TAKE IT EASY

Well I'm a-running down the road trying to loosen my load
I've got seven women on my mind
Four that want to own me, two that want to stone me
One says she's a friend of mine

Take it easy, take it easy
Don't let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy
Lighten up while you still can
Don't even try to understand
Just find a place to make your stand and take it easy

Well I'm a-standin' on the corner in Winslow, Arizona
With such a fine sight to see
It's a girl, my lord, in a flatbed ford
Slowin' down to take a look at me

Come on baby, don't say maybe
I've got to know if your sweet love is gonna save me
We may lose and we may win
But we will never be here again
Open up I'm climbin' in to take it easy

Well I'm a-running down the road trying to loosen my load
Got a world of trouble on my mind
Lookin' for a lover who won't blow my cover
She's just a little hard to find
Take it easy, take it easy
Don't let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy
Come on baby, don't say maybe
I've got to know if your sweet love is gonna save me

You know we got it easy
We oughta take it easy

Co-written by Jackson Browne and Glenn Frey, and originally performed by Jackson Browne. Bruce played electric guitar and sang back-up on TAKE IT EASY on 16 Mar 2004 at the Beacon Theater, New York, NY. These lyrics refer to Jackson Browne's original version.

From Backstreets.com:

24 hours after inducting him into the Rock 'N' Roll Hall Of Fame, Springsteen performed with Jackson Browne, at Browne's Beacon Theatre show in New York City [on 26 Mar 2004]. After watching much of the show with Patti Scialfa from the audience, Springsteen came out for the last encore, closing the show with TAKE IT EASY. Bruce played electric guitar and sang back-up on the song that Browne co-wrote with Glenn Frey.

Bruce's speech inducting Jackson Browne into the Rock 'N' Roll Hall Of Fame:

(With the music of ADAM RAISED A CAIN being played in the background and the audience cheering, Bruce was presented: "Here to induct Jackson Brown into the Rock 'N' Roll Hall Of Fame, Hall Of Fame inducting Bruce Springsteen")

Thanks you. Uh... Alright, I first met Jackson, I first met Jackson Browne in the early seventies. It was at the Bitter End. I was brought down there by David Blue, a folk singer, after a set I did at Max's Kansas City. And on David Blue's word, Jackson was uh, kind enough to let uh, somebody he'd just met get up on stage and play a song during his set. And I watched Jackson play, that night he was accompanied by his great sideman, David Lindley. As I listened that night I knew that this guy was simply one of the best. Each song was like a diamond and my first thought was "damn, he's good". And my second thought was "I need less words".

And uh, the emotions of all the music was right out there on the sleeve and I've remained a major, major fan since then. I remember watching him that night and he was kinda quintessentially California. He's right down to like, you know the, the lost surfer haircut, uh, good looking guy, great songwriter, and we became pretty friendly. So over the next few years, Jackson was gracious enough to let me open up at several of his gigs.

Now being a little competitive, the first thing I noticed was Jackson didn't have much of a show. He just stood there in the baggy jeans and the T-shirt, singing his serious songs. That was it! Being a little competitive, I also noticed that Jackson drew an enormous amount of good looking women. Great looking women, who stood there staring at the stage, entranced. His hair was perfect. And that was something I aspired to myself. Both the hair and the women.

So tonight, this is an unlooked, looked at part of Jackson's work that I'd like to focus on for a moment. Uh, the great songwriting? Alright, I could deal with that. I don't need to stand here tonight and dwell on the obvious. But the gals that came to the show! You see, what most people don't realize - and for me this was a big part of Jackson's Rock 'N' Roll credentials - is that Jackson Browne was a bona fide Rock 'N' Roll sex star. And, my wife says he still is. He tried to hide it but not too much, I guess. Now being a little competitive, I also noticed that while the E Street Band and I were sweating our asses off for hours just to put some fannies in the seats, that obviously due to what must've been some strong homo-erotic undercurrent in our music, we were drawing rooms filled with men. And, not that great looking men either. Well, meanwhile, Jackson is drawing more women than an Indigo Girls show.

So, yeah, alright it's, it's true, it's true that, that Jackson wrote some of the most beautiful breaking up music, break your heart music of all: "Sky Blue And Black", "Linda Paloma", "In The Shape Of A Heart". I think that what drew women to Jackson, besides the obvious, uh was that they finally felt they were listening to a guy who knew as much about love as they did. And what drew men to Jackson, besides the obvious, I guess, was that when they listened to him, they realized they knew more about love than they thought they did.

In the seventies post-Vietnam America, there was no album that captured the fall from Eden, the long slow after-burn of the sixties, it's heartbreak, it's disappointments, it's spent possibilities better than Jackson's masterpiece "Late For The Sky". You know, it's uh, it's just a beautiful body of work, it's essential in making sense of the times. "Before The Deluge" still gives me goosebumps and it raises me to cause. "Late For The Sky", when those car doors slam at the end of the record, they still bring tears. And there was no more searching, yearning, loving music made for and about America at the time.

In this and so much of Jackson's writing, the slow meticulous crafting of the songs, the thoughtfulness. Jackson was one of the first songwriters I met who demonstrated the value of thinking hard about what you were saying, in your subject; "The Pretender", "These Days", "For Everyman", "I'm Alive", "Fountain Of Sorrow", "Running On Empty", "For A Dancer", "Before The Deluge". Now, I know the Eagles got in first, but let's face it - and I think Don Henley would agree with me - these are the songs they wish they'd written. I, I wish I'd written them myself, along with "Like A Rolling Stone" and "Satisfaction".

But uh, Jackson's influence and his voice has always been his own. He's one of the few, true activist musicians I've ever known. "World In Motion", "Looking East", "Lives In The Balance", he followed his muse wherever it took him, risked his, and he paid whatever the cost. He's long put his mouth, his money, and his body where his politics are. "Lives In The Balance" sounds more urgent today than it ever did.

Well, The Beach Boys and Brian Wilson, they gave us California as paradise. And, Jackson Browne gave us "Paradise Lost". Now I always imagine, what if Brian Wilson, long after he'd taken a bite of that orange that the serpent offered to him, what if he married that nice girl in "Caroline No" - I always figured that she was pregnant anyway - and what if he moved into the valley and had two sons? One of them would have looked and sounded just like Jackson Browne. Cain of course, would've been Jackson's brother-in-arms, Warren Zevon. We love you Warren.

But Jackson to me, Jackson to me was always the tempered voice of Abel. Toiling in the vineyards, here to bear the earthly burdens, confronting the impossibility of love, here to do his father's work. Jackson's work was really California pop gospel. Listen to the chord changes of "Rock Me On The Water", "Before The Deluge", it's gospel through and through.

Now I always thought that in our fall from Eden, besides the strains of physicality and the bearing of earthly burdens, our real earthly task was that an unbridgeable gap, or a black hole was opened up in our ability to truly love one another. And so our job here on earth, and the way we regain our divinity, our sacredness, and our general good-standing, is by reconstructing love and creating love out of the broken pieces that we've been given. That's all we have of human promise. That's the way we prove ourselves in the eyes of God and facilitate our own redemption. Now to me, Jackson Browne's work was always the sound of that reconstruction. So as he writes in "The Pretender": "We'll put our dark glasses on, and we'll make love 'til our strength is gone, and when the morning light comes shinin' in, we'll get up and do it again". Amen.

Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming my very handsome friend, Jackson Browne into the Rock 'N' Roll Hall Of Fame.