The year was 1975, and James Taylor needed a hit.
Strange words to hear in 2024, when the man and his music have become so iconic and revered that it’s hard to keep straight which musical giant named a kid for him (Garth Brooks) and which was herself named for him (the world-conquering Ms. Swift).
But back in 1975, Taylor’s career was on one of the downslopes of his up-and-down early days. His 1968 Apple Records debut had stiffed, but 1970’s follow-up Sweet Baby James (the start of a six-album run on Warner) was a worldwide smash, landing him national magazine covers and charting hits in “Fire And Rain” (#3) and “Country Road” (#37). The introvert’s introvert seemed to shrink from the attention, retreating into a series of albums that often felt like they were tacking left, then right, in search of a way forward.
Mud Slide Slim And The Blue Horizon (1971) felt like Sweet Baby James II to a certain extent, but only JT’s cover of pal (and briefly, bandmate) Carole King’s “You’ve Got A Friend” achieved any notable chart success. The shambolic One Man Dog (1972) felt both relaxed and tossed-off, while Walking Man (1974) felt both slick and bland. Each spun off a charting single (“Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight” and “Walking Man,” respectively), but neither came close to the success of Sweet Baby James or even Mud Slide Slim. In fact, Walking Man has been described
as “a critical and commercial disaster… his first album to miss the Top 5 since his contract with Warner. It received poor reviews and sold only 300,000 copies in the United States.”
Meanwhile, two other factors loomed large in Taylor’s life: family—he and fellow singer-songwriter Carly Simon married in 1972 and their daughter Sally was born in 1974—and the heroin addiction that would plague him for another decade. How those played into the decision-making that led to his 1975 album Gorilla is anyone’s guess, but it seems clear he was determined to make a more focused album with wider commercial appeal—and boy, did he succeed.
Under the supervision of Warner house producers Lenny Waronker and Russ Titelman, Taylor assembled an album that leaned on A-list guest stars (Simon, Graham Nash, David Crosby, David Sanborn, Randy Newman, Lowell George) and a surprising, exuberant blue-eyed cover of Marvin Gaye’s r&b classic “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)” more than it did on Taylor’s own songs. Granted, the gently celebratory, Taylor-penned “Mexico” made it to #49 (#5 Adult Contemporary), but deeper in the tracklist lie song titles so generic as to verge on parody (one is called “Music,” another is “Love Songs”).
Gorilla saw Taylor’s sunny side ascendant on tunes like “You Make It Easy,” “Lighthouse” (featuring Crosby and Nash) and his luminous lullaby to his daughter “Sarah Maria.” What shone through here also was consistency; Gorilla’s second-tier tracks are among the strongest and most upbeat representatives of that category in JT’s entire catalog. There were occasional downbeat moments, including the melodic yet snappish “I Was a Fool To Care,” but as All Music Guide tartly notes, “even ‘Angry Blues,’ which confessed, ‘I can't help it if I don’t feel so good,’ didn’t sound like things were that bad.”
And indeed they weren’t; riding the high of hit single “How Sweet It Is” (#5, #1 Adult Contemporary) Gorilla reached #6 and reestablished Taylor as a hit-maker. After the equally star-studded if not quite as successful In The Pocket, Taylor would jump ship to Columbia for 1977’s JT, which reached #4 and cemented his status as the personification of the American confessional singer-songwriter.
It's ironic, then, that the album that pulled James Taylor’s career out of the power dive it had fallen into is one of the man’s least personal and confessional ones; Gorilla only hints at the depth and power of Sweet Baby James, but hits were what the man needed in that moment, and hits are what this album delivered—that, and consistency. The outcome has been another 50 years of sterling songcraft and performances.