On 6.5.12 I posted about a chat I had with Jackson Browne way back when. (It was actually a four-way — Browne, myself and a couple of pretty ladies.) It was at some kind of political fundraiser that Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon were attending. (Or so I recall.) It was at the Mondrian on Sunset, around late ’94 or early ’95. And I was very favorably impressed by Browne’s manner and focus.
When you collar a celebrity at a party, it’s understood that you’ll have his/her attention for maybe two or three minutes, and then someone else will move in. Browne was different in that we were talking about something political, and he didn’t respond to others trying to wheedle in on the conversation. We all stayed focused and just hung in there for 20 or 25 minutes, which is an eternity at a party.
I liked how Browne seemed to think in long sentences, and how he stayed with a thought (his or someone else’s) and how he tried to develop it and push it along, and how he really seemed to listen and engage and make an effort to stay away from the usual chit-chat. Yes, he may have been persisting in the conversation because he liked the ladies. But one can usually sniff out hounds and their personalities, and my sense was that Browne wasn’t one.
For years I’d been a fan of Browne’s songs like everyone else, but after that night I knew first-hand that he was genuine and grounded as far as it went, and that he really disliked being glib or skirting or going “yeah, yeah, uh-huh” without really listening.
I can’t recall if it was a post-Oscar party, but it might have been. The subject may have been the Gingrich revolution and the piece I had just written Hollywood conservativbes for Los Angeles magazine, which was eventually called “Right Face“.
Pete Hammond says Barbra Streisand is like Browne in this respect. Engage her in a good political discussion and she’ll stick with it.
