Everybody talks about how it was ten years ago when the Village was at its
zenith. When Dylan, Ochs, Hardin, Van Ronk, Buffy, and all the rest of
them were walking from the Gaslight to the Go Go to Gerdes carrying their
guitars, anxious for any forum at all. That period was probably folk
music's answer to the "lost generation" of writers who congregated in
Gertrude Stein's and Alice B. Toklas' drawing room.
Well, if you were in the Village last weekend at the Gaslight , you would
have had the distinct feeling that you were experiencing a deja-vu. It was
all happening again. There were more than 400 people huddled inside their
coats in sub-freezing weather on both sides of MacDougal Street, about 100
of them holding numbered admission tickets for the Gaslight at 1:30 AM,
waiting to get in for the scheduled 12:30 AM show which would not begin
until about 2:00 AM. No, Dylan wasn't appearing. But he was at the
Gaslight twice during the weekend, it was reported, to see James Taylor,
who was there for three days. James Taylor, just a tall, lanky guy with a
big rich rounding guitar who had one album on Apple and has just had his
second release on Warner Brothers. Why all the furor?
Plenty of reasons. First of all there's the instinct factor. The people
who were at the Gaslight last weekend; the ones standing in the cold; the
same ones who yelled every time someone from the working press walked in
front of the line into the Gaslight to wait in the warm innards of the club
for the preceding show to end; these people are the cognoscenti. They can
smell a legend going to happen almost as soon as the first copies of his
debut album reach the stores.
Then of course there's James himself. With James there is a multi-leveled
thing happening. James Taylor is not what he appears to be. Even the
covers of his albums are deceiving. There he is, stretched across his
entire Apple LP, a fall leaf for a boutonniere. Pleasant. Then, there's
the Sweet Baby James cover. Just James looking as pensive as hell,
concerned, even a little angelic. Your first impression is probably "Yeah,
that's 'Sweet Baby James' alright." But there's much more to the covers
once you begin to concentrate on his face, especially the eyes. A young
artists who studied the "Sweet Baby James" jacket photos said that James
had to be a star because he had what she described as "superstar cheek
bones." But the artist was more interested in the fact that there was a
great deal of tension apparent in James' face.
James' music will be subjected to the same shift of analysis. On the
surface, his melodies and his lyrics can seemingly be understood with a
little effort. So, James Taylor is accessible... intellectually. Odd when
you consider that legends on their way to happening should be as obtuse as
possible. How can you get to be a legend if you're not mysterious? Well,
James Taylor's mystery is there. And it's the best kind; the type that is
there without anyone realizing it...
Both albums are extremely personal. They're personal statements made up of
fleeting impressions, sensations, snatches of places he's been and places
he's thinking about. Throughout the two albums, James shows a strange
curiosity with the element of light. Almost every song in the first album
deals with the subject either directly or in the forms of sunshine or
night. The theme is carried through to the Warner Bros. album. James'
work lives on a non-tactile level. His songs don't give you anything to
touch. They do more. They allow you to visualize and even experience his
thought process, his feelings.
But things are well on their way for James at this point. Album sales and
popularity are already beginning to zoom. Then the flood of critical
analysis will quickly follow. Last stop: Legend.