By 1973, Jackson Browne had become a successful recording artist, and not having raided his back catalogue for the first album
Jackson Browne, was willing to do so for his second,
For Everyman. Recorded at the
Sunset Sound Factory,
Glide critic Lee Zimmerman rated it as one of 10 Jackson Browne songs that should have been a hit, calling it "a tender tune written by a remarkably young man at the early stages of his career" and saying that "the remorse and regret belie the fact that his life experiences had barely even begun." While Allman was most associated with the emerging
Southern rock scene, he had spent considerable time in
Los Angeles before The Allman Brothers Band came together; he and Browne had become friends, and he had recorded the Browne composition "Cast Off All My Fears" on the album
The Hour Glass, the self-title debut of his band at that time. Allman's version of "These Days" kept to Browne's revised lyric until the end, when he changed "Don't confront me with my failures / I had not forgotten them," to "Please don't confront me with my failures / I'm aware of them."
Rolling Stone praised the treatment, saying Allman "does full justice to the quietly hurting lyrics, double-tracking the vocal over a sad steel guitar," and calling the vocal quality "resigned" and "eternally aching." In 1999, writer
Anthony DeCurtis called Allman's version "definitive", and in 2012,
American Songwriter magazine said that Allman's recording had overshadowed Browne's in the same way that the
Eagles had for Browne's co-written "
Take It Easy". While neither version was released as a single, both Browne's and Allman's "These Days" recordings gained airplay on
progressive rock radio stations and became the most-heard interpretations of the song. The song was included on both of Browne's "best of" albums,
The Next Voice You Hear: The Best of Jackson Browne and
The Very Best of Jackson Browne, and on both of Allman's compilations,
The Millennium Collection: The Best of Gregg Allman and (in a live version)
No Stranger to the Dark: The Best of Gregg Allman. When Allman toured as a solo act, he generally kept "These Days" in his concert repertoire. Browne was a different story. It had appeared in his concerts since before he had a recording contract, and stayed in through the 1970s, usually played on piano in a surprising segue out of his biggest hit single, "
Doctor My Eyes". But by 1980 he had graduated from
halls and
outdoor amphitheatres to arenas, and "These Days" disappeared from his
set lists, perhaps because he felt it no longer effective in those settings. Save for the occasional acoustic show or benefit show, the song was not heard again until the late 1990s, as Browne was again playing smaller venues, often solo, and where it began to reappear out of the "Doctor My Eyes" segue again. ==Renewed visibility==