Jackson Browne - Running On Empty (1977) [Remastered 2005, CD + DVD-Audio]

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Jackson Browne - Running On Empty (1977) [Remastered 2005, CD + DVD-Audio]

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Running on Empty is the fifth album by American singer-songwriter Jackson Browne. Released in 1977, the album reached #3 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart in 1978 and stayed on the charts for 65 weeks. The single for the title track, "Running on Empty", peaked at #11 and the follow-up single, "The Load-Out"/"Stay", reached #11 on the Billboard Pop Singles chart. The song "Running on Empty" was included in the film Forrest Gump. On November 15, 2005, Elektra/Rhino issued a remastered version with the following additional tracks: 11. "Cocaine Again" and 12. "Edwardsville Room 124" on Disc 2 of the package, which is a DVD Audio version of the album's track lineup that features a 5.1 surround sound mix, among other bonus items, such as video montages and lyrics. Disc 1 is a remaster of the original album's song list only. The remaster is missing the first 25 seconds of audience ambience that, on all other previous editions of the album, led into the beginning of the album's title track. For reasons unknown, this snippet, which included the sounds of the musicians' count into the song's opening, was edited out on this version, though curiously the Disc 2 DVD Audio version includes the 25 seconds missing on Disc 1.

Having acknowledged a certain creative desperation on The Pretender, Jackson Browne lowered his sights (and raised his commercial appeal) considerably with Running on Empty, which was more a concept album about the road than an actual live album, even though its songs were sometimes recorded on-stage (and sometimes on the bus or in the hotel). Unlike most live albums, though, it consisted of previously unrecorded songs. Browne had less creative participation on this album than on any he ever made, solely composing only two songs, co-writing four others, and covering another four. And he had less to say – the title song and leadoff track neatly conjoined his artistic and escapist themes. Figuratively and creatively, he was out of gas, but like "the pretender," he still had to make a living. The songs covered all aspects of touring, from Danny O'Keefe's "The Road," which detailed romantic encounters, and "Rosie" (co-written by Browne and his manager Donald Miller), in which a soundman pays tribute to auto-eroticism, to, well, "Cocaine," to the travails of being a roadie ("The Load-Out"). Audience noises, humorous asides, loose playing – they were all part of a rough-around-the-edges musical evocation of the rock & roll touring life. It was not what fans had come to expect from Browne, of course, but the disaffected were more than outnumbered by the newly converted. (It didn't hurt that "Running on Empty" and "The Load-Out"/"Stay" both became Top 40 hits.) As a result, Browne's least ambitious, but perhaps most accessible, album ironically became his biggest seller. But it is not characteristic of his other work: for many, it will be the only Browne album they will want to own, just as others always will regard it disdainfully as "Jackson Browne lite."

Review by William Ruhlmann, Allmusic.com

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Jackson Browne - Running On Empty (1977) [Remastered 2005, CD + DVD-Audio]

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Jackson Browne - Running On Empty (1977) [Remastered 2005, CD + DVD-Audio]

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Jackson Browne - Running On Empty (1977) [Remastered 2005, CD + DVD-Audio]

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Jackson Browne - Running On Empty (1977) [Remastered 2005, CD + DVD-Audio]

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Jackson Browne - Running On Empty (1977) [Remastered 2005, CD + DVD-Audio]

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Jackson Browne - Running On Empty (1977) [Remastered 2005, CD + DVD-Audio]

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Jackson Browne - Running On Empty (1977) [Remastered 2005, CD + DVD-Audio]

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Jackson Browne - Running On Empty (1977) [Remastered 2005, CD + DVD-Audio]

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