Jackson Browne’s First Hit Single Was Inspired by a Temporary Loss of Vision

In 1972, Jackson Browne had his first hit with “Doctor, My Eyes”. His debut single, Browne wrote the song by himself for his eponymous freshman record. Browne would go on to write plenty of other hit songs throughout his career, both for himself and others, but perhaps none as personal as “Doctor, My Eyes”.

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The song begins with, “Doctor, my eyes have seen the years / And the slow parade of fears, without crying / Now I want to understand / I have done all that I could / To see the evil and the good without hiding / You must help me if you can / Doctor, my eyes / Tell me what is wrong / Was I unwise / To leave them open for so long?”

“I did, in fact, have something happen to my eyes,” Browne reveals. “They became red. I could barely see—I didn’t know what it was. They gave me some drops: ‘Keep your eyes shut for a few days.’ By the time I wrote this, I could see again. But it was a metaphor for having seen too much, a loss of innocence.”

Later, Browne reveals how his vision problems became the catalyst for a story that goes much deeper.

“My eye trouble was the initial inspiration for the song’s lyrics,” Browne says. “But as I wrote them, the eye issue became a metaphor for lost innocence and for having seen too much.”

Jackson Browne Found Success as a Songwriter

Browne wrote several of his own hits, including “Running On Empty”,  “Somebody’s Baby”, “For America”, and more. But he also had hits for other artists, including “Take It Easy” by the Eagles. Their first song, “Take It Easy” was written by Browne with band member Glenn Frey.

 “Jackson had shelved ‘Take It Easy’ because he couldn’t complete it, but it was Glenn who remembered the song from some time earlier and asked Jackson about it one day,” the Eagles’ Don Henley recalls. “I told him that I really liked it.”

“He started playing it for me and said, ‘Yeah, but I don’t know — I’m stuck,’” adds Frey. “So he played the second unfinished verse, and I said, ‘It’s a girl, my lord, in a flatbed Ford, slowin’ down to take a look at me.’”

Browne includes “Take It Easy” on his sophomore For Everyman album. Other songs Browne wrote for other artists include “Poor Poor Pitiful Me”, a hit for both Linda Ronstadt and Terri Clark, “These Days” by Nico, and more.

Photo by Ebet Roberts/Redferns