"These Days" is a song written by Jackson Browne and principally recorded by Nico, Gregg Allman, and Browne himself in three distinctly different musical styles. Though the song was first recorded by Nico in 1967, Browne had written an early version of the song several years earlier, at the age of 16.
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In the mid-to-late 1960s Browne was a precocious songwriter who was pitching his material to various artists and publishing houses. On January 7, 1967 he made some demo recordings for Nina Music Publishing at Jaycino Studio in New York City.[1] (An unplanned double album of these recordings was made by Nina Music, with 100 copies issued.) Included in these demos, and the third song on this "record," was "I've Been Out Walking," the earliest manifestation of "These Days". Yet the song was even older than that; Browne would later say he wrote it when he was sixteen years old,[2] meaning in 1964 or 1965.
German model and singer Nico was the first to record "These Days" for release, on her October 1967 album Chelsea Girl. The production featured a fairly fast, almost upbeat fingerpicking electric guitar part by Browne (suggested by Andy Warhol[3]), combined with strings and flutes (added after the fact by producer Tom Wilson, without Nico's knowledge).[4]
While Nico never achieved much commercial visibility, her work caught the attention of other musicians and songwriters. And of Browne's catalogue during this period, "These Days," along with his "Shadow Dream Song," were regarded as his gems.[5] Thus "These Days" was recorded in 1968 by The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band on their album Rare Junk, by Tom Rush on his 1970 self-titled album, by Jennifer Warnes (as "Jennifer") in 1972 (this version was produced by John Cale, who also played on Nico's Chelsea Girl album), by Kenny Loggins' first band, Gator Creek, around the same time, and by Ian Matthews on his 1973 album Valley Hi.
By 1973, Jackson Browne had become a successful recording artist, and not having raided his back catalogue for the first album, was now more willing to do so for this second, For Everyman. This "These Days" was considerably different in several ways from the Nico effort. Some lyrics were changed or omitted, such as a couple of lines about "rambling" and "gambling". The fingerpicking guitar figure was replaced with flatpicking, and the instrumentation was typical of early 1970s Southern Californian folk rock — drums, bass, piano, acoustic guitar, but most prominently with David Lindley's slide guitar, a prominent feature of Browne's early albums.[4] Nico's cool delivery was replaced by Browne's warmer, singer-songwriter-style approach.[4]
The For Everyman liner notes thanked Gregg Allman for the arrangement. Allman decided to record his own version of "These Days" for his debut solo album, Laid Back, released like For Everyman in Fall 1973. Allman's version kept to Browne's revised lyric until the end, when he changed "Don't confront me with my failures / I had not forgotten them," to "Please don't confront me with my failures / I'm aware of them." Rolling Stone praised the treatment, saying Allman "does full justice to the quietly hurting lyrics, double-tracking the vocal over a sad steel guitar," and calling the vocal quality "resigned" and "eternally aching."[6] In 1999, writer Anthony DeCurtis called Allman's version "definitive".[7]
Many years later, Browne would describe the inspiration he credited: "When [Allman] did it I thought that he really unlocked a power in that song that I sort of then emulated in my version. I started playing the piano. I wasn't trying to sing it like Gregg; I couldn't possibly. I took the cue, playin' this slow walk. But it was written very sort of, kind of — [strums opening to 'These Days'] — a little more flatpicking."[8]
While neither version was released as a single, both Browne's and Allman's "These Days" recordings gained airplay on progressive rock radio stations and became the most-heard interpretations of the song. The song was included on both of Browne's "best of" albums, The Next Voice You Hear: The Best of Jackson Browne and The Very Best of Jackson Browne, and on both of Allman's compilations, The Millennium Collection: The Best of Gregg Allman and (in a live version) No Stranger to the Dark: The Best of Gregg Allman.[9]
When Allman toured as a solo act, he generally kept "These Days" in his concert repertoire. Browne was a different story. It had appeared in his concerts since before he had a recording contract, and stayed in through the 1970s, usually played on piano in a surprising segue out of his biggest hit single, "Doctor My Eyes". But by 1980 he had graduated from halls and outdoor amphitheatres to arenas, and "These Days" disappeared from his set lists, perhaps because he felt it no longer effective in those settings. Save for the occasional acoustic show or benefit show, the song was not heard again until the late 1990s, as Browne was again playing smaller venues, often solo, and where it began to reappear out of the "Doctor My Eyes" segue again.
"These Days" gained renewed visibility when the Nico recording was included in a scene in the 2001 Wes Anderson film The Royal Tenenbaums. As Jackson Browne would later describe it, "I forgot that I'd licensed them to use this song. And this is one of those things that comes to you in the mail and you don't know what they're talking about and you simply give them their permission. You're sitting in the movie theater and there's this great moment when Gwyneth Paltrow is coming out of a bus or something like that. I'm thinking to myself, I used to play the guitar just like that. And then the voice comes on and it's Nico singing 'These Days', which I played on."[8]
Nico's "These Days" was included on both versions of The Royal Tenenbaums soundtrack.
Later, a 2002 Kmart commercial looped the guitar part from the Nico recording.[4]
There was a new wave of covers of the song, with some emulating either Nico or Browne while others reimagined it in other ways.[10]
Given this new attention, Browne began playing "These Days" in concert on a regular basis, but on acoustic guitar and in a new style. He now starts with the fingerpicking guitar part but continues in a technique and feel that falls between the Nico and Browne recordings.[2] Indeed he would say, "And now I've learned how to play the Nico version, which we sort of made up for her. [Imitates Nico's version of "These Days"] Fabulous you know..."[8] It was included on Browne's 2005 live album, Solo Acoustic, Vol. 1, including a humorous spoken introduction about the origins of the song.
The Allman Brothers Band themselves would include the song for the first time in their concerts, featuring it on their March 2005 "Beacon run" with Gregg Allman and Warren Haynes both playing acoustic guitar and sharing dual vocals.
Pitchfork Media's 2006 ranking of "The 200 Greatest Songs of the 1960s" placed the Nico "These Days" at number 31.
The best-known sountrack usage of "These Days" was in the 2001 film The Royal Tenenbaums. Other soundtrack appearances include:
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