FROM: _Stereo Review_ vol 40 pg 62-7, January, 1978

	
		A TALK WITH JAMES TAYLOR BY: RICK MITZ


	Right at the start, there is something you should know about 
James Taylor, something that will forever change the way your feel about 
rock superstars, taxi drivers, and life in general.  And that something 
is this: James Taylor drives a yellow cab.
	True, it doesn't have a meter in it.  He doesn't charge a fare, 
and he certainly doesn't accept tips.  And he did have the light on top 
surgically removed.  But that's what he drives-a yellow cab.
	"It's a good car. I don't care what happens to it. I drive it.  
Anyone can drive it. The babysitter can drive it. A total stranger can 
drive it, because I don't have any great love for the vehicle.  Which is 
why I love it so much."
	Now, maybe the taxi isn't the love object highest on James 
Taylor's list these days.  Perhaps his family and a few friends and- oh, 
yes- his music, come first.  But you ought to know that it's way up 
there.  You should also know that James Taylor doesn't wear glasses that 
light up, he rarely destroys hotel rooms, and his favorite groupies are 
his two children, whom he adores.  And what he'd really like to do (his 
latest preoccupation) is run a brewery.  He's already got a name picked 
out:  Taylor's Lighthouse Lager.
	In the meantime, though, he brews himself a cup of tea.  He's in 
his white New York kitchen, huddled over the boiling water, communing 
with the tea leaves.  As he dunks the tea bag in and out of his cup, he 
looks all knees and elbows.  But there's  plenty of in-between too. At six 
feet three inches, taut and tight, James Taylor has the body of a long 
distance runner.
	In the pop durability contest, the marathon race of the music 
business, Taylor has completed more than his share of laps.  While other 
performers have long since pooped out, James is still running.  Not from, 
but to.
	At thirty, he's already into his eleventh year as a successful 
musician, and that's quite a track record.  He is a pioneer in a business 
littered with followers.  When he first started, he was dubbed the "New 
James Dean."  Now, neophyte musicians are touted as the "New James 
Taylor."  He is an institution, and he has also become an industry, 
complete with posters, T-shirts, souvenir books, and all the other 
trappings of adulation.  In short, he's got just about everything:  Fame 
and success, good health and good looks, a lot of talent, and a lot of love.

	If you look closer, though, you will find a man bothered by 
self-doubt and insecurity, a man who is supercritical of himself, as 
easily wounded by the bullets of the press as by the lack of them on the 
weekly record-rating charts. "If I have a successful album," Taylor 
says. "It'll make a difference in a whole year.  If an album doesn't do 
so well it hurts."
	According to that criterion, Taylor has had a lot of good years.  
It began, of course, with the song Fire and Rain in 1970, a painfully 
lonely and lovely anthem that heralded the transition from the acid-hard 
Sixties to the mello-soft Seventies.  Now more than a dozen hit songs 
later ....James Taylor is sill with us.  He has survived and thrived in a 
business that eats up its musicians like popcorn.  Unlike the scores of 
singer/songwriters who have faded from public view and are now driving 
taxis because they must, James Taylor is still up there on top, driving a 
taxi by choice.
	For example, his latest album, "JT," first went gold, then 
double-platinum and is swiftly heading for uranium. His "Sweet Baby 
James" was Warner Bros. hottest-selling album at more than three million 
copies until Fleetwood Mac came along and edged it out.  All told, Taylor 
has sold more than eleven million records, and by the time you finish 
reading this he'll have undoubtedly have sold a few dozen more.
	The man may sing, but he doesn't often talk publicly.  Although 
he's surprisingly articulate, interviews with Taylor have become so rare 
they're almost extinct.
	Says Taylor: "I think what the press has found to sell in me has 
been my self-destructiveness.  They spent a lot of time- and I'm guilty of 
it too- talking about my hospital days and my drug problems. That, 
coupled with songs like Fire and Rain, has created an image of someone 
who is having a hard time.  They found that salable . It was really 
overdone- Things simply never were that bad.  But if people came into my 
house and saw me playing with my kids....well, that wasn't a salable 
image; everbody has kids.  Of course, nowadays, everybody has kids who 
are strung out on dope or in a mental hospital.  So I guess it's time for 
me to move along to another character-if I want to keep those cards and 
letters coming."
	
	Sitting and sipping his tea (the beverage would later change to 
beer, then to coffee, then back to tea again), Taylor talked generously 
and thoughtfully.  He perched himself on the edge of a couch in the den. 
The sounds of music, children laughing, phones ringing, and vacuum 
cleaners whining wafted their way into the conversation.  In a skyhigh 
apartment overlooking Manhattan, James Taylor somehow managed to be quite 
down-to-earth.
	"There was do doubt that success had made me happier with 
myself.  A psychiatrist I used to see, and occasionally go back to visit, 
said to me that nothing succeeds like success.  It's true.  It increases 
your self-image and it makes you feel more confident.  Your perform 
better. You know, I've had my problems and you tend not to fall back into 
these problems or onto old crutches. So success has really been great , 
and I thank everybody who contributes because it really increases my 
self-esteem.  I have found, though, that when it hasn't been too easy for 
me, it's because I'm taking myself too seriously.  It never hurts to 
lighten up, to de-emphasize the urgency of the situation.  Because 
there's just not that much to worry about."
	He gingerly moves his cup onto the floor.  Against one wall of 
the den is a beautiful antique baby bed.  Against another is a desk 
piled with memos and newspaper ads to be approved, promotional pictures, 
and business correspondence.  James Taylor, Inc....
	"I am more business conscious now. And I've squared up somewhat.  
I guess it came about from being in the business
 such a long time.  In ways, it may be poison.  But I think you square up 
as you get older and pick up a family.  If you make money and accrue 
things, your tend to become more conservative, and I think 
responsibility squares you up, too."
	He picks up the cup and looks at a few tea leaves that have 
escaped from the bag and are floating on the top." Things are different 
now than they were seven or eight years ago.  Today the music business is 
much more a business, there's much more competition.  It seems to me that 
things are very tightly packed and there's very little room to move around 
any more.  It weens like, if someone goes up, someone else comes down; 
It's very close to a total saturation point with popular music.
	"It's a whole different thing from the romantic idea we used to 
have of being a rock star.  It's sobering for a guy like me who at one 
point had the romantic idea of being a "troubadour."  It sure is an 
education to see what goes into selling records.  It really is a matter of 
sink or swim.  Nice guys, in a sense, finish last.  That's not to say 
that you have to be a rat to do well in this business.  What I mean to 
say is that you have to blow your own horn. And that's really all I'm 
doing anyway. I would be deluding everybody including myself if I said I 
were not.
	"But an artist doesn't necessarily have to grow up and take 
care of himself. I mean, I have relatively few responsibilities, and I 
have the luxury of not having to yell at anyone, and it's my good fortune 
in life to be able to take a bath rather than make someone else take a 
beating.  I get paid for doing what I love, so I'm in the catbird seat."

	Twelve years ago Taylor was far from that catbird seat.  He went to 
New York in 1966 to form a band (which disbanded after one year) called 
the Flying Machine.  Then, in 1968, he arrived in London, an unknown 
street musician trying to peddle a demonstration record.  He ended up 
recording his first album for the Beatles' Apple Records.  Although 
well-reviewed critically, it didn't sell well.  He left the label, 
returned to the U.S., and signed with Warner Brothers (today he records 
for Columbia).  In 1970, "Sweet Baby James" was released, and music 
history took a little turn.
	Music history took a turn....? Taylor doesn't like to hear that 
kind of talk.
	"It still doesn't seem to me that I was doing anything different 
from the other people around me.  I was listening to folk music in Boston 
and Cambridge.  It was really acts like Peter, Paul and Mary,  Bob 
Dylan, Ian and Sylvia, the Kweskin Jug Band, Tom Rush, and the Kingston 
Trio that brought folk music to popularity.  You know, it's actually all
folk music, what we listen to today.  It has a self-made tradition, people
who go out and shop for their own education rather that having one 
delivered to them.  Sure,  I'm a folk musician.  And it's not 
only because I can't read or write music.  It's because I'm a product of 
the happenstantial kind of random musical environment that I grew up in. 
I was influenced by the people we called folkies.  I was introduced to 
and strongly influenced by black music.  I was introduced to jazz a little 
bit.  And the country music that I heard on the radio down South - these 
were pretty much what I listened to all the time.  And I consider all of 
that whatever roots I have."
	He's branched out from those roots.  Today there is a whole James 
Taylor style, characterized by rich melodies and the careful melding of 
music and lyric.  A song such as his Sunny Skies, for example, has been 
consciously crafted for effect, with its dark lyric fused to joyous 
melody.  But the distinguishing trademark of his style is 
self-revelation through lyrics.  Carly Simon's songs are similar in that 
respect.  In fact, it's been said that if you listen to James' albums and 
then listen to Carly's you can figure out what's going on in their 
relationship at any given time.  James laughs at the suggestion: "Well, then
you probably know as much about our relationship as we do..."
	He is reluctant to talk about his song lyrics though, and when 
asked to describe a song, he'll talk about the chord changes rather than 
the mental changes that went into the writing.
	"I think I'm probably much more guarded in my personal life than 
I am in a song lyric.  But it's not like really being open in a song:  
It's not like relating directly with someone.  A song is a form, you 
know, it's like something that you're putting in the air, and if it's a 
personal statement that's okay - if that's the type of thing you're 
trying to do.  In other words, if I were to explain myself to you, it 
would be as if to elicit some response from you.  But you don't do that in 
a song.  There is no interchange.  It's just a statement.  I get a lot 
of mail, and I suppose some people do respond to a song in that way.  
Some people write me and tell me they like my songs or they'd  like me to 
come over for dinner or that they're in a tight jam - and that's the 
closest thing to an interchange in a song." 
	He pauses for a moment. " But you know, they're gonna do it 
anyway - they're going to try to figure out who you are from the lyrics of 
a song.  If you try to be a star and you're in the public eye, they're 
going to do it.  And it's not just a matter of whether they'll be right 
or wrong in their assumptions.  Obviously they're going to be wrong, but 
how wrong they're going to be is the question."
	Another rest, another sip. "There is a songwriter's place.  
There is a place you are at when you write a song, and I'm not there all 
the time.  I'm there twelve times a year or less.  I don't know if it 
has to do with alpha rhythms or bio-rhythms or what food additives they've 
been popping into you.  I don't know what goes into you to allow you to 
reach that state of feeling so that you can write a song.  And the 
song's lyrics are not necessarily the view of the person who's doing the 
writing.  That's just the state.  Different songs happen different ways."
	One source of mild discontent for Taylor is that he hasn't 
written a hit song for some time. "I've had mostly oldies as hits for a 
while now.  I really haven't had a big record since _Don't let Me Be 
Lonely Tonight_.  Carole King wrote _You've Got a Friend_, and then there 
were a sting of oldies- Mocking-bird, How Sweet It Is, and Handy Man.  I 
would very much like to have a hit with something I've written myself."
	What Taylor fohgets, of course, are the songs he's written that 
have been hits of varying degrees - songs like Mexico, Shower the People, 
and of course his latest, Your Smilin' Face, which he calls "bubblegum" 
and which he wrote for his daughter.  Also, he's hard at work writing 
songs for Working, a musical theater adaptation of Studs Terkel's book, 
scheduled for Broadway.
	But whatever he sings, his concert audience loves it, showing 
their appreciation with loud cheers, paying homage to him with standing 
ovations and lighted matches, sporting his picture on their T-shirts.  
Taylor became something of a sex symbol with his slow, sensual version of 
Handy Man.  And so his photo hangs on a lot of thirteen-year-old girls' 
bedroom walls lately. "I don't really put much time into thinking about 
that," he says shyly. "But I don't mind being hung on walls - in fact, 
it pleases me to think about being hung on a young girl's wall and have 
her look at me.  That's fine."

	There is, of course, nothing about a picture on a bedroom wall that 
gives any clue whatsoever about what it took in terms of work and sheer 
nerve to get there.
	"Performing - it's terrifying.  And it has to stay that way. 
Your really need that energy and that urgency, or else you'd get 
complacent after a number of years doing it.  You'd just lay back and 
nothing would happen.  But if you're ready, if your throat is in good 
shape and our head is in good shape, and you know that the arrangements 
are there and your instruments are together and your sound and lights 
and everybody are all organized, then it's all okay.
	"What I say to myself before I go on stage is that I'm the right 
person to be here now - you know, that this is my job.  The performance 
that's about to be given is my performance and nobody else can do it.  
And I just sort of get into a frame of mind where I'm fated to do it. 
It's sort of like Zen archery - there's the target and I'm the arrow, and 
there's the space to be covered between the two of us.  Sometimes walking 
on stage becomes an out-of-body experience.  I start to come around the 
guy wire that's holding up the backdrop, and the curtain and the 
monitors are on my right.  The stage manager is holding up his hand with 
the headset on, waiting to will the spotlight operator to hit me, and the 
house lights are out and the audience is beginning to make some noise.  
And then the stage manager points at me _ the spot hits the corner, and 
I come around the corner, and every step is like it takes... a vision of 
myself rises about three feet out of my body.  I purposely go into a song 
that's familiar to me -  it'll either be You Can Close Your Eyes, Sweet 
Baby James, or Riding on a Railroad - something that I can sing if a lion 
is chewing my foot off.  And by the time I've done a couple of 
numbers, it's cool, you know.  I can always be drawn forward by the 
music and become excited, but I try to keep myself a little cool.
	"I think you have to be in as good shape as you can to give a 
show. I quit smoking about three years ago, and it takes about three 
years for your voice to feel the effect of no cigarettes.  I'm not a 
terrific singer.  I've got a pretty good instrument, and I've god a good 
musical sense and I phrase well.  But I don't have a good enough voice 
that I can abuse it.  If you're given one of those terrific instruments 
by whoever passes them out, then you can do anything to it and still 
sound relatively okay.  But in my case, a little rest makes all the 
difference."
	Taylor's on-stage patter is sparse.  "It used to be that 
sometimes I would say silly things on stage, things like, `I know you'll 
like this song because it sounds like all the rest of my stuff.' i guess 
I really do feel, though, that if I had put our five instead of eight 
albums in my career. today I would have five really good albums.  And 
three albums of stuff that maybe I would have wanted to leave off. I 
think my favorite album is `Walking Man.'  Then comes the `Gorilla' 
Album, but I'm used to loving `Sweet Baby James.'  I like `JT' too."
	Critics have always had a lot to say about Taylor's albums.  
Many performers claim they don't read their reviews or, if they do, they 
just don't care.  Taylor wishes he felt that way.
	"I listen to my critics and absolutely read my record review.  I 
try not to read beyond my name in print, but when I read something, I 
take it seriously, even though I know better.  I remember one review that 
said the reviewer was tired of my stuff, that it was all the same, it 
was all romantic pap and I was beating myself and wasn't taking any 
chances - that I was boring.  That review just poked a hole right 
through the bottom of things for a couple of days.
	(****Note to readers**** I have read this review and chose not to 
	(include it because the writer was ignorant and rude and had no 
(appreciation for anything other that his own interests.  Clearly he was a 
(really music edge fan of the mid-seventies and nothing more.  This 
(article covered a mid-night performance of James Taylors at Radio City 
(Music Hall- the only one of it's kind.  It was attended by VERY old 
(listeners of JT who respect the RCMH's atmosphere and didn't scream and 
(dance and jump on the seats (which the reviewer seemed to expect)

But that's what you set yourself up for if you're playing for the public. 
You take your chances....Generally, though, I've been well-treated by the 
critics."
	While music critics have written about his professional life, 
another kind of journalist - the gossip monger - has taken aim at his 
private life, trying to spot anything controversial in this past, zeroing 
in on his problems, even his marriage to Carly Simon - which is all very 
strange, because he lives simply and conservatively, and their marriage 
is durably old-fashioned.
	Perhaps his reluctance about accepting the role of public 
personality goes back to Taylor's early experience with fame.  He started 
out as musician and quickly ended up as media figure.  While most other 
young men his age were still sitting in classrooms, James Taylor was 
sitting on the cover of TIME magazine.
	"I think that the early success and recognition really froze me 
up," he says now.  "The Time magazine thing was a big deal.  I don't 
know that there were a lot of rock-and-rollers on the cover of Time.  
Back then it was a big thing.  I can't remember it that well.    But in 
my career, a lot of things that have happened have been amazing, and I 
haven't really noticed them happening.  When I turn away from them a 
little bit, when I get some distance, then I notice them.
	"Now it all just seems kind of natural.  I don't know about 
about anything else besides being famous.  It's about perfect, you know. 
If i want to,  I can always find someone to recognize me in a place if I 
need the advantage of being famous.  If someone won't take my check, for 
example, then just give me five minutes and I'll find someone who's heard 
You've Got a Friend.  Somebody in the place will know of James Taylor - 
enough to consider cashing my check.  There are about two or three 
things that it's worthwhile being famous for.
	"As far as being bugged on the street or not allowed to eat in a 
restaurant or stuff like that.  I haven't got that problem.  I guess I 
change my appearance enough so that people just don't recognize me.  Or, 
if they do, they're just very kind about it.  I hear people complain 
about what a bummer it is to be famous, and I think that when that 
happens, it's usually because someone's handled it poorly.  People who 
recognize me usually have positive feelings about me.  I may be proved 
wrong tomorrow, but my fame doesn't carry much notoriety with it."

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