What happened with Jackson Browne and Joni Mitchell? Abuse allegations and split explored

Rock musician Jackson Browne is currently trending after he announced the death of his elder son, Ethan Zane Browne, who passed away on November 25 at the age of 52. The mourning father’s statement on Facebook and Instagram reads as follows:

“It is with deep sorrow that we share that on the morning of November 25, 2025, Ethan Browne, the son of Jackson Browne and Phyllis Major, was found unresponsive in his home and has passed away. We ask for privacy and respect for the family during this difficult time. No further details are available at this moment.”

According to Variety, the LA Coroner’s Office has listed Ethan Browne’s cause of death as “deferred.”

In the wake of the tragedy, focus is now on his father Jackson Browne’s life and career, including his tumultuous romance with singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and painter Joni Mitchell. It lasted for a few months in 1972, when the pair was on tour together across the USA and Europe.

Later, the split led to public disagreements when Mitchell made several accusations against Browne, including in her 1994 track Not to Blame, from the award-winning studio album Turbulent Indigo.

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Exploring the timeline of Jackson Browne and Joni Mitchell’s feud

Jackson Browne began dating Phyllis Major in late 1972, soon after his split from Joni Mitchell. Later, the For Everyman crooner married Major and welcomed their son, Ethan.

However, after Phyllis died by suicide from a sleeping pill overdose in 1976, Mitchell infamously gate-crashed her funeral. Later that same year, she accused her ex-boyfriend of being abusive toward Major on her track Song for Sharon.

The song appeared on her studio album Hejira and included the lyrics:

“The woman I knew just drowned herself/ The well was deep and muddy/ She was just shaking off futility/ Or punishing somebody/… He showed me first you get the kisses/ And then you get the tears/ But the ceremony of the bells and lace/ Still veils this reckless fool here.”

Notably, Joni Mitchell never admitted that the song was about Jackson Browne or Phyllis Major.

Mitchell made additional allegations in her 1994 track Not to Blame. In it, Mitchell not only accused Browne of pushing Major to kill herself but also weighed in on Daryl Hannah’s 1992 physical assault allegations against Jackson.

Hannah was an actress, filmmaker, and activist who briefly dated Browne and later John F. Kennedy Jr.

Joni Mitchell’s lyrics went as follows:

“The story hit the news from coast to coast/ They said you beat the girl you loved the most/ Your charitable acts seemed out of place/ With the beauty, with your fist marks on her face/ … I heard your baby say when he was only three/ ‘Daddy, let's get some girls, one for you and one for me’/ His mother had the frailty you despise/ And the looks you love to drive to suicide.”

Three years later, Jackson Browne responded to the song publicly. He told the Dallas Morning News in September 1997 that Not to Blame was “beneath” Joni Mitchell.

Not only that, but the rocker accused his ex of being a “violent” woman and of physically attacking him twice during their brief relationship. Jackson Browne described Joni Mitchell as an artist who remained ‘very embittered’ toward him, despite their breakup two decades earlier. He added:

“Joni Mitchell is, unfortunately, she's not really well. At this point in her life, you know, she has had deep fallings-out with many people... I think there's quite a few people that she's no longer on speaking terms with. She's not a happy person, and what she says in that song is absolutely, 100 per cent wrong.”

Jackson Browne continued by saying that it was “nasty, ill, and bad-spirited” of Mitchell to make such kinds of “conjecture” in her song, including dragging his young son into it.

“It was abusive to employ that image of my son as somebody who treated his mother's death light-heartedly. I mean, he was a 3-year-old baby, you know. This is inexcusable.”

As for the Daryl Hannah claim, Jackson Browne mentioned that it was naïve of Joni Mitchell to believe the tabloids. He added that he was “sick of people” assuming that the Blue songstress was an “authority somehow in my life.”

Browne concluded his interview by saying that he wasn’t the “anti-Christ” Joni Mitchell portrayed him to be, nor was she an “intimate of mine,” as they hadn’t known each other since their split.

Mitchell’s former friend and manager, David Geffen, later shared that Jackson was “not violent in any way” and that relationship endings were “always messy.”

Meanwhile, Joni’s biographer, David Yaffe, insinuated in his 2017 book Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell that Browne was abusive. It was also claimed that both violence “from both directions” and incompatibility played a role in the Browne-Mitchell split. In the memoir, Joni herself called Jackson “the very worst one.”

Referring to the Daryl Hannah allegation, Jackson told Billboard in July 2003:

“I never assaulted Daryl Hannah, and this fact was confirmed by the investigation conducted at the time by the Santa Monica Police Department.”

Meanwhile, speaking with Route Magazine in 2021, the father of two didn’t address the longtime speculation. The speculation concerned whether his hit song Fountain of Sorrow from the 1974 album Late for the Sky was about Joni Mitchell. But he did agree that it was about a woman he dated.

He also hinted that the song Jamaica was based on the same relationship, adding:

“It was an idyllic little song, but what the song really describes is the relationship I had just been in, in which I had wanted to hide. I was content to just be with this girl. And she was ready to move out into the world, and she was so vibrant.”

“She was such a knockout and she was constantly being invited places or approached or hit on, in all those ways in which a beautiful young woman in full sail is. And I, in no way, was a match for that. I wasn’t doing that in my own life; I was hiding in her,” Jackson continued.

Joni Mitchell and Phyllis Major were reportedly acquaintances before their respective relationships with Jackson Browne. Mitchell’s 1974 song Car on a Hill from the album Court and Spark was also rumored to be about heartbreak. It reflected her subsequent anxiety and nervous breakdown during Browne’s relationship with Major.

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It was reported at the time of Major’s death that she suffered from postpartum depression and other mental health issues.