1:59

hospital, he had

2:01

attempted suicide and they

2:04

really were not sure if he would pull

2:06

through and I needed to come home right away.

2:09

And so that night was

2:11

a scramble of you

2:13

know getting a plane and

2:16

flying back to Kansas City from

2:18

Phoenix where I lived at the time. And

2:22

apparently my brother had taken

2:24

a quantity of pills. When he was

2:27

talking to my mother on the phone he let

2:29

her know and I and then I can't imagine this phone

2:31

call, he let her know that she needed to

2:33

pick him up and take him to the hospital because

2:36

he had done this thing. And

2:39

so we all

2:41

gathered at the hospital that night, my family, and

2:45

we were just waiting. The doctor

2:47

told us that one

2:50

of two outcomes would

2:52

happen. Either he he would

2:56

fall into a coma and pass away or

2:59

his liver would save

3:01

him, essentially. I

3:04

remember the

3:07

weather, well the weather

3:09

in the Midwest

3:12

in late fall, early winter,

3:22

is really dreary anyway.

3:24

It

3:25

was very cold, it was rainy and

3:27

icy, and I

3:29

remember the weather in particular

3:31

at that time. I remember driving

3:34

in a car you know back and

3:36

forth to the hospital and

3:39

I remember just driving with

3:41

my mother and my little sister and

3:44

the James Taylor song came on the radio. And

3:56

I knew about the song of course,

3:58

it was a song from my

3:59

childhood, my parents had listened to it.

4:02

I'd probably been in the back of a car dozens

4:05

of times hearing that song on the radio. But

4:09

this time in particular, the lyrics

4:12

really stuck with me,

4:14

and there were a few lyrics that

4:16

stood out.

4:18

One of them, when the cold wind

4:20

blows, it can turn your head around. The

4:24

weather and this terrible thing that had

4:26

happened to my brother to cause him to want

4:28

to take his life.

4:47

I remembered playing make

4:50

believe games with him, and the

4:53

line that James Taylor sings about flying

4:56

machines and pieces on the ground.

4:58

It

5:01

just clenched my heart as

5:05

we were experiencing this terrible, terrible night.

5:12

Thankfully, he survived.

5:16

He got treatment, and

5:18

today he is thriving.

5:19

Many, many years later. And he's

5:22

just thriving. He has

5:23

a little son. He's a

5:25

wonderful father. But

5:29

whenever I hear the song, it immediately

5:31

transports me back to those days.

5:34

And

5:35

for anyone who has experienced

5:38

the suicide in their family or

5:40

a death by suicide

5:43

in their family and their friendships,

5:45

I think, can relate to this desperately

5:49

sad feeling.

5:50

And just the very first part

5:52

of that song where he's telling the story

5:54

of his friend, I

5:57

think that the part that's almost

5:59

unbearable to me.

5:59

hear is the,

6:02

you know, they, when he

6:04

talks about, I wrote this song, I just

6:06

don't know who to send it to,

6:08

you know, and that's,

6:11

I don't know what I would do if I couldn't,

6:15

you know, share my writing with my

6:17

brother, you know, and so that

6:19

line in particular gets

6:21

me.

6:38

My name is Michael Granberry.

6:41

I am an arts writer

6:43

with the Dallas Morning News in Dallas,

6:46

Texas. I am now 71 years

6:49

old, which means I am just a little bit younger

6:52

than James Taylor, and I

6:55

have followed his career since

6:57

it began. His debut album

7:00

came out on the Beatles Apple Records

7:02

in 1968, and I have followed

7:05

him since that time, but

7:07

the real turning point for me

7:09

was his 1970 album, Sweet Baby James,

7:12

which contained

7:16

the song Fire in Rain, which

7:19

immediately became my

7:21

favorite song of his. I

7:25

saw it from the beginning as kind

7:27

of an anthem for the American generation,

7:30

although I now realize it was an international

7:32

anthem. Suzanne

7:45

was a close friend of his. James

7:47

was not there when Suzanne

7:52

took her own life, and I don't know,

7:54

maybe in some ways it had, because he wasn't

7:56

there, he heard about it from someone else, maybe

7:58

it had an even bigger impact

8:01

on him. In a very simple way, he

8:04

tells us about who she was and what happened

8:06

to her and and

8:09

then the rest of the song is

8:12

framed around those images of fire

8:14

and rain. I've

8:17

seen sunny days that I thought would never end.

8:19

I've seen lonely times when I could not

8:22

find a friend. But I always thought that I'd

8:24

see you again. And I

8:27

mean the pain of that is just

8:29

extraordinary. And

8:32

then dealing with the drug addiction. Once you

8:34

look down upon me, Jesus, you've got to help

8:36

me make a stand. You've just got to see

8:38

me through another day. My

8:40

body's aching and my time is at hand

8:43

and I won't make it any other way. I mean, that's

8:46

so sad, so sorrowful,

8:48

so painful and yet for people

8:50

who have lived through that they

8:52

know exactly what he's

8:55

talking about.

9:00

Hi, this is Peter Asher. I'm

9:02

a record producer and used to be a manager

9:05

as well and was very fortunate

9:07

in that my career did include producing and

9:09

managing James Taylor. My

9:12

contact with James Taylor began of courtesy

9:15

of a guitar player called Danny Korchma. And

9:18

the way he came into the picture is this. When Peter

9:20

and Gordon, the old you I used to be in, went

9:22

out on the road the promoter

9:25

of those gigs that we were doing would

9:27

be the person responsible for hiring a backup

9:29

band. And one such band was a band called the

9:31

King Bees. The guitar player, Danny

9:33

Korchma, was brilliant and a really nice guy. He

9:35

and I became friends and he

9:38

subsequently was in a band with

9:40

his childhood friend called

9:42

The Flying Machine and his childhood

9:45

friend was James Taylor. And they

9:47

were in this band together called The Flying Machine and that ended

9:49

up being a New York based band. And

9:52

eventually broke up. They were suffering all of the acidities

9:55

that New York had to offer and James decided

9:57

to go to London.

10:01

And Danny said to him, oh, you know, if you

10:03

go into London, I have a friend in London. I've been in touch with him

10:05

since the Peter and Gordon era when I used

10:07

to play with him, a guy called Peter Asher.

10:09

You should give him a call. And

10:11

that's how it happened. I was just sitting at

10:13

home in my flat one day and the phone rang and

10:16

this very polite person with

10:18

a slight southern accent introduced

10:20

himself as a friend of Danny's and

10:22

said that he was visiting London and I invited

10:25

him over. He

10:27

told me that he was a singer and songwriter

10:30

and played me a couple of songs he'd recorded

10:33

on tape and a demo session and

10:35

then picked up my guitar and played me a couple more and I

10:37

was super impressed. And I said to him,

10:40

well, you know, this is a strange coincidence, but I've just got this

10:42

brand new job. I'm head of A&R for a record

10:44

company. The record company in question

10:46

was actually Apple Records and the Beatles label. And

10:49

I said, I'm looking for people to sign. I can sign people,

10:52

you know. Would you like a record deal? And he said, yes, please.

10:54

I'd love one.

10:55

That was kind of it.

10:58

He wrote it in 1968 and even

11:01

though it had to be incredibly heady, right,

11:03

I mean, the

11:05

Beatles

11:13

are recording it, right? I mean,

11:16

it's amazing. And

11:18

yet he was very lonely and he felt very

11:21

alienated. And I believe

11:23

I'm correct in saying that he wrote the song there

11:26

during that time that he was in London

11:28

recording his debut album.

11:31

And I think it's not

11:33

unusual at all

11:36

that he wrote this song in 1968. This

11:39

was a horrible year

11:41

in American life. America

11:44

suffered three assassinations

11:47

during the 1960s. I was a sixth

11:49

grader in Dallas when President Kennedy

11:51

was assassinated in my hometown,

11:54

which in my opinion, my hometown

11:56

has never gotten over. And

11:59

then five years later. we have Dr.

12:01

Martin Luther King assassinated in Memphis

12:04

and then in the summer we

12:06

have Bobby Kennedy,

12:09

the slain president's brother

12:11

who was then running for president. We have him assassinated

12:14

in Los Angeles. So in 68 alone there were two

12:17

horrific crimes,

12:20

these assassinations, plus Vietnam

12:23

is raging and everyone in Taylor's

12:26

generation and mine is

12:28

faced with the possibility of having to

12:30

go to Vietnam, a war in

12:32

which so many Americans

12:35

died and

12:38

so many Americans were sent you know to

12:40

fight a war that made no sense

12:42

and still doesn't make any sense. So

12:45

I think all of that is billowing

12:49

through him, I mean as he's sitting there alone

12:52

in London, you know

12:54

he's a young man who has been dealing

12:56

with drug addiction and here he is dealing

12:58

with loneliness and loss and this crazy

13:01

time in the world and this

13:03

just absolutely amazing song

13:06

flows out of him.

13:10

Ferran Ray was one of the songs I heard

13:12

later when I first heard James,

13:15

I know he sang something in the way she moves and

13:18

he sang something's wrong. Ferran

13:20

Ray wasn't in time for that album and

13:23

we did make an early run at the song that

13:26

didn't come out quite right, trying to do

13:28

a rather more R&B flavored version

13:31

than the final one. I just thought

13:33

it was a terrific song but I didn't go you know

13:35

this is a smash because I

13:37

wasn't sure if you'd ever hear it on the radio but because

13:41

the flavor was quite different from what was on the

13:43

radio at the time I think but

13:45

I just thought it was a terrific and emotional song

13:48

and it you know it gripped

13:51

me.

13:54

My name is Mark Deeks, I'm the musical

13:56

director of Sing United, I

13:58

call it community singing group.

13:59

here in New Council Upon Time. I'm

14:03

Geoff Alexander, I'm

14:05

a member of Mox Choir, I'm

14:08

a retired chart surveyor.

14:18

The idea behind Sing United was to have a multi-layered

14:21

approach. I wanted people to not

14:23

just turn up and sing their music because they thought the music

14:25

was great, although obviously that was a bonus.

14:29

But I wanted them to feel something because after

14:32

being around community singing groups for so many years,

14:35

I started to detect that there's often

14:37

a change in the sound when

14:39

singers are feeling something they believe and something that

14:41

they feel. I think it's something you

14:43

actually can't teach or can't replicate in any

14:46

other way. And so I wanted to try

14:48

and bottle that if I could and say

14:50

well all right it's great if we can turn up and sing music that

14:52

we love and enjoy and that's fantastic. But what if I

14:54

could add a layer to that? What if we could give

14:57

something, give causes to

14:59

people that they felt, give meanings behind

15:01

the shows that people could connect with, be

15:03

it on a regional identity level or

15:05

be it on a charitable level. And

15:08

so that's what we try to do with Sing United

15:10

over the years. I'd agree with

15:12

what Mark was saying about the fact that the emotional

15:15

connection actually enhances your experience

15:17

of actually singing the songs. It gets

15:18

you here, it really does. Choosing

15:22

Fire and Rain, I think if you're

15:25

going to have a show that is about

15:27

mental health then you have to

15:30

contain, include a song that

15:32

is around the subject of people dying by suicide.

15:34

And it is because

15:38

what more potent a subject or important

15:40

to subjects could we have in terms of mental

15:42

health than that. I

15:45

have personal connections to

15:47

people who have died

15:50

in that manner and are

15:53

retentive to you. So and you

15:55

know like Jeff says when you're performing

15:59

or involved in that, you can do it. involved in a collective

16:02

that is performing a song

16:04

on any subject, you immediately feel

16:06

like you almost can, when you're singing

16:09

you're looking at each other and think that

16:11

you know what the other person's thinking, even

16:13

if they may have an entirely separate

16:16

personal experience of that song that you may

16:18

well not know about. Sometimes when

16:20

we're in rehearsals even, never mind with the shows,

16:23

the emotion on some people's faces,

16:26

it's just, I've seen people in tears

16:28

and even just in our rehearsals,

16:31

not just with this song but generally

16:34

something, the songs mean something

16:36

more to them than they do to me at different times, but

16:38

when I look around the emotion that it creates

16:41

and I do think those emotions are enhanced

16:43

by being with other people singing the same thing, I

16:46

think people feel that sort of collective

16:52

emotion if you like when they're there, it's

16:55

just the most wonderful experience at times, it really

16:57

tips over one or two times and Mark's

17:00

and three Mark at the front when conducting

17:03

this all, reacting to what people are

17:05

doing and it's obviously affecting Mark as well, you know,

17:07

because we have people standing there in tears, you

17:09

know. So the idea was a

17:11

show about subjects surrounding mental

17:13

health, but you know, as we all know in recent

17:16

years, open discussion

17:18

around the associate subject around mental

17:20

health has become an increasing part of

17:23

how we operate

17:23

on a daily basis and at

17:26

least from my point of view, that's

17:28

a good thing, because

17:31

I think why should we then hide

17:33

it in performance, why should we attempt to then hide it

17:35

in music and pretend it's not there, you know, there

17:37

are countless examples of musicians over the years writing

17:40

around subjects of

17:41

difficulty around their own mental health and events

17:44

that have impacted them on a personal level. I

17:47

sort of vaguely remember the song, although it was a

17:49

little bit before my time, I thought

17:51

of it at the time as a breakup

17:53

song, I thought that's what it was about and

17:55

when we started rehearsing and I started looking at

17:58

the words and I realised what it was about. and

18:00

then I looked up what it was about. It really

18:02

affected me when we were singing it, knowing

18:04

what the song was about already, if you know what I mean. But

18:07

I always come back to you,

18:09

baby,

18:11

one more time. Oh, hi. My name

18:13

is Marsha Hype. I basically grew

18:15

up in Boston, Massachusetts, in a house

18:18

with my mother and my brother, and my

18:20

dad died when I was six months old.

18:22

I won a scholarship at the New England Conservatory

18:24

of Music,

18:25

which was wonderful, but it wasn't my thing. I

18:27

was a young girl growing up, a hippie child,

18:30

so I was born to Janice Joplin

18:32

and Jimi Hendrix, a great musician

18:34

called Yousaf Latif. But most kids,

18:35

black

18:36

kids in America, we

18:39

get brought up in church, and that's where my roots started.

18:43

Back in the day, there was a show in Boston that

18:46

was creating up all around the world, and

18:48

the show was called Hair. And at that

18:50

point in time, I was 16, and

18:52

there were two Australian people in Boston,

18:55

specifically auditioning

18:57

for black American kids to

18:59

do the parts in Hair. And

19:02

about nine days later, I was on a plane

19:04

to Australia. Fantastic. I've

19:10

been here ever since it's my home, you know. I

19:12

do maintain two passports,

19:15

but I'm most

19:18

definitely, probably, I don't know, I can't

19:20

say I'm more Australian than I am American,

19:23

but my work ethic comes from my parents. Fire

19:25

and Rain is one of those songs. When

19:27

I left Boston at 16, it was this huge hit that

19:31

was hitting the airwaves in Boston, and I loved it. And

19:33

I had such a crush on James Tillis as

19:35

well. So I played it and played it and played it. And

19:38

as a musician, anybody who knows a musician, when

19:41

you like something, you tend to play it until my

19:43

mother would say, can you take that record off, you

19:45

know? And then I got, I flew

19:47

to Sydney, and

19:48

I was taken to my accommodation

19:51

when I got here, and I turned

19:53

on the radio, and lo and behold, Fire

19:56

and Rain was being played on the radio, and

19:58

it just made me feel like...

19:59

I was home. It gave

20:02

me that incredibly warm, knowing

20:05

feeling. I said to

20:07

myself, and this is the truth, I said to myself,

20:09

you never ever get a chance to record anything, and

20:12

I had no idea what my life was going to be.

20:14

But if you ever get a chance to record something,

20:17

this should be the thing that you record, and

20:19

that's what I did.

20:37

When you sing something

20:39

over and over and over, it's part of

20:41

me. When I sing Fire and Rain, when I sing Fire

20:44

and Rain, it

20:45

reminds me of the little girl that I was

20:48

when I heard

20:49

the song in Boston, heard

20:51

it in Australia, and

20:53

then got a chance to

20:56

live a dream and record it. That's

20:58

pretty amazing

20:59

stuff. To me, that's pretty

21:02

nice synchronicity.

21:27

I'm a sweet baby.

21:39

Sweet Baby James, the album came

21:41

out, I think, February 1970. And

21:45

I got the album. That

21:49

spring, I was in my junior

21:51

year in high school, and

21:54

I had just gotten a new

21:57

stereo with

21:58

detachable speakers. so

22:00

I could hear in real stereo,

22:03

not a very high level

22:06

piece of equipment, but it seemed

22:09

really great to me. I

22:12

just had this very clear memory

22:14

of putting the album on

22:17

my record player and listening

22:19

to it, just particularly

22:22

fire and rain, has

22:24

this kind of mix of

22:27

melancholy but hope that

22:30

really resonated for me. My

22:33

name is Peter Bardaglio.

22:35

I live in Trumansburg, New York

22:38

in the Finger Lakes region. I'm the

22:40

coordinator of the Tompkins County Climate

22:42

Protection Initiative. This

22:45

was something I started back in 2008.

22:51

We've had some really severe thunderstorms

22:55

recently. We had a tornado

22:57

actually come through a couple

23:00

of miles away that just tore

23:02

up a huge barn and just knocked

23:04

it flat and

23:07

that was pretty sobering. So

23:10

recently with the

23:14

kind of acceleration in climate change,

23:17

almost at this point climate chaos,

23:20

I've been thinking back about

23:24

fire and rain quite a bit. We've

23:27

certainly had a summer of fire and

23:29

rain. If you think about

23:33

the flooding that took place in the Hudson

23:35

River Valley in New York just across

23:37

the border in Vermont,

23:40

eight inches of rain overnight

23:43

and the flooding and destruction

23:45

from that was just terrible. And

23:48

then you think about the fires in Canada

23:50

but also on Maui. I

23:52

mean just burned to the ground, an entire

23:56

town. So,

24:00

a line near the end of the song where

24:03

Taylor says, you

24:05

gotta make a stand, that idea that it's

24:07

time to take a stand is

24:11

really important because we

24:14

can't just sit around and feel

24:16

sorry for ourselves and

24:18

be plunged into despair.

24:21

We have to act. And

24:24

I think of Fire and Rain in that

24:26

context and how James

24:29

Taylor really picks himself up in that song. He

24:31

picks the pieces up

24:34

and

24:34

articulates a sense of

24:37

hope that he's gone on before, in

24:39

spite of all the pain and suffering

24:41

that he's experienced.

24:45

I was determined to make the album

24:47

that became Sweet Baby James a simpler album, so

24:49

I assembled a very small band to

24:52

record with. We had Danny Courtymar,

24:54

we both wanted to play guitar of course, because Cooch

24:56

is a brilliant player and we love him as my

24:58

best friend. It was in some

25:00

doubt at one point about who should play piano

25:02

on the record, because I really didn't want it to sound

25:04

like one of those super skilled studio

25:08

session piano players. And

25:10

then it so happened that I heard Carole

25:13

King's original demos, which

25:16

were just her and the piano. And her

25:18

piano playing was exactly what I was imagining.

25:22

And luckily Cooch came to

25:24

the rescue. Yet again, he knew Carole, he'd been in a band

25:26

with her. He introduced me to her. And

25:28

after doing the requisite amount of fan groveling, because

25:31

I think Carole is one of the greatest songwriters

25:34

who ever lived, and I still do, I

25:36

said to her, look, you know, I suppose

25:39

this is kind of an outrageous request, because I know you're

25:41

actually going to make your own album soon. But

25:43

I wondered, would you consider just being

25:45

a studio musician and playing on this album

25:49

I'm about to make with this guy called James Taylor. And

25:52

she hadn't heard of James at that point, but

25:54

she agreed to come over to my house where he was staying.

25:57

And she came over to my house and

25:59

met James. and

26:01

I knew right away that I'd found the piano player who

26:03

wanted to play on the album, the album that

26:05

subsequently became Sweet Baby James, and

26:08

she played of course on Far and Rain. But

26:12

I didn't realise at the time, but of course

26:15

Lonely Time is when you could not find a friend and inspire

26:18

in her, you know, don't worry you've

26:20

got one, you've got a friend.

26:24

I've heard him say,

26:26

well he said this about Far and Rain and about you've got a

26:28

friend, he said, you know, be careful

26:31

when you have a huge hit record because you're

26:33

going to have to sing it every night for the rest

26:35

of your goddamn life, you know, just about.

26:38

So if you're going to get stuck with a song you're obliged

26:40

to sing all the time, it better be when you

26:42

enjoy singing and that means something to you. And

26:44

he said that every time he sings Far

26:47

and Rain or you've got a friend, he

26:50

still thinks about what it means

26:53

and it's still emotionally resonant

26:54

to him. It never feels like a burden

26:57

to sing it to the 574th audience or whatever it is, probably

27:01

thousands at this point I thought.

27:05

Yeah, watching audiences react is funny

27:07

when we did the James and Carol

27:09

back at the Troubadour thing. You

27:11

can see people crying their hearts out and stuff,

27:14

it's touching and music does

27:16

that and that's one of the reasons it's so important

27:18

to us all and why we love it. And that's

27:20

the kind of song that makes you love music

27:23

and has an effect on your

27:25

emotional life forever.