By Tony Dewhurst.

AMERICAN singer Jackson Browne was chasing the sixties dream when he arrived in New York with a handful of dollars in his pocket and landed a job playing guitar with the legendary Nico.

Suddenly he was an avid observer to the world of The Velvet Underground, and their life, times and music.

On his remarkable new album, Standing in the Breach, Browne revisits a song he wrote during the gentle groove of yesteryear, The Birds of St Marks, the album’s first single, and a portrait of Nico that he composed as he was leaving the Big Apple to find worldwide fame.

“There’s something about playing a song 20,40 years after you wrote it that is kind of exhilarating,” Browne told The Guide.

“I wrote that ballad when I was 18. It’s really like opening a book in the middle, looking back at a time that was captured then, like a picture from an earlier era in my life.

“My favourite thing is writing a song that really says how I feel, what I believe in, like Running on Empty.

“I always had this dream to write songs and perform, even at five or six when my father would play me Louis Armstrong, Ella Fizgerald and Django Reinhardt on the gramophone.”

It was Browne’s teenage years in New York that coloured his life, though.

“Having that access to those legends - Lou Reed and John Cale - was an astonishing experience for somebody so young, and the work with Nico was just a fluke.”

Always one to tell it how it is, Browne intelligently holds up a mirror to a divided America and his ability to write powerful songs with a strong message has not diminished with time.

“The divisions in America are very deep and very real,” he adds.

“And I mean in religion, culture and taste.

“Barack Obama hasn’t been able to be the champion America had hoped for.

“We need a slogan of hope, fairness and justice because there is so much inequality in the country.”

Browne recalls playing in front of a million people in New York’s Central Park at the height of the cold war in 1982.

“They called it Peace Sunday,” he said.

“I sang with Bruce Springsteen – and Orson Welles spoke direct to the President Reagan from the same stage.

“That was an amazing thing to do, but people are beginning to protest again.

“Look at what’s happening in Hong Kong, they want democracy.”

Browne’s songwriting skills earned him the attention of many popular artists of the 60s and 70s, most notably Joan Baez and The Byrds.

But even with the success he has enjoyed, Browne has a restless musical spirit that is still on a never ending journey to connect with listeners through words and music.

“When I began to write songs I wasn’t a political person – it didn’t really influence my work until later on.

“My new album has infused me with joy, though.

“Music has been a lifelong pursuit for me, and you do it because it is your deep passion.”

An evening with Jackson Browne, Manchester Bridgewater Hall, November 18.