gave Not to Blame an impressive veneer of credibility.

However, behind that cool, authentic exterior, Mitchell was wildly stabbing at Browne like a vengeful goddess* re-enacting the Psycho shower scene.

This song and the unfair damage it’s done to Browne should fade to grey in the limbo reserved for such defamatory fits of passion.

* Thanks to commenter Alan Smith for that apposite epithet.

💔 Not to Blame 🔼

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah
Jackson Browne’s relationship with Joni Mitchell
Contents – Joni 🔼

BROWNE ON MITCHELL

Typically gnomic

Typically tight-lipped, Jackson Browne has said very little about his relationship with Joni Mitchell other than in response to Not to Blame and in contemporaneous lyrics, some of which he’s – kind of – explained.

In a 1997 interview about Not to Blame, Browne described Mitchell as a violent woman who twice physically attacked him during their relationship.

Browne has also spoken about the ‘differences’ alluded to in Fountain of Sorrow (from his 1974 album Late for the Sky), believed to be about Mitchell.

In his spoken introduction to a 2014 videoed performance of Fountain of Sorrow, Browne explained he wrote it for an ex-lover. He’d run into her sometime after they separated, was impressed by her beauty, remembered ‘all the good stuff’, and wrote the song for her. His introduction concluded:

a more generous song than she deserved

The audience’s knowing and sympathetic laughter showed they got Browne’s drily understated reference to Mitchell and her vengeful song, Not to Blame.

Weirdly, however, Fountain of Sorrow isn’t a generous celebration of an ex-lover’s good points at all – it’s a typically deep and soulful meditation on relationships, memory, and loneliness.

I’m just one or two years and a couple of changes behind you
In my lessons at love’s pain and heartache school
Where if you feel too free and you need something to remind you
There’s this loneliness springing up from your life
Like a fountain from a pool

Asked in a 2014 interview about that introduction to Fountain of Sorrow, Browne said:

differences

generous

Hmmm. In the same interview about Fountain of Sorrow Browne was asked about the meaning of these lines:

When you see through love’s illusion there lies the danger
And your perfect lover just looks like a perfect fool

He replied, gnomically:

above

The equally brilliant and moody song Late for the Sky – ‘Looking hard into your eyes, there was nobody I’d ever known‘ – is also thought to be about Mitchell.

Such were Browne’s thoughtful – if not particularly ‘generous’ – reflections on their relationship. Mitchell’s take on it, however, seemed increasingly angry.

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah
Jackson Browne’s relationship with Joni Mitchell
Contents – Joni 🔼

MITCHELL ON BROWNE

More heat than light

In 1972, Jackson Browne ended his relationship with Joni Mitchell. Apparently permanently furious ever since, she’s trashed him implicitly in two songs and explicitly in a recent biography.

In 1976, Mitchell’s Song For Sharon, released soon after the suicide of Browne’s first wife Phyllis Major, included a coded implication that Browne caused Major’s suicide.

In 1994, Mitchell’s uncompromisingly vicious Not to Blame, released in the wake of the Browne-Daryl Hannah rumour (22 years after Mitchell’s relationship with Browne had ended), openly implied Browne was a wife-beater who drove his wife to suicide.

More recently, in David Yaffe’s 2017 biography Reckless Daughter, published 45 years after her relationship with Browne, Mitchell – apparently consumed by bitterness like a modern-day Miss Havisham – brutally dismissed Browne as a worthless nonentity.

Yaffe’s book drew on conversations he recorded in 2015 shortly before Mitchell’s aneurysm.

Surprisingly – perhaps advisedly – Yaffe’s book contained no comments by Mitchell about Not to Blame. (Readers had to rely on the author’s own flawed explanation.)

However, Mitchell wasn’t holding back in Yaffe’s book. She lashed out at Browne, describing him as a ‘leering narcissist‘, just a ‘nasty bit of business‘ and the ‘very worst one’.

Some of Mitchell’s comments about Browne in Yaffe’s book were merged with those about her previous lover, singer-songwriter James Taylor.

Taylor and Browne seemed to have almost fused in Mitchell’s mind into a single lump of uselessness – but while she excused Taylor as a junkie, she condemned Browne as actively vile.

Mitchell made the ‘leering narcissist’ comment when speaking about her love not being returned:

He was a leering narcissist

(Yaffe, P 167)

The ‘nasty bit of business’ comment occurred when Mitchell explained how her sadness was caused by having her self-worth undermined:

Jackson’s just a nasty bit of business

(Yaffe, P 169)

The ‘very worst one’ comment was about Browne meeting Phyllis Major at the time he ended his relationship with Mitchell. She described Major as ‘a sensitive … girl, who was passed from guy to guy to guy’ (see above), and claimed a horrified concern:

The very worst one

[Yaffe, P 238 – Yaffe’s italics; my bolding]

There’s more of this from Mitchell in Yaffe’s and Weller’s books. Yaffe told me he was able to get most of the people involved to tell their side of the story but Browne’s management didn’t respond.

That was probably for the best. Browne must have had his faults, but Mitchell seems to have constructed an alternative reality in which fault is one-sided, exaggerated and vilified.

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah
Jackson Browne’s relationship with Joni Mitchell
Contents – Joni 🔼

CONCLUSION

A woman scorned

In forum discussions and comments, people say Joni Mitchell’s song Not to Blame shows Jackson Browne assaulted Daryl Hannah and drove his wife Phyllis Major to suicide. But they’re wrong.

My inquiry into the Browne-Hannah rumour, and this detailed annex about the Browne-Mitchell relationship and its aftermath shows Not to Blame is an unjustified accusation made in anger.

In 1976 in Song For Sharon, released soon after the suicide of Browne’s first wife, Phyllis Major, Mitchell implied Browne drove her to it.

In 1994 in Not to Blame, released in the wake of the Browne-Hannah rumour, Mitchell boosted that rumour; and, this time, openly accused Browne of driving Major to suicide.

💔

Why did Mitchell lash out in Not to Blame with those damaging smears, 20 years after their relationship had ended? What was it about that brief relationship that made her so vengeful?

Was it simply that Browne didn’t sufficiently return her feelings (perhaps because it was a rebound relationship) and – perhaps even worse – that he ended it?

Was Mitchell inconsolably enraged because he dumped her? Possibly, but James Taylor (Mitchell’s pre-Browne lover) also, apparently, dumped her and they’ve stayed friends – whereas in 2015 she described Browne as ‘just a nasty bit of business’.

He’s got a friend – even if he did dump her | Photo: Marcy Gensic (2018) | Thought bubble: Yaffe [P 169]

Also, Browne and Taylor are apparently good friends. As of late 2021, they were planning to tour together. This suggests Taylor doesn’t share his friend Mitchell’s bad opinion of Browne.

Best of friends: Mr Nasty and Mr Fucked-up | Photo: Taylor’s selfie?

If there’s more to it than the indignity of Browne being the one to end it, perhaps it’s the depth of Mitchell’s feelings for Browne – feelings apparently not fully returned – and the depth of her despair when he ended their relationship.

In 2017 in David Yaffe’s Reckless Daughter, Mitchell angrily dismissed Browne as deeply selfish and unpleasant – ‘the very worst one’.

No one else has publicly said such things about Browne. Mitchell’s unsupported criticism, so bitter after over 40 years, raises the possibility that in denigrating him she was hiding a painful truth.

Perhaps Browne wasn’t the despicable nobody she portrayed to Yaffe, but was actually the lost love of her life. To paraphrase the poet, there’s no fury like that of a woman scorned and no rage like love turned to hate.

Mitchell’s previous lover, James Taylor, was handsome enough, but Browne was undeniably a very good-looking young man.

Browne in 1971. Handsome is … | Photo: Henry Diltz

Was Mitchell entranced by Browne’s combination of talent and beauty – and hopelessly in love with him? As she’s said, ‘I’m a fool for love’.

Perhaps closer to the truth than Mitchell’s bitter comments in Yaffe’s book are her poignant – and erotic – lines about the start of their relationship from Car On A 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

Did Browne inadvertently get through Mitchell’s defences like no one else – and leave her permanently embittered when he ended their relationship?

In his 1997 interview about Not to Blame, Browne said, ‘She and every one of her friends knows – it’s all about carrying a torch’.

💔

Is that the explanation for Mitchell’s lasting bitter anger and its expression in Not to Blame‘s spiteful slur?

We’ll probably never know – Browne has mainly kept quiet about their relationship, and Mitchell’s heated outbursts have shed little light.

Whatever happened and whatever Mitchell’s state of mind, her relationship with Browne gave Not to Blame considerable credibility.

That song’s defamatory message, boosted by Mitchell’s renown as the truthful songwriter and by her more recent expression of lasting hatred in Yaffe’s biography (see above), has continued to damage Browne’s reputation.

Sheila Weller’s 2008 biography Girls Like Us recounts a brief meeting in 2004:

[P 497]

However, Mitchell’s comments on Browne in Yaffe’s 2017 biography showed the hatchet was buried alright – in Browne’s head.

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah
Jackson Browne’s relationship with Joni Mitchell
Contents – Joni 🔼

AN APPEAL TO JONI

Put it right and let it go

Joni Mitchell said she was thin-skinned and exposed when recording Blue in 1971. If she was still vulnerable in 1972, perhaps the relatively immature Jackson Browne got under her thin skin and accidentally did some lasting damage.

In Not to Blame she used her art to hurt him back. Her more recent comments in David Yaffe’s biography, Reckless Daughter, inflamed the wound.

After all this time, perhaps she could forgive him and retract her claws. Some healing would be good. Not to Blame‘s baseless accusation should be withdrawn…

Its false note resonates dissonantly
It should be silenced, allowed to fade away
It’s a bad spell woven with lurid colours
It should be undone, allowed to fade to grey
It’s a bad smell. Light a candle, hey?

Apparently, Joni Mitchell doesn’t use the internet, but a friend might show her this direct appeal:

Dear Joni

You’ve said some terrible things about Jackson – and many people believe you.

After Phyllis’s suicide, you implied in Song For Sharon it was his fault.

After the Daryl Hannah incident, you accused him in Not to Blame of being a violent man who drove his wife to suicide.

You said, about Phyllis’s death:

[She] had the frailty you despise

And the looks you love to drive to suicide

That was baseless and cruel. But a lot of people believe you. In forums and comments, they say, in effect:

He’s a wife-beater and he drove his wife to suicide. Joni Mitchell says so.

In David Yaffe’s biography, you described Jackson as a ‘leering narcissist’, a ‘nasty bit of business’ and the ‘very worst one’.

No one else has said such extreme things about him. Would your discerning friend James Taylor, who presumably knows Jackson pretty well, be his friend if he shared your view of him?

What d’you say, Joni? You and Jackson were lovers for a while – you know what he was like. Was he really that bad?

If not, however embarrassing it might be after all that bombast, you owe him an apology – as a debt of honour.

Before you die would be good. (Flinch not, dear younger Reader. Those of us over 70 may try to deny it – I do – but we know we’re facing death.)

OK, he pissed you off. He seems to have a knack for doing that. Maybe he broke your heart, and you’ve been lashing out ever since.

But don’t take this grudge to the grave. C’mon, Canada – let it go!

As you guardedly conceded to Cameron Crowe in 1979, ‘Jackson writes fine songs‘. (Faint praise? Like a grocer, a purveyor of fine goods?)

He’s not as good as you – he’s the Monet to your Manet. But he writes beautiful songs. Like this one about you:

Fountain of sorrow, fountain of light

You’ve known that hollow sound of your own steps in flight

You’ve had to struggle, you’ve had to fight

To keep understanding and compassion in sight

You could be laughing at me, you’ve got the right

But you go on smiling so clear and so bright

🌷

Cat lady in red: Joni and Bootsy, 2020 | Photo: PR

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah
Jackson Browne’s relationship with Joni Mitchell
Contents – Joni 🔼

Footnote

OLD LADY OF THE YEAR et al

Cheesy crap
Introduction | Old Lady of the Year | Hollywood’s Hot 100 | Jann Wenner’s anti-Mitchell slurs

Old Lady of the Year et al 🔼

Introduction

In 1971, Rolling Stone magazine insulted Joni Mitchell by calling her ‘Old Lady of the Year’. A year later, the magazine insulted her again in its ‘Hollywood’s Hot 100’ chart by putting her name in a lipstick kiss.

Those two creepy incidents are detailed here as a footnote partly because they’re so well known, and partly because the second one happened around the time Mitchell got together with Jackson Browne.

They’re not directly relevant to Mitchell’s bitter vendetta against Browne, but they may have worsened her self-confessed downward spiral during that time – when the seeds of bitterness took root.

The two Rolling Stone items are featured on the official Joni Mitchell website, with the Hot 100 introduction and facsimiles of both items.

Old Lady of the Year et al 🔼

Old Lady of the Year

In February 1971, Joni Mitchell was insultingly dubbed ‘Old Lady of the Year’ by Rolling Stone magazine and its famously misogynist co-founder and editor, Jann Wenner.

From Rolling Stone, 4 February 1971 (#75)
Editor: Jann Wenner

In a would-be humourous 4-page section titled It Happened in 1970: Rolling Stone Annual Awards for Profundity in Arts and Culture, Mitchell got this citation:

Old Lady of the Year: Joni Mitchell (for her friendships with David Crosby, Steve Stills, Graham Nash, Neil Young, James Taylor, et al.)

(‘Old lady’ was hippie slang for girlfriend – with, in this case, a snide hint of groupie.)

As it happens, despite the award’s lewd implication, Mitchell’s love life wasn’t promiscuous: it was serial. Crosby and Nash were Mitchell’s exes; and at that time, she was in a relationship with Taylor.

And if a female artist was promiscuous, so what? In the age of free love, sexual equality and the contraceptive pill, it would have been deeply hypocritical to shame her for it.

Stills and Young, also named, were friends of Mitchell. Wenner used the word ‘friendships’ suggestively, leeringly adding the Latin phrase ‘et al’ meaning ‘and others’.

(‘Et al’ is used in academic publications when naming the authors. Wenner dropped out of university.)

Perhaps Wenner thought his targeted misogynism was daringly funny. Tastefully adjacent to Mitchell’s award was Wenner’s award for ‘Old Man of the Year’: Charles Manson, for his ‘friendships’ – with his murderous female acolytes. Hilarious, Jann.

Old Lady of the Year et al 🔼

Hollywood’s Hot 100

In February 1972, a year after smearing Joni Mitchell as ‘Old Lady of the Year’, Rolling Stone struck again. Its now-infamous Hollywood’s Hot 100 chart insulted her again – by gratuitously putting her name in a lipstick kiss.

The Hollywood’s Hot 100 chart mapped LA musicians’ musical and ‘romantic’ links. Its introductory text described the scene as an ‘incestuous’ society whose members came from several ‘families’.

From Rolling Stone, 3 February 1972
Illustration: Jerry Hopkins | Editor: Jann Wenner

The Hot 100 chart had solid lines for musical links and dotted lines for ‘romantic’ links. The dotted lines had heart symbols for existing relationships and broken hearts for previous ones.

The chart linked Mitchell musically (with solid lines) to Elliot Roberts (her manager), James Taylor, David Crosby, Stephen Stills and ‘The Intellectuals’ family, which included Neil Young and Randy Newman.

Mitchell was also linked ‘romantically’ (by dotted lines with broken hearts) to exes Crosby, Graham Nash and Taylor.

Mitchell’s relationship with Taylor had ended in late 1971. Her 1972 relationship with Jackson Browne hadn’t yet begun.

(Although Browne was part of that scene, and his debut album had just been released, he wasn’t on the Hot 100 chart.)

Rolling Stone’s prurient mapping of ‘romantic’ connections was cheesy – but apparently accurate. As such, it was borderline-acceptable.

However, the Hot 100 chart crossed the line by singling Mitchell out for some bizarrely puerile and insulting treatment .

The names of all the other female artists on the chart were printed normally. But Mitchell’s name was printed at an angle inside a large lipstick kiss, with the words ‘Kiss Kiss’ repeated three times.

The leering – and libellous – implication of that prominent graphic device was that Mitchell was known to be especially lubricious.

Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner was attacking Mitchell again. But why?

Old Lady of the Year et al 🔼

Jann Wenner’s anti-Mitchell slurs

Why did Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner insult Joni Mitchell by calling her Old Lady of the Year and printing the Hollywood’s Hot 100 chart with her name in a kiss graphic? Was it gay misogyny? Or was it something else?

Although Wenner was married (to Jane Wenner) and was supposedly bisexual, he eventually emerged as gay. Male gay misogyny is a well-kept secret (masked, for instance, by the phenomenon of gay men tolerating straight women claiming close friendship).

Beauty and the Beast: the Wenners, 1968
Photo: Baron Wolman

But those smears – and other later ones, such as calling ‘The Hissing of Summer Lawns’ the worst album title of the year in 1975 – showed something beyond generic gay misogyny.

They showed Wenner’s obsessive personal animosity towards Mitchell (albeit unconvincingly presented as edgy humour).

There’s apparently no reason for Wenner’s targeted hostility. Something about Mitchell must have irrationally wound him up.

As the necessarily forceful owner and editor of an internationally succesful magazine, perhaps Wenner became autocratic and delusional – and felt entitled to indulge in what was apparently his whimsical dislike of Mitchell.

cultural rehab

Hi – I’m Jann

(Mitchell’s: ‘Hi – I’m Joni. I’m holding on to my bitterness and my irrational hatred of Jackson Browne.’)

Whatever its cause, Wenner’s anti-Mitchell campaign showed he had no respect for her widely acknowledged artistry.

That disrespect was life-long. The crass remarks Wenner made about Mitchell some 50 years later helped get him thrown off the board of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. (See below.)

Understandably offended, Mitchell boycotted Rolling Stone for many years. Supposedly, she later threw tequila at Wenner during an awards ceremony and was then apparently blacklisted by the magazine (as described in her song Lead Balloon on Taming the Tiger, 1998).

In 1979, because of her friendship* with writer Cameron Crowe, Mitchell broke her boycott and gave Rolling Stone an interview. She dismissed the magazine’s obsessive interest in her relationships as ‘ludicrous’.

Rolling Stone’s mistreatment of Mitchell continued, but eventually the tide turned. In 2023, the magazine celebrated Mitchell’s overdue ‘Jonissance’ recognition; and belatedly repented its misogynist past.

Also in 2023, Wenner got his overdue comeuppance. Promoting his book of interviews (with exclusively white, male musicians), he vented his disrespect for Mitchell and his disdain for black musicians.

Those remarks led to Wenner’s removal from the board of directors of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame – which he’d co-founded.

Wenner’s editorial animosity was an obstruction on Mitchell’s long and winding road to superstardom. But in the end, she won her righteous feud with Wenner. Hoo fucking rah!

(Now she should end her pointless feud with Browne.)

Old Lady of the Year et al 🔼

Movie Corner 🎬

Still friends: Crowe and Mitchell, November 2022
Photo: Bruce Glikas/Getty Images

*After Joni Mitchell’s 1979 boycott-breaking interview with Rolling Stone writer Cameron Crowe, they stayed friends.

Crowe became a filmmaker, writing and directing films such as the award-winning Jerry Maguire – and the recent controversial flop, Aloha.

A 2023 article said Crowe was developing a drama film with Mitchell about her life. Wow!

(To avoid another Aloha, will Crowe cast an ethnically accurate Norwegian Irish Scottish actress? 😉)

But will Crowe’s film – if it gets made – defame Jackson Browne, as Mitchell has? Or will it whitewash her brief relationship with Browne – and its 45-year aftermath?

As things stand, if Mitchell has an editorial say, the film is unlikely to tell the truth about that. And to complicate things, Crowe’s also been friends with Browne.

(There was Crowe’s friendly 1974 Rolling Stone cover interview with Browne. And in 1982, because of their friendship, Browne co-wrote Somebody’s Baby for Crowe’s screenwriting debut, Fast Times at Ridgemont High.)

If they’re still friends, Crowe might understandably prefer to airbrush Browne out of the Mitchell picture.

Also…how about another film from Crowe – about Browne? With Mitchell airbrushed out, presumably.

(It’s difficult to make truthful biopics while the stars are alive. I wish Paul and Ringo a long old age – but I also hope I live long enough to see a truthful film about the Beatles.)

Also…ahem…if Crowe or anyone else wants to make a film based on this post – as I write, it’s had over 70,000 views – I’m open to offers. It’s registered with the Writers Guild of America. In my (deluded) imagination, I see it as a heightened docudrama.

🎬

Old Lady of the Year et al 🔼 | Contents – Joni 🔼

Jackson Browne’s relationship with Joni Mitchell
The end of the annex

Thanks for some of the above information about Jackson Browne and Joni Mitchell to Alan Ashworth, UK journalist and writer on music, especially West Coast music.

Thanks also to Les Irvin, the man who knows (almost) everything about Mitchell, and the host of her official website, a brilliant labour of love maintained, managed and mainly funded by Irvin.

Joni and Les, September 1997 | Photo: FOJ

Contents – Joni 🔼

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah

Contents 🔼

Afterword

The #MeToo movement

And how I think it relates to this post

Has this post got anything to do with the Me Too movement?

Best known as the hashtag #MeToo, it’s a movement against the sexual abuse and harassment of young vulnerable women in the overheated show business workplace, where the power to confer fame gives an ugly sense of entitlement.

None of that applies here, but the #MeToo movement has been extended to other sorts of abuse in the wonderful world of showbiz.

So in these #MeToo times, how come I’m giving the benefit of the doubt to a famous musician (Jackson Browne) accused of abusing an actor (Daryl Hannah). And how come I’m accusing an even more famous musician (Joni Mitchell) of making a baseless accusation of abuse?

The #MeToo movement’s a wonderful thing. It’s breaking the silence and setting the truth free.

That’s the thing: truth. Browne probably told the truth, but not enough of it; Hannah kept quiet, which was a kind of deceit; and Mitchell libelled Browne in a fit of passion.

To effectively oppose abuse and objectification, the wider #MeToo movement needs truth, however complicated.

In that spirit, I hope this post’s attempt to get at the truth – of a rumoured assault by a famous man on a less famous younger woman, and of the accusations made by a more famous spurned lover – can be seen as supportive of #MeToo.

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah

Contents 🔼

September 2023

My closing farewell

Adieu to yieu and yieu and yieu

Waving, not saluting | Photo: Getty/Rex

This rolling blogpost now rolls to a halt. I’ve been updating, supplementing, rearranging, editing, tweaking and generally faffing about with it for over eight years (on and off). It’s grown to 20,000 words. Enough, already. (Apart from the occasional irresistible supplementing…)

Was it worth it? Yes. Call me obsessive – I suppose I am. (I haven’t got OCD, thank goodness, but I’m probably a bit autistic. I love it – the investigation, analysis and writing!)

The problem with self-publishing is there’s no objective editor. I’ve just taken this post wherever it went, tried to make it meaningful, and hoped it’d be OK.

I suppose it doesn’t really matter, in the context of more serious issues like, say, racism or the Rohingya. But there’ve apparently been over 70,000 viewers so far. (You’re another one, dear Reader.) That shows people care. Keep caring.

Please feel free to comment. All comments will continue to be answered (by me).

My closing farewell 🔼

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah

Contents 🔼

Afterthought | April 2024

The real Jackson Browne – a tiny doubt

Will the real Jackson Browne please stand up?

Jackson Browne’s been accused of hitting Daryl Hannah and driving Phyllis Major to suicide. I think I’ve shown he’s innocent of those charges – but one thing’s bugging me: who is Jackson Browne?

I know I’m just a fan with an amateur investigation. but still – it bugs me that in spite of my delving and all these words, I really don’t know Browne at all. His cultivated anonymity might be designed for his protection – but it’s planted a seed of doubt.

Browne seems basically a decent chap, somewhat troubled as a younger man, poetic, a visionary thinker, genuinely philanthropic, and not violent.

But that’s just my impression. In his tight-lipped and gnomic public presentation, Browne’s private self seems somehow invisible – as insubstantial as one of Joni Mitchell’s illusive clouds.

I’m not suggesting Browne’s got a hidden dark side – no more than anyone else, anyway. It’s just that he’s a known unknown – perhaps by choice, as with other celebs.

The famous are, of course, entitled to protect their privacy from prying media – ie we the people, with our voracious, vicarious appetite for celebrity tittle-tattle.

Anyway, because of that unknown, this post’s conclusion that Browne’s probably innocent must include – in the possibility scale – a tiny seed of doubt.

That might be partly my fault. If my delving had been deeper, I might have found the real Jackson Browne! 😉

The real Jackson Browne – a tiny doubt 🔼

The end

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah

Contents 🔼

Sources of help

If you need it

If you’ve been affected by any of the issues raised, here are some sources of help:

Domestic abuse: UK | US
Mental health: UK | US
Cocaine addiction: UK | US
Autism: UK | US

Keep a fire burning in your eye
Pay attention to the open sky
You never know what will be coming down

From For A Dancer by Jackson Browne
On the album Late for the Sky (1974)

Eye-browed handsome man | Photo: Poster for Jackson Browne’s 2017 tour

🌷
Chris Hughes | Leicester, UK
chris.hughes1235@gmail.com | 0044 7733 055472

Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah

Top 🔼 | Contents 🔼

Pleeeease comment…
(Sorry – you have to scroll to the end of the comments to leave one. It’s a pain. Blame WordPress.com…)

104 thoughts on “Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah”

Anonymous says:

Mar 4, 2024 at 6:20 am

Thanks for the research. I have been uncomfortable about this story since it happened, but went to see him in concert anyway. This blog provided enough information for me to conclude that I can keep on listening to JB’s music.
I tend to agree with the comments that nothing was proved. JB may have done it. DH may have felt pressured by her sister to go public. Or it was self-defense from an autistic attack.
I don’t put much stock in People magazine, and the step-uncle went quiet. So whatever happened was settled between the parties out of the public eye, and I hope they found redemption.
But Joni MItchell? So sad to read what she wrote and how she projected her problems with him onto Phyllis. I loved Song for Sharon which came out while I was in college. I thought that she was projecting her own thoughts on the suicide of the woman.

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1. mrmeaning says:
  
  Mar 4, 2024 at 10:41 am
  
  Thanks for your insightful comment, Anonymous. Yes, I also continue listening to his music. I’m not sure about redemption – I don’t think Browne and his partner will be breaking bread with Mr and Mrs Young any time soon. And yes, it’s sad about Joni. If Cameron Crowe’s film about her gets made, it’ll be interesting to see what, if anything, it says about JB.
  
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Anonymous says:

Oct 28, 2023 at 1:35 pm

Seriously, why would Jackson Browne call the cops if HE was the one out of control?

The 1984 Rolling Stone profile of DH when she was first dating JB has some insights into her mental health that suggest instability. Right out the gate, autism is mentioned so it was already brought up by DH. There’s also an interesting anecdote from Peter Gallagher, her co-star in Summer Lovers:

“One time we were shooting this scene, and there was a fly in the room. I was sort of peripherally aware of it, and it landed on my nose. I was going to whisk it away, but then I saw this look come over Daryl’s eyes — like the only thing in the world she saw at that moment was the fly. So I just saw her wind up and BAMMO!
“Anybody else would be going for the schtick, but she didn’t even know where that fly was. Either that or she just wanted to slug me. I wasn’t sure with her. It could have been this marvelously complex naiveté, or it could have been that she just couldn’t stand me.”

In 50 years I’ve never read or heard anything about JB having an “explosive personality” as one of DH’s “anonymous friends” charged. As for the initial statement from her spokesperson, they had to say something and one person was their client and one wasn’t. It was/is convenient for her to allow others to perpetuate a false narrative of the event.

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1. mrmeaning says:
  
  Oct 28, 2023 at 3:44 pm
  
  Thanks for your comment, Anonymous. Dead right. Then there was how she behaved when her lover JFK Jr’s mum Jackie died. Still, she seems more sorted now. And whatever happened, she inspired great loyalty in JB.
  
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Anonymous says:

Mar 16, 2023 at 8:28 am

Chris, your detailed research is unbelievable. I have always wondered about this allegation against JB and my curiosity was rekindled after watching him tonight on Austin City Limits. Still not sure if he did it or not but i would tend to think “yes.”

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1. mrmeaning says:
  
  Mar 16, 2023 at 8:33 am
  
  Thanks for your comment, Anonymous, and your compliment. I conclude he probably didn’t do it. Why, if I may ask, do you tend to think he did?
  
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Baylink says:

Dec 31, 2022 at 6:02 pm

FYI: it isn’t just Wikipedia that has blackballed you, apparently Facebook has too. I just tried to drop a link to the top of the Jackson Browne piece into a comment in a Facebook group, and it bounced because the URL is not permitted or words to that effect. I had to take the period out of your domain name to get it to post.

And let me chime in on the side of people who think that you did a very good job in your ‘just the facts ma’am’ presentation here.

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1. mrmeaning says:
  
  Dec 31, 2022 at 6:12 pm
  
  Thanks for your comment, Baylink. Yes, sorry about that. My blog URL’s been banned by Facebook for ages. My many attempts to get it unbanned – or at least find out why – have failed. I used to think it was because I quoted Roy Harper (‘I hate the white man’) in my racism post, but then they said I was ‘spamming’. (I did give a link to my blog in some forums.) As you say, the not very satisfactory solution is to disguise it. I usually write ‘DOT’ instead of the period. Thanks for the compliment!
  
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2. mrmeaning says:
  
  Oct 28, 2023 at 3:46 pm
  
  Update: my blog URL (https://soothfairy.com) is currently unbanned by Facebook!
  
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Queen of Crows says:

Oct 4, 2022 at 8:15 pm

Today is October 4th 2022. A bit late for the party here but I’m a JB fan and have been for many years. I have done a lot of research myself but was very happy to find you site. I’ve been listening to JB again on a loop as I do every so often when things turn to shit. We have just witnessed the trial of the century Deep vs. Heard. I think that situation shows just how vile a certain type of woman can be re; D. Hannah. I was waiting for Amber Heard to pull autism out of her ass as well.
In any event I bet JB sighed a huge sigh of relief when AH lost to Depp. I believe JB has put it all behind him and no longer gives af since he knows he’s innocent. As for J. Mitchell I think she’s always been bat shit crazy and is getting worse as her brain ages. I stopped listening to her when I discovered JB. Ciao.

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1. mrmeaning says:
  
  Oct 4, 2022 at 8:23 pm
  
  Thanks for your comment, Queen of Crows. Re Depp v Heard, I followed reports of the UK trial (I’m English). He lost, but the judge was a silly old fool taken in by a pretty woman. Depp might have blacked out on drugs and booze but she was clearly lying about the abuse. I bought some Sauvage.
  
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2. Queen of Crows says:
  
  Oct 4, 2022 at 8:50 pm
  
  Ha ha. I love Sauvage. The Depp trial gives hope to men who have suffered from the type of abuse DH put JB through. He prevailed though by having a wonderful fan base who stayed with him. Keep up the good work.
  
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Mick Morris says:

Aug 4, 2022 at 9:51 am

As a small child I witnessed matrimonial arguments where my mum, bless her, totally lost it and violently attacked my dad, a composer and musician, often with household objects, chairs, saucepans etc. He just defended himself. She would sometimes injure herself in the process, so that is a posibility with JB and DH. Musicians like Jackson and film icons like Daryl are, outside of work, just people and ordinary things happen to them. I have always loved his music and she was so beautiful.

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1. mrmeaning says:
  
  Aug 4, 2022 at 10:18 am
  
  Thanks for your comment, Mick. I’m sorry to hear about your childhood experiences of domestic violence. Such things affect us deeply. Apparently (https://www.womensaid.org.uk/information-support/what-is-domestic-abuse/domestic-abuse-is-a-gendered-crime), repeated incidents where the woman is the perpetrator are rare.
  
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Ellie Dubelu says:

Nov 11, 2021 at 1:55 am

Perhaps one could explain your obsession with “finding the truth” about Browne, Hannah, Mitchell in much the way that the undoubtedly talented junior Mitchell couldn’t let go of her bitterness? Truly Browne wasn’t the only man to dump her…just the one that mattered. These people, for their talent and gifts were still just people. And much of who they really became and how they treated others has been hidden for decades.

Mitchell, an old musical idol of mine, seems shallow, bitter and unforgiving in your memoirs even after decades of time. That seems especially pathetic. Still, her or Browne or Taylor or Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, the Beatles, the Eagles etc created songs of beauty, emotion and captured a time in all our lives. It’s the TIME and memories that come back when listening to their music for me. Not them personally….for the “they” we remember…those titans of music, talent and heart are long gone. I am just glad for the music and magic they left behind.

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1. mrmeaning says:
  
  Nov 11, 2021 at 8:44 am
  
  Thanks for your comment, Ellie. I admit to being obsessed – once I started, I couldn’t stop! As for likening my obsession to Joni’s – she threw shade; I try to shed light. Yes, the wonderful music left behind outweighs personal faults; but domestic abuse can’t be forgiven, and this rumour could and should be resolved by them.
  
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The Saint says:

Sep 23, 2021 at 5:50 am

I didn’t see any mention of ”In the Shape of a Heart” here. Jackson recently said in an interview that he wrote it about Phyllis’ suicide.

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1. mrmeaning says:
  
  Sep 23, 2021 at 8:07 am
  
  Thanks for your comment, The Saint. You’re right – I missed it out. I must admit – I hadn’t even heard it! I’m a fan, but not a completist. I wasn’t listening to him in the mid 80s. It’s a beautiful, sad song, and it sheds light on the difficulties of his relationship with Phyllis. I couldn’t find the interview you mention. Can you give a link? There’s an excellent, sympathetic analysis of the song on Songmeanings by phxvalleygirl: https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/3530822107858493177. I’ll probably add something about this. Thanks very much for bringing it to my attention.
  
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2. mrmeaning says:
  
  Sep 23, 2021 at 11:24 am
  
  I’ve now included something about In the Shape of a Heart (in: Browne’s relationship with Joni Mitchell/Mitchell on Major’s suicide).
  
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3. mrmeaning says:
  
  Sep 23, 2021 at 1:49 pm
  
  If I may quote from that ammended section:
  
  ‘Major took her own life after apparently suffering long-term mental health issues and extreme postnatal depression. In the Shape of a Heart shows they were having difficulties. This may have been known to Mitchell – it was a small world.
  
  ‘However, no one apart from Mitchell has suggested that Browne mistreated Major and drove her to suicide.’
  
  Edit: I’ve since added a section in Browne’s relationship with Joni Mitchell/Phyllis Major about the songs in which Browne refers to his relationship with Major, including In the Shape of a Heart
  
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elizabeth says:

Sep 17, 2021 at 5:33 am

Hi, I’m a relatively new fan of Jackson Browne, he was one of my mom’s favorites so I was always vaguely aware of his music but I recently got super into his music on my own after hearing Sky Blue and Black on a Spotify playlist. I’ve been non-stop listening to JB since then. I truly knew nothing about his personal life at all, I think I did maybe a cursory glance at his wikipedia page but that’s it. But when I was looking into the meaning behind some of his songs I saw people talking about this allegation of domestic abuse in comments and I was crushed.

I googled it and couldn’t really find any information, except those articles about the defamation in the JFK Jr. movie. I’m a law student and we actually just learned how much more difficult it is for a celebrity to win a defamation/libel suit as they are “public figures.” And FOX has a lot of money and resources to fight a lawsuit, so when they backed down I actually saw that as more pointing to Jackson’s innocence. Especially since by filing the lawsuit and bringing more attention to the allegations he was opening himself up to more scrutiny, which is something he wouldn’t want if it could come out that it was actually true. But that’s just my take and what do I really know.

Then I found your incredibly well-researched article that seems to put all the limited sources that are out there in one place that allowed me to come to my own conclusion, which I think is important in this era of “cancel culture.” While I would like to hear the truth coming directly from the source, I don’t think Jackson speaking up would really do much good – no one will believe him. Daryl Hannah has nothing to gain from telling the truth now, whatever that truth may be. I just think it’s unfair for Daryl Hannah to have implied these accusations and let people believe whatever conclusion they came to. Never once did Daryl Hannah actually say that Jackson hit her but these accusations still follow him around. And if he did abuse her, he would deserve that but I don’t think he did.

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1. mrmeaning says:
  
  Sep 17, 2021 at 6:46 am
  
  Thanks for your heartfelt comment, Elizabeth – and your kind compliment about my post. I think if Jackson spoke up, he’d be believed. If they both said what happened, it would clear the air, and allow people to enjoy his music without their enjoyment being affected – as with you – by their coming across the unresolved rumour. I’m glad you found my post helpful, but I’d prefer it to become redundant!
  
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2. mrmeaning says:
  
  Sep 17, 2021 at 6:57 am
  
  As for Browne’s defamation successes, they may seem to have helped his case, but they apparently depended on his rubbish police ‘statement’. Fox could have torn that to pieces (as I have), but (as I say) Fox presumably decided that the case would nevertheless be difficult and high-profile, and therefore not worth it.
  
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Curvy Survey Queen says:

Aug 11, 2021 at 1:09 am

As a survivor of domestic violence, this entire story sounds all too familiar. I don’t agree with the writer’s opinion of Browne at all though. My ex was a wonderful guy. Sweet and charming. Laid back, no one would ever believe that he beat me. Many people, including members of my own family, still don’t believe it 30 years later. He was good. He had everyone fooled. But he did abuse me. My body carries scar tissue and my mind carries open wounds still. I believe Browne beat Hannah. I believe he probably at the very least mentally and verbally abused Joni. And his first wife….well, having been there as well with post-partum depression and abuse, I have no doubt that Browne’s treatment of his first wife contributed to her suicide as well. I know that I came very close a couple of times. Then again, my husband tried to kill me when I was 4 months pregnant with my son. Pregnant women are the single most abused group of people in the country. Men who abuse women don’t start out hitting them physically. They start out hitting them mentally. By the time they get to physical they’ve got you beat down and your self esteem so low that by the time they do start smacking you around, you figure you deserve it. If men started off beating women physically, no woman would ever stay. It’s a mind game.

There is a certain type of man that revels in the abuse of women. He’s educated, intelligent, often gifted, and he’s honed his craft well. People see him as a friendly and helpful guy. He is known as the “good guy” at work. He’s helpful to his neighbors and so nice that no one could ever see what lurks in his eyes when he drops his mask…and he’s smart enough never to drop his mask in front of others. This was my abusive ex. I see a lot of gaslighting in this story, both by the author and by Browne. I think Daryl Hannah escaped by the skin of her teeth and is lucky to be alive today.

Much has been made of the inconsistencies surrounding the police visit. Someone said that even back in the early 90s, in California if the cops thought that Browne was abusing Hannah, they would have arrested him.

Sorry, but no. Even in California, even in the early 90s, cops still tried their best to not have to arrest anyone in domestic disturbances, especially when it came to the entertainment industry elite. In that, they were no different than cops anywhere else in the country. My own experiences in the early to mid 80s, in a “nice” suburban community, where most everyone at least had a college degree, bears this out. The cops really didn’t want to know. Unless they caught the guy in the act of beating a woman, or she was unconscious with injuries, they’d usually split the couple up, tell the guy he needs to stop smacking his wife around, and tell the wife to stop provoking her husband…keep the kids quiet and have dinner on the table when he comes home, honey. He has a stressful job. How hard is it to pick up the house a little?

The author did the right thing in not taking his wife to see Browne perform, IMHO.

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1. mrmeaning says:
  
  Aug 11, 2021 at 6:57 am
  
  Thaks for your comment, Curvy Survey Queen. I’m sorry you were abused by your ex-partner and that you still suffer from it. I take your point about how abusers can successfully hide it from others, looking like the ‘nice guy’. However, I don’t think I’ve gaslighted Daryl or Joni. Daryl never explicitly accused Jackson of abuse – and she had plenty of opportunity. Joni’s accusations were implicit, but she didn’t accuse him of abusing her. No one other than Joni has suggested that he (mentally or emotionally) abused his first wife, Phyllis. Joni’s uncorroborated accusation seems to be based on speculation coloured by sexual jealousy. As for the police response to the Jackson-Daryl incident, I’ve criticised it as inadequate. A police investigation would have uncovered the truth.
  
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SorryIAssumedTheWorst says:

Mar 1, 2021 at 4:30 pm

I liked Jackson Browne before the Daryl Hannah abuse accusations, and I avoided him for years afterward. Pre-covid, I got a chance to see him perform and looked up info on the story to help me make the decision, as I realized I only had limited info on the topic. Your well-researched blog helped me decide to see him perform and listen to his music again. In an era in which bad information gets out and circulated so much more quickly than thoughtful analysis, I would hope we can learn to slow down and look at the long view. My initial reaction now feels like as much of an over-reaction as immediately dismissing accusations used to be.

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1. mrmeaning says:
  
  Mar 1, 2021 at 4:55 pm
  
  Thanks for the comment, SorryIAssumedTheWorst (don’t we all!). I’m glad if my post helped you make your own mind up. The ellusive long view is indeed well worth looking at – as long as you’ve got the facts in focus.
  
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2. Anonymous says:
  
  Jun 18, 2021 at 7:00 pm
  
  I don’t believe any of these sick bitches. I believe Jackson Browne.
  Joni Mitchell clearly is a psycho and went berserk when Browne dumped her & Daryl Hannah was going back-and-forth between him and John Kennedy Junior. And I believe she attacked Jackson and I believe Joni was an obsessed Looni
  Don’t start shit with Jackson on #MeToo. Get on with your lives and get over him. The problem is he dumped your ass is and you need to get over it!!!
  I love you Jackson Browne and feel sorry that these women gave you so much shit!!!
  I had a friend like them- she would attack men and they had to Literally fight her off of them causing bruises on both of them but of course the men were blamed until I saw it with my own eyes. She also stalked them.
  And whoever is obsessed with writing this article About You Jackson -like You say in your picture “it’s none of your goddamn business”
  He’s another nosy obsessed psycho-maybe he’s gay and obsessed with you too! End of story.
  ❤️You Jackson Browne & i’m a woman-that truly believes you because a woman scorned is a total bitch!!!!
  I have been listening to you for hours now on YouTube and I listen to every word you say because I know it comes from your heart and they’re very meaningful and truthful👍🏻😘
  
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3. mrmeaning says:
  
  Jun 18, 2021 at 9:36 pm
  
  If you mean me (‘nosy obsessed psycho – maybe he’s gay and obsessed with [Jackson]’), perhaps there’s some truth in that – but not much. I’m a fan, with maybe a man-crush back in the day. If I was gay, I would have, as they say – but I’m not. Nosy and obsessed? Maybe – once I started looking into the rumour, I just couldn’t stop. Psycho? No, just your average neurotic.
  
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Anousha says:

Dec 26, 2020 at 5:57 pm

Interesting- I grew up with the music and the people who loved the music of …

Heady crazy times -we, both men and women talked and sang and tried to live a utopia of equality of race and gender.

Life was much harsher. History was bleaker than we wished for. The post colonial euphoria was harshly stamped on by the cold warriors.

We fell into war of survival – “the man” was ruthless. What did real, cool? men do in response. They tried to be better but failed. Women looked on aghast – if not in the firing line – many joined in.

Sweet songs cover a multitude of betrayals – personal, political, historical…

Our gen betrayed our gen and every future gen. We will go soon. Let everyone learn from us. And do better

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1. mrmeaning says:
  
  Dec 26, 2020 at 6:34 pm
  
  Thanks for your thoughtful contextual contribution, Anousha. I don’t agree that we boomers should beat ourselves up for our failure to change things. We’re only human, as are the powerful super-rich who lobby to resist change. Browne’s Late for the Sky was an emotional manifesto for many in the 70s. His subsequent output never matched that promise but he seems a decent guy who still cares. I see him as a survivor, not a failure – and almost certainly not a wife-beater.
  
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2. A says:
  
  Dec 26, 2020 at 8:42 pm
  
  Ok – whatever.
  
  Good blog – I look forward to hearing more in and on 2021
  
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3. mrmeaning says:
  
  Dec 26, 2020 at 8:58 pm
  
  Thanks!
  
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Joe Harris says:

Dec 24, 2020 at 7:36 pm

Everyone calls John Lennon a wife beater too. Who knows what’s true and what isn’t with these people?

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1. mrmeaning says:
  
  Dec 24, 2020 at 8:00 pm
  
  Thanks, Joe. Yes, that’s the trouble with rumours, isn’t it. Apparently Lennon admitted hitting women. Jackson’s denied it and, having checked it out, I’m inclined to believe him.
  
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David Mckay says:

Oct 30, 2020 at 1:52 pm

Hi there just read your article found it very interesting. I have been a big fan of Jackson from the very beginning and have seen him many times one in particular comes to mind The Barbican in York, he sang Sky blue and black we all cried as we knew or thought we knew what that was about. I have personally met Jackson and cannot believe he could be a wife beater. You are right however it would feel much better to know the truth.
Keep writing. Regards David

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1. mrmeaning says:
  
  Oct 30, 2020 at 2:07 pm
  
  Thanks for your supportive comment, David. Your personal impression of Jackson, having met him, chimes with the impression I’ve formed. How did you meet him?
  
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Mary K says:

Oct 10, 2020 at 5:09 am

This was a very well-written synopsis of the allegations, thanks. I appreciate all the detail. I’ve always enjoyed Jackson Browne’s music but as you say it’s a “tainted love.” I’ve always had trouble separating the artist from the art. (I can’t enjoy Michael Jackson anymore, for instance. Nobody has to be above reproach, but some acts are too repellent to overlook.) I want to think Browne didn’t do it, of course, but wish there was a definitive answer out there.

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1. mrmeaning says:
  
  Oct 10, 2020 at 6:47 am
  
  Thanks for your complimentary comment, Mary. Yes, I wish they’d say what happened. I must admit, I still listen to Jackson’s music, but I wouldn’t go with my wife to a concert (if there are any in the foreseeable future!).
  
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Evan says:

Jul 8, 2020 at 2:22 am

Sorry for necroposting here but I found this very helpful. I came across this article because I read in the book Hotel California that Nico was abusive to Jackson and I was trying to track down any info on that to no avail. If memory serves there was some account of Jackson leaving the stage in tears. Similarly to the Hannah incident info on that is scarce at best. I found this article to at least be a fair account of what information does exist out there. Well done and thank you.

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1. mrmeaning says:
  
  Jul 8, 2020 at 8:34 am
  
  Thanks for your comment, Evan. I don’t think its technically necroposting (had to look it up!), so no apology needed. The Browne-Hannah event was a long time ago but I constantly update this post, so I like to think of it as current. I hadn’t heard of the incident with Nico, but you piqued my interest. There’s an interview with Browne in UK rock mag Mojo, issue 275, in which he talks about Nico. It’s not available online, so I bought one from Ebay – currently waiting for it!
  
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2. mrmeaning says:
  
  Jul 10, 2020 at 1:52 pm
  
  The 2015 Mojo interview was OK – but no mention at all of Hannah. Quite interesting on Nico, but nothing about her abusing him.
  
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3. mrmeaning says:
  
  Aug 14, 2020 at 2:01 pm
  
  Just got ‘Girls Like Us’ by Sheila Weller, which quotes Browne as saying ‘[Nico] used me, man: she fucked me around!’
  
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4. WVF says:
  
  Aug 25, 2020 at 1:13 am
  
  I just wanted to let you know that Crystal Zevon, while not discussing these issues, does paint JB in a positive light as someone who protected her and her daughter when WArren Zevon misbehaved and was abusive to her. See I’ll sleep when Im dead: the dirty life and times of wz. Her account gave me a sense that Browne deserved the benefit of the doubt.
  
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5. mrmeaning says:
  
  Aug 25, 2020 at 5:00 am
  
  Thanks for that, WVF – I hadn’t come across CZ’s book. Browne’s support for her does indeed speak to his good character.
  
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6. Anonymous says:
  
  Aug 25, 2020 at 7:48 pm
  
  👍🏽
  
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7. mrmeaning says:
  
  Aug 25, 2020 at 8:37 pm
  
  Thanks for the thumbs-up, ANONYMOUS. 👍
  
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James7777 says:

Jun 20, 2020 at 3:17 pm

Your great article is missing one very important piece of the puzzle. In a magazine interview, c. 2003, I presume, Daryl was asked—directly—to comment on the accuracy of the scenes in the JFK Jr. film that indicate Browne beat her up. There is no doubt as to what the interviewer was driving at: he was asking her yet again to confirm or deny that Jackson Browne beat her. Daryl responded, in effect, that the film was so full of lies and distortions that she had no comment about it. In short, years after the incident, she was given another chance to implicate Browne, and she chose not to do so. I took her answer to imply that the accusations were false. Sorry I cannot provide you with the source, but it was an American print magazine. There is no chance I am misconstruing Daryl’s response. Daryl’s comment partly explains the OnStage claim that Daryl has denied Browne hit her. (No, she doesn’t deny it in the response to the film, but she comes close).

And a side point. There is no chance in the world that Browne didn’t intend the word play in “Sky Blue and Black,” which I find to be the most lovely and sad song in Browne’s catalog of lovely and sad songs. I only take the wording to mean that relationships can leave us bruised; I don’t think he was commenting on the accusations.

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1. mrmeaning says:
  
  Jun 20, 2020 at 3:44 pm
  
  Thanks, James7777, for your comment, your compliment, and your information. I couldn’t find that Hannah interview, but if she basically said, No comment, I don’t think that adds much. You say she had another chance to implicate Browne and didn’t – but she never has! Regarding “Sky Black and Blue”, yes, relationships can leave you bruised (and Browne’s handy with a metaphor) but so can domestic violence. I’d keep that on the table.
  
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2. Anonymous says:
  
  Jun 18, 2021 at 7:06 pm
  
  I also remember by reading your last couple of paragraphs after I posted my opinion that they asked John F Kennedy Junior if he believed Daryl Hannah that Jackson Browne assaulted her and John said he didn’t believe Daryl- he believed Jackson!
  Yes it was a long long time ago but people like to bring up shit years later and continue and continue – I want no more part of this gossip and lies about Jackson I’m going back to enjoy seeing him and hearing him play his unbelievable music-Babye.
  Hopefully I will see him in concert this year which is 2021 I don’t know when all this was written I just came across it and had to comment.
  
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3. mrmeaning says:
  
  Jun 18, 2021 at 9:45 pm
  
  Yes, give him the benefit of the doubt and enjoy the wonderful music.
  
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riverofheart says:

May 30, 2020 at 8:03 pm

I googled the relationship of Jackson Browne & Daryl Hannah after watching the music video for “Tender is The Night” featuring both of them … circa 1983 … its spooky how the music video foreshadows their eventual breakup in 1992 … including the scenes of them fighting together, and Daryl packing up her things and later riding off in a car driven by a guy who vaguely resembles John Kennedy Jr …

What we call “domestic abuse” is created by, and adds to, the suffering in the hearts of both participants in the relationship … (my alcoholic grandfather beat my grandmother many times before she finally left him … both were very troubled souls and needed help to break the cycle of violence they were in) …

Instead of trying to determine who is to blame, lets focus on how we can more deeply understand the roots of these painful experiences and do more to reduce the current and potential future suffering of those involved.

Your story, in spite of its emphasis on determining whether or not Jackson Browne is a “domestic abuser”, does a great job of revealing the complexity of these situations and the roots that go deep into each person’s psychological background. Thank you.

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1. riverofheart says:
  
  May 30, 2020 at 8:17 pm
  
  Ps: having said all that, i also believe that legal action is sometimes required to prevent the stronger partner in a relationship from continuing to injure the weaker partner … and that usually requires establishing “who is to blame” … deeper understanding is helpful … and at the same time, doing whatever is needed to stop the violence is also extremely important … such sad situations …
  
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2. mrmeaning says:
  
  May 30, 2020 at 11:10 pm
  
  Thanks for your Comments, riverofheart. I hadn’t seen that video. It’s kind of prescient, isn’t it. Yes, anyone being abused needs to go to the police for help. In this case, whatever happened was a long time ago, so if they’d say what happened, then the disturbing rumour that a good guy did a bad thing could finally be resolved and perhaps understood.
  
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"K" says:

Apr 7, 2020 at 5:07 am

The quandary seems to be that the facts cannot be established. If a man has done a crime, then he can do time. People can weigh it up and forgive him. An innocent man may be wrongfully convicted too. A criminal may also go free without anyone suspecting what he or she has done. However, the further away from the event, the less it matters to me.
I don’t see equivalence, but murder cases are known when the facts are clear, and a family member of the victim publically forgives the killer. In the case of Mr. Browne here, no one has died. If he was innocent, no one would need to forgive him, and if he did beat Ms. Hannah, people would have to decide whether to forgive or not, but as the facts are unclear, that stage cannot be reached.
I posit that given the stakes (whether to go to a concert, whether to play an album) are so trivial, moving to forgiving and forgetting even if the very worst were true is reasonable. Consider that if you ever knew the whole truth about everything and refused to cooperate at any level with the morally repugnant then you would have to live like a monk. By all means continue to investigate Mr. Browne if you must, but surely he is innocent unless proven guilty whatever the crime may be. Are other personal concerns not more pressing? If I were wronged then I would strive for justice, and if I wronged someone, then I hope that I would find the strength to confess and make amends, but whether Mr. Browne did something wrong doesn’t factor in my record buying habits. If Mr. Browne were beating a woman in front of me, I would strive to stop him. Trying to establish the facts in this case seems quixotic. However, showing that the case is not proven is useful.
Seriously, if you’re unsure if you can listen to Mr. Jackson Browne, then you can never listen to Mr. Warren Zevon.

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1. mrmeaning says:
  
  Apr 7, 2020 at 6:30 am
  
  Thanks for that, “K”. Perhaps the whole thing is, as you say, relatively trivial. But I’ll take “Quixotic”! Re Warren Zevon, I never warmed to his music (sorry!). He apparently admitted and regretted the domestic abuse he inflicted on his wife. Not that that excuses him.
  
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2. Anonymous says:
  
  Jun 18, 2021 at 7:12 pm
  
  I said I was done discussing it -it was a long long time ago -John Kennedy jr believed Jackson I believe Jackson and that’s all that matters . Also Jacqueline Kennedy couldn’t stand Daryl Hannah and John dumped her Too
  The woman that has been with him now for years and years seems to be extremely happy. And I consider her to be very very lucky to have him and for him to have her since they both have so much in common. So nothing needs to be proven -it just needs to be dropped-
  Worry about today’s problems
  
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3. Anonymous says:
  
  Jun 18, 2021 at 7:16 pm
  
  I said I was done discussing it -it was a long long time ago -John Kennedy jr believed Jackson I believe Jackson and that’s all that matters . Also Jacqueline Kennedy couldn’t stand Daryl Hannah and John dumped her Too
  The woman that has been with him now for years and years seems to be extremely happy. And I consider her to be very very lucky to have him and for him to have her since they both have so much in common. So nothing needs to be proven -it just needs to be dropped-
  Worry about today’s problems
  I added a few more things in my comments so it’s not duplicated in fact I said nothing about his current girlfriend that has been living with him for many many years so I didn’t duplicate anything! and since you constantly keep bringing it up -I have to constantly tell you to shut up. And move on with your lives & Not LIES-Now 👋🏻👋🏻👋🏻
  
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4. mrmeaning says:
  
  Jun 18, 2021 at 9:22 pm
  
  Er… Right. Thanks for that. 🤔
  
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Alan Smith says:

Mar 1, 2020 at 5:43 pm

I think it’s genuinely admirable that you have tried to present a balanced and impartial picture of the evidence against Browne and the evidence in his favour. It’s an intelligent analysis, mainly free of slewing in favour of political correctness. My reservation is that much of the debate pivots on the assumption that Browne’s behaviour has to be the main issue. If he is innocent, then the main issue would in fact be Daryl Hannah’s behaviour: i.e. her apparent willingness to let an allegation to hang in the air, unformalised and thus undefendable, which has come close to destroying a man.

If Browne is indeed innocent, his refusal to make definitive comment in deference to an earlier covenant between Hannah and himself would place him on considerably higher moral ground than Hannah – i.e. it takes exceptional integrity to allow one’s name to be dragged through the mud in preference to breaking a promise to someone who has helped that to happen – even if by omission rather than commission.

I personally have come across nothing which conclusively supports any of the four possible positions – i.e: 1) that Browne assaulted Hannah; 2) that someone else assaulted her; 3) that Hannah self-harmed; 4) that Browne was defending himself against an assault by Hannah.

The only conclusively demonstrated fact about anyone’s behaviour concerns neither Hannah nor Browne, but Joni Mitchell. The lines below are from her song of judgment on Jackson Browne, ‘Not To Blame’.

I heard your baby say
When he was only three
“Daddy, let’s get some girls
One for you and one for me”
His mother had the frailty
You despise
And the looks you love
To drive to suicide

Even Mitchell’s apparently rather sudden conversion to feminism circa her fiftieth birthday does not excuse the perniciousness of these lines. That Browne has resisted putting out a tit-for-tat song is maybe one more indicator of his integrity. In his place I’d have been itching to put something called ‘Vengeful Little Goddess’ on my next album.

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1. mrmeaning says:
  
  Mar 1, 2020 at 6:25 pm
  
  Thanks for your comment, Alan. You say that if Browne’s innocent the main issue is Hannah’s behaviour. I agree. She should say what really happened. As for Browne’s integrity in keeping his promise and allowing his reputation to be compromised, its been more a necessity than a virtue. He could say what happened – and I think he should – but without Hannah’s corroboration, it’d be just his word. As for Joni Mitchell, vengeful goddess is about right!
  
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2. Alan Smith says:
  
  Mar 1, 2020 at 6:56 pm
  
  You might be right. But none of us knows what the promise was. If it was, for instance, ‘I will never reveal anything about you to the media or anyone else’, then he’s stuck with that.
  
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3. mrmeaning says:
  
  Apr 7, 2020 at 7:06 am
  
  Sometimes you have to break a promise. If it was about Hanna’s autism, she’s since been open about that.
  
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4. mrmeaning says:
  
  Jun 2, 2021 at 3:11 pm
  
  I’ve used ‘vengeful goddess’ in ‘Browne’s relationship with Joni Mitchell/Not to Blame’ – and attributed it to you!
  
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Lanaki says:

Jul 15, 2019 at 4:43 pm

Thank you for this very thorough piece. I was researching this “old” story to see if there was any “new” information and came across your research here.

I have also been reluctant to listen to or go to a Jackson Browne show because of these allegations. I have season passes to an upcoming music festival where he is playing. I am selling that one ticket (my husband still wants to go but I refuse to) as can not see fit to contribute to him. I really do wish someone would come out and clear the air. In the meantime I will lean towards supporting domestic abuse victims and NOT attend.

Thank you again for trying to do what others will not. We can only hope that one day the truth will come out.

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1. mrmeaning says:
  
  Jul 15, 2019 at 8:15 pm
  
  Thanks for your comment, Lanaki. And thanks for your thanks. If Browne respected his fans’ concern about domestic abuse, he’d explain what happened.
  
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2. Lanaki says:
  
  Jul 16, 2019 at 1:21 am
  
  Exactly!!!
  
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mrmeaning says:

Jul 10, 2019 at 3:36 pm

Thanks for your comment, Robert. I can’t imagine how bad it must feel to be falsely accused of domestic violence – especially if there’s no court hearing, and you’ve had no chance to test the accusation and put your side of the story. However, I haven’t “convicted” Browne – in fact I’ve said I think he’s probably innocent.

If someone’s falsely accused, they can sue the accuser and so test the accusation in court. However, in spite of the wide-spread rumour, Hannah never accused Browne. Hannah’s uncle did accuse him, but instead of suing the uncle Browne aparently came to a private agreement with him. Then two film companies made or implied an accusation, and Browne won defamation hearings against them.

There was no police investigation (other than a perfunctory five-minute doorway visit), so no charge was brought and there was no court hearing at which Browne could have defended himself. With his public platform, however, Browne could have told his side of the story – but he hasn’t. With the uncle, he threatened to go public – and the uncle piped down. With the film companies, he supposedly relied on an extremely shaky police “statement”, but – more pertinently – apparently gambled successfully on the companies’ reluctance to take on a difficult, high-profile case.

If I’d set out to convict (or, for that matter, to acquit) Browne, my position would indeed be “abhorrent”. But I didn’t. So I don’t think it is. (Nice word, though.)

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Robert says:

Jul 10, 2019 at 2:54 am

As someone who was falsely accused of domestic violence, I find your default position of convicting Browne positively abhorrent. With no evidence and no firm accusations, you still put him on trial? Put yourself in his, or my, or any other falsely-accused’s shoes.

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mrmeaning says:

Jan 29, 2019 at 12:08 am

Thanks for your comments, MEASWELL, NOONEWANTSLITIGATION. Not sure what you mean, though. Are you referring to the fact that Wikipedia’s entry on Browne strangely has no mention of the incident or its aftermath? As for ‘editing’ and ‘fixing’, any specific suggestions would be welcome. I suppose it’s a bit long – but it’s all relevant! Re archiving on archive.com, it sounds like a good idea, but, having registered, I couldn’t find out how to archive a blogpost.

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1. mrmeaning says:
  
  Feb 1, 2019 at 10:26 am
  
  Apparently, WP.com users can add a “page” with the text “[archive]” which allows archive sites such as archive.org to “scrape” your blog. Sounds painful. I’ve done that. I don’t think there’s any danger of Browne suing, though. Apart from his wierdly successful two defamation claims (see above), he seems to prefer what he apparently thinks is a dignified silence. Also, I’ve said that I think he probably didn’t do it!
  
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MeAsWell, NoOneWantsLitigation says:

Jan 28, 2019 at 5:21 pm

FYI — I recommend that this page is archived on ARCHIVE.ORG so that if JB finds it and sues, at least the research won’t be lost.

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MeAsWell, NoOneWantsLitigation says:

Jan 28, 2019 at 5:19 pm

VERY irritating that I had to find a link to this page, from another source, just to discover what the controversy was. I at least thought that Wikipedia was an “honest enough” source to at least mention that there was a controversy. (Note that the “talk pages” still reference some of this.)

But no… These days we must erase any signs of “what was” for either (deserved real) fear of litigation, or the now politically correct notion that we must not be exposed to anything that might have (now) become unacceptable and “harmful” to the newly formed fragile snowflakes growing in academia. OK, this could use editing…. but, I’ve got real work that needs my time for now, more than fixing this…

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1. mrmeaning says:
  
  Feb 16, 2020 at 7:40 pm
  
  Update Feb 2020: I just checked Wikipedia and saw that it now mentioned the allegation and gave three references (all of which are covered in my post). I signed up as wikipedia editor and added a fourth link – to my post. How long will it last?
  
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Nobuddy says:

Sep 23, 2018 at 8:41 am

Sad story.
Well, at least she is married to someone that’s nice to her.

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1. mrmeaning says:
  
  Sep 23, 2018 at 9:20 am
  
  Thanks for your comment, Nobuddy (sad name!). Yes, Young seems to be – like Browne, I’d say – a good guy.
  
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mrmeaning says:

Mar 5, 2018 at 7:11 pm

Thanks very much for your comment, Moldenke, and your polite correction. (Actually, according to the Wikipedia entry for Browne’s Running on Empty album on which the song appears, Browne and Glenn Frey rewrote all the Rev’s lyrics – apart from the line, ‘Cocaine all around my brain’, and they even rewrote that as ‘Cocaine, running ’round my brain’).

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1. Anonymous says:
  
  Mar 7, 2018 at 1:55 am
  
  Yes, the lyrics were modified considerably. Intersting to hear that Glenn Frey was involved. Thanks.
  
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moldenke says:

Mar 5, 2018 at 4:54 pm

FYI — Jackson Browne did NOT write the song “Cocaine.” it was written by the Rev. Gary Davis, a very fine composer and musician.

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Jane says:

Jan 1, 2018 at 7:50 pm

Hi soothfairy — Good post, thanks. You should add “crown prosecutor” to your list of alternate parallel-universe lives. You’d have probably made a good one (I know, because I was one for many years and am still working full-time in the American criminal justice system). Nice presentation and analysis of competing facts and explanations. I was once again wondering whether I could go back to listening to Mr. Browne’s work with these allegations still out there and unresolved, and after reading your excellent evidentiary compilation, have decided that, like you, I cannot. While I agree that it has not been established that he committed an assault (and very likely never will be), there is enough in the tale that is too similar to the hundreds (if not thousands) of domestic-violence reports I have read for me to be able to set it aside and enjoy his music again. It is tainted indeed. Just like what happened to my two decades of fandom for Mr. Townshend and The Who after his exceedingly suspicious arrest and morphing explanations for his accessing of internet child porn. I simply cannot put it out of my mind when I listen to his music, so I don’t anymore. For better or worse, I can separate some (alleged) artists’ behavior from their work, but apparently not these kinds of allegations.

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1. mrmeaning says:
  
  Jan 1, 2018 at 10:55 pm
  
  Thanks for your comment, Jane, and your kind words. Yes, you’re right, I should have been a lawyer! Maybe I should start another one on Townsend. Or maybe not. The Who’s 60s pop hits were brilliant, but I don’t play them like I’d play a 70s album by JB or Joni or whoever. So it’s not such a dilemna for me as with JB.
  
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2. mrmeaning says:
  
  Jan 10, 2018 at 6:37 pm
  
  Although, if you check the Wikipedia entry for Townshend (I spelt it right this time!), there are links to a subsequent investigation by the highly reputable Duncan Campbell which show that Mr T didn’t actually do anything wrong. Phew! I can listen to My Generation with a clear conscience!
  
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3. mrmeaning says:
  
  Oct 18, 2019 at 8:15 pm
  
  I must admit, though, I DO still listen to his music. Well, the Late for the Sky album anyway. I wouldn’t go to a show, though. Call me a hypocrite. But listening is private, whereas going to a show is public acceptance. That’s my excuse. 😳
  
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Matt Gettys says:

Nov 13, 2017 at 11:43 pm

Great read sir. You have skills. I agree with your statement of overlooking some flaws in artists we like but abuse doesn’t get a pass from me either.

I appreciate your research.

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1. mrmeaning says:
  
  Nov 14, 2017 at 12:51 am
  
  Thanks for your kind comment, Matt. I appreciate your appreciation!
  
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Laura says:

Jul 19, 2017 at 10:30 am

Although I Didn’t learn anything new from your article, thank you for writing it. I think they should explain as well. I have researched this a lot and.too have stayed away from Jackson Browne. I struggle with this everytime I hear his songs, he comes up in conversation or I see him somewhere. This whole thing was very public so I think it should really be explained. Woody Allen is another artist that has a dark cloud over is head. We see our heros fail and it’s sad but it’s worse when we are not sure. Keep us up.to date if.anything more surfaces. I would like to enjoy his music once more but because of this it feels tainted. Thank you again.

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1. mrmeaning says:
  
  Jul 19, 2017 at 11:01 am
  
  Thanks for your comment, Laura – and your encouraging words. You say you’ve researched this a lot. Are you by any chance Laura the lawyer quoted on the Findadeath forum? (http://www.findadeath.com/forum/showthread.php?22538-Jackson-Brown/page2&styleid=10findadeath%20forums) You say you learnt nothing new. Had you seen the 1994 US Weekly interview by Fred Schruers? I hadn’t seen that anywhere else – I managed to get the Library of Congress to send me a scan. I thought that, at least, would be new to most readers!
  
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2. mrmeaning says:
  
  Jul 22, 2017 at 10:01 am
  
  I’ve just realised that the 1994 interview wasn’t in celebrity magazine ‘US Weekly’ but was in in a classier earlier version of that magaine, the monthly film and music magazine, ‘US’. (I’ve changed all the references to the interview in the post )
  
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3. Georgiab says:
  
  Nov 5, 2017 at 10:55 pm
  
  ‘Jackson wouldn’t hurt a fly’ was said frequently by his contemporaries, note David Crosby called Hannah poison, and now she has her claws into Neil Young who is vulnerable. I knew a lot of his contemporaries and they all said she was a psycho and it never occurred to them that anybody would believe her. I always give the woman the benefit of the doubt, but not this one. And by lending her ‘story’ to the Weinstein narrative, I believe she is causing victims harm because of her lack of credibility.
  
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4. mrmeaning says:
  
  Nov 6, 2017 at 12:43 am
  
  Thanks for your heartfelt comment, GIORGIAB. I’ve just googled Hannah’s Weinstein story – it sounds believable. I can’t agree that she has a lack of credibilty which harms other victims of sexual harassment and abuse – after all, as far as I know, she never publicly accused Browne of assaulting her. As for David Crosby’s ‘poison’ comment, Rolling Stone said: ‘Eight months after causing a major rift with Neil Young when he labeled his girlfriend Daryl Hannah a “purely poisonous predator,” David Crosby went onto the Howard Stern Show and offered a heartfelt apology. “I was completely out of line,” he said. “I have screwed up massively…She’s making Neil happy. I love Neil and I want him happy.”‘ (http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/david-crosby-apologizes-to-neil-young-daryl-hannah-20150518)
  
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5. mrmeaning says:
  
  Nov 6, 2017 at 11:44 am
  
  Sorry GEORGIAB – misspelt your name 😦
  
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Anonymous says:

Apr 20, 2017 at 11:48 pm

Good blog.

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1. mrmeaning says:
  
  Apr 21, 2017 at 5:53 am
  
  Thanks!
  
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JC Jacobi says:

Mar 25, 2017 at 5:42 pm

Jackson owes the world nothing but his art, which he creates, for fans to purchase. You missed a great performer over bullshit innuendo. Bummer.

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1. mrmeaning says:
  
  Mar 25, 2017 at 6:03 pm
  
  Thanks for your comment, JC. I’m sorry you think my post is BS. (I don’t think there’s any innuendo, though.) Perhaps you don’t think domestic abuse is a serious matter. You might be in a minority, there.
  
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2. mrmeaning says:
  
  Mar 25, 2017 at 6:53 pm
  
  You might be right about him not owing anything, though. Perhaps I went too far with that…
  
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3. mrmeaning says:
  
  Mar 26, 2017 at 8:17 am
  
  So I’ve taken that bit out.
  
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4. mrmeaning says:
  
  Apr 7, 2017 at 8:03 am
  
  I found some innuendo (we Brits love a bit of innuendo) and took it out. (What was it? You’ll never know.) I’ve edited the post a lot since the ‘bullshit’ comment. I hope its a lot clearer now.
  
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5. mrmeaning says:
  
  Nov 14, 2017 at 1:44 am
  
  I’ve just realised – JC’s ‘BS’ comment was about the rumour, not my post. Oops.
  
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6. GDOLen says:
  
  Oct 25, 2017 at 12:17 pm
  
  The logical thing for Hannah’s sister to have done would be to take photos and have them published. THAt would have given credibility to the claims and leverage in the property settlement. Not doing so makes me think Browne’s story isn’t more believable.
  
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7. mrmeaning says:
  
  Oct 25, 2017 at 1:24 pm
  
  Thanks for your comment, GDOLEN. Hannah’s sister took her to a local hospital, apparently, and presumably called her uncle, who said in his letter to US that he took photographs of Hannah in the hospital.
  
  I didn’t know there was a property settlement. A quick Google hasn’t shown anything. Please tell me more!
  
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Bobby Voltage says:

Feb 12, 2017 at 4:55 pm

I’ve researched this topic as I am a huge fan of Jackson Browne. Nothing is definitive. I’ve heard it did happen and that it didn’t. Apparently, Jackson hasn’t been nice to a lot of his exes. However, he did get a beautiful Martin D-48 acoustic as a gift from Laura Nyro while they dated. One story I’ve heard that makes me not believe it is about Jackson and Nico. Jackson really helped her out. Gave her songs, played with her, etc. She was addicted to heroin and flipped out on him and attacked him during a concert. She looked at him and said, “I know what you’re up to.” She then tried to physically attack him. In Jackson’s defense, a few people have said how crazy Daryl Hannah is. She recently revealed she is autistic, Browne never knew this. Certain parties claim this attributed directly to the dissolution of the relationship. There is some good info on the subject, you just have to dig and know what you’re looking for.

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1. mrmeaning says:
  
  Feb 12, 2017 at 6:08 pm
  
  Thanks, Bobby, for your very interesting comment. You certainly seem better informed than me (not that that’s saying much). It’s natural to want the life of an artist you admire to be as good as their art, but unfortunately they’re usually f****d up in some way or other. Perhaps it’s the price they pay, like Robert Johnson at the crossroads. Many excesses, deviations and character defects can be overlooked, but not, IMHO, domestic abuse. If Browne is innocent, he should break his silence and explain it. (Re autism, I don’t think it can be caused by trauma. As far as I know, Hanna would have been born with it.)
  
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2. mrmeaning says:
  
  Feb 12, 2017 at 11:05 pm
  
  Sorry, Bobby, I’ve just realised (Duh) that you meant that Hannah’s autism, unkown to Browne, contributed to their breakup. Perhaps, knowing that she had problems, he didn’t want to add to them by explaining what really happened. Perhaps.
  
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