Political fire still burns in Jackson Browne

Browne has long been generous in his praise and support of other artists. At the dawn of the 1970s, his championing of his friends, The Eagles, helped persuade David Geffen to become their manager and sign them to his new Asylum label.

Browne, who plays Glasgow later this month, covers a lot of ground in our interview: the pro-independence movement in Catalonia (he touches on Scotland's indyref, too) and the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong ("I think the world is over and over demonstrating its desire for real representation"); the appropriation by the American right-wing of de Tocqueville's notion of American exceptionalism; and his genuine fears about the impact on democracy of Citizens United, a Supreme Court decision that allows corporations to spend unlimited amounts on US elections.

His new studio album, Standing In The Breach, expertly fuses the political and the personal. There are references to the lax gun-control in the US, to the buying of elections and, in a wider context, to the disappearing ozone layer and the indestructible plastic that litters the earth. One song, Which Side?, pointedly asks whether you would align yourself with the people campaigning for the earth or with "the corporations attacking/The natural world-drilling and fracking/All done with the backing of the craven and corrupt".

It says much for Browne's songwriting skills that such lines make you think: they make you want to explore the issues further. "That's the intention," he says. "I don't want to harangue you. Matter of fact, sometimes it makes me cautious, you know. I think there are times when you just have to say what you know, say what you feel.

"You don't want to just assume, because you feel that you're right about something, that it gives you the right to go on and on about it. You really have to be persuasive. You have to, like, not preach to the choir. You have to try to engage people who don't necessarily agree with you, and in a convincing way."

On Which Side? he tried to get out of writing too many verses, but ended up writing more than perhaps he planned. "I realised at a certain point that I was really holding back. I even wrote a note to myself in my workbook … I was scolding myself, looking at this lyric. I said, 'Jackson, you're going to have to tell people exactly what you're talking about here - you can't just refer to something you assume that they already know. Tell them which side, spell it out'."

He makes a general point: you hear the sound of the record, the emotion and the playing, and that should draw you into it. "Matter of fact, I'm really enjoying singing [Which Side?] live now," he adds. "People have been cheering at the last verse [with its line about people hoping they can build something new 'and turn this world around']. Maybe they're reluctant, when they think, 'Oh, here he comes again with, you know…' but if you can make your point well, there's a certain kind of agreement that a thing should be said."

Browne, who is now 66, came to national prominence in the 1970s. His superbly crafted records - Jackson Browne, For Everyman, Late For The Sky, The Pretender, Running On Empty - were cerebral, visionary, affecting, emotionally literate and utterly compelling, and they made his name. "No contemporary male singer-songwriter," Rolling Stone observed of 1974's Late For The Sky, "has dealt so honestly and deeply with the vulnerability of romantic idealism and the pain of adjustment from youthful narcissism to adult survival as Browne has in this album." (The same magazine said 10 years ago that Browne might just be rock's greatest confessional singer-songwriter.)

His albums from the 1980s on gradually came to reflect his political and humanitarian passions. His friend Graham Nash has spoken of his "staggering and inspiring" dedication to the human condition. Browne has campaigned on environmental and human rights issues, and he co-founded MUSE - Musicians for Safe Energy.

Just last month, when he accepted the Spirit of Americana Free Speech award, he was praised as someone who has "consistently stood with America's underdogs and has never hesitated to raise hell, in speech or song, demanding that this nation truly lives up to its ideals".

Browne doesn't often do cover versions on his albums, but there are two on this new one: Walls And Doors, written by the Cuban singer-songwriter Carlos Varela and translated by Browne, and You Know The Night, based on extracts from a 30-page notebook entry penned by Woody Guthrie and given to Browne by Guthrie's daughter Nora. The resulting song, on a Guthrie tribute album, was originally 15 minutes long but has been cut down to five-and-a-half.

Walls And Doors contains the thought-provoking line, "There can be freedom only when nobody owns it." The line probably has its own resonance in Cuba but Browne believes the song and the line also relates to the US: America, he suggests, seems to have a proprietary attitude towards freedom, but it did not invent it and, more to the point, often fails to practise it.

The opening track on this album is also the oldest. The Birds Of St Marks was written in 1967, about Nico, with whom Browne had worked in New York. He had never played it in concert until a decade or so ago when, during a solo acoustic show, a fan called out: "Can you remember The Birds Of St Marks?' Browne laughed, said, "Yeah - you wanna hear it?" and despite admitting that he didn't know if he could remember it, played a note-perfect version.

That moment (included on the Solo Acoustic Vol 1 album) is a reminder of his remarkable rapport with his audiences. "There's an intimacy, there's a kind of conversational quality to the shows," he says, adding with a laugh: "I'm comfortable to a fault."

He mentions the great musicians who have helped him get inside the emotions of songs - guitarists Val McCallum and Greg Leisz on the new album; 'the Section' session guys, guitarist Danny Kortchmar, drummer Russell Kunkel, bassist Leland Sklar and keyboardist Craig Doerge, and multi-instrumentalist David Lindley.

"They are really emotional players," he says. "Beginning with Lindley, I got used to having someone respond so honestly and so emotionally to the song. There was a time once, very early on, when I was rehearsing with him and we were about to go on the road. We were playing this song, we had played it several times and, I forget why, but I stopped in the middle. I guess I was just treating it, like, oh well, you know… He looked at me and said, 'Don't do that. What are you doing?' He was really gathering it up, he was so involved.

"I learned from that record on, from that second record [For Everyman], the one that David played on, that I gravitate towards that, I need somebody to get back to me what I'm putting in, and very often people who are just technically good, they have their uses, you know, but now there's an emotional component that I have become attached to."

I bring up Graham Nash's admiring words. Is there anyone to whom Browne himself would apply them?

"I think that's what really great art is addressing - it's talking about what's real and what it is possible to aspire to," he says. "Even if you're talking about that which isn't real yet, or what you wish to happen, you have to engage. I mean, art has to engage the truth of who we are, and whether it's a novel or a play or a painting or music, if it puts us in touch with our own and other peoples' lives, puts us in touch with the real experience, that's what we count on art to do.

"To answer your question, some of my favourite songwriters do exactly that. Like this Lucinda Williams album. When you get it - remember I said it - it's really something."

Later, I listen to that album, Down Where The Spirit Meets The Bone. I'm glad I did. Thanks for the recommendation, Mr Browne. Your own album is pretty damn fine, too.

Jackson Browne plays Glasgow Royal Concert Hall on November 21. Standing In The Breach is out now on Inside Recordings