Middle of the Roadie

Jackson Browne - Running on Empty



This song sounds like it was written as the backing music for a beer commercial. You can almost picture three shiny white 30-something guys in cowboy hats sitting in the front of a pickup truck drinking beer and driving into the sun with this song playing in the background. They'd probably have guns too. It's not even a real song - it starts off pretending to be a live song and then sounds like it was recorded in a bathroom, which it probably was. Browne and his band recorded this road music(and their roadies) onstage, backstage, in various hotel rooms and on their tourbus. Thanks for the focus on production values, Jackson. That said, at least there's a song about a roadie masturbating to spice things up a bit

Country-tinged, soft focus guitar and piano, MOR vocals and even a slide guitar solo - this song (and album) has been described as the one album Jackson Browne's true fans don't own, and the one that everyone else does. Well, not me, obviously, because it sounds like Garth Brooks impregnated Boston. And, of course, this is an album that's been mythologised as the Odyssey of the tour band, a paen to the road musician, with Browne being compared to Gawain, of the Knights of the Round Table fame. So I suppose if Browne ever reads this he'll come and impale me with his lance (Ooo-er.. that said, I've heard it gets lonely on the road).

Well, I'll do my best to make it quick - this song is so middle of the road it wouldn't offend a nun with a hangover (I'll bet that even the song about the roadie jerking off is so MOR as to be innoffensive). I don't like it. It's a power-ballad to driving a big truck while wearing a cowboy hat.

I think you need to be an American to get it.