These Days (Jackson Browne Song) - Renewed Visibility

Renewed Visibility

"These Days" gained renewed visibility when the Nico recording was included in a scene in the 2001 Wes Anderson film The Royal Tenenbaums, which grossed over $50 million in the U.S. and garnered many award nominations. The Philadelphia City Paper wrote that "It's no surprise that Wes Anderson used this recording in The Royal Tenenbaums; the fear of missed opportunity that its characters share is what propels 'These Days'." Indeed, the scene, in which Gwyneth Paltrow gets out of a Green Line bus as the song is heard, was one of the first that Anderson designed for the film. As Jackson Browne would later describe it, "I forgot that I'd licensed them to use this song. And this is one of those things that comes to you in the mail and you don't know what they're talking about and you simply give them their permission. You're sitting in the movie theater and there's this great moment when Gwyneth Paltrow is coming out of a bus or something like that. I'm thinking to myself, I used to play the guitar just like that. And then the voice comes on and it's Nico singing 'These Days', which I played on."

Nico's "These Days" was included on both versions of The Royal Tenenbaums soundtrack. Later, a 2002 Kmart commercial looped the guitar part from the Nico recording. There was a new wave of covers of the song, with some emulating either Nico or Browne while others reimagined it in other ways.

Given this new attention, Browne began playing "These Days" in concert on a regular basis, but on acoustic guitar and in a new style. He now started with the fingerpicking guitar part but continued in a technique and feel that falls between the Nico and Browne recordings. Indeed he would say, "And now I've learned how to play the Nico version, which we sort of made up for her. Fabulous you know..." It was included on Browne's 2005 live album, Solo Acoustic, Vol. 1, including a humorous spoken introduction about the origins of the song. Yet another arrangement was constructed for his 2006 tour of Spain with Lindley and percussionist Tino di Geraldo and captured on the 2010 live album Love Is Strange: En Vivo Con Tino. A Spanish-accented vocal from guest singer Luz Casal was set against Browne's acoustic guitar, Lindley's violin, and di Geraldo's cajón; Allmusic stated that the result "makes an already beautiful song exquisite".

The Allman Brothers Band themselves would include the song for the first time in their concerts, featuring it on their March 2005 Beacon Theatre run of shows with Gregg Allman and Warren Haynes both playing acoustic guitar and sharing dual vocals.