Sweet Dreams and Flying Machines

April 15, 2016
A biography that confirms both the best and the worst that fans have heard about the archetypal 1970s singer/songwriter.Ribowsky (Dreams to Remember: Otis Redding, Stax Records, and the Transformation of Southern Soul, 2015, etc.) offers little new in this overwritten, underreported biography of James Taylor (b. 1948), which mainly draws from what others have written about him and from detailed analyses of his albums by the author. Assessing a mostly forgotten album from 35 years ago, the author writes, "while the album was easy listening comfort food, its creator was his usual mess," an assessment that pretty much summarizes the biography's perspective on his subject. Though Taylor remained addicted to heroin even through his troubled marriage to Carly Simon--"two broken people waiting for a merciful end" to their union--the addiction was less a disease than a symptom of a troubled soul. Privileged and self-centered, he sang of himself as a sensitive soul yet he treated women in particular as disposable, and it was not until his final marriage that he seemed committed to any sort of monogamy. The author depicts him as some sort of sex addict as well, with Oedipal undertones, in the sort of psychobiography that would benefit from the support of primary sources. Yet the firsthand interviewing seems minimal and inconsequential in a book that leans heavily on Rolling Stone interviews, previous books on Taylor, and Carly Simon's recent autobiography. Ribowsky does a better job of putting Taylor's achievements in the context of the soft-rock Los Angeles of the 1970s and recognizing their durability, though his claim that "Taylor is the nearest thing to rock royalty in America" is the kind of hyperbole one writes to justify a biography with little new in it. Just another in the onslaught of rock bios and memoirs--a disappointing follow-up to the author's excellent Dreams to Remember.

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May 15, 2016

Notoriously reticent singer-songwriter Taylor has been the subject of numerous biographies over his almost 50 years in the music business. One of the best things in Ribowsky's (Dreams To Remember: Otis Redding, Stax Records, and the Transformation of Southern Soul) book is the extensive bibliography. Unfortunately, though the author interviewed several influential figures, he did not have contact with Taylor himself, and this title suffers in comparison with recent autobiographies such as Carly Simon's Boys in the Trees and Carole King's A Natural Woman. Ribowsky relies on (sometimes conflicting) secondhand information and speculation; compounding the distance from the subject source and despite the wealth of insight there are some factual errors regarding who recommended Taylor to Apple Records and personnel on his recordings. Apart from these lapses, it merits a place on the shelf as it traces Taylor's career through the 2015 release of the billboard chart-topping Before This World. VERDICT Taylor continues to produce compelling music with a large fan base. Casual enthusiasts wanting an up-to-date career overview will find it here.--Bill Baars, Lake Oswego P.L., OR

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