With typically sly humor, James Taylor describes the mystical songs on
his new album, "Hourglass," as "spirituals for agnostics."
One song, "Up From Your Life," starts out by declaring "God's not at
home," then does a U-turn in its chorus to implore "Look up from your
life" and to talk about an "ancient and sweet" river connecting all
things. Another song, "Up Er Mei," describes a powerful feeling of
being "blessed" that Mr. Taylor says he experienced while climbing a
sacred Buddhist mountain in the Sichuan province of China with his two
children.
In "Gaia," a rhapsodic hymn to the balance of nature inspired by the
theories of the British scientist James E. Lovelock, the singer calls
for prayers for the earth and for himself.
Has this gifted, famously troubled singer-songwriter suddenly found God?
Not quite. But as he has coped with the successive deaths of several
close relatives and friends and with the breakup of his second marriage,
he appears to have found a tentative peace and accepted the inevitable
changes life brings. The songs evoke a Zenlike embrace of life's simple
pleasures.
"Growing up in North Carolina, I missed the boat on most religions," Mr.
Taylor explained during a recent visit to New York to participate in a
rainforest benefit concert at Carnegie Hall. "My dad was basically an
atheist or at best an agnostic," he added. "But music has such a
spiritual component. There's also my recovery from addiction, which has
been going on for 13 years. There's something about intoxication and
oblivion-seeking that closely parallels a spiritual need."
Mr. Taylor, the patrician 70's troubadour made famous by songs like
"Fire and Rain," "Carolina on My Mind" and Carole King's "You've Got a
Friend," is now 49. His thick, shoulder-length locks have thinned
considerably, and he is pale and beanpole thin, with blue eyes that burn
behind wire-rim spectacles. Clad this day in a dark blue work shirt,
black slacks and boots, he has the demeanor of a prosperous,
God-fearing 19th-century farmer as he slouches in a chair in a midtown
Manhattan hotel room. When not on tour, he returns to his home on
Martha's Vineyard.
"James has always reminded me of Abraham Lincoln because of his height
and his lugubriousness," says his friend Sting. "He's the archetypal
Southern gentleman and a great storyteller."
Mr. Taylor's string of losses began four years ago with the death of his
beloved older brother Alex, whose rock band, the Fabulous Corsairs, he had
joined in the mid-60's when he was still a teenager. About the details
of the death, Mr. Taylor would say only that it came "after a long
struggle with the family demon" and that "his being my older brother and
being only a year older really shifted things for me."
The loss is remembered in the song "Enough to Be on Your Way," an
exquisitely tender ballad that begins at a funeral and describes the
ashes of a woman cremated in New Mexico blowing over the San Juan
Mountains.
The death of Mr. Taylor's brother was followed several months later by
the death of his father's new wife, Sue, who was around the same age as
the singer. Then last June, Don Grolnick, Mr. Taylor's producer,
keyboardist and collaborator, succumbed to lymphoma at the age of 48.
Mr. Taylor remembers him as "a very lovely man who impacted people in a
profound way," and "Hourglass" is dedicated to him.
Finally, Mr. Taylor's father, who was suffering from multiple ailments,
died last November. Around the same time, Mr. Taylor's marriage to his
second wife, the actress Kathryn Walker, unwound.
He has a new companion now, Caroline Smedvig, an executive with the
Boston Symphony Orchestra. And he is close to Sally, 23, and Ben, 20,
his two musically gifted but career-shy children by his first wife, the
singer Carly Simon.
Despite these losses, "Hourglass," his 16th studio recording and first
collection of new material in six years, is a far from mournful album.
The sense of depression that was palpable on earlier Taylor albums like
"Flag" and "Dad Loves His Work" is nowhere to be found on the new record,
which may be his finest album in two decades, and possibly his best ever.
Along with Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne and the late Laura
Nyro, Mr. Taylor helped found the singer-songwriter genre, the
folk-oriented confessional soft-rock style that dominated American pop
in the early 1970's. Among his fellow pioneers, Mr. Taylor has probably
changed less musically than any of them. His austere but tender
Appalachian-flavored folk-pop is as instantly recognizable as it was
30 years ago.
"I write on guitar in a style which is very concise and doesn't allow me
to break loose," Mr. Taylor explained. "The limits of my guitar and of my
vocal range are what keep it identifiable and contained. Songwriting for
me is also not a conscious process. It's really just what happens to come
through, a channeling process."
As primary influences, Mr. Taylor listed Hank Williams, the Carter Family,
Woody Guthrie, Jean Redpath, the Rodgers and Hammerstein show tunes his
parents listened to, and the early soul singers Ray Charles, Sam Cooke and
Jackie Wilson. The Brazilian influence that creeps into many of his songs
comes from the 60's bossa nova recordings Stan Getz made with Jojo and
Astrud Gilberto. And like all his peers, Mr. Taylor paid close attention
to Bob Dylan, who is six years his senior.
"Before Dylan, people would write about themselves, but first they would
assume a character and stand in a certain posture," said Mr. Taylor. "Bob
broke down the presentation of the self. He would write about himself
collapsed, strung out in Mexico, wondering how to get home."
When Mr. Taylor took up the guitar, the first songs he played were the
hymns and carols from the Protestant hymnal at his Massachusetts
boarding school, Milton Academy, and he constructed his finger-picking
technique around their harmonic structure.
What Mr. Taylor, who was born in Boston and reared in Chapel Hill, N.C.,
has forged out of these influences is something quintessentially
American. His distinctly reedy voice with its Carolina twang conveys a
paradoxical mixture of resilience and aching fragility. Because even his
darkest songs are written in major keys, there is always a play of shadow
and light in his music. He has the ability to sculpture a song on a
guitar so that it feels three-dimensional without wasting a note.
"James has a way of getting the guitar to speak that's very particular,
and that's all his," said the guitarist Pat Metheny. "It has to do with
his touch, which is the equivalent of Bill Evans on the piano."
Eminent guest musicians, including Yo-Yo Ma (on cello), Stevie Wonder
(harmonica), Branford Marsalis (saxophone) and Shawn Colvin and Sting
(background vocals) add extra fillips of texture to the new album, which
is characteristically spare but warm. Along with a precarious sense of
joy, the songs glint with a dry, observant humor. "Line 'em Up," a song
about regimentation, begins with a verse describing Richard Nixon, with
"a tiny tear in his shifty little eye," on his final day in the White
House in 1974 lining up the staff to say goodbye. The song goes on to a
mass wedding presided over by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon.
If there's such a thing as an archetypal baby boomer whose life
encapsulates the cultural shifts of his generation, Mr. Taylor comes
about as close to fitting the mold as anyone.
His confessional songs tell the story of a creative, sensitive hippie
who got snagged in the drug excesses of the 60's, went through two
marriages and emerged from his prolonged adolescence as an abstemious,
health-conscious environmentalist seeking spiritual enlightenment.
"Our generation took up so much space that we didn't have to refer to
anything in the past," he said. "The 50's felt a certain way because of
the age we were. In the 60's, and 70's, the things going on in the
culture were the things that were of interest to us. Then came the cold
shock of reality in the 80's, of having to pay a mortgage and raise a
family. Now a lot of people are talking about what the quality of the
culture is going to be like when the boomers are in their 50's and 60's
and still have their health and mental acuity. I find it very promising."