When Jackson Browne released The Pretender in November 1976, his son Ethan turned three the same month. The first song on side two, “The Only Child,” was written for him. It is a quiet piano song full of a father’s advice to his boy about growing up, getting hurt, letting go of disappointment and taking care of the people he loves, including his mother. Don Henley and J.D. Souther sang harmony on it.
Browne wrote it while Ethan’s mother, Phyllis Major, was still alive. By the time the record reached stores, she had been gone for eight months.
A baby on the cover of Rolling Stone
Ethan Zane Browne was born on November 2, 1973. Six months later he was on the cover of Rolling Stone, in the May 23, 1974 issue, held close to his father’s face.
The story inside described Browne posing for the photographer with Ethan in his arms, clowning around and singing the refrain of Dr. Hook’s “The Cover of the Rolling Stone” to get a laugh out of him. He told the magazine:
“I wanted a baby ’cause I wanted to be a baby.”
He was 25, and his career was still on the way up. When he went on tour in 1975, Phyllis and their one-year-old son came along.
March 1976
Jackson Browne and Phyllis Major, a model and actress, married in December 1975. Four months later, in March 1976, she died by suicide at 30. Jackson was 27. Ethan was 2.
Browne had only recently begun work on his fourth album with producer Jon Landau. He later told MOJO that her death came in the middle of making the record, and that work stopped for a while.
What Browne has said about the album
Because The Pretender arrived months after Phyllis died, many listeners heard the whole record as a statement of grief. Jackson Browne has pushed back on that more than once. In a 2015 interview with MOJO, he said the songs were written before she died, with one exception: “Sleep’s Dark and Silent Gate,” the short, quiet song near the end of the album. Of that one he said:
“I guess that could be considered cathartic.”
In another MOJO conversation in 2021, he said plainly that the album is not about his wife’s suicide, and that finishing “Sleep’s Dark and Silent Gate” after her death colored the rest of the record. Then he added that the older songs had changed in a way he never planned:
“…songs I’d written before mysteriously became more about that.”
“The Only Child” is the clearest example. A song meant as gentle advice for a toddler reached listeners after the boy had lost his mother.
A song finished with Phyllis’s mother
The album’s lead single carried another link to Phyllis. “Here Come Those Tears Again” is credited to Jackson Browne and Nancy Farnsworth, Phyllis Major’s mother. According to published accounts, Farnsworth had shown Browne an unfinished song of her own while visiting the couple, and he completed it with her.
The single was released in January 1977. That March, almost exactly a year after Phyllis died, it peaked at No. 23 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Raising Ethan
The Pretender went to No. 5, Browne’s first Top 10 album. At home, he was raising a toddler alone.
Speaking to Route Magazine in 2021, Jackson Browne said being a father to Ethan became his main focus. He had hoped he could fit together two things, being a songwriter and being a father, and if it ever came down to only being a father, he hoped he would recognize it and just do that. He was honest that it was not that simple:
“You don’t get a notice in the mail saying you’re blowing it as a parent.”
The boy in the song
Ethan Browne grew up to work as a model and an actor, with roles in Hackers and Raising Helen. He also worked as a DJ, founded Spinside Records as an imprint of his father’s independent label, Inside Recordings, and in 2022 released the album Right Before Your Eyes with the duo Alain Zane.
He became a father himself. In 2022, Jackson Browne told Tru Rock Revival how proud that made him:
“Ethan is a great father. He’s a great son, a great man.”
Ethan Browne died on November 25, 2025, at his home. He was 52. His father announced the news the next day and asked for privacy for the family. The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner later ruled his death accidental.
On the original LP of The Pretender, the song his father wrote for him is still the first thing you hear on side two.