These Days

Browne said he wrote These Days at sixteen. On 7 January 1967 he made demos for Nina Music Publishing at Jaycino Studio in New York, and the third was an early version called I've Been Out Walking. Nico was the first to record it, on Chelsea Girl in October 1967, with a fingerpicked electric guitar part played by Browne. Andy Warhol suggested the electric guitar as something more modern than the acoustic guitar of the demo, and the producer Tom Wilson added strings and flutes without Nico's knowledge.

Tom Rush recorded it in 1970 and Gregg Allman in 1973. Browne's own version on For Everyman was recorded at the Sunset Sound Factory with David Lindley on slide guitar, Jim Keltner on drums and David Paich on piano. He built the arrangement partly on Allman's, and the two versions were released within days of each other in October 1973. Browne said that when Allman did it, "he really unlocked a power in that song."

The song returned to wider attention when Nico's recording was used in Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums in 2001, a licence Browne said he had forgotten he had granted. After that he began playing it regularly again, now on acoustic guitar and starting with the fingerpicked part, and it appears on Solo Acoustic, Vol. 1 (2005). Alexis Petridis of the Guardian wrote in 2021 that Nico's version, along with Take It Easy, counted among the best-known songs of his that others had sung.