Music matters most to Taylor

Music matters most to Taylor

(Courtesy photo)

By John Berger / jberger@staradvertiser.com

Simple questions can spark a fascinating conversation. I’d been talking with James Taylor for maybe 10 minutes — about this weekend’s concerts in Hawaii, about the projects he’s working on this year — when I asked him about the artists who had inspired him as a singer and songwriter.

By the time Taylor finished answering the question, he’d compiled a list that stretched from Broadway hits to the Beatles to jug band music.

“There are a number things that I consider to be seminal,” he began. “Ray Charles’ album ‘Yes Indeed’; Ry Cooder’s album ‘Paradise and Lunch’; the Stan Getz album with (Antonio Carlos) Jobim and (Joao) Gilberto and Astrud Gilberto — that Stan Getz album is phenomenal.

“‘Sketches of Spain’ by Miles Davis and ‘Appalachian Spring’ by Aaron Copeland, and a greatest-hits compilation of Lee Dorsey. A collection of Jobim — those great Brazilian bossa nova songs that are so classical. And Gabby Pahinui. That slack-key stuff is so amazing. I could go on and on forever.”

Catching his breath, Taylor continued.

“Ralph Vaughan Williams’ ‘Fantasia on Greensleeves,’ sort of a Celtic orchestral album. A lot of that stuff connected with me in a major way.

“In the beginning I listened to a guy — a live performer — named Tom Rush who was a folk-music phenomenom in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Tom had some great stuff — I stole a lot of that stuff. And there was a group called the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, and, man, those records were really key for me.”

He went on to mention an early Judy Collins album, “In My Life,” and two Capitol albums by the Beatles: “Yesterday and Today” and “Rubber Soul.”

“The other thing that had a huge effect on me was the (original) cast recordings of ‘My Fair Lady,’ ‘Oklahoma!’ and ‘Kiss Me, Kate,’” he said.

“When you think about a nonformal musical education, the first thing (you hear) is what your folks play around the house when you’re a kid, ’cause those things sink in and have a huge effect.”

Taylor’s older brother introduced him to “all soul music — Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, Carla Thomas, the Stax/Volt stuff, the Motown stuff. … There is also a guy you should listen to, and this is probably hard to find, but his name is Arsenio Rodriguez. He was a Cuban tres player — he played a 10-string instrument called a tres. His recordings completely blew my mind when I was a young musician.

“Also in that Afro-Cuban world is a guy named Eddie Palmieri. That was a very strong Latin hit for me.”

TAYLOR COMES to town with his band tomorrow night in the middle of what is essentially a year off.

“This is a year that I’m taking off, basically, to write music to finish my current batch of songs, but when the opportunity came up to get together in the middle of it and play the gig in Honolulu again, it was just too good to resist,” he said. “It’s basically just a spot weld to keep us together, ’cause we’re not going to work together this summer. We may be in the studio recording some in the fall, but it’s good to have a check-in in the middle of this stretch of time off.”

He’s playing Blaisdell Arena more than 40 years after his first time here as a young hit-maker.

“It was one of my first memories of playing a really big place, a big arena, so that’s gonna be great to come back there,” he said.

“I love Honolulu, too. It’s a very exotic city to me. … At the base of it all, there’s that Native Hawaiian thing which is so remarkable and such an amazing, exciting part of the American mix. It’s just incredible that (Hawaii) is part of the American experience and that our president now has such a tie to the place. That’s kinda cool, too.”

Taylor was an active supporter of the president’s re-election campaign and performed “America the Beautiful” at the inauguration in January. He describes meeting the president as “a thrill.”

“My wife, Kim, and I did some (campaign) work in 2008, but (we did) an awful lot of work in this past campaign for the president, so we’ve had that honor and experience (of meeting him) a couple of times.

“We played in the Rose Garden of the White House for a state dinner for the German chancellor … and he came out during our sound check and said hello to everybody. It was a thrill. It was great.”

Taylor’s career as professional musician and songwriter began in the mid-’60s when he formed a band named The Flying Machine. The quartet cut a single that got some play in the Northeast but didn’t reach the Hot 100 nationally.

When The Flying Machine fizzled, Taylor moved to London and became the first American artist signed by Apple Records, the Beatles’ DIY label in London. Apple released Taylor’s self-titled debut album to good reviews but limited commercial success. With Apple imploding in London — anarchic management and a horde of freeloaders undid everything the Beatles had tried to accomplish — Taylor returned to the United States and signed a new deal with Warner Bros. Records.

Taylor’s first album for Warner Bros., “Sweet Baby James,” released in 1970, made him a star.

“Fire and Rain,” inspired by his experience in psychiatric institutions and the suicide of a friend, peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. The album sold more than 3 million copies.

“In ways it seems every bit (40 years ago), and in other ways it’s like just yesterday,” he said. “One of the things about getting older is that I always assumed when I was a kid that people my age now are like a different species (with) a completely different set of motivations and references and priorities and everything. The fact is that I think you become who you are at the age of 8, and then that gets sort of reiterated by the time you’re 20 but you stay that person for your whole life. That’s one of the surprises of this end of the spectrum. You just don’t change that much.

“Of course, when you’re successful early on as an entertainer and a musician and songwriter, there’s a tendency to want to freeze it — if it works, keep it going — and there are a lot of people, oneself included, who want to keep the big ball rolling, so it may be different with me. I may have been more encouraged to stay the same than other people are, but sometimes it amazes me that it’s 40 years ago that I was playing the H.I.C. (Honolulu International Center) in 1971.”

James Taylor last performed in Hawaii in 2001. (Courtesy photo)

BEING A MUSICIAN was always more important than being famous, Taylor said.

“I was always a working musician. Essentially I make my living on the road,” he said. “The other aspects of show business and (being a) celebrity always seemed to me to be very dubious, very fickle and not to be trusted.

“I always just tried to focus on the music, focus on the audience, focus on my fellow musicians, my band. Over the years I’ve played with such great, great players.”

The musicians he’s bringing to Hawaii, Taylor said, “feel like family to me.”

The last time Taylor did a show here was in 2001.

“How are things in Honolulu?” he’d asked, sounding like he sincerely wanted to know and wasn’t just making small talk.

He was calling from Montana, enjoying a few days of skiing in big sky country before coming here to “soak in the sun.”

“I live in western Massachusetts, and it’s sort of up high and we get proper winter there. They’ve got 2 feet of snow on the ground right now.”

“The great thing about playing live concerts (is) the communication between the musicians onstage and the communication in real time with the audience. You get a sense of an instant community of people who are there for the same reason; they’re dedicating three hours of their time to this one event.

“The thing that is so hard today is to feel as though we live in communities. We’re trapped between the television set and the automobile. We get a sense we’re connected to the world, but in many ways we’re disconnected.

“For me, playing music live, the kind of a spiritual thing that happens at a concert is the main sort of reassuring thing in my life. … For me it’s what this life is about. I love it.”