James Taylor Comes Clean

00:00:08 Speaker 1: Pushkin. It's hard to mistake James Taylor's voice. It's sweet and sounds care free, and if you know the cliff Notes version of James's life, that kind of makes sense. Summers and Martha's Vineyard as a kid signed by the Beatles to Apple Records at only nineteen years old, relationships with Joni Mitchell and Carly Simon, becoming one of the premier singer songwriters of the seventies when competition was stiff. But these autobiographical details and his sweet voice belie the traumatic events of his early days, two stints in a mental institution, heroin addiction, and alcoholic father. This is the life James attempts to make sense of and his new audio memoir Breakshot, all of which he traces back to a traumatic family event he says left the Taylor's cursed. When Malcolm Gladwell and James Taylor got together to talk about his new memoir, they dove into these darker memories from James's past and how his songwriting started as a form of therapy. They also discussed why James fields his last five albums have been his absolute best work, including his latest American Standard. His new albums out February twenty eighth, and is full of the songs James Hurd growing up, songs that offered him refuge, songs that ultimately offered him a new life through music. This is broken record liner notes for the digital Age. I'm justin Richmonton. Here's Malcolm Gladwell and James Taylor from GSI Studios in New York. What I wanted to start with the most unexpected fact that came up as I was preparing, which was Taylor Swift is named for you. Yes, that was a surprise to me too. We first met at a benefit for an organization that is meant to mitigate teenage pregnancy and she was doing a couple of songs and so was I. Yea, and she told me at that point that was before she you know, it was such a success. But it makes me wonder how many tailors out there have you inadvertently spawned. That's a good question. So I the I was listening to break shot your audible original, which I thought was fascinating. So your your dad grows up in Morganton, North Carolina, and your mom is in New England. There I kind of put a real you're saying grew up as a fisherman's daughter in New Report. So a real New England there, that's right. Your parents married and what year they married in forty well probably in nineteen forty seven seven, Yeah, so in nineteen forty seven, that would be right, they would have That's what I mean one your your father or Southern or your mother or New England or those are distinct identities in that they are they are. I mean, they were politically very aligned, but they were from two different cultures. But my father was you know, the thing is really about him is that he didn't belong you know in uh. I think that that he he didn't really he identified uh sort of as we identify our context. He identified that as being Southern. But I don't think he felt a part of anything really. I think he was quite um, quite isolated. It's sort of it's the I think that's the key to to understanding my father say that he was He never really had a context in which he felt he belonged, and you know that changed over time. But I'm pursuing this both because this is the a big part of breakshot, this memoire that you've done, but also because it so obviously feeds into a lot of your music, but I wanted to linger a little bit about your You tell this story? Can you tell the story in the book? It's the most one of the most heartbreaking stories I think I've ever heard about your Your grandfather, I think it's my great grandfather. You mean the one who delivered my father, right, Well, my grandmother biologically was a warrant from Springfield named Theodosia Haynes, and she met met Alexander Taylor, my grandfather father, and the two of them fell in love and she got pregnant. They married, and the child was delivered by my grandfather's father, my great grandfather, and he hadn't delivered a child for for a while. And I think after the birth of my father, she contracted what was called childbirth fever, but it was really just an infection, you know, it was this was pretty antibiotics. And she died. Uh And the the great grandfather, my great grandfather, who delivered her, was dead within two months, and I think the assumption is that he may have suicided, you know. So, um so, my father really like his mother, went to the family because my grandfather, Alexander just fell apart really and descended into alcoholism, which was there was a lot of addiction in the family. Yes, it was a tragic start, and I think it it gave my father the sense that that his position was very conditional, you know, that he didn't really have a secure place in the world, and that his performance was going to really you know, that was that was going to be the thing that that allowed him, you know, a place in the lifeboat. In in Brickshot, you talk about a lot about how that's almost like the original sin of the tailors, that it cast a shadow, a multi generational shadow in the famid does. It's like ripples and they spread out. And I think the thing manifested when my dad, you know, he had he had five kids in Bally in six years and we all as as we entered adolescence and the prospect of leaving home. I think that my dad just was out of his depth. I think it it was something that he just didn't know how to how to deal with. It also coincided with his drinking becoming. You know, alcoholism progresses. My father is an extremely functional alcoholic for many, many years, but ultimately that you know that you lose control of that eventually, and and that happened around the same time. So my parents marriage also fell apart at that that time. And the culture was was the Vietnam baby boom culture of nineteen sixty eight or sixty six, you know, it was it was every buddy was was questioning their connections and their context and the and the thought was abroad in the land that we change everything, you know, that it would all that there was a distinct interruption, you know, discontinuation with the last with the World War two mentality of that generation. And we were a new generation that was really going to change things. And there were so many of us at the same time, so you know, all of these things happened at once. Uh. And and I my own personal story is that I sort of had a breakdown, you know, I just couldn't go forward, and I sort of had a crisis there, and it precipitated in my siblings a similar a similar sort of derailment. And how many of your siblings end up you and how many of your siblings end up intitutionalized to him, to two others. But my older brother really should have he was he was the ultimately the sacrifice, my brother Alex. Yeah, so you you spend ten months at McLean Hospital. Um, and once again we're as you point out, McClean hospital is where Robert Lowell went where uh and Sexton was teaching poetry classes. You said at some point, so your Platt worked there. Yes, Um, I mean the list is kind of like it's it's a kind of another you know, there's there's a series of these kind of um iconic set pieces. It's like a nexus. Yeah, yeah, that's true. There. I never I didn't think about it at the time, but it sort of was where one went, you know, if you had a breakdown. Yeah, yeah, it was you know, it was Harvard Medical School and mass General Hospital. Yeah, did you I was curious about in those So you had this very tumultuous teenage late teenage years where you're you leave North Carolina, you go to boarding school for a while, then you have your breakdown, you go back to North Carolina, and then you finished school at Milton Academy. Were you writing music in that period? What's what was your musical identity in those years? Yeah? I was starting to well when I went home to North Carolina for that junior year, I was in a band with my brother Alex. But before then on Martha's Vineyard, it would had been the middle of what a friend of mine calls the folk scare of the of the early sixties. You know, so folk music was the sort of thing on campuses, and it was you know, Bob Dylan and John Bias and the Kingston EO and Peter Paul and Mary and you know that, but also Odetta and Lightning Hopkins and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee and Jesse Loncat Fuller and Reverend Gary Davis. You know, there was country blues in there as well. So on Martha's Vineyard in the summertime, it was easy to pick up a guitar and learned from other people who were around, and and to find people to sing with and play with. And there were open mics at a various a couple of coffeehouses they were called. But what's the function of am I reading too much into it? But his music? Does music have a kind of psychological function for you in that troubled moment? Is it your own personal therapy as you deal with all of this? Yeah, without a doubt, I think that probably a good deal of what art is, if this can be called it's a commercial art. It is you know, is a kind of therapy or a way of getting something insoluble that's inside just in front of you somehow. You know, it's like, you know, I was a cutter when I was when I was a teenager, and it's almost like that you sort of want to see the scar. Uh So music definitely started to me to uh, you know, it was always a celebratory thing. That was that was the main thing about it is that it was fun and joyful. But when I started to write, I started to write from a sort of a therapeutic place, I guess. And that's what I'm known for, sort of that that kind of uh. I mean, people who go into my stuff in any depth realize that that's just a corner of it. But but it was the thing that really resonated with people when when fire and rain took off. Yeah, I guess my question and this is an unanswerable question, but a fun one. Nonetheless, had your mother Trudy married a prosperous, happy New England merchant and had that been the version of your life? Are you a musician or are you something else? No? I mean there was no My mother had studied voice. She sort of was the last generation that went to finishing schools, and she went to a school in Boston called Missus Child's School on Beacon Hill, and those women were learning to be wives. It was sort of pre Ruth Vader Ginsberg, you know, it was pre my mother could see she could see the promised land. But but you know, and it was frustrated, and you know, so she had children and um and was basically a sort of a faculty wife, which was a it was a job really. But when I you know, so in the summertime I had been playing the guitar and getting into blues and folk music. I met my friend Danny Korchmar, who coach who was to be for my whole life, a major connection for me musically, and he introduced me to a lot of the music that I was has been a source to me, so that there was this musical life on the vineyard. Then when I went home to North Carolina, I was in a band with my brother Alex, and I played the electric guitar and we basically were we played fraternity parties, we played what were you playing? What kind of music? Well, it was called beach music, and what it was was the music that Southern college students loved when they went to Virginia Beach or Myrtle Beach or or Rightful Beach when they took their spring break and they went to party on the on the coast. That was the music to what kind of can you remember any of the songs. I've never heard that term before. A song like Shotgun by Junior Walker in the All Stars. That's beach music. Yeah. It was very close to the to the Chitland circuit, you know, I see those acts that could work that circuit could also do the beach circuit. It was a place where race is mixed to a certain extent, a limited extent. And that's what my brother Alex got into. You know. He just loved that music. Anyone who heard it loved it, and it was just it was great, Like, uh, you know that song a search in by the Coasters. That was That was a song called Searching and it was the first soul music that I ever heard. I was in a bus going from a camp in the mountains of North Carolina to Tennessee over the border, and the bus driver had a like a I don't know if it was the car radio or if it was a transistor or what it was, but it was playing that song and I just it was like it was like somebody you know, carbonated my blood. You know, it was just amazing. Yeah, was it unusual for for white people to be playing that music in that part of North Carolina at that point? I mean it was your brother. Was your band with your brother an oddity or was it commonplace? Well there was only there was only one among high school students in our town, so in the town of Chapel Hill, and for that reason we got work. We weren't very good, but we were you know. So that was a big influence. Folk music first, then beach music, my brother's music, and then after McClean, I came to New York and started playing here in town for about a year. We had a band called the Flying Machine, and it just we we just couldn't compete. We petered out. You had to get a record contract in those days, and we did sign one, much to my chagrin years later when when it turned out I'd also signed a publishing contract. But we were in their hands and they gave us two days in the studio and that's it. You know, just what kind of music was that, you know, it was funny. It started by we sort of identified as a blues band, but you know, we realized that was sort of inappropriate. We were essentially suburban kids, you know, but we love the music. But we also played Jogi Carmichael songs. We played God Bless the Child to billy holiday tune, and so we we had odd material, you know, and I wrote a couple of songs for that. I wrote a tune called a night Owl. I'm a night Owl, and I wrote a song called Brighten your Night with My Day. I cringe to think of it, but there it is. And uh, um, you know, we we tried our best. We were We got a job as the house band at a club called the night Owl at McDougall and third. That's just down to yeah, but this is a little bit after Downs Gone, Dylan's has left, um and Stephen Stills had had gone to the coast and started Buffalo Springfield. That was also you know, that was a you know, an example of what we were aspiring to. But our record deal was a dead end and it basically killed us. We were signed to people who wouldn't record us. So yeah, yeah, that was the end of the sand. Is there anything that you wrote in those years that you feel like stands with some of your best work. Do you look back fondly on anything from that and say, you know what that was? That was really the beginning of what I really stand for. You know. I wrote a song called I'm a Night Out that I think was the best thing I wrote in those days, just as a song, the way it was constructed, and you know, and it had a feel to it. You know, it was good. And and I've often thought that I'd like to, you know, try to cut that. Yeah, cut did it go? Oh? It was? You know. A fish likes the water, that's where he's going to be. A monkey lives on fruits and bananas, so he lives in the top of a tree. But my eyes are made for darkness, so the nighttimes right from me, I'm a night owl. Most folks like the daytime. They're light to see the signing shining sun. They're up in the morning, off and run until they're too tired to have any fun. But when the when the sun goes down and the bright lights shine, my daytime has just begun. I'm a night owl. Close those curtains, form you, honey, it's just about to make me blind anyways, point out that you are reciting from memory a song written over fifty years ago, and you must have written in the course of your life. How many songs? How many? I think it's probably approaching one hundred and fifty. Now maybe it's more, maybe it's more like two hundred. But it's pretty impressive. You know. It's a funny thing. I think that for me, anything that has music connected to it, I can remember. I don't know any Italian, but I can sing. I can sing ladone mobile as you know. I learned it in Italian and it's just because there's music attached to it. It sticks in my mind. Yeah. In fact, I think that that's why people when they learn English, why English songs, English popular music is so useful to them. You know that that a lot of people have told me. You know, I learned English by by listening to English lyrics. Yeah. Yeah, who to go back to? So we're talking about what years now that you are. What year are you in Are you in Grene Village playing in those clubs? Well, um, that's nineteen sixty six, sixty six, I'm eighteen years old. You're eighteen years old when you look back on that year. I know, you you fall back into drugs or fall into drugs, I guess for the first time. Um, but do you have is the is the is the year in your memory? Chaotic? Is it a pleasant? I mean, how do you kind of look back on that? Oh? It was great, you know, the whole thing was it was a riot. You know. I was free, eighteen and living in New York City. The drinking age was eighteen at that point. So where were you living? We lived in the Albert Hotel, which was at on University at Eleventh Street. It was below just below Union Square, and there was one of the floors of the hotel it burned, you know, there'd been a serious fire. But there was one room that had survived it. But they couldn't rent it, really rent it. But they rented it to me and the bass player, my best friend, Zach Weasner, who I knew from the Vineyard. Zach and I took that sort of suite of rooms for just for almost no money, I mean, and we rehearsed in the basement of the Albert Hotel. So that was where I lived first. And then I you know, I would crash at different people's places too, and Eventually I got an apartment on eighty fourth in Columbus, which in those days was you know it was yeah, it was a rough neighborhood and and it was you know, it was a cheap rent. What are you doing all? That's question? But what are you doing all day at that age in New York City? Well, you get up late and you go to work at the night Al Cafe, which is where our gig was. And that was six days a week. So from when to end, probably from seven o'clock till midnight, three four or five sets we would do. People would come in the order hamburg and a cup of coffee or something. They didn't have a liquorized and you know, we play a twenty minute set. There was no backstage to speak of. There was like a closet where we could hang out or in the kitchen. But are you are you writing? How much music are you writing in those years? I'm starting to write now, but uh, like that night Owl song is written in that in that era? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, you know the guy who ran the club, it's a labor of love. I don't know why he did it. He did it because he loved the music. I think and just wanted to be part of the life because it you know, it wasn't a living the guy. We were making like less than a hundred dollars a week for each of us. But you could live on that then, Yeah, it's amazing that you could live on that. But you know, the subway still wasn't a quarter. It was still a dime to ride the subway, so one hundred dollars could go a certain distance. Yeah, those days. And you know they also fed us dinner, I mean free free Hamburgs at the yeah, the night owl. So really, rent was the only consideration the So you're things get bad and you and then your father comes and rescues you, which was an incredibly touching moment, given how troubled your relationship was with him and how troubled your family life was. He drives from North Carolina to New York. He did. He I called home. The Flying Machine had had disbanded. You know, I had a habit, a heroin addiction that I was. It really was going to get me in trouble sometime very soon, you know, because I no longer was in contact with with Joel O'Brien, who was had been my sort of source and a sort of safe way to get into the to get access to the to the drug. But being an eighteen year old kid on the street trying to hustle an to have a habit was going to really get me in trouble soon, There's no question about it. And my father really did. It was like the cavalry coming over the hill. I think he sensed it. I called him up. He said, how are you doing. I said, you know, Dad, not so good. And he just said, where are you. I told him the address eighty fourth in Columbus. He said, don't move. He says, stay right there, do not leave the apartment. So you know, I went home to North Carolina and I stayed there for about six months, and then I went to England. Yeah. Yeah, And you serendipitously get in touch with someone who is involved with Apple Records. That's why you see my friend coach Danny kortchmar who had been the other guitar in the Flying Machine and who had known from Martha's Vineyard and we'd played. He had introduced me to the blues and some Latin music and stuff, and he had in the year before the Flying Machine he had been with a group called the King Bee's Much Better Name, and the King Bes had backed up Peter and Gordon, an English group, a duo. I don't care what they say, I won't stay in the world without Love. That was one of their hits, and another McCartney song called Night and Rusty Armor. But Peter was Jane Asher's sister, who was Paul McCartney's girlfriend, you know, sort of steady girl for a while there, and Peter had, as chance would have it, he had just accepted a job at the Beatles brand new record label, Apple Records, and his job was basically to find and sign other acts to the label. So when I called Cooch when I got to London and really started getting serious about somebody hearing my music and maybe making a record, I call Cooch back in the States and said, if you still got a number for Peter Asher from Peter and Gordon, And he said, I got a number. I don't know if it's any good, but it turned out it was, and Peter was just at the right the right person to call at the right time. He heard my stuff and liked it, and he took me to Apple Records, where I auditioned for Paul McCartney and George Harrison, and they said, Peter, if you want to make a record with this guy, let's sign. How old are you at this point? This point, I'm nineteen. You're nineteen years old. You have just had this kind of disastrous ending to your time in New York, and then within six months or a year you are auditioning for Paul McCartney in Church Harrison and an incredible just a the mother of all lucky breaks, you know, just exactly what So how did it happen? You go over to your your, your your, Where is it again? Where's the Apple Studios? It's in um uh they were well, eventually they were in Saville Row, but when I went there in in early January of nineteen sixty eight, they were at Baker Street. Yeah, and it was a sort of rented office space. And as soon as they bought a building in Saville Row, that's that's where they moved. But the uh, you know, it was I just couldn't believe it. I went along with Peter and we went up into these offices and I met a number of people who seemed really nice, and it was all, you know, quite amazing, and he Peter remembers it as leaning out into the hall and just saying, is there a beatle in the house? And there was, and there was. There were two and they came down and we walked into a room and I I can't remember it really very well because did you play? I played Something in the Way She Moves? Why did you choose that was? At the moment that was your you considered to be your best song? Yes, I thought it was probably It's probably the best one I hit. We'll be back with more of James Taylor's Beatle audition after the break. We're back with Malcolm and James Taylor. Before the break, James was telling Malcolm about his audition with Paul McCartney and George Harrison and producer Peter Asher, where he played the group something in the Way She Moves. So they so they listen and they say, do you remember They said to Peter, you know, I think Peter went out of the room with them. They said very nice, very nice, and left the room and Peter said, well, what do you think and he said sounds good to me. Do you do you want to record him? Peter said yeah, I'll produce him, and they said okay, yeah, what are the great job interviews of all time? Can I point out? I think so, you know, an actually it's like a fantasy of a job interview, an actual you know. Apple only lasted for a very short time, less than in a year, really, yeah, because Alan Klein had convinced Yoko and John that he should manage them, because after Epstein died there really was a great uh you know gap and no question about it. Apple was badly run and it was hemorrhaging money. And but you know, there were a number of people signed to it, Billy Preston, myself, Mary Hopkin, Jackie Lomax, uh, the Modern Jazz Quartet. But Alan Klein came in and wasn't interested in any of that, you know, and our contracts said that we could audit him. He didn't want to be audited, so you know, McCartney didn't you know, had been warned off him by a number of people, including the Rolling Stones, who who had had a disastrous uh time with Alan Klein. But he was just one of these pirates who manages to convince people, and John and Yoko went for it. So it was probably like the death knell for the for the Beatles. But he closed down Apple, and Peter um I had left London to go back to the States and I was trying to clean up. I was trying to get to shake my my habit again. And Peter called up while I was in an institution back back in the Berkshire's actually where I live now, and he said, well, this place is finished, he said, and we're out of the contract because Alan Klein will not be out at it. So that was it. He said, yeah, I'm gonna move to He said, I'm moving to Los Angeles and what do you say? I find us a record company and I'll be your manager. And I said, m sounds good. And I called Paul McCartney and asked him if he thought Peter would be a good manager, and Paul said, yeah, I do. I think McCarty's number. I guess I did. Maybe Peter gave it to me. You know, could you say you're charmed life? Your life is both not charmed and insanely charmed. Oh, it's it's totally charmed. Yeah, and it's it's you know, the only parts about it that are bad are totally my fault. I mean, just because I have this mangled eye that that sees everything, you know as as being a drag but but in fact it's just been a gift from from start to finish, it's been wonderful. Yeah. Well, there's a little straight detail that confused me because so your song was called something in the Way She moved, Yes, something something that she was So George Harrison did he read his song after hearing yours? Yeah? Does he does? He? Does he own up? Does he say he was inspired? No? I don't think he really remembered my song. I think he remembered the line there's something in the way she moves. Yeah, and he liked that line. Um, but I don't think he he. I don't think he really. It was some months later and um, actually you know that the Beatles song? Uh yeah, I took that from them. So it's all karma. Yeah, it's all it's all just goes around. And I just I looked at it as a real you know, the thought that that he might have that I might have inspired it. George Harrison's song was was enough for me? That was great. Yeah. Yeah. And in Breakshot, you're fast fast forwarding about the strange set of coincidences that's surround and surround the death of John Lennon, and I was so, I mean, the whole thing is just so you wouldn't you couldn't make this up. So you so you couldn't make Trump up. For Christ's sake, Yes, you couldn't make good. There are many things in our world now, but but you're you at that point, living just a few blocks from John Lennet on Such Park West. I'm assuming know, not a few blocks. I was living one street up one and I my window on the sixth floor of apartment six s at at the Langhum, which is the building uptown from the from the Dakota that looked out on seventy third Street and the back of the Dakota with a sort of an arch that gave way into the archway didn't reach all the way to the street level, but it was an archway into the courtyard of the of the Dakota. So when John was shot, I was, I was in the window, you know, just just talking to someone on the phone, and I heard the I heard the shot, you know, and then the day was the day before you would run into this strange character on the subway. Yeah, who we described Hell, let's you know, just this this sort of sweaty, obviously either coked up or or or on speed, or or on some combination or in a manic break or something. This guy had sort of fastened onto me as we both left the subway station at seventy second Street, which is right there at the Dakota, and I was walking up one block to my door, and uh, and he just was in my face, talking to me about this and that and John Lennon this and and you know, his his music and uh and he has plans for this and he wants to do that, and I just like, you know, the guy was face was glistening with sweat, you know, it was just uh, you know, the picture of someone who was manic, you know, and and just flying. And I just you know, scraped him off and got out of there. And it was Mark David Chap Yeah. Wow, couldn't I couldn't believe it. The next day I was talking to Peter Asher's wife out on the West Coast and she said, I don't know if it was the if it was the Manson Trials, or if if maybe uh that one of the Manson m crew had tried to shoot um present Ford or something like that. But Squeaky from squeaky from right squeaky anyway, Um, she said, things are crazy out here on the West Coast. You know, it's just feels so strange in Los Angeles, you know, the all the the manson stuff, coming up on stuff. And I said, you think it's strange there. I just heard the police shoot somebody on the street, you know. And she said, well, how do you know that? I said, well, it sounded like a thirty eight. It was five shots in a row, which is you know, the police. I've been told that that's what a police shooting is, that they emptied the gun and that they keep an empty chamber under the hammer. And so I was sure that it was a police shooting. And she said wow, And we said goodbye and hung and rung off, and like twenty minutes later she called me back and said, that wasn't a police shooting. That was John Lennon. Oh yeah, just a half hour later or something. Yeah, just amazing. They had already heard about it, but you know, so yeah it was. I had visited Yoko and John at the at the Dakota at one point, and I think they invite me over because they wanted Alan Ginsberg wanted to talk to me about some songs that he had written. And he was there, but you know, I I didn't know what to make of his lyrics or or and I really wasn't interested in collaborating, you know. And I just it was a beautiful, you know, an odd oddly decorated but you know, by what standards, I don't know, but it was. You know, it was a amazing to be in their apartment. I had been in other apartments in that building before. I had looked at Leonard Bernstein's apartment which was on the market, and um, my wife and I were looking for a place then, but uh, you know, it was out of our league. So um that's the only time I visited them there. But I was I was just in my window when the shots rang out. I want to catch on a couple of other things about about songwriting. Um, I would be remiss, you know, here I am a few feet from the great songwriters at the last kind of say that thing, So I really have to. One of the things I read that fascinating was that you often begin to compose on the piano and then go because I you know, we always imagine people like yourself in the room with your guitar struggling way. But you when did you start doing that? And what's the advantage of doing it that way? Um? On the piano. Yeah, well it's just a slightly different you know. Uh. It's often the case that you'll you'll sit down and you'll you'll be playing like a just a little you know change that comes to men, and then that will suggest you to you up a sort of a lyric or Um, let's see. And likewise, if you a sort of scrap of melody and a little bit of lyric will will happen in the context of those little wheels that you're playing, and that will, you know, sort of ignite a song. And uh. And that can also happen when you're sitting at the piano like um, you know, just I'm very I'm I can't play I can't claim to play the piano at all, but I've written, Um, I've written a number of songs on the piano, and and then uh, um I sort of explain them to a piano player and and uh and let go of it, you know, and he'll change the key I can only play in uh and uh see anyway, Uh, it's a little bit rusty even at that. But that's a tune called shed a Little Light written on the occasion of Martin Luther King's birthday. And see that was shed a little light, shedow of a light. So I'm just curious about what is it you're hearing on the piano that you that you can't hear on the guitar or can't do on the guitar. And now it's it really is what I can manage to do with my fingers and the sound that it makes, that that comes back to me. It's a feedback thing. And you know, suddenly I'm you know, trying to construct a little melody on the on the piano that I that I like. You know, it'll i'll record that. I'm I'm always traveling with something. Well, now that our phones are these great recorders, um, I don't have to carry one anymore, But I used to always carry a little digital pocket recorder. And if I have an idea or a lyrical idea while I'm walking on the street, or a melody comes to mind, I'll I'll whistle it into the thing and and then i'll i'll when it comes time to really get serious about working stuff, I'll i'll look back through all of these things and find things to work on, things to elaborate on, or things that will fit together and make a make a piece. And so with the piano, it's really just sitting down at it and playing what occurs to me. But it's a combination of what you know. It's always in the KEYFC, it's a very it's very pros it's very prescribed prescribed um. In other words, it's it's extremely limited. And uh, and so is the guitar really. I mean, I'm not a chromatic. I'm not free up the neck with the guitar that you know. I change capo positions so that I can play in a different key, or so I can use a fingering up a whole step so it'll be and B and that's more comfortable for some songs. So it's these limitations really that contain it. You know, I don't know what I'd do if I were absolutely chromatically free to do whatever I wanted. I'm really dependent upon my my limits, the limits of my vocabulary, musical vocabulary, the limits of my voice. You know, these things really put it into a shape and a recognizable one after a while. And you know, I think the same thing happens lyrically that I keep going back to familiar topics, like I have a number of songs I've written about my dad, a couple about my mom. I have songs that are like ms hymns for agnostics, spiritual songs that that are looking for some kind of spiritual connection I have, you know, I've love songs that I that I now write mostly to my wife. So then there are celebratory songs and occasionally a political song a little bit um. But I keep coming back to the same you know. It's almost like my limitations are are really the containers that the juice gets poured into, you know. Yeah, we'll be right back with more of Malcolm's conversation with James Taylor. We're back with more from James Taylor. What's the song of yours? Do you think has been overlooked? There are a lot? Can you pick one? Never die young? It's enough to be on your way if I keep my heart out of sight, God have mercy on the frozen man. The song there we Are. I believe that the I've written my best work in the in the past five albums. In the album That's That's why I'm here. Our glass New Moonshine, October Road, and Before This World. I believe that that I've written my best work, my best songs, and it just happens to be out of what people are familiar with for my work. And I think that that I do have an audience that knows those songs. But um, they they're not you know, they're not the money songs. How does the active songwriting change as you as you get older. It's a really good question. It has less urgency to it, and it's being you feel less like it's being extruded from you, like it's got to get out, you know, like scratch the surface anywhere and a song will come out. And it's more like, Um, the urgency leaves and it becomes more of a craft and you you get you you become better at the just the process, you know, the you develop a method and you are more demanding in terms of the structure of it and the form of it. There was a long gap between Um, October Road and Before This World. Well what was happening in that period? Those are the two yeah, you know, uh, those are your two last or rigid songs of original music. Two thousand and two and twenty fifteen. Yeah maybe, uh wait, and for your three and twenty fourteen but yeah, and before this World was your first number one album? Yes it was. Yeah. Isn't it extraordinary? Well it is, although uh you know, nowadays album sales are are way off because people don't buy music really anymore in the same way. Still, come on, but it is no, it's remarkable. And what it really means is the record company finally did their job. And yeah, they finally you know, I just you know, I don't have very good things to say about the record business, but I do think that it's it's better. It's it's better to have thought have music exists in a commercial world than it is to have it. Um that it is to have it, uh, you know, to to to be dependent on the court like some minor aristocrat in Germany somewhere to sponsor you. Or the church. You know, those are the the church, the court and academia were the places where music used to happen. And and and the marketplace is better, you know, it's it's better. It's not great, but it's better. Wait, so what tell me what was happening in that gap? Had you were you were you giving up on songwriting? No, not at all. I've just been extremely busy. I made two albums of cover songs, songs that I that because I have this great band it's like a musical community, and I wanted to record them. And I built a studio on my property of a big room, big wooden room, um and uh, and we we recorded a couple of covers albums, so that was in there. Also a Christmas album was in there, which I always you know, just like you know, as as time goes by, your scruples kind of fall by the wayside, and I thought, you know, but the Christmas album was a delight to make, and I made it with Dave Grusin, who's a great composer and arranger, and he produced it and we just had a ball, you know. We So there were three albums that came out, and actually a fourth was the the album from I had a sort of theatrical piece that I did for a while just myself and a piano player called One Man Band, and we that we released that as an album as well. So there were really there were four projects, three or four projects between those two albums, and we were recording a lot. And then also, uh, you know, if you've got a family. If you have children, and you're going to pay any attention to him, you know you that that's a big demand on your time. And also just touring. Touring takes a lot of time too. Yeah, so really there was plenty going on. Yeah, one last thing and then I think we probably hum were you were you? Will you play something just to bring our delightful chat to a graceful close. You're up to you whatever you well. I don't know if you know this song what he got three wrote it. You know, he used to do commissioned songs. I think roll On Columbia, roll On Your power is turning our darkness to dawn. Roll On Columbia roll On was for the power company that built the damn on the Columbia River. Yeah, so he would, yeah, you know, and he was hounded by someone that he knew who belonged to an organization called the Ladies Auxiliary and um, and I guess that shut him up. There there's your song. Good. Thank you so much, James, Thank you, sir. Thanks to James Taylor for coming on Broken Record. His new album American Standard is out February twenty eight, and his new audio memoir breakshot is available on audible net. We can hear some of James's music on a playlist we put together for this episode at broken record podcast dot com. Broken Record is produced with help from Jason A. Gambrell, Milo Bell, and Lea Rose for Pushkin Industries. A theme music is by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond. Thanks for listening.