AUTHOR & JOURNALIST

David Browne

David Browne is a senior writer at Rolling Stone and a longtime music journalist. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Time, Spin, the New Republic, and numerous other outlets. After graduating from New York University with a degree in journalism, he worked as a staff music reporter at the New York Daily News. For 16 years, he was the music critic at Entertainment Weekly, where he worked as a roadie for Kiss, shared a bagel with Leonard Cohen in Cohen’s Montreal home, and spent time on the tour buses with Coldplay and the Black Crowes and with James Taylor at his Berkshires home. A contributing editor and then senior writer at Rolling Stone since 2008, he has written cover stories on Whitney Houston, Bob Dylan, Adele, Robin Williams and Philip Seymour Hoffman in addition to hundreds of articles and reviews.

Browne is the author of eight books: Dream Brother (2001), a dual biography of the late musicians Jeff and Tim Buckley; Amped (2004), a history of extreme sports; Goodbye 20th Century (2008), a biography of the pioneering indie band Sonic Youth; Fire and Rain: The Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, James Taylor, CSNY and the Lost Story of 1970 (2011), about the confluence of music and politics during that under-chronicled year; So Many Roads: The Life and Times of the Grateful Dead (2015), a major biography of the legendary band that includes new interviews with band members, friends and former employees, along with access to documents from the Dead archives; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young: The Wild, Definitive Saga of Rock’s Greatest Supergroup (2019), a deeply reported chronicle of the iconic counterculture band; and Jeff Buckley: His Own Voice (2019), a collection of the late Jeff Buckley’s journals and writing that he compiled and co-edited with Buckley’s mother, Mary Guibert.

Browne is also the author of The Spirit of ’76 (2014), a mini-book on Kindle Singles about the ground-breaking events of that year in America. 

Dream Brother, a steady seller for nearly 18 years, has been translated into French and Italian and is regularly cited as the definitive biography of Jeff Buckley, complete with access to friends, family, and archival material. Goodbye 20th Century was hailed as “an expressway to the soul of the influential band” by Vanity Fair, “a rollicking, epic biography” by Salon, and “compulsively readable” by Publishers Weekly. It has also been published in the UK, Germany and, soon, Japan. Fire and Rain was called “a worthy addition to anyone’s collection of such music histories” (Associated Press) and “one of the most entertaining and informative books of the year” (NPR). So Many Roads has been hailed as “an education and revelation even for the seasoned Deadhead reader” (Steve Silberman, best-selling author of NeuroTribes) and a book with “broader context and significance” (The Washington Post). His CSNY tome was called  “the most comprehensive biography of the group to date … an authoritative chronicle” by Publishers Weekly and “one of the great rock and roll stories (New York Times Book Review).

His latest book is Talkin’ Greenwich Village: The Heady Rise and Slow Fall of America’s Bohemian Music Capital (Grand Central, September 2024). It is the first panoramic history of the now-mythical community that fostered several generations of music icons and became a safe space for misfits and iconoclasts. The book is based on interviews with more than 100 musicians, club owners and observers from its earliest days (Judy Collins, Herbie Hancock, Tom Paxton, Sonny Rollins, John Sebastian, Carolyn Hester, Buffy Sainte-Marie, and members of the classic band the Blues Project) to those who emerged during its last great era (Suzanne Vega, Shawn Colvin, Terre and Suzzy Roche, Steve Forbert, actor/musician Christopher Guest). Browne also uncovered previously unseen documents and recordings, including efforts to curtail folk singing in Washington Square Park in the ’60s that led to the “beatnik riot” and how the FBI and city government tracked Bob Dylan, Dave Van Ronk, and others. Publishers Weekly called the book “a vivid account” and noted that its “evocative prose enlivens this captivating ode to a storied chapter of pop culture history.” In a starred review, Kirkus calls Talkin’ Greenwich Village a “detailed, abundantly populated chronicle of a storied place.”

Born and raised in New Jersey, not far from Bruce Springsteen territory, Browne lives and works in New York City.