“The idea that I have to perform made me angry,” James said later. “I had gotten into my music as an act of rebellion, you might say.” Now he felt that his “alienated musical soul” had turned into a businessman making a product for a corporation. “And in that way, recording an album might have made me angry. And might have made me turn to drugs to stomach that anger. Obviously, if you can’t express it, you’ll have to swallow it somehow.”
In June 1969, after five months of treatment, James left Austen Riggs drug-free, driving the Massachusetts Turnpike from Stockbridge to Boston, and then to Martha’s Vineyard. In July he performed, solo, at the Troubadour in Los Angeles for the first time. Back on the Vineyard that summer, he crashed a stolen motorcycle on a fire road in the island’s state forest, breaking both feet and both hands. The rest of the year was spent in plaster casts. In this period, James got to know his brother Alex’s baby son, James Richmond Taylor, now two years old—the original sweet baby James.
Meanwhile, in London the Beatles were imploding over acute business problems. Apple was bleeding money, much more than the company took in from sales. As record executives, the Beatles were too preoccupied to manage their label, so the products simply weren’t selling. Peter Asher left the company to go out on his own as a record producer and talent manager. He asked James if he could manage him, and James did not hesitate to say yes. Asher then persuaded Paul McCartney to cancel James’s contract with Apple so he could move to another label, and Paul convinced the rest of the Beatles that this was the right thing to do.
Peter Asher then approached Warner Bros. Records in Los Angeles in September 1969. They loved the Apple album, and signed James Taylor to the label for forty thousand dollars. When the casts came off his broken limbs, James took up his guitar and erupted into a creative state that produced many of his best songs. “I think I had built up a lot of energy,” he recalled, “because as soon as I got out of those casts, I went into Sunset Sound in L. A. and it was just explosive. That album just went so fast.”
When James got to Los Angeles, he called Danny Kortchmar, who’d been living there since the Flying Machine broke up. Kootch had joined a rock band called the City, which had an album out. Personnel included drummer Jim Gordon, bassist Charlie Larkey, and Larkey’s girlfriend, the former Brill Building songwriter Carole King. As a teenager, she had cowritten some of the biggest hits of the era, such as “Up on the Roof,” “One Fine Day,” and “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?” Now, at twenty-six, she had left her husband and relocated to North Hollywood’s Laurel Canyon neighborhood, prepared to start a new career as a performing artist. She was about to make her first album under her own name, but Danny persuaded her to help him make James Taylor’s record first. Peter Asher, who was producing the record for Warner Bros., agreed that Carole King’s band would provide backing for James’s incredible book of new songs.
These included the material that would make his career, and which, he later ruefully said, he would be forced to sing for the rest of his life: the lullaby “Sweet Baby James”; “Country Road,” written in Stockbridge; the jazzy but disconsolate “Sunny Skies”; “Blossom”; “Anywhere Like Heaven”; and others, including a hip rendition of “Oh Susannah,” which he used to sing for the late Susie Schnerr. But it was the song partly inspired by her, “Fire and Rain,” that would make James Taylor the first major star of the American 1970s.
James in 1972: “‘Fire and Rain’ has three verses. The first verse [‘Suzanne the plans they made put an end to you’] is about my reactions to the death of a friend. The second verse [‘Won’t you look down on me, Jesus’] is about my arrival back in this country with a monkey on my back. And there, Jesus is an expression of my desperation in trying to get through the time when my body was aching and my time was at hand—when I had to do it. ‘Jesus’ was to me something you say when you’re in pain. I wasn’t actually looking for a savior…. Which I don’t believe in, although he can certainly be a useful vehicle. The third verse of that song [‘Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground’] refers to my recuperation at Austen Riggs, which lasted about five months.”
It is the “There’s hours of time on the telephone line / To talk about things to come” lines in the last verse that give the song a message of hope and redemption, that the friendless, self-pitying singer of the album’s other songs would somehow pull through to sing again another day.
Sweet Baby James was made in only a few weeks, for about eight thousand dollars. The basic tracks consist of James, Danny on second guitar, and Carole King on piano. Several different bassists were at the session, and the session drummer, Russ Kunkel, from nearby Long Beach, plays with an uncanny sympathy for the mood that James and Peter Asher were trying to get.
Meanwhile, James joined the community of local musicians. That spring in 1970, he participated in the sessions for Carole King’s album Writer. The core musicians then formed a band called Jo Mama and were signed to Atlantic Records. And James started spending serious time with Joni Mitchell at her Laurel Canyon home, where she was writing her Blue album. He played guitar on “California” and several other tracks on her record.
The “Sweet Baby James” single didn’t even make the charts when Warner Bros. released it in March 1970. No one played it on the radio. The album stalled at number ninety. Nothing more happened until that summer, when the “Fire and Rain” single took off and hit the Hot 100 on Billboard’s chart. It was then that the album took off, and things were never the same for James, or his family, again.
He was in England with Joni Mitchell when this happened, playing concerts on his own, and then supporting her when she played a show broadcast by the BBC. “Fire and Rain” was on the radio in Britain and was being recognized as a major statement from a young master songwriter. The audience was rapturous when Joni brought him onstage. Together they played “California,” “For Free,” and “The Circle Game,” with Joni on piano and dulcimer and James on guitar. They played the world premier of “You Can Close Your Eyes,” a lullaby James wrote for Joni early in their relationship. The BBC later reported they had received a record number of requests for tapes of the concert.
When he returned to California, James took a starring role in a Hollywood movie, Two-Lane Blacktop, directed by Monte Hellman. It was a modest road movie about a cross-country car race. James was the driver. Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson was his mechanic. Dialogue was minimal, plot even more so, but the script had an existentialist drive, and James was interested in how film production worked. People on the set loved his record and kept telling him what a huge star he was going to be. (Neither James nor Dennis Wilson appeared in a Hollywood movie again.)
As Sweet Baby James smoldered its way up the sales chart and James’s fame spread nationally, the Taylor family, James’s siblings, signed recording contracts of their own. Brother Liv signed with Atlantic and released his first album that summer. Sister Kate signed with Cotillion, an Atlantic subsidiary. Even brother Alex got a deal, with the southern label Capricorn Records, and made a pretty good album in Atlanta with local musicians. James now felt in a strange position, as he told friends. With his parents divorced and his father out of the picture, it was like he had become the head of his fiercely loving but troubled family. It was a position he wasn’t comfortable being in. When Rolling Stone put James on its cover, the headline was “The Taylors.” The long family saga revealed that two of James’s siblings had also been hospitalized at McLean: Livingston for depression; Kate for hurting herself. No one in the Taylor family was happy with this kind of publicity.
James played guitar on the sessions for Carole King’s second album, which was made in five days in January 1971. The band was Danny’s group Jo Mama with Russ Kunkel on drums. Songs included “I Feel the Earth Move,” “It’s Too Late,” “So Far Away,” “You’ve Got a Friend,” “Tapestry,” and “A Natural Woman.” James and Joni Mitchell both sang backup vocals. The album, Tapestry, was released a month later and went o
n to sell twenty-five million copies.
At the same time, James was helping his sister make her first record and trying to finish his third, which was taking a toll on his equipoise. He was also facing a thirty-city concert tour with Carole King, backed by the Jo Mama band. He was under a brutal corporate deadline to finish the sequel to his last album, which was now selling about a million copies a month. He sang “Fire and Rain” and “Sweet Baby James” on Johnny Cash’s popular network TV show and became a mainstream American heartthrob overnight. In March he appeared on the cover of Time magazine, discussing his problems, including addiction, as well as his music.
He was much more interested in the house his friends were building for him on Martha’s Vineyard than he was in making another record. He wished he had a hammer in his hand instead of a guitar. He took up heroin again, felt better, and finished his album. Decades later, looking back in candor, James said that sometimes his addictions had been “of service to me at the time.” He was a cult hero now, with people wanting to speak with him after shows. Parents brought their children backstage to meet him. His lyrics were plumbed for meaning, as if he had a secret knowledge and solutions to life’s mysteries. He was a physical wreck, but kept going.
His new album, Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon, came out in late March. The basic tracks are played by James, Carole King, Russ Kunkel, with Leland Sklar on bass. James appears on the album jacket with his new moustache, looking obviously stoned. The album sold like hotcakes, getting to number two. (Tapestry was number one.) James’s version of Carole’s “You’ve Got a Friend” was released as a single and became a big radio hit. Carole King and James Taylor were now the bestselling musicians in the country. Mud Slide had only a few great songs, but these included Carole’s “You’ve Got a Friend” and “Long Ago and Far Away,” both with Joni and Carole singing backup vocals. “Hey Mister, That’s Me Up on the Jukebox” is a candid self-portrait of a young artist at the end of his rope and ready to quit. In the song, echoing mighty “Country Road,” he disappears into the land, where carpenters are working on his cabin in the woods (and he even name-checks the building crew). Artist/ craftsman Laurie Miller’s drawing of James’s austere little barn adorned the back of the album jacket.
Mud Slide Slim firmly locked James Taylor, in the imagination of his contemporaries, into the persona of a saintly junkie, a patron saint of druggy anomie. It was an image he had never pursued, but it was commercially successful, and was inspired by who he was and what he was doing. As his legion of fans celebrated the authenticity of his songs and as his celebrity began to unfold, James described “a feeling of aura” around him. In interviews, he described the instant fame that was happening to him as a feeling he called “holiness.” He wasn’t conventionally religious, but the huge (and unexpected) success, and especially the intense national media attention, made him feel as if a glowing halo were over his head. “What’s all this talk about ‘holiness’ now?” he was asked by Joni Mitchell. He explained that it was a simplistic reaction to fame descending onto him, in an intense manner, in a short amount of time.
That’s when James Taylor went to see his drummer playing with a new girl singer at the Troubadour nightclub in Los Angeles on April 6, 1971.
“LOVE FROM CARLY”
This happened mostly because Joni Mitchell wanted to see Cat Stevens. And then Russ Kunkel, who’d worked on both their records, said he was playing with Carly Simon on the same bill, and please come on over and say hello after the show. They went with Kate Taylor and were given a good table near the stage. James hadn’t heard much about Carly Simon, and he hadn’t heard “That’s the Way I Always Heard It Should Be,” which was already a hit record in April 1971. This was mostly because he never listened to recorded music—no radio, no records, especially his own. His musical world was influenced mostly by the melodies he composed in his head. Kate told him that Carly was one of the Simon Sisters who used to play at the Mooncusser that first summer when James started playing the open-mike evenings there.
At the Troubadour, there was a vase with a crimson rose on their table and a note that read, “Love from Carly.”
Backstage, Steve Harris decided not to tell Carly that Joni Mitchell and James Taylor were in the house. Carly came out and nailed her six songs, expertly propelled through her set by Russ’s steady rhythms. So Carly was surprised, and very pleased, when Steve told her that James Taylor was on the staircase and wanted to say hello. Carly kissed James and Kate. James sat on the floor as Kate and Carly sat on the little sofa. They compared notes on the Vineyard, how their paths had crossed in summers past. Then Joni sent word up to James that it was time to get in the limo, and the meeting was over. Both Carly and James later said it was a fateful evening.
Then James went back on the road with the band, focused on getting through the tour until the last stop in Chicago. Danny Kortch mar: “People were in awe of him, treating him with kid gloves, whispering around him like he was Montgomery Clift, or a prophet who knew everything. He was being pursued—by every chick, by everybody around—to where it was painful for him. By the time we got to Chicago in ’71, he was in bad shape, and we’d wonder if he’d make it to the next show.” Joni Mitchell broke up with him.
This tour was not an artistic success. Reviewers described James as sluggish and distant from his audience. After a Boston concert, his brother Livingston upbraided him about seeming uncomfortable at the adulatory applause he was getting.
James: “And he said, ‘What the fuck are you doing? These people love you. Why can’t you enjoy it?’ He was really angry at me [about] the way I was coming on. And then I read an article by [critic] Jon Landau [who was producing Liv Taylor’s second album] in which he assumed that the way I had come on was on purpose, that I actually was in control of it. Whereas, I really had… no control over it, at all. Sometimes… I just don’t know how to act.”
But James Taylor kept going. He was on the cover of Rolling Stone. His single version of “You’ve Got a Friend” charted at number one in July and stayed at the top for weeks. (It was the only number one record of his career, to date.) Mud Slide Slim was certified a gold album, then platinum. His stage patter was subtle, funny, and self-effacing. He usually introduced “Sweet Baby James” by insinuating that he didn’t really like children, which made the audiences laugh out loud. Some critics raved about his concerts. By the autumn of 1971, James was the primo male of the American singer-songwriter movement, embodying the popular notion of the singer-songwriters as their generation’s shamanic conveyers of sympathy, sincerity, healing, and trust; bardic harpers whose songs told of the times and mirrored the sensibilities of their audience.
He was also running out of dope on the road. James: “This was the fall ’71 tour, with just myself [onstage]. I found myself on the road with no drugs and quite a habit. So I went to Richmond. The first gig I had was in Williamsburg, and I was sick for the job. And it went lousy. I ran into a chick I knew from London and she took me to Richmond and we copped there from this guy named Hangdown. He sold me enough to keep me going until I got to Chicago.”
In the meantime, James played Carnegie Hall, and then started seeing Carly Simon. He couldn’t tell her about his drug habit, for the shame of it, and he resolved to get off dope when the solo tour wound up. “When I got to Chicago, I got in touch with a doctor who was a friend of mine. And he got some methadone for me, somewhat illegally. He figured it was either he’d break the law, or else I would go down. I stayed on the methadone he gave me for almost a month.”
As they began seeing more of each other in early 1972, James continued to hide his addiction to heroin from Carly. He was good at secreting his stash and his works: needles, spoons, cotton, lighters. He covered up his absences by pretending to rest, or brood, or just be remote. She didn’t understand it, but accepted it as being part of the Taylor’s family back story, as had been reported by the national media over the past year of his success.
“It was a harro
wing time for me,” she said a year later. “In the beginning of our relationship I didn’t really understand the extent to which James was addicted, or needed drugs. It just kind of confused me that there was always this… wall up between us. And I didn’t know exactly what it was, because I was never close to anybody who was really addicted to anything before. There was just this remoteness I was always aware of. I was aware that I couldn’t depend on him either. And at the same time, I wanted him to depend on me more, but there just seemed to be this barrier between us that I could not break through.”
Eventually James told Carly what was going on. She wanted him to get into treatment and said she would do anything in her power to help him. This is what he wanted to hear. She said she needed to know why he got so remote, so far away from her.
“It was partly drug abuse,” James said later. “And it was partly that—instead of communicating what feelings I had—I would get off on a drug instead. My mind was occupied by the drug—even the idea of getting off on the drug. The idea of keeping it from Carly was a big part of it. But… I still needed her very much.”
Carly understood this and resolved to stand by James. The needier he became, the more she accepted it.
It was a struggle. James threw out three different sets of “works” (syringes) in the late winter and spring of 1972, each time swearing to himself that his heroin habit was over. He kept reaching out to Carly for support, but it was hard for her. She loved James but now saw the negative aspects of the personality he was submerging under narcotics. To her, he could be many different people, alternately bright, withdrawn, arrogant, romantic, reckless, depressive, cruel, cutting, tender, brilliant. It bothered her that, before their first meeting, he had never heard any of her songs and seemed completely uninterested in her music and career. Sometimes he seemed childish to her, something he readily admitted. “Being a pop star is a very regressive thing,” he said later. “All of a sudden, anything you want to do is allowed. You become a spoiled child when you become a pop star. You really get spoiled, something awful, and it happened to me.”
More Room in a Broken Heart: The True Adventures of Carly Simon Page 18
