1974 · Behind the Songs
At 6:42, the longest song on Late for the Sky, edited down for an unlikely single release.
“Fountain of Sorrow”, from Late for the Sky (1974), was the longest song on the album at 6:42 and the longest Browne had released to that point. Asylum still issued it as the album’s second single in 1975, trimmed to 4:37, but it failed to reach the Billboard Hot 100. The song is generally assumed to have been inspired by Browne’s brief relationship with Joni Mitchell. He produced it with Al Schmitt, and the session band included David Lindley on electric guitar, Jai Winding on piano and Larry Zack on drums, with harmony vocals from Don Henley, JD Souther, Dan Fogelberg and Doug Haywood.
The single’s B-side was “The Late Show”. Joan Baez recorded the song immediately for her 1975 album Diamonds & Rust, placing it right after the title track, and critic Robert Christgau called it the best song on Late for the Sky. A live solo piano version appears on Browne’s Solo Acoustic, Vol. 1 (2005), and Glide magazine later counted it among the Jackson Browne songs that should have been hits.