This is an archive text from 2015. James Taylor’s new album Before This World is his first collection of original songs in 13 years, although he hasn’t taken it easy during that time – touring regularly, releasing live and cover albums, and raising twin sons, now 14. But a few years ago, Taylor realized that if he ever wanted to release an album of new songs again, he had to make songwriting a top priority in his life.
So he borrowed a friend’s apartment and retreated there to write what eventually became “Before This World” – a gentle, thoughtful work that evokes memories of his classic albums of the ’70s. “I’m not the type of musician who keeps reinventing myself,” he says.
“I’m a slow evolution of a style of recording and writing, and I actually think I’m getting better at it in some ways.”
Looking back at 67
At 67, Taylor can honestly reflect on his life and career, including its darker moments – from his heroin addiction to his struggles as a father (he has two children, Sally, 41, and singer-songwriter Ben, 38, with his ex-wife Carly Simon). “Sally and Ben turned out brilliantly,” he says. “But I can hardly claim the credit. I was a pretty impaired father. Addiction is retarded development, so maybe I grew up late.”
In a luxury suite at Fenway Park before his beloved Boston Red Sox took on the New York Yankees on a recent night, Taylor took us back through 50 years of songwriting — all the way to his signing with Apple Records by the Beatles in 1968.
“Rainy Day Man” (1967)
In 1966 I was living at the Albert Hotel in New York with my best friend Zach Wiesner, who wrote this song with me. We had one of two rooms in the hotel that hadn’t been destroyed in a fire, so it was pretty cheap.
The “rainy-day man” was a drug connection. In 1966 I took my first opiate. Joel “Bishop” O’Brien, the Flying Machine’s drummer, was hooked. I spent a lot of time at his apartment, so it was only a matter of time before I tried heroin. I was basically born to inject myself with fabric – it was the key to my lock, so I was basically gone for the next 20 years.
“Something in the Way She Moves” (1968)
I was talking to my dad on the phone while I was living in New York and he didn’t like the way I sounded. He was right: I was exhausted, malnourished and pretty worn out. The next day he came in the family station wagon and drove me back to North Carolina, where I grew up. I took time to recover, and around Christmas 1967 I persuaded my parents to buy me a ticket to London, where a friend wanted to take me in for a few weeks.
I was hoping to sing in clubs or even on the street, but instead I got in touch with Peter Asher, who had just started working for Apple Records. He got me an audition with Paul McCartney and George Harrison where I played this song for them. Paul said to Peter, “Do you want to produce this guy?” And Peter said, “Yes.”
Origin and homesickness
The song is about an early girlfriend and the peace you feel in the presence of someone who knows you really well. When I heard George Harrison use the title for the opening words of “Something,” I was thrilled. I didn’t feel like anything was being taken away from me at all – plus, “Something in the Way She Moves” quotes the Beatles in “I Feel Fine”: “She’s around me almost all the time/And I feel fine.”
“Carolina in My Mind” (1968)
I recorded my first album at Trident Studios in London while the Beatles were working on the White Album nearby. I realized how happy I was to hear the Beatles’ backing tracks and watch their process in the studio, but at the same time, surrounded by this holy crowd of my absolute idols, I missed my home in North Carolina. That captured that feeling of being called to another place.
“Sweet Baby James” (1970)
Allen Klein took over Apple Records in 1969. Our contract said we could audit him to see our sales numbers, and he didn’t want to let anyone look at the books, so he let us go. In fact, he let everyone at the label go except the Beatles.
I came back to the States and found out that my brother Alex had had a child. I decided to write a song for the boy named after me. A little cowboy song. It starts as a lullaby, then the second half – “the turnpike from Stockbridge to Boston…” – talks about what music means to me. It ends up being quite spiritual. I think it’s my best song.
“Steamroller” (1970)
I came back from London and my heroin addiction was raging again, so I went into treatment. Well, it wasn’t rehab. It was a psychiatric facility in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. I had already been in a psychiatric hospital when I was 17, and I think that was just what my parents knew to do with me. That facility wasn’t intended for opiate withdrawal, but that’s where I was, and I wrote a lot of songs there that later ended up on “Sweet Baby James.”
“Steamroller,” on the other hand, was from my Flying Machine days, and it was a joke. There were a lot of white guys playing blues, students singing Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters, and that seemed weird to me. “Steamroller” was simply intended as a parody.
Success and alienation
One of the consequences of multiple hospital stays was that any expectations my family might have had of me—academic or professional—had been abandoned. They sort of raised their hands and said, “Well, at least he’s still alive.” They were always very supportive of my music, but I felt like I was coming from a position of disenfranchisement and alienation. When Sweet Baby James took off it was hugely satisfying and everything I wanted, but success was a big adjustment.
“You’ve Got a Friend” (1971)
Carole King and I played together at the Troubadour in Los Angeles. She had just written “You’ve Got a Friend,” which she later described as a response to “Fire and Rain.” The chorus of “Fire and Rain” is: “I’ve seen lonely times when I couldn’t find a friend.” Carole’s response was, “Here’s your friend.” As soon as I heard it, I wanted to play it.
Shortly after, we were in the studio recording “Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon.” We had already recorded two songs that day, but we still had studio time and a lot of energy. Peter Asher said: “Why don’t you play ‘You’ve Got a Friend’?” We did it and it sounded great.
Generosity and recovery
There was just one problem: I hadn’t bothered to ask Carole if it was okay. I called her, a little embarrassed, and said, “We didn’t really want to do this, but we recorded ‘You’ve Got a Friend,'” and she said, “All right, put it out,” which was remarkably generous.
I have a lot of songs about recovery.
“A Junkie’s Lament” (1976)
is a warning not to view a junkie as a fully functioning human being. Heroin should have killed me about five times, but it never did. My children suffered because of their addicted father. I don’t think there’s any way they wouldn’t have done it.
More turning points
“Secret o’ Life” (1977)
I wrote in a small patch of sunlight on the steps of a house I was building on Martha’s Vineyard. One line reads: “The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time.” The title was intended to be reminiscent of Life Savers varieties such as Pep-O-Mint or But-O-Rum – a swipe at the presumption of calling a song “The Secret of Life”.
“Only a Dream in Rio” (1985) was written after another withdrawal. At the Rock in Rio Festival, 300,000 people sang along to my songs – loud, powerful and in time. When I walked off stage I felt like I was floating two feet off the ground. It was a turning point in my life.
Late years and recognition
“Copperline” (1991)
is another song about home, about my father, about a peaceful childhood. Sometimes I feel like the snippets of information we constantly receive are preparing us for some kind of hive mind.
“Mean Old Man” (2002) was a huge success for me. Paul McCartney said he initially thought it was by Frank Loesser or Cole Porter. Bob Dylan once told me he had heard “Frozen Man” and thought it was great. Ten critics can tear me apart, but if every now and then someone like Bob Dylan or Paul McCartney says, “Keep going, boy,” that’s enough for me.
“Angels of Fenway” (2015)
I finished the song in May 2014, but had the music about seven years before that. I knew I wanted to write about that miraculous 2004 season against the Yankees. If you’re a Red Sox fan or just a baseball fan, it was an amazing event. I told it as a story about a grandmother who was born the last time the Red Sox won and dies the day they finally win again.
