James Taylor talks to Andy Welch ahead of his Birmingham concert.
He once sang about being a young cowboy and living on the range with just horse and cattle for companions.
Now, as James Taylor approaches his 61st birthday, the lyrics of his 1970 smash hit single Sweet Baby James appear to have become a reality.
OK, he doesn’t reside with livestock – James lives with his wife Kim and twin eight-year-old sons Henry and Rufus – but he does live on a big farm in Massachusetts, USA, and has chosen a simple, clean life just like the character he sang about all those years ago.
It’s fitting, then, that the farm, not too far from his birthplace in Boston, was the inspiration for his latest album.
Recorded in James’s barn, converted into a state-of-the-art studio, his new album Covers, is, as you might guess from the title, a collection of classic songs given the Taylor treatment.
Because of the size of the barn and the quality of the musicians James assembled for the project – many have been in his touring band for years – the album was largely recorded live, everyone playing together.
The result is a warm-sounding album which is already a huge hit in America where it was released at the tail end of last year. James won two Grammy nominations for Covers, including one for his version of Jimmy Webb’s modern standard Wichita Lineman.
Once James starts talking in his gentle tone, it’s difficult to get him to stop.
“We recorded 20 songs for the sessions, which we did live,” he begins. “It’s relatively rare to do things like that these days, you get used to over-dubbing, but for Covers we had 12 musicians into a room and just recorded it. We went at it hammer and tongs and just cut as many songs as we could in 10 days.”
Recording his own versions of other artists’ material is nothing new for James who plays Birmingham NIA Academy on July 5.
You’ve Got a Friend is one of his signature songs, perhaps more famous than the Carole King original, while Marvin Gaye’s How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) and The Drifters’ Up on the Roof are also among his greatest hits.
To choose songs for this project, James and the band started with tracks they had been playing on tour over the past 15 years.
“Midnight Hour by Wilson Pickett, Eddie Floyd’s Knock On Wood and Summertime Blues by Eddie Cochran are all songs that have a life on the road, but we’ve never recorded,” he explains.
“They are the kind of things we play for encores in order to keep people on their feet at the end of a show.
“We went in knowing we had these arrangements and burned through that group of 10 or so songs relatively quickly. Then someone would say ‘Let’s try this, let’s try that’ or ‘I’ve always liked this tune’, and that’s basically it.”
But what makes a good cover? Stick too closely to the original and the exercise seems pointless, yet stray too far, and what was once a well-loved classic can come dangerously close to being unrecognisable and not particularly enjoyable.
“First of all you’re usually choosing songs that you love or were really well recorded,” James says. “If the original was great, you’re not trying to improve on it, just approach it from a different angle and make the song your own.
“I’ve always cut covers and basically the process has been the same. I’ll live with the song for a while and work up an arrangement on the guitar, add changes and make a lot of substitutions.
“Often I’ll change the whole shape of it, too. When I did Joni Mitchell’s song Wish I Had a River I changed the whole shape of it, and when I re-cut Mockingbird for an album of Carly’s, I wrote an extra verse,” he says, referring to ex-wife and Bond-theme singer Carly Simon.
An avid rollerblader and skier, 6ft 4in James seems in rude health now, a far cry from his early days when hedonism threatened both his life and career.
He moved to New York in the late 60s and formed The Flying Machine – later James Taylor and the Original Flying Machine when a band emerged with the same name – but James’s heroin addiction meant it was a short-lived affair.
At the lowest point, he called his dad, who flew to New York to take his son back to the family home in North Carolina.
After recuperating for six months he remodelled himself as a solo artist, and financed by a small family inheritance, moved to London, thinking the change of scenery would be good for both health and career.
It was, initially. James soon met Peter Asher, elder brother of actress Jane Asher, the then-girlfriend of Paul McCartney.
He was head of A&R at The Beatles’ fledgling Apple label, responsible for finding new talent.
He became the first American artist signed to Apple, and recorded his debut album around the same time they were working on The White Album.
Paul and George Harrison guested on a number of his songs, while his Something in the Way She Moves provided George with the inspiration for his classic Something.
“It was such an amazing time to be in London,” he says. “Between 1965 and 1970, Britain was the centre of everything, and the people I met there were so encouraging and supportive. Having Paul and George say they were fans was something else. I was like their pet Yank when I was in the studio,” he says, laughing.
Unfortunately, during this fruitful spell, James turned once again to heroin, and while his debut album was released to widespread acclaim, he was back in America undergoing treatment.
Thankfully, he got another chance with second album Sweet Baby James in 1970, which was a worldwide hit. But the battle with his addiction would go on until the 1980s.
Covers is James’s 16th album, and his first to be released on coffee chain Starbuck’s Hear Music label, a method favoured by old associates Paul McCartney, Joni Mitchell and Carly Simon.
How does he feel about the rumours this could be his last album?
“I’ll carry on as long as I can. My models have been people like Ray Charles or Tony Bennett, who just love making music, or people in the classical world who just carry on until they drop. I hope to die in harness the same way.”
* James Taylor: Sunday July 5: Birmingham NIA Academy. Tickets: £45 plus booking and transaction fees from 0844 338 8000.
