Sorrow

This picture was taken a good few years ago. On the right is one of my all time favourite singer songwriters - Jackson Browne. And on the left - that's his oldest son - Ethan Browne. Ethan's mother was Phyllis Major who took her own life in 1976 when Ethan was just three years old.

Now it seems that Ethan has done the same - not through an overdose of barbiturates this time but through a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He died in his own home in Los Angeles which is where local police officers discovered his lifeless body. It was November 25th, two weeks ago.

Parents are meant to die before their children and  you may agree with me that there's something extra tragic about the death of a child - even when that son or daughter is fully grown up. And it doesn't matter if the only remaining parent happens to be  a millionaire singer songwriter.

I was privileged to see Jackson Browne in concert at Sheffield City Hall back in March 2009. I was there with my late brother Simon and we enjoyed the occasion enormously. For me it was almost a dream come true. I knew so many of the songs by heart and one of them was "Fountain of Sorrow" from the "Late for the Sky" album (1974).

I leave that song for you to listen to and in memory of an American man I never knew - Ethan Browne who finally gave in to his demons...