James Taylor Will Teach you Guitar

Summary

Podcast Summary: "James Taylor Will Teach You Guitar"

Podcast: The New Yorker Radio Hour
Host: David Remnick
Interviewers: Adam Gopnik (The New Yorker)
Guest: James Taylor
Date: May 17, 2019

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Episode Overview

This episode features an intimate, wide-ranging conversation with legendary singer-songwriter James Taylor, conducted by The New Yorker's Adam Gopnik at the New Yorker Festival. The discussion explores Taylor’s early musical influences, his unique guitar style, the deeply personal nature of his lyrics, the evolution of his sound, and the transformative influence of Brazilian music. Memorable live performances and an impromptu guitar lesson conclude the show, with Taylor’s warmth and wit shining throughout.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

Early Musical Roots and First Instruments

• Family Background and Early Influences
  • Taylor describes a home rich in Broadway, folk, and “light classics,” describing trips from North Carolina to Manhattan orchestrated by his mother to expose the children to the arts.
  • Quote: “My folks loved Rogers and Hammerstein, Rogers and Hart, Cole Porter, My Fair Lady… and some folk music too. And of course, I loved Elvis and I loved the Beatles and I loved Ray Charles.” (02:24)
• Transition from Cello to Guitar
  • Initially played cello “badly, reluctantly,” but the guitar “was going to be it for me.”
  • Recounts his first guitar purchase at Schirmer Music in Manhattan.
  • Quote: “Immediately I got… sounds that I wanted to hear more of.” (03:20)

The Birth of James Taylor as Songwriter

• First Attempt at Songwriting
  • Taylor plays his very first song, “Roll River Roll,” demonstrating early use of “Travis Picking.”
  • Quote: “The fact that nobody here tonight has ever heard it is pretty proof of how lame it was.” (04:50)
• Musical DNA
  • Gopnik notes that even the earliest songs contain the musical signatures Taylor became known for: descending bass lines and minor resolutions.
  • Quote: “It sounds like a James Taylor song… the way the bass line goes down.” (05:32)

Early Career, Struggles, and Breakthrough

• Formative Experiences and Setbacks
  • Discusses forming the band “The Flying Machine,” facing setbacks, and eventually returning home for support.
  • Touching recollection of his father rescuing him from a bad patch in New York.
  • Quote: “My dad actually heard me on the phone... He said, ‘you just stay right there. I’ll be there in 10 hours.’ And he was. That’s wonderful... That memory… that thing he did. I wrote a song about it called Jump Up Behind Me.” (07:20)
• Recording with Apple Records
  • At 19, Taylor secures a contract with the Beatles’ Apple Records in London, calling it his “big break.”
  • Quote: “That was the door that opened and let me through to the life that I’ve lived ever since.” (06:40–07:00)

Writing as Personal Diary, Going Public with Private Songs

• The Transition from Private to Public Artist
  • Discusses the dissonance of writing deeply personal music that later becomes universal touchstones.
  • Quote: “It’s always that moment of going from the private to [public]… When you’re doing it alone… it is a very strange transition to make.” (08:56)
  • Taylor relates how initial songs weren’t written “with an audience in mind… They really were personal, like diary entries.”
• Songwriting Longevity
  • Taylor says “Something in the Way She Moves” was the first song he truly felt was “finished.”

Evolving Sound, Embracing Covers, and Motown

• Searching for New Sounds
  • Gopnik observes a mid-career transition in the 1970s as Taylor begins recording covers.
  • Taylor explains these were spontaneous, often decided on in the studio after recording his own songs.
  • Quote: “That’s the way it was with How Sweet It Is. That’s the way it was with Handyman…” (12:26–12:59)
  • Taylor performs “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)” live.

Brazilian Influence and the James Taylor Signature Sound

• Discovering Brazilian Music
  • Taylor credits his older brother with introducing him to jazz and bossa nova.
  • Profoundly moved by João Gilberto, Astrud Gilberto, and Antonio Carlos Jobim.
  • Quote: “For a guitarist, that Brazilian thing is just a rich vein to get into… I couldn’t get enough.” (15:08)
• Guitar Technique and Harmonic Style
  • Taylor traces his harmonic sensibility back to Christmas carols, hymns, and Bach—before melding Beatles, Ray Charles, Motown, and Brazilian influences.
  • Gopnik and Taylor break down how “Beatles chords, Beatles beats, Brazilian chords, and Bach harmonies… [become a] James Taylor tune.” (19:19–19:22)*

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Spontaneity in Studio (Covers):
  • “We’re going to be paying for [the studio] anyway. So you still feel strong and energetic... Why don’t we try ‘How Sweet It Is’? ” – James Taylor (12:26)
• On Songwriting as Intimate Exposure:
  • “Those first songs weren’t written with an audience in mind… They really were personal, like diary entries or poems that you write for yourself.” (09:52)
• On Influences Filtering Through His Technique:
  • “I think I’m playing Ray Charles. I think I’m playing Jobim… But it actually is put through this sort of narrow filter of my technique—and it makes it sound like James Taylor.” (17:16–18:00)
• Anecdote about Miles Davis:
  • “I met Miles Davis once… and he said, ‘D is your key.’ The oracle is spoken.” (29:05–29:30)

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Live Performances (with Timestamps)

• “Roll River Roll” (James Taylor’s first song) – [05:19]
• “Jump Up Behind Me” – [08:06]
• “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)” – [12:59]
• “Never Die Young” – [20:27]
• “Something in the Way She Moves” – [24:44]
• “You Can Close Your Eyes” – [29:46]
  • Includes duet with his wife Kim, with Adam Gopnik attempting the guitar under Taylor’s direction

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Guitar Lesson Segment: James Taylor Teaches “You Can Close Your Eyes” ([28:13]–End)

• Adam Gopnik shares he’s played “You Can Close Your Eyes” for his children for years, asking Taylor to teach him the proper way.
• Taylor instructs Gopnik and audience on finger placement and tuning, sharing personal anecdotes about his instruments and collaborating with his wife.
• Fun on-stage moment as Taylor’s wife, Kim, is spontaneously brought up to sing.

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Conclusion

The episode offers a rare and engaging window into James Taylor’s creative world—part musical anthropology, part masterclass, and part candid personal reflection. Both serious musicians and lifelong fans will leave with not only greater appreciation for Taylor’s craft, but also a sense of having witnessed a living legend in an intimate, lighthearted setting.

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Noteworthy Segments & Timestamps

• James Taylor’s introduction to guitar and songwriting: [01:30]–[06:00]
• First break & rescue by his father: [06:17]–[08:06]
• Processing personal experience as public song: [08:56]–[11:13]
• The evolution into covers and studio stories: [12:26]–[13:14]
• Brazilian & classical influences meet pop: [14:11]–[19:24]
• Live performances: [20:27]–[27:57]
• Guitar lesson and family cameo: [28:13]–[31:33]

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This summary captures the episode’s heartfelt storytelling, musical demonstrations, and the unique informal style that defines both the New Yorker Radio Hour and James Taylor himself.

Transcript

[Announcer]

From One World Trade center in Manhattan, this is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co production of the New Yorker and WNYC studios.

[David Remnick]

Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. If you're a James Taylor fan, what would you ask him? If you could ask him anything, the New Yorker's Adam Gopnik got his chance.

[Adam Gopnik]

James this evening runs the risk of being an episode in the Chris Farley Show. I don't know if you remember Chris Farley on Saturday Night Live, when he would have people he admired on, he would just say, do you remember when you wrote Fire and Rain? And say, that was great. And I could go through everything you've done and simply stand here and sweat and say, that was great. But I will try at least to find out why it's all been so great. Thinking about your music, one of the things that's always sort of stunned me about it is when you first appeared, you had a distinctive way of playing the guitar, which wasn't like anybody else's distinctive kind of voicings. And you had an amazing harmonic language. You know, I always think when I go through your sheet music and see that wonderful song like Don't Let Me Be Lonely Tonight starts with an E minor 9th chord and then goes to a major 7th chord. Those weren't the C, A minor, F, G progressions of pop music at the time. Did you study music? How was it that the language of music came to be the language you speak?

[James Taylor]

So naturally I studied cello when I was a kid. My parents thought it would be good for there were five of us. So I got the cello and I played for about four years, badly, reluctantly. I was a bad student. And it never gave me the kind of feedback that I needed to have it take off and. And have its own momentum, its own reason to continue. But all along I noticed that the guitar was going to be it for me. And I finally prevailed on my folks. We lived in North Carolina. My mother would bring little groups of us up on the train to Manhattan to expose us to something other than trees, and we.

[Adam Gopnik]

Was it art or music or the shows that she took you to?

[James Taylor]

Museums and shows? Yeah, and the city itself. You know, my folks loved Rogers and Hammerstein, Rogers and Hart, Cole Porter, My Fair lady in South Pacific and Oklahoma, and some light classics and some folk music, too. And of course, I loved Elvis and I loved the Beatles and I loved Ray Charles. When I was exposed to those things, that's sort of the second tier of stuff. I was exposed to that amazed Me too. And it just opened my eyes, and I wanted to explore that music. And I wanted to sing it, I wanted to play it. But I was 12 when I got a guitar here in Manhattan at Schirmer's, really, in the. The Schirmer Music Company.

[Adam Gopnik]

So you drove up with your mother to.

[James Taylor]

Well, we took the train up, and I think it was my mom and my dad on that trip. And we went to Schirmer's and found a guitar. I saw the Fender electrics, the shape, the amazing finish of them, the way they looked, the chrome, the mother of toilet seat. But they wouldn't go for it. So it was a classic guitar. And I. You know, immediately I got. I'll show you what. The first thing I ever played on. It was simple, but it spoke to me. And it. It was. It just immediately started making sounds that I wanted to hear more of.

[Adam Gopnik]

And you sold the cello at that point and pawned it on 46th Street.

[James Taylor]

I don't know what happened to that damn cello. It's gotta be around somewhere. I hope someone's playing it.

[Adam Gopnik]

And you started to compose just the way kids do, teenagers do, on the guitar. You just chord to chord and idea to idea. What was the first song you ever wrote that you thought was a good song?

[James Taylor]

I wrote a song called. When I was 13 or 14, called Roll River Roll, which is pretty awful. I can play it for you.

[Adam Gopnik]

Would you, please?

[James Taylor]

Yes.

[Adam Gopnik]

I don't think this is ever here. James Taylor's first song. Has this been widely covered, James?

[James Taylor]

It has been widely covered. And the fact that nobody here tonight has ever heard it is pretty proof of how lame it was. You know, it was really. This is something called Travis Picking that we all learned. Sort of a walking thumb and then one or two fingers thrown in.

[James Taylor Singing]

Roll, river, roll Long as you can be Longest river I've done seen Rollin.

[James Taylor]

To sea.

[Adam Gopnik]

Went like that and then. But, you know, the strange thing is, James, I never heard that. It sounds like a James Taylor song, you know. I mean.

[James Taylor]

Yeah, it does.

[Adam Gopnik]

You know, I mean, not the Oompa part maybe so much in the beginning, but the way that the bass line goes down and goes to.

[James Taylor]

All of that ends on the minor.

[Adam Gopnik]

Minor. Exactly. Yeah. In that.

[James Taylor]

Yeah, it does. It had a certain.

[Adam Gopnik]

It hints at things you will write. Yes. If not everybody. I think everybody here knows that you went off to London eventually and you recorded that first record. How old were you when you did that, James?

[James Taylor]

I guess I was 19 when I went to London and got my recording contract with Apple. Records with the Beatles. And that was such an amazing reversal of fortune for me. That was the door that opened and let me through to the life that I've lived ever since. It was my big break. I'd been at it since, you know, when I came to New York in 1966, instead of graduating high school, I came here and I started with Danny Kortsmore, a band called the Flying Machine, which was. It was ill fated. And we had problems and, you know, typical problems and never got our recording deal that we needed. We signed one, but the people who signed it just. They couldn't follow through with it. And after that fell to pieces. In 66, when I was 18, I went home to North Carolina to recover a little bit. I needed soup, I needed a bed, I needed my parents, I needed to go home. My dad actually heard me on the phone. I called him in North Carolina from New York, and the band had been broken up for about a month. And he could hear that I wasn't well. And he said, you just stay right there. He got my address. He said, you stay right there. I'll be there in 10 hours. And he was, that's wonderful. I just sat there for 10 hours and my dad showed up in a station wagon and took me home. That's one of my, you know, my treasures. That little. That memory, that thing he did. I wrote a song about it called Jump Up Behind Me.

[James Taylor Singing]

This land is a lovely green it reminds me of my own home Such children I've seldom seen Even in my own home the sky's so bright and.

[Adam Gopnik]

Clean One of the things that was so potent about your music when, as a very young man, people first started paying attention to it, was that it seemed to be so amazingly, emotionally accessible. It seemed to sum up so many of the longings of a generation. So many people song like Rainy Day man or Something's Wrong. And then more famously, in the next go round and the next group of songs, Fire and Rain and those things. Was it strange and difficult to have to see your own experience turning into songs and then becoming these kinds of universal vehicles for other people's feelings?

[James Taylor]

Very strange indeed. And, you know, I think that that's. Obviously, you want success, you want to be heard, you want to be listened to and encouraged, but it's always that moment of going from the private to thing. And in the case of a singer songwriter who doesn't have a band who's sort of going there with him and sort of a posse or a crowd or a tribe that you're running with and doing it with. When you're doing it alone and by yourself, it is a very strange transition to make. And I wrote songs about that, too. Hey, Mister, that's Me up on the Jukebox or Fading Away or Company Man. Those are songs about, you know, the difficulty of starting off with a very private and personal thing. And as my friend David Crosby says, you know, the first album you make is the result of 10 years of work. Then you've got a year to make the next one. But those first songs weren't written with an audience in mind, except in the most general sense. They really were personal, like diary entries or poems that you write for yourself. But then when you take this stuff to market and engage the music business and the popular culture and all that stuff, it can be. That's a very interesting thing to try to negotiate and to make, to go public with it and to make a living. I'm sure that writing has a similar. There's a similar thing to it when you take your work to market.

[Adam Gopnik]

But it had to be. You were saying it had to be peculiar because, yes, of course, it's true for everyone, but a writer may be six people read it. When a musician genuinely develops a following, it's millions of people who see your music as their internal. Not just as your journal, but as their internal diary. And that's an extraordinarily rich time. What's the first song of that body of work that you feel? A lot of it you still perform, that you feel is strong, is a finished song that you feel good about?

[James Taylor]

I guess Something in the Way She Moves is probably the first song that I had written. Knocking around the Zoo and a song called Sunshine. Sunshine before Something in the Way She Moves. And actually all the songs on the first album, some of them before, some of them after Something the Way she Moves. But that was the first one that I thought really worked as a song.

[Adam Gopnik]

Yeah, you still do material from that period, and I know you've talked about it a lot. But one of the things that interests me, if you don't mind, just to fast forward a little bit, as a listener of yours, as a follower of yours, one of the things that seemed to me to be true, and I wonder if it was true, is that in the kind of mid-70s, you were searching a bit for a sound for work. And then beginning in the late 70s, you started doing a couple of things. You started doing covers for the first time. You started doing Motown covers, How Sweet It Is and so on. And it seemed as though there was a kind of rebirth through sort of being free to do other people's work as well as yours and sort of shedding the skin of Sweet Baby James. And of that material, was that a fantasy or did you feel some of that?

[James Taylor]

You know, it just wasn't very carefully considered ahead of time. All of those cover tunes that I would do were things that would be thought of at the spur of the moment in the recording studio after we had already recorded two songs that day. That's the way it was with How Sweet It Is. That's the way it was with Handyman, and we're going to be paying for it anyway. So you still feel strong and energetic. And Cooch says, why don't we try how sweet it is how sweet it.

[James Taylor Singing]

Is to be loved by you how sweet it is to be loved by you.

[David Remnick]

James Taylor talking with Adam Gopnik at the New Yorker Festival. Ahead this hour, we'll hear a live performance from James Taylor. It's the New Yorker Radio Hour. Stick around. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. James Taylor joined Adam Gopnik in conversation at the New Yorker Festival. And they talk there about how Taylor formed his very distinctive sound, which was so influenced by Brazilian music and in particular, Antonio Carlos Jobim.

[Adam Gopnik]

You have that beautiful song, Only a Dream in Rio. Did Brazilian music open up your ears and your musical vocabulary?

[James Taylor]

It sure did. You know, I mentioned the Broadway stuff, the folk music and the light classics that my parents listened to and some satirical stuff, Tom Lehre. The next level of that was what my brother Alex brought into the house. He brought Ray Charles and Joe Tex and Don Kove and the Hot Nuts, which were a beach music band. And his stuff extended into some light jazz. And one of them was that great album recorded in 1963 in three days here in Manhattan. Astrid Gilberto, Joao Gilberto, girl from Ibonima.

[James Taylor Singing]

Tall and thin and young and lovely.

[James Taylor]

The girl from I. And that stuff had a huge effect on me. I loved the chords, I loved the, you know, for a guitarist, that Brazilian thing is just a rich vein to get into. And man, I, I, I couldn't get enough. So, and I, you know, that, that song more recently, the.

[James Taylor Singing]

La la la la la la.

[James Taylor]

The idea of that song is it was sort of like one note samba. It's just that da da da da da da and then the changes, the harmony underneath it. And that's a very Brazilian, very Jobim thing to do. So I was hugely impressed by that stuff and it was a great source for me, you know, what happened is I developed a little bit of a guitar style from playing Christmas carols and hymns from school. God, that's Deutschland Uber Alles, too, isn't it? That is.

[Adam Gopnik]

That's the part you want to keep quiet if you can, James, that influence you, really.

[James Taylor]

No, I only learned. I only came to realize that later. We can cut. We can edit right here. Hi. So, yeah, no, I played hymns, I played Christmas carols. And it gave me that sort of very bedrock kind of Western musical.

[Adam Gopnik]

Bach harmony.

[James Taylor]

Bach harmony, that kind of thing. And. And from then I fell into the Beatles and Joe Beam, and it really. I found that I had enough of a technique to be able to adapt those things into it. But the technique itself. I think I'm playing Ray Charles. I think I'm playing Joe Beam. I think I'm playing Paul McCartney, Lennon McCartney. I think I'm playing Holland Dozzi or Holland. I think I'm. But actually. Or Sam Cooke or Marvin Gaye. But it actually is put through this sort of narrow filter of my technique.

[Adam Gopnik]

Of your guitar finger.

[James Taylor]

And it makes it sound like James Taylor. Like, you know, Carol's tune Up on the Roof, which we did all summer long, and we went back and forth between her version of it and mine. It started being like.

[James Taylor Singing]

When this whole world starts getting me down and people are just too much.

[James Taylor]

For me to feel. Well, when I adapted the tune and we did it, it was like, when.

[James Taylor Singing]

This whole world starts getting me down and people are just too much for me to feel. I climb way up to the top of the stairs and all my cares is just right and deep.

[Adam Gopnik]

All that inner voicing of the. So now we know, right?

[James Taylor]

So it gets really. Beatles.

[Adam Gopnik]

Beatles chords, Beatles beats, Brazilian chords and Bach harmonies. And you have James Taylor tune. It's just too painful to have James Taylor up here and not hear you play. Would you play a few things for us?

[James Taylor Singing]

We ring around the rosy children they were circles around the sun Never give up, never slow down never grow old Never ever die young Synchronize with the rising moon Even with evening star they were true love all written in stone they were never alone they were never that far apart and we couldn't bear to believe they might make it. We got to close our eyes to cut up our losses into doable doses and brassen our tears and sighs. You can see them on the street on a Saturday. Everyone used to run them down. They're a little too sweet They're a little too tight they're not enough. Tough at this Town Though we couldn't touch them with a ten foot pole Nor didn't seem to rattle at all. They were fused together, body and soul Much more with their backs up against the wall. Oh, hold them up, hold them up. Never do let them fall. Pray to the dust and the rust and the ruin. The names us and shames us, claims us all. I guess it had to happen someday soon. There wasn't nothing to hold them down. They would rise from among us like a big balloon. Take the sky and forsake the ground. Yes, other hearts were broken and I know other dreams ran dry but our golden ones sailed on and on to another land beneath another sky. Let other hearts be broken Let other dreams run dry. Let our golden ones sail on to another land Beneath another sky Beneath another sky. Hold them up. Hold them up. Hold them up. Hold them up. Hold them up, hold them up Pull them up to hold them all.

[James Taylor]

Thank you. You never die young. I try. I'm going to play that first song, Very early song, first presentable song I think that I ever wrote.

[James Taylor Singing]

Well, there's something in the way she moves Looks my way or calls my that seems to leave this troubled world.

[James Taylor]

Behind.

[James Taylor Singing]

And if I'm feeling down and blue Troubled by some foolish game.

[James Taylor]

She.

[James Taylor Singing]

Always seems to make me change my.

[James Taylor]

Mind.

[James Taylor Singing]

I feel fine anytime that she's around in the now she's around me now almost all the time if I'm well you can tell that she's been with me now she's been with me now Quite a long long time and I feel fine Every now and then the things that I didn't lose their meaning and I find myself convening into places where I should never let me go she has a power to go but no one else can find me and silently remind me of the happiness and good times that I know you know well I guess I just got to know them it isn't what she's got to say how she thinks of where she's been to me the words are nice the the way they sound I like to hear them best that way doesn't much matter what they mean she says the mostly just calm me.

[James Taylor]

Down.

[James Taylor Singing]

I feel fine anytime that she's around me now she's around me now I mean just about all the time if I'm well you can tell that she's been with me now she's been with me now Quite a long Quite a long time Quite a long, long time and I feel.

[Adam Gopnik]

I have been playing I have two children and for the last 16 years I've been playing. You can close your eyes for them every night when they go to sleep. And they always ask me, daddy, did you make up that song? And I say, I did, actually.

[James Taylor]

Yes, of course.

[Adam Gopnik]

But now they're here tonight and they'll be aware that I didn't actually, James did. But I wonder if, on behalf of this audience, who I know are all moving their fingers, would you teach me to play that song properly?

[James Taylor]

I will indeed, yes. Let's get a guitar.

[Adam Gopnik]

Is there a guitar?

[James Taylor]

Could I get one a guitar and plug it in? Thank you.

[Adam Gopnik]

Thank you.

[James Taylor]

I bring two in case. These are Olson guitars made by a guy in Minneapolis St. Paul, and he manages to. He managed in 1985 to get one into a hotel room that I was checking into in Minneapolis. And I've never looked back. So this is the first one that. This is the most recent one he built.

[Adam Gopnik]

So this is. So I'll take it home tonight. Now we're in D, which Miles Davis said was the key that belonged to you.

[James Taylor]

Well, it's true. I met Miles Davis once up on 94th street and it was, you know, it's one of those things that you take as with you as the great man indeed, that he noticed me enough to mention. He said, you know, D is your key.

[Adam Gopnik]

The oracle is spoken.

[James Taylor]

The oracle is spoken. So that's it.

[Adam Gopnik]

And D is your key. So we start on D. So where it's.

[James Taylor Singing]

The sun is short.

[James Taylor]

That's good. Actually, before we go. That is, before we go any further, I sing this song at home too. And I've actually more and more recently gotten used to singing with my dear wife Kim, who is here. And I'm gonna pull. She's gonna kill me. Pull me up. Pull her up on stage here somewhere. She is here.

[Adam Gopnik]

Hi, Kim.

[James Taylor]

Hello. Good.

[Adam Gopnik]

So this is sort of like open mic night.

[James Taylor]

It's open mic night. That's right. We are going to go out with a whimper here. So again.

[James Taylor Singing]

When the sun is short he rising down but the moon is slowly rising so the world must still be spinning around Can I still love you? So close your eyes. You can close your eyes. It's all right. Great. I don't know no love songs. I can't sing.

[James Taylor]

Anymore.

[David Remnick]

That was Adam Gopnik on the guitar, accompanied by James Taylor and his wife Kim. I'm David Remnick. Please join me next week and until then, have a great week.

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