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Concert Review: James Taylor's soothing songs excite fans again
Thursday, October 14, 1999 By Ed Masley, Post-Gazette Pop Music Critic
With "Fire and Rain" and a heartwarming cover of Carole King's "You've Got A Friend," James Taylor emerged in the aftermath of Altamont to usher in a kinder, gentler age of the sensitive singer-songwriter, quietly strumming acoustic guitar while pouring out his soul in confessional explorations of his inner demons.
Thirty years older today than the day he recorded the oldest original tune in last night's set -- one that found him backed by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra at Heinz Hall -- the man remains as sensitive, as soothing and as personable a presence as ever.
He's focusing less on the songwriting side of his legend, though, stocking the set with a liberal dose of Gershwin, tunes from "Peter Pan" and "My Fair Lady," even "Hard Times Come Again No More" by Pittsburgh native Stephen Foster. To his credit, Taylor's smooth, appealing vocals proved a perfectly natural fit for nearly every tune. And yet, the most enthusiastic cheering of the night was, as you might expect, in response to the tunes from his own back pages -- "Carolina in My Mind" to the encore of "Fire and Rain."
A tropical stroll through the rhythms of "Only a Dream in Rio" proved an early highlight, helped along by Taylor's introduction -- a charming, hilarious anecdote about the night he played at Rock in Rio (joking about how well he did on that bill) before being asked by a roomful of drunken Brazilians to play "You've Got A Friend" at a party celebrating the overthrow of the military junta. So he played the song. And as he played, Taylor recalled, "Somebody in the audience remembered that the United States had supported the junta." The next thing he knew, he'd been hit in the head with a beer can.
For a guy dressed in black with a set full of serious, sensitive music, he certainly did his share of joking with the crowd. To introduce "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face" (a song "we used to call 'I've Thrown a Custard in Her Face'"), he said, "My parents played the soundtrack to 'My Fair Lady' pretty much uninterrupted throughout the '50s."
The orchestral backing was tasteful, never overbearing, supporting the mood of the song the way George Martin would have wanted it. The musical highlights were many -- "Secret of Life," "You've Got a Friend," "Another Day," "The Frozen Man," a song he wrote for the musical "Working" that offered a poignant account of a woman who worked in a shoe manufacturing plant, a raucous "Country Road," and as expected, his calling card, "Fire and Rain," a song that benefited greatly from the rousing orchestral accompaniment.
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