Jackson Browne and Staying Alive

by editor Michele Catalano

While I believed in true love when I was younger, I also knew there was a polar opposite of the heady feeling of falling fast in love, and to acknowledge that heartache and breakups existed was to acknowledge my dreams of romance were just flights of fancy. Once I recognized the possibilities of having my heart broken, I began to obsess over what it would be like to love someone so deeply that their leaving would render me helpless. 

I wanted to know what it was like to have lyrics to my favorite sad song resonate with me instead of just pretending that they did. I was maybe 14, my hormones were raging, and I had no idea if I wanted happiness or sadness, love or heart-wrenching agony. I was 20,  imagining myself a spurned woman, endlessly spinning sad records in my bedroom, crying and carrying on as each lyric imprinted itself on me. 

Little did I know that I was practicing for the future. There would come a time, or two or three times, when I would need those skills I honed. Wallowing, crying, and feeling sorry for myself would all come in handy in future years, as would the records I listened to while practicing my emotional death spiral. 

When the time came that my heart was actually broken, I automatically reached back to the albums that were with me during my bouts of cos-playing breakups. These were records that were not necessarily sad records to anyone else but gave me a sense of melancholy. Neil Young’s After the Gold Rush, Grateful Dead’s American Beauty (how can you not cry to “Brokedown Palace?”), even, to an extent, Rumours. They all evoked a sadness in me, an agony buried deep, slowly being uncovered. And now that my heartache was real, the tears came with such ease. Sometimes I couldn’t get them to stop.

I kept playing the same records when I felt down because they were familiar and provided comfort, and because they made me feel like I knew what I was doing to navigate life post-breakup.

I’d thumb through the music I had left after the divorce—he took so much of our shared Record World hoard— and look for something different when the sadness became too much of a rut. Nothing but the same albums ever called to me, but they were beginning to sound stale. One night, I decided to really take care in going through my collection instead of absentmindedly flipping through everything. And then I found it. Still in plastic wrap. A Jackson Browne album I’d never heard of and that my ex either didn’t see or didn’t want. The black and white cover was a picture of Browne submerged in a pool up to his neck. He looks like a man who has seen troubles.

I listened to enough Jackson Browne in high school to know what I was getting into by opening 1993’s I’m Alive. I was a little hesitant because how good could it be if I never heard of it? But it’s not as if I had exactly been keeping track of Browne. So that winter night in 1996—six weeks after my marriage ended—I took a chance and put on I’m Alive and  settled in for the long haul.

I never get past the first song. 

It started out as a jaunty little ditty. But then his voice kicked in. When he started singing, “I’m Alive” hit me in such a profound way that I lost my breath for a second.

It’s been a long time since I watched these lights alone

I look around my life tonight and you are gone

I might have done something to keep you if I’d known

How unhappy you had become

Oh boy. I felt like I had been kicked in the chest. I pushed on.

I want to go where I will never hear your name

I wanna lose my sorrow and be free again

All those years of practice and now here was the real thing. This was not a drill. My heart was really broken, my sadness was thick, my despair deep. And Jackson Browne was putting words to all of that.

I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want to feel this. I turned it off, put I’m Alive away, and made a vow that I was done listening to music that punched me in the gut. I put it away and did not give it another thought. 

In 2021. I was again in the throes of a marriage ending. I was again listening to sad, morose songs, trying to out-wallow teenage and young adult me. I was listening to the likes of the National and Phoebe Bridgers, and I spent a lot of time not only crying, but feeding into the despair with a passion I did not know I possessed. I was one with my sadness. 

I was looking for new depressing music as, once again, I was wearing out my usuals. Then a chance conversation with a friend about sad songs led him to recommend a song to me: Jackson Browne’s “I’m Alive.”

It had been over 30 years since I had listened to “I’m Alive.” Thirty years since it took my breath away with how much I felt it without even listening to the whole thing. I explained this to my friend, told him how I turned the song off because it was just too much. “Oh, no,” he said. “You did yourself a great disservice by not listening all the way through.” 

I took his word for it and decided to give it a full listen.

The first familiar verse, the one that shook me, so familiar even though I only heard it once. 

As I listened, I thought about everything that led me to this moment; the heartbreak, the tears, the years of suppressing my sadness, the end of my marriage. And then, Jackson’s sweet voice called to me.

Yeah, now I’m rolling down California five

With your laughter in my head

Gonna have to block it out somehow to survive

‘Cause those dreams are dead

I’m alive

I’m alive. I inhaled as I repeated that in my head. I’m alive.

If you’d have told me what was in your heart

But, baby, you lied

And I thought that it would kill me

But I’m alive

Yeah, I’m alive

Yeah, I’m alive

Yeah. Yeah. I am alive. No wonder my friend recommended the song, and no wonder he balked when he found out I didn’t listen all the way through the first time. The ending is a necessity. It’s a callout. It’s cathartic and profound. Just two simple words. 

I’m alive.

Whereas Jackson Browne once caused me to shut down, he was now, with the same song, propelling me forward, telling me it was okay because I was—I am—alive.

I had an epiphany of sorts that day. Oh, it did not cure my heartache, it did not make me stop crying. But it did make me appreciate the fact that, in the parlance of the kids, I lived, bitch. It’s a necessary song, even if I don’t listen to it. I have folded it up and put it in my pocket, and just knowing it’s there is enough.

Here’s a  slowed down version from The Road East - Live in Japan that you all might enjoy:

I Have That on Vinyl is a reader supported publication. If you enjoy what’s here please consider donating to the site’s writer fund: venmo // paypal. Tips go toward paying writers, an editor and for site maintenance, You can also join the Patreon