Having done more than most to substantiate and shape the singer-songwriter movement as a recognised genre of ’70s rock, Boston-born James Taylor (12/3/1948) also became one of the first to suffer when the inevitable critical backlash occurred.
While his 1968 self-titled debut album, recorded in London for The Beatles’ Apple label, pretty much sank without trace, the few ears it did reach could not fail to be taken by its melodicism and poignant, contemplative lyrics. On returning to the United States he joined forces with Peter Asher who took the roles of producer and manager, the wistful folk-rock balladry Taylor purveyed, showing remarkable lyrical maturity for someone barely into their twenties, was then captured to brilliant effect on his second album ‘Sweet Baby James‘ (1970).
The title-track, ‘Country Road‘ and ‘Fire and Rain‘ soon became established as touchstone pieces of the era, the latter, depicting his own drug use and the overdose death of a friend, one of the most harrowing songs ever to become a major hit single.
The following year brought ‘Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon‘ another huge-selling, if not quite so accomplished offering, the stand out cut being a cover of the Carole King penned ‘You Got a Friend‘ which reached number one around the world when released as a 45. To all intents and purposes it became not only his signature song but the acoustic guitar ballad against all others of the time were judged.
‘One Man Dog‘ (1972) and ‘Walking Man‘ (1974) sold well, Taylor also achieving a U.S hit single with a cover of the 1965 Aretha Franklin hit ‘Mockingbird‘ on which he duetted with songstress wife Carly Simon, the couple having married in 1973. But both albums met with disparaging reviews and fell some way short of the expectations set by releases earlier in his career. Against this backdrop of negativity from the critics, Taylor displayed a welcome return to form with the resurgent ‘Gorilla‘ (1975) that dispelled any notion his talents were in decline – this fresh wave of momentum carried into his seventh studio album ‘IN THE POCKET‘ (June 1976).
Revisiting many of the areas that made its predecessor so successful, Taylor retained Lenny Waronker and Russ Titelman as producers, assembled a star-studded back-up cast (Art Garfunkel, Stevie Wonder, David Crosby, Graham Nash, Bonnie Raitt, wife Carly) along with numerous top-notch L.A. session players. While he stops short of covering another Motown classic – ‘How Sweet It Is‘ (To Be Loved by You) providing Taylor with a likeable hit from ‘Gorilla‘ – his rendition of Bobby Womack’s ‘Woman’s Gotta Have It‘ has similar R & B overtones.
With the same personnel in charge of production it is not altogether surprising the dozen tracks that constitute ‘In the Pocket‘ should have a similar feel to what was heard on his previous album. Waronker and Titelman give the material a polished, pristine sound conjuring where Steely Dan had already been and the vibe Crosby, Stills & Nash would create on their reunion album of the following year.
It was, however, something of a surprise when the album fared poorly in the marketplace, a highest position of 16 on the Billboard charts the lowest Taylor attained through the six albums he made for Warner Bros since 1970 – and neither did it sit well with the rock press, who again turned cold after warming to ‘Gorilla‘.
While not in the consistently stellar form of the previous year, for the most part this is an agreeable, at times diverse collection, containing as it does splashes of funk, blues and the relaxed soft-rock that had become his forte. With hindsight, admittedly, there is the sense of a final chapter, Taylor leaving Warner Bros to sign with CBS early the following year.
Things could not begin on a more positive or upbeat note, ‘Shower the People‘ being among his most enduring compositions.
In the same year the Eagles were reflecting in a somewhat jaundiced way on the thwarted aspirations of the late-’60s counter-culture on ‘Hotel California‘, Taylor continues to espouse the need for collective understanding and awareness – it might be a dream in these cynical times of the mid ’70s, but one worth persevering with:
‘You can play the game and you can act out the part/Though you know it wasn’t written for you/
But tell me, how can you stand there with your broken heart/Ashamed of playing the fool/One thing can lead to another/It doesn’t take any sacrifice/Oh, father and mother, sister and brother/If it feels nice, don’t think twice/Just shower the people you love with love/Show them the way that you feel.‘
Built on a platform of chiming acoustic guitars, the background harmonies of James and Carly at the chorus are multi-tracked in evoking a choir, this sumptuous production, completed by imaginative use of vibes and bells (performed by ace percussionist Victor Feldman) taking on a grand, orchestral sweep.
As the piece unfolds Taylor switches from the universal to the personal, imploring us to look beyond self-absorption and self-defeating ways to embrace, literally, more purposeful forms of expression:
‘You can run but you cannot hide/This is widely known/And what you plan to do with your foolish pride/When you’re all by yourself alone/Once you tell somebody the way that you feel/You can feel it beginning to ease/I think it’s true what they say about the squeaky wheel/Always getting the grease.’
If the opening track is utopian in hope, then paradise quickly seems lost in the next up ‘A Junkie’s Lament‘, a disconcerting account of a man trying, without success, to kick his heroin habit. There are moments when the well-crafted nature of the track undercut the distressing scenes contained therein, but clearly Taylor has sympathy not just for the individual but those around him affected by his addiction, the narrator commenting with what appears informed detail:
‘It’s halfway sick and it’s halfway stoned/He’d sure like to kick but he’s too far gone/They wind him down with the methadone/He’s all on his own.’
At various stages of the song there are harmony vocals from Carly and Art, this a new variation of Simon and Garfunkel. Paul Simon’s erstwhile partner is also heard to good effect on ‘Captain Jim’s Drunken Dream‘ – the protagonist in this atmospheric folk-ballad longing to escape his rural surroundings for a Caribbean locale:
‘To see me now is like watching a fish on dry land/I only wish you could see me down in the islands/Mister, that’s my home/What a fool I was to leave the only happiness I’ve known.’
As the mandolins and the marimbas ring out so his thoughts are shaped by different varieties of alcohol, (‘Now I know that Yankee whisky has taken away my mind/And I know that rum is the only drink suitable to mankind‘), his desire to be somewhere hotter and more hospitable captured in the final verse:
‘I need to see a gentle palm tree and I won’t wait too long/I can feel that it’s coming on strong/The first cold wind of winter is flapping in my clothes/Showing me the way with the direction that it blows.’
‘Everybody Has the Blues‘ and ‘Don’t Be Sad ‘Cause your Sun is Down‘ have the similar theme of not being disheartened by everyday life. The former strays close to being a Randy Newman pastiche and although the man himself might compose such a jaunty, horn-infused tune, he would write more acerbic lines than ‘Everybody gets to sit and cry/Everybody gets to wonder why/Everybody gets to watch the sky turn grey.’ The latter meanwhile, a songwriting collaboration with Stevie Wonder – who also contributes an harmonica solo – is charming enough, although two such gifted writers might have been expected to come up with stronger couplets than:
‘Don’t be sad ’cause your sun is down/You’re gonna find your way yeah yeah/Don’t be sad ’cause your day is done/There’s another day, everyday.‘
Taylor writes in more pointed fashion on the wry ‘Money Machine‘ where funky piano lines and strident horns put him out front of a soul revue, the cash-till sound effects adding to the ambience of finance.
In making his observations on the deal and the dollar, Taylor is not shy in offering barbed comments, including a sly reference to the Vietnam war, ‘Now you can measure you manhood by it/You can get your children to try it/You can bring your enemies to their knees/With the possible exception of the North Vietnamese‘ – and neither is he afraid of having some fun at his expense in discussing the subject, ‘When I began the game/See me singing ’bout fire and rain/Let me say it again/I’ve seen fives and I’ve seen tens.‘
On three occasions, in terms of subject matter, Taylor returns to territory he covered on ‘Gorilla‘ yet in each instance does so with inferior results.
The brooding ‘Slow Burning Love‘ has similarities to ‘You Make it Easy‘, a sultry gem of yore where the vocals of James and Carly come over as a husband and wife take of Crosby, Stills and Nash – two of whom, Crosby and Nash, add vocal support to the country-rock styled ‘Nothing Like a Hundred Miles‘, a pleasant midtempo offering that is far less than a hundred miles from ‘I Was a Fool to Care‘, again of recent vintage.
Once more contemplating the feelings of loneliness and absence brought on by time spent on tour, ‘Daddy’s All Gone‘ says something similar to ‘Music‘ from ‘Gorilla‘ only from a more downbeat perspective, ‘I sure am on the road/I don’t need to say much more/Just the same old well-known stranger/That I was before‘ – but with ‘Family Man‘, an upbeat piece spilling over with solid percussion, soul inflections from a vibrant horn section and nice turn in vocal support from Bonnie Raitt and Valerie Carter, Taylor comes at the touring conundrum from a different angle, having doubts whether he wants to go in the first place:
‘Spending my time with a bunch of crazy people/Yes, I been there before/I don’t need to go back no more.’
Described unkindly as ‘listless‘ by Rolling Stone magazine in their underwhelmed appraisal of the album, the cover of ‘Woman’s Gotta Have It‘, originally a hit for Bobby Womack in 1972, carries a sweeping string arrangement that, along with a warm, affecting vocal from Taylor, takes it much nearer to the Philly-soul of Billy Paul than the L.A. soft-rock of say Poco.
If nothing else it adds extra variety to an album that closes with the more recognisable Taylor-fare of ‘Golden Moments‘ – not least because he had used the phrase before on, you guessed it, his previous album.
On ‘Gorilla‘ the line ‘I’m rolling all my golden moments into one,‘ appears in a serene composition entitled ‘Lighthouse‘ – the words barely changing (‘Now if all my golden moments could be rolled into one‘), in introducing an airy, delicate track that affirms his contented state of mind, ‘You may think I might be crazy/And I guess you must be right/But I know the way I feel today is out of sight.’
The gentle lilt of the melody quickly brings ‘Across the Universe‘ to mind, even prior to Taylor closing the first verse with, ‘No ones gonna bring me down/No one’s going to stop me now.’
As previously stated, Rolling Stone were not impressed by the record, neither for that matter was the New Musical Express in England, the gist of both reviews being it represented two steps backward. In contrast, a recent online poll conducted from Taylor devotees voted it the fifth best of his twenty studio albums.
Quite inadvertently he could have been describing the journey of the record when singing ‘All it really needed was the proper point of view,’ in ‘Golden Moments‘ – although Taylor perhaps added to the confusion by wearing a ‘Gorilla‘ tee-shirt on the rear sleeve photograph of ‘In the Pocket.’
Hard to imagine Bob Dylan sporting a ‘Blood on the Tracks‘ badge on the cover of ‘Desire‘ in 1976……..
JAMES TAYLOR – IN THE POCKET (Released June 3 1976):
Shower the People/A Junkie’s Lament/Money Machine/Slow Burning Love/Everybody Has the Blues/Daddy’s All Gone/Woman’s Gotta Have It/Captain Jim’s Drunken Dream/Don’t Be Sad ‘Cause Your Sun is Down/Nothing Like a Hundred Miles/Family Man/Golden Moments;
Hello – hope you enjoyed another exclusive production from SAMTIMONIOUS.com
In order to create the best experience for when you drop by to read a page or two, those with the power to ordain such things (me, actually), have decided to remove all external advertising from the site – in other words articles will no longer be subject to intrusive pop-up ads. BUT – and ain’t there always one – should you wish to make a donation toward the on-costs of the most entertaining and original blog-site around, please press on the – ‘DONATE’ – button below. It will be greatly appreciated.
Stay safe everyone and thanks for dropping by – best wishes Neil
SAMTIMONIOUS.com – films, football and fabulous music at The Dominion of Opinion
NEIL SAMBROOK is the author of ‘MONTY’S DOUBLE‘ – an acclaimed thriller now available in paperback and as an Amazon Kindle book.