Jackson Browne took time out to recall his most successful collaboration — the Eagles' 1971 signature tune “Take It Easy.” While chatting with Record Collector, he looked back at his days living under Glenn Frey and J.D. Souther in a basement apartment in L.A.'s Echo Park. Browne remembered when the stars aligned on a song he had left incomplete: “Glenn finished 'Take It Easy' for me because I’d got stuck and bored with it. He’d heard it countless times through the floorboards, and he said, 'Let me add something' so he came up with the line, 'There’s a girl, my Lord, in a flatbed Ford, slowing down to take a look at me.'”
He went on to say, “Glenn’s culminating line was perfect. He knew how to sum things up. He grabbed that line like Roy Orbison did on '(Oh) Pretty Woman': 'But wait. What do I see? Is she walking back to me? Yeah, she’s walking back to me.' He was a big Orbison fan, and he made my song universal when I’d have probably come up with something lame about an Indian standing on the corner. I wanted it to be a guy, but he went up the middle and made it about him. Now when audiences sing it, they picture themselves. The girls are in that truck and the guys can’t wait to hop in. It’s so teenage, it’s f***ing wonderful.”
Browne, who reportedly earned $1 million in royalties for “Take It Easy” by 1973, went on to co-write “Doolin’ Dalton” for the Eagles' 1973 set Desperado album, and then co-wrote “James Dean” for 1974's On The Border collection.
