Saying James Taylor had a wild start to his career is like saying Shaq is kind of a big dude.
After spending nine months in a mental facility with chronic depression, 18-year-old Taylor moved to New York, started the band The Flying Machine with longtime friends Danny Kortchmar and Zach Wiesner, and developed all the bad habits one might associate with “troubled young musician hanging out in New York City in the mid-Sixties.” The Flying Machine struggled to get off the ground, Taylor fell in with the wrong crowd and commenced the heroin addiction that would plague him for more than a decade, and Taylor’s father came to his rescue, driving all night to bring him back home to North Carolina.
After six months of treatment and recovery, Taylor decided in late 1967 that he would move forward as a solo act and followed Kortchmar to London, where his friend connected him with Peter Asher (formerly of Peter and Gordon) soon after the latter’s installation as head of A&R for the newly formed Apple Records. Asher played the 20-year-old Taylor’s demo tape for Paul McCartney and George Harrison and within days they had signed him to Apple as the new label’s first non-Beatles artist.
The Beatles were of course at that moment the most famous musical act on the planet, as well as being in the midst of recording their sprawling magnum opus The White Album.
So, you know: no pressure.
Taylor was a new breed of artist whose gentle songs, rich with introspection, nuance, and difficult emotions, would become the template for the “sensitive singer-songwriter” movement of the early Seventies and the soundtrack for much of a generation. Harrison certainly recognized the timeless qualities of “Something In The Way She Moves”—first heard on the aforementioned demo tape—going so far as to ask Taylor’s permission to borrow the song’s opening line (Harrison’s song “Something” would become a #1 hit single for The Beatles).
That was the good news. The bad news was that Apple was a chaotic environment and Taylor was a novice without the standing and experience to fight for his vision for the songs that ended up on his self-titled 1968 debut. As a result, while the essential elements of his career-in-the-making can be heard at the core of this busy and overproduced record, it’s a decidedly imperfect debut.
The chief source of James Taylor’s cluttered sound is a series of “linking” segments McCartney and Asher asked arranger and orchestrator Richard Hewson to add to Taylor’s songs. Rather than unifying the album, they distract from its greatest strengths: the power of Taylor’s direct, confessional lyrics, and the naturally soothing timbre of his warm baritone voice.
“Don’t Talk Now” kicks off side one with a comfy folk-blues that feels a bit raw, but Taylor’s talent is obvious from the get-go. “Something’s Wrong” then offers a microcosm of the album’s biggest flaw, starting off with just Taylor and his acoustic wallowing in melancholy introspection and concern for a troubled lover, until horns and strings suddenly intrude, subtracting by addition. “Knockin’ Round The Zoo” is among the album’s highlights, a funked-up acoustic rambler about life inside a psychiatric facility, with punchy horns and an upbeat tempo that effectively contrasts with its subject matter.
That said, the orchestral arrangement of “Sunshine Sunshine” feels formal and stiff, in unfortunate contrast to Taylor’s warm and approachable lead vocal. “Taking It In” reminds you who was in the booth during the album’s recording, an acoustic pop-rock number with a harpsichord lifted right out of the grooves of Sgt. Pepper’s. The side finishes with the original studio recording of “Something In The Way She Moves,” where the guitar line is subtly different and played faster than on the more familiar version that was re-recorded for Taylor’s 1976 Greatest Hits album. The latter recording has more thoughtfulness and gravity to it; this earlier take feels rushed.
Side two opens with the original recording of “Carolina In My Mind.” It’s a denser arrangement than the Greatest Hits version, but the bones are there and the qualities of the song are apparent—at least until the strings come in and crowd out the rest of the arrangement. (The “holy host of others standing around me” in the lyric refers to McCartney and Harrison, sitting in on bass and background vocals, respectively.)
"Brighten Your Night With My Day" is a characteristic early JT tune, an acoustic base supplemented by horns that don’t add much. Then the funk returns for “Night Owl,” Taylor’s most fun early tune, a celebration of his youthful partying ways whose only real flaw is leaning too hard into the horns in the second half. “Rainy Day Man,” co-written with old friend and Flying Machine bandmate Zach Wiesner and rerecorded a decade later for Flag, strips it down to acoustic-bass-drums basics to deliver that distinctively JT melancholy warmth.
Taylor’s affection for covering traditional American music was present from the very beginning, as evidenced by his cover of "Circle Round The Sun," featuring plucked harp and cello before the full orchestra comes in; it’s a bit much but James is having a good time. The album closes out with "The Blues Is Just A Bad Dream," a spare acoustic blues that demonstrates the power of paring things back to just Taylor’s voice and acoustic guitar, at least until the extraneous strings butt in. (The 2010 CD remaster of James Taylor adds four demo recordings that serve to underscore the greater impact of JT’s thoughtful songs when an orchestra isn’t stepping all over them.)
James Taylor is an embryonic outing by an artist still finding his way and gathering confidence in his own instincts. The secret to framing his music would turn out to be alternating stripping it down and building it up, and recognizing when each approach might fit best. While this album, released in the UK in December 1968 and the US in February 1969, would earn solid reviews, Taylor was back in treatment for his addiction by the time it came out and its singles fizzled on the charts, leading to another retreat and regrouping back in the States.
Thankfully one of the numbers originally recorded for this album would be held over for 1970’s Sweet Baby James: “Fire And Rain.” Several others that did make the cut would be re-recorded in more characteristic form down the road, as Taylor found his voice, his confidence, and his audience. The ride may have started out bumpy, but it’s been a long and fruitful one ever since.