Browne takes a look back down his road

When Jackson Browne is ushered into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by Bruce Springsteen at the annual induction dinner Monday in New York City, he’ll join three other alumni of the Southern California singer-songwriter movement of the early 1970s: the Eagles (inducted in 1998), Joni Mitchell (1997) and Crosby, Stills & Nash (also ‘97).

The folk/country/rock amalgam formulated by these artists -- most of whom recorded for mogul-in-the-making David Geffen’s upstart Asylum Records -- was a potent force in the pop music of that decade.

Browne, who grew up in Highland Park and Fullerton, was the golden boy of that scene, a precocious folk-rock poet whose yearning voice and hymn-like melodies carried both youthful exuberance and apocalyptic foreboding through such albums as “For Everyman” and “Late for the Sky.”

The conventional wisdom is that Browne derailed his career by introducing more political commentary into his songs in the 1980s, but in an interview at his Santa Monica studio, Browne, 55, had a different explanation for his commercial drop-off.

And as a lifelong activist, he has no regrets: “I think those songs that I wrote about specific political things have not only found a place in people’s lives, but they’re also an important part of my life. So I don’t try to second-guess them.”

Question: What does it mean to you to be voted into the Hall of Fame?

Answer: Well, I’m tremendously honored to have my work find its place among the other work that has illuminated my whole life. It’s a thrill, because your life is made of this stuff, the music. It just winds up being woven into the fabric of your life. It’s a wonderful feeling to know that these songs are recognized as being part of people’s lives.

Q: Who were your key influences and inspirations in the beginning?

A: I grew up in that fertile folk music revival of the ‘60s, learning songs by Mississippi John Hurt and Dave Van Ronk and Doc Watson and Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan. There was that interplay between learning something and making something up that was a natural environment to begin writing songs. So I started writing songs when I was about 15. Leonard Cohen and Van Morrison were big influences too. I also read a lot ... Steinbeck, Kerouac. Irving Stone. What invariably happened was I would sit down and read, like, two pages of a James Baldwin novel and then go off and write a song, because it was such a potent catalyst.

Q: What was the impact of participating in the Southern California singer-songwriter scene?

A: Coming to Los Angeles and playing in clubs and at each others’ houses did shape me. Because for one thing, if you write a song and you play it yourself, that’s what you’ve got, but if you hear somebody else record your song or just sing it, it’s a thrilling thing.

Q: Is it true that David Geffen tried to sign you with Atlantic Records and Ahmet Ertegun turned him down and told him he should go start his own label?

A: I have a feeling it is, but Geffen never really told me about that. I know that he tried to place me at Elektra and Columbia and Atlantic. I like the story, because there’s triumph in there. David went his own way. David was sure of what he was hearing. And of all the stuff that’s been written about him, no one even mentions how much he loved music. He went around singing songs. To have this guy who was a businessman, the guy you trusted to represent you, be that knowledgeable about your work was a great affirmation.

Q: Did you ever come close to joining the Eagles?

A: In my dreams. [Laughs.] I didn’t have the skills to be in that band. They are really such disciplined singers. No, I don’t think so. You know, they had their own trajectory and I have always had mine

Q: Did you ever find yourself confined by that Southern California stereotype -- maybe trying to repeat the formula of one of your successful songs?

A: People were immediately saying, “Write another ‘Doctor My Eyes’ ” or “Write another ‘Take It Easy,’ ” and I used to look at them like, “Man, you don’t know what goes into these songs.” I can’t do anything on purpose. I don’t really know how to do that. It’s not where they come from. The songs come from experience and from emotion and from actually wrestling with questions, and maybe trying to draw up close enough to issues to get a glimpse of what’s going on inside you.

Q: In the late ‘70s, you shifted from a folk- and country-based sound to something close to mainstream rock. What was behind that?

A: Well, I started playing arenas, and that is a very physical thing to do. Volume became a very strong ally when you were playing to 20,000 people, and it changed my music. I don’t think it served my writing well. Impact and power and volume became a premium, and intimacy and vulnerability got put aside. I think it took awhile to get back to them.

Q: One reason your songs have resonated is that they seemed to reflect the collective feelings of your audience, the mood of the culture. Was that something you were trying to do?

A: I grew up in a time when everybody felt like they were going through something together. I don’t know if kids now feel that way or not. I felt a connection with people. Maybe because I hitchhiked everywhere and I was a hippie. I met people hitchhiking that I would spend two days with -- go home with and stay in their houses.

Q: “The Pretender” [1976] is usually interpreted as a comment on a surrender of those early ideals. Was that the intention?

A: Well, it wasn’t a full surrender, but I think I was talking about something that a lot of people were feeling. The thing you heard over and over again was how disillusioned we were with the ideals, the things that we fought for in the ‘60s. In “The Pretender,” I think it was enough to pick them up, hold them to the light, examine them, talk about the idea whether they were just dreams or whether they were still possible.

Q: How did you move into writing more specifically political songs?

A: I didn’t quite know how to write songs on social themes until later, but I grew up singing civil rights songs, songs they would sing at demonstrations and people’s houses. It was what I was reading about; it was what I was thinking about all the time. I think I read three books about the Vietnam War back-to-back one summer when I was touring, and then I read “Salvador” by Joan Didion, and I went, “Oh, my God, it’s 20 years later and the same kind of thing is happening. Policy is being made in secret.” Thought, “This can’t be happening again.” So when I began writing “Soldier of Plenty” and “Lives in the Balance,” I didn’t intend to write political songs. When you write and when you dream and when you imagine, the things are coming through you, they’re coming from what you’re dealing with, and they manifest themselves through playing.

Q: Do you think that was the cause of your commercial decline in the 1980s?

A: Maybe, but I don’t think so. I think there are other things, real considerations that were musical and personal that had more to do with it. Like abandoning intimacy in favor of aspiring to a kind of power or prowess in an arena, which is probably not what I do best.

Q: You’ve always performed for causes. Do you think the day of the large-scale political concert has passed -- things like the Amnesty Tour and the No Nukes concerts?

A: Don’t they seem to come around every 10 years or so? There’s the Free Tibet concert, which was done by the Beastie Boys, may I say, of all people. I went to see the Beastie Boys with Run-DMC with my 12-year-old son, and if you had told me at the Hollywood Bowl that those guys spitting beer all over each other were going to become human rights activists, well, I don’t know that I would have believed you.

It’s an odd thing, but life is long, and this music is something you have with you your whole life. It’s a magical thing, because it winds and curves and twists and turns and metamorphoses in so many ways.

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Jackson Browne

Where: Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, 2100 E. Thousand Oaks Blvd., Thousand Oaks

When: Friday, 8 p.m.

Price: $35 to $65

Contact: (805) 583-8700