The Permanent Holdout

Jackson Browne, His Music, His America

De: Cornel Bonca

Known for albums like Late for the Sky, The Pretender, and Running on Empty, Jackson Browne was a master of capturing the counterculture ethos of the 1960s. Cornel Bonca dives deeply into his music, his long fifty-year career, and activism—including environmentalism—within the context of American life, revealing a figure still fueled by certain American ideals like justice, freedom, and equality for all.
Browne grew up in Southern California in the early 1960s, greatly influenced by his mother’s progressive politics, the music of Bob Dylan and the speeches of Martin Luther King. Then, drawn to the Laurel Canyon rock scene, he moved to Los Angeles and established himself as a songwriter for The Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, and many others, becoming a fixture of the singer-songwriter movement in the early 1970s. His music in the 1980s was largely political in scope, critiquing America’s conservative turn, its militarism in Central America, its nuclear brinksmanship with the Soviet Union, and its dismantling of Great Society social programs. He only returned to the personal music his fans treasured in 1993 with I’m Alive.
Since then, Browne’s music has toggled back and forth between the personal and the political. He’s settled down into a long-term relationship with environmental activist Dianna Cohen and remained astonishingly active in local and national politics. This book dives into his music, life, and political activism in the changing face of America over the last fifty years, and why he still matters today.

Reseñas de la Crítica

Cornel Bonca offers thoughtful insight into the life of the genius singer, songwriter, musician, and entertainer that is Jackson Browne while never forgetting it’s all about the music. I highly recommend it. (Dicky Barrett)

A lyrical, fiercely intelligent book which places Jackson Browne in his proper context. Like all talented writers who venture to write about music, Bonca is unafraid to explore what the music did to him, personally—how it morphed his point of view and introduced him to a faraway world. Through Bonca’s ferocious intellect and elegant prose, we see the brilliance of one of the great songwriters of the twentieth century, the fractured America which gave him voice and—most of all—a glimpse of ourselves as we marvel at the beauty wrought from its failures. (Mikel Jollett)

In lively, accessible prose, Cornel Bonca explores Jackson Browne’s fifty-year career, persuasively demonstrating that Browne’s music and political commitments had their roots in the liberal humanism of the California counterculture of the 1960s. In a far-reaching work that is equally about Browne, the author’s own fifty-year engagement with Browne’s music, and, perhaps more than anything, about the slow-fading reverberations of the 1960s, Bonca depicts Browne and his music as cultivated by a sincere commitment to the universal human values. (Stephen Mexal)

The Permanent Holdout is … a thoughtful exploration of how one artist came to shape another person’s life. [Cornel] Bonca is the proxy for the rest of us, and as a guide to Browne’s music, he is a fine one as we go through the singer’s creative ups and downs. Fans of Jackson Browne should enjoy this one-man excavation of his work.

Bonca’s book on Browne is an excellent addition to the literature on this important US artist because Bonca not only provides another lens through which we can revisit the albums and biographical highlights but also brings us up to date on the output of this still active singer, songwriter, and activist.