The city of the song

WINSLOW, Ariz. – It was the middle of the night, and Jackson Browne was on tour with the Indigo Girls, who suddenly wanted to stop.

What they wanted to see was a monument that he helped create, albeit indirectly. And there it was, at the corner of Second Street and Kinsley Avenue in old downtown Winslow, on the remnants of Route 66, in the high desert of northern Arizona.

The people of Winslow appeared to be utterly unaware that one of the co-writers of “Take It Easy” – the song that inspired its Standin’ on the Corner Park – was, indeed, right there … just standin’ on the corner.

“Pretty cool,” Browne said. “But it was the middle of the night … which may be why no one knew we were there.”

Like Strawberry Field, Penny Lane, MacArthur Park and other landmarks made famous by songs, the Standin’ on the Corner Park has become a tourist destination. The town fathers of Winslow credit it with helping spearhead the renaissance of an otherwise depressed downtown business district.

“The Corner” features a 6-foot-tall bronze statue of a balladeer with a vest and open-collared shirt, resting his guitar on the toe of his cowboy boot. Silhouetted over his shoulder is a mural of a dazzling blonde in a flatbed Ford, slowing down to have a look.

Browne, 56, is the balladeer in whose mind the song first began to take shape. He started writing “Take It Easy” in the early 1970s. His version appears on his second album, “For Everyman,” which Asylum Records released in 1973.

But a few other things happened along the way. Having not quite finished the song, Browne had played enough of it for friend and fellow songwriter Glenn Frey to make him want to speed it along. So, Frey ended up finishing “Take It Easy.” And it was he who added the line about Winslow:

“Well, I’m a standin’ on a corner in Winslow, Arizona,

“Such a fine sight to see

“It’s a girl, my Lord, in a flatbed Ford

“Slowin’ down to have a look at me”

“Take It Easy,” which the Eagles recorded on their debut album in 1972, is also among the entries on “The Eagles, Their Greatest Hits, 1971-75.” Having sold more than 28 million copies, that collection is now the No. 1-selling album in music history, outpacing even the Beatles and Michael Jackson.

The estimated hundreds of thousands of tourists from all over the country who stop through Winslow are often surprised to learn that the statue depicts neither Frey nor Browne, though some people insist it’s a dead ringer for the latter. Browne had his photograph taken beside the statue in October 2000.

“It (the statue) doesn’t look like me, but he does have my haircut,” he told a concert audience in Albuquerque, N.M., after stopping in Winslow.

If anything, the statue was made to resemble the son of sculptor Ron Adamson, who created the bronze likeness that goes by the nickname “Easy.”

Or so says Winslow chiropractor Greg Hackler, a board member of the Standin’ on the Corner Foundation, which authorized the monument in 1997 and then unveiled it on Sept. 11, 1999.

Hackler and others here had spent years hearing an all-too-familiar response when asked, “Where you from?” People would always say, “Oh, the Winslow, Arizona, in the song!”

“So, we were the boon of this nice little song, which inspired our official corner,” Hackler says.

Don Henley – another co-founding member of the Eagles – was among the initial donors underwriting the park, said Hackler. Additional support has come from corporate donations and memorial bricks that range in price from $50 to $250, permitting donors to have their names inlaid in decorative bricks on the corner.

In 1997, when the idea for the monument was conceived, Winslow had “one functioning business downtown,” said Hackler.

“Now, virtually every shop and every building have been occupied. Winslow is starting to come back.”

Thriving curio shops sell Standin’ on the Corner memorabilia. A Seattle’s Best Coffee Shop has sprouted up. The old Rialto Theatre is showing first-run movies.

Which is not to say that everything is wonderful. An October fire gutted the interior and roof of the building next to the park, but, amazingly, left the mural and concrete wall that contains it intact. The fire also spared Easy, though at the moment, the adjacent building is encircled by a chain-link fence, pending repairs.

The townspeople of Winslow hope to have those done by summer. But in the meantime, you can check out Easy and the mural at www.standinonthecorner.com.

Or, you too can stop by and check it out – even in the middle of the night.