~~ recommended by emil karpo ~~
At 75, James Taylor’s life is sweet, baby
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James Taylor returns the MGM Music Hall at Fenway for a pair of shows Aug. 31 and Sept. 1.NORMAN SEEFFAt 75, James Taylor is having an epic summer.
Logan Roy, er, we mean Brian Cox, took in Taylor’s Fourth of July Tanglewood show. (The “Succession” star had evidently been waiting half a century to see a JT concert.)
Next, Taylor saved the day performing what he called “emergency folk music” after Noah Kahan had to drop out of the Newport Folk Festival at the last minute because of strained vocal cords. (Taylor’s set ended up making Rolling Stone’s list of best fest moments.)
And soon the diehard Red Sox fan will be taking the field near Fenway Park for shows Aug. 31 and Sept. 1 at the MGM Music Hall, which he helped inaugurate last year. He gushed over the venue — from its size to its acoustics— at various points during a recent phone interview. (“We love the hall. It feels like it was made for music and dance, made for art.”)
Sweet Baby James was born March 12, 1948, in Boston to Gertrude Woodard, a New England Conservatory of Music student, and Isaac Taylor, a Harvard Medical School graduate. He and his siblings — Kate, Livingston, Hugh, and the late Alex — were raised in North Carolina and Martha’s Vineyard. The troupe of talented-yet-sometimes-
Taylor met his wife, Kim — then working for the Boston Symphony Orchestra — when he was performing with the Boston Pops. (“The next day, I called her up because I couldn’t find my watch,” he told me previously. “She still thinks that was a bogus ploy. But I still don’t know what happened to my watch.”)
They married in 2001, settled in the Berkshires, and have twin boys, Henry and Rufus, now 22. Taylor also has two children from his previous marriage to Carly Simon: musician and artist Sally Taylor, and Ben Taylor, a musician and mason on Martha’s Vineyard.
In recent years, soon-to-be Berklee student Henry has been performing with his father, including on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” He helped pinch-hit at Newport Folk, and will play with his father on this tour as part of Taylor’s All-Star Band.
Ahead of his two Boston shows, Taylor shared thoughts about his unscheduled Newport appearance, the changing music landscape, whether he thinks about retirement, and what the Taylors have been binge-watching lately in the Berkshires.
Q. So you were recently doing some “emergency folk music” at Newport Folk.
A. [Kahan] had to cancel at the last moment — I mean, really the last moment. I’d been in touch with [headliner] Jon Batiste, who’d invited me to do a song in his set. So I was already talking to the festival people about how that was going to work. Then they called Friday midday and said: “Listen, it’s a short order, but we’ve had a cancellation and can you move everything to tonight?” So with Kim and Henry, we did a 45-minute set. It was spur of the moment. We jumped in a boat and came across the water.
Q. Were you on Martha’s Vineyard?
A. No, I was in Jamestown, Rhode Island, just hanging out. They sent a boat over. It was nice. The whole thing went off without a hitch.
Q. So Henry is showing interest in taking on the family business?
A. It feels like that. We resisted for a while, saying it makes the most sense to have a Plan B. But it’s what he wants to do. He’s just very musically aware. He’s going to Berklee this fall, and we’re accepting that that’s the path he wants to take, as daunting as it appears. I don’t know if I’d be able to find my way into a career in music today. It was very accessible back in the ‘60s.
James Taylor performs at the MGM Music Hall at Fenway in August 2022. JIM DAVIS/GLOBE STAFFQ. How is it harder, specifically?
A. There aren’t the available clubs that there were. Record companies — not that they ever did a particularly good job, generally speaking, of sponsoring new and supporting acts — even that minor amount of support, that’s gone now.
So with everything else — the technology revolution — we’re in new territory. Also, from my point of view, to follow someone else’s footsteps can be confusing. But I don’t think that’s the right way to think about it. I think the main thing is to focus on the art and take Joseph Campbell’s advice: Follow your bliss.
Q. Have you been to the Vineyard this summer, or have you stayed mostly in the Berkshires?
A. Mostly I’ve been in the Berkshires, but I went down to the Vineyard for a week and saw family and friends, visited with my brothers and sister, Sally and Ben. Ben lives there full time. He’s deep into his music. He’s constantly writing and recording. It used to be really hard to record on the Vineyard; I’ve done it a couple of times. But Ben has mastered the digital realm of recording.
Q. You spent part of lockdown in the Berkshires. You’ve said that time changed your perspective.
A. It changed everybody’s. That was the Great Interruption. It showed me how much I liked traveling with my band, performing. Once touring went away, I really missed it. COVID showed me how much I love that aspect.
Q. Still see a time when you’d retire?
A. Sure. I think it’s inevitable. It’s hard to imagine being 85 and doing this stuff, but so far, so good. We take it a day at a time, a tour at a time. You know, I’m doing today what I’ve been doing for 60 years. It’s been a slow evolution. You don’t [take time to stop and] see it, to get an overview of the whole thing. But that’s what [lockdown] was: A chance to realize how special it is and how much I love doing it.
Q. What are some highs and lows looking back on 75 years?
A. My recovery [from heroin addiction] in the mid-’80s. Bottoming out and not knowing what it was going to be like to try to pull it all back together. I don’t know if you’d call it a low point. It was just an intense point.
Q. What are some other highs or lows? You’ve said you didn’t really like the way the Apple record [1968′s “James Taylor,” his debut] turned out.
A. Well, it’s not that. I think I was learning my way. It’s raw. It’s early. It’s hard for me to look at it objectively. I was a work-in-progress at that point. Peter [Asher] and I, we did our best. I’m extremely grateful for the opportunity that Apple Records gave me, and the Beatles. Looking back, it was a Cinderella moment to have gone across the sea and found a door to the future. It’s just that I tend to look at the faults and get hung up on those and cringe.
Q. High points?
A. Oh, geez. Too many to mention. My recovery. Finding Kim, which just seems so unlikely that at that particular point in our lives we’d find each other and be so good for each other.
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