WEBVTT - James Taylor 0:00:02.200 --> 0:00:05.880 My Heart Radio presents Inside the Studio. I'm your host, 0:00:06.040 --> 0:00:17.520 Joe Levy. My guest this episode is James Taylor, who 0:00:17.560 --> 0:00:21.200 has two new recordings out right now. American Standard is 0:00:21.239 --> 0:00:24.960 his album of classic tunes drawn from the Great American songbook. 0:00:25.200 --> 0:00:29.040 Break Shot is an audio book, a memoir about his family, 0:00:29.600 --> 0:00:32.680 his music, and his life until the age of one. 0:00:33.400 --> 0:00:37.320 The first is full of great melodies, songs like Pennies 0:00:37.360 --> 0:00:40.040 from Heavens, Sit Down, Your Rocking, the Boat Moon River, 0:00:40.560 --> 0:00:46.000 all rendered with warm intimacy and delicate control. The second 0:00:46.520 --> 0:00:51.959 delivers strikingly direct accounts of Taylor's joys and struggles, including 0:00:51.960 --> 0:00:54.840 the depression that saw him hospitalized as a senior in 0:00:54.920 --> 0:00:58.400 high school and the heroin addiction that began not too 0:00:58.400 --> 0:01:01.280 long after, when he'd moved to New York City in 0:01:01.440 --> 0:01:03.760 nineteen sixty six or so to try and make it 0:01:03.800 --> 0:01:07.040 as a musician, playing a regular gig at a Grantwich 0:01:07.160 --> 0:01:10.160 village club called the Night Owl with his friend Danny 0:01:10.240 --> 0:01:14.560 Kortchmer and their band, The Flying Machine. It took Taylor 0:01:14.640 --> 0:01:17.680 a few more years than that to find fame and fortune, 0:01:18.240 --> 0:01:21.400 and as he recounts in Breakshot, it also took a 0:01:21.440 --> 0:01:24.760 fair amount of Luck. He tells a story in the 0:01:24.800 --> 0:01:29.720 memoir by Turns horrifying and hilarious of a car accident 0:01:29.760 --> 0:01:32.399 in London where he was living in nineteen sixty eight 0:01:32.400 --> 0:01:35.960 while he recorded his debut album for the Beatles label Apple. 0:01:36.640 --> 0:01:39.959 And while we're talking about Luck, let's talk about recording 0:01:39.959 --> 0:01:43.720 for the Beatles label Apple in nineteen while the Beatles 0:01:43.720 --> 0:01:47.360 are working on the White album. But anyway, driving home 0:01:47.400 --> 0:01:50.560 early one morning, Taylor talks about how he was high 0:01:50.560 --> 0:01:53.280 and holding drugs that he'd scored, and he hit a man, 0:01:53.840 --> 0:01:56.200 and when the cops showed up, he was pretty sure 0:01:56.280 --> 0:01:59.200 that both his career and his life were over before 0:01:59.200 --> 0:02:01.840 they had really be one. But it turned out the 0:02:01.880 --> 0:02:05.200 man that he'd hit was okay, and then in fact, 0:02:05.480 --> 0:02:08.200 he'd been running away from the cops, who ended up 0:02:08.240 --> 0:02:12.080 thanking Taylor for stopping the guy. Beatles are Not. That 0:02:12.200 --> 0:02:16.520 first album went nowhere, But in early nine seventy, Taylor 0:02:16.560 --> 0:02:20.679 released Sweet Baby James with his first hit, Fire and Rain. 0:02:21.840 --> 0:02:25.600 That album, that song, they would help defind a style 0:02:25.680 --> 0:02:31.359 that itself helped define the nineteen seventies confessional singer songwriting. 0:02:33.440 --> 0:02:40.359 And then you know you were gone, Susan fans, You 0:02:40.520 --> 0:02:48.519 may put an end to walk out this morn and 0:02:48.720 --> 0:03:01.680 wrote down the song just can't themod send I've seen 0:03:02.600 --> 0:03:07.680 and I'm seen, though, Taylor, it's planes in breakshot exactly 0:03:07.720 --> 0:03:12.000 how autobiographical many of his songs are. Who the Suzanne 0:03:12.040 --> 0:03:15.200 of Fire and Rain was and how she died. His 0:03:15.400 --> 0:03:20.440 music might be more confessional in feeling than fact. I mean, 0:03:20.480 --> 0:03:22.520 you could listen to the title track of Sweet Baby 0:03:22.600 --> 0:03:25.760 James for most of your life and fully understand the 0:03:25.880 --> 0:03:29.880 sweetly exhausted, deep green and blue emotions it describes without 0:03:29.919 --> 0:03:32.760 ever knowing that it was an account of James driving 0:03:32.760 --> 0:03:36.280 home to North Carolina to meet his nephew, his older 0:03:36.280 --> 0:03:40.840 brother Alex's newborn son also named James, or maybe that's 0:03:40.880 --> 0:03:42.880 just me. I mean, I listened to that song for decades, 0:03:42.920 --> 0:03:45.880 at least once on the very turnpike from Stockbridge to 0:03:45.920 --> 0:03:49.320 Boston that it talks about, and I definitely understood all 0:03:49.320 --> 0:03:53.840 the feelings without ever really knowing the story. At first. 0:03:54.040 --> 0:03:57.440 American Standard seems like something completely different. I mean, this 0:03:57.520 --> 0:04:00.440 is James Taylor singing other people's songs and show tunes 0:04:01.040 --> 0:04:05.680 aren't exactly confessions, but look at it this way. American 0:04:05.720 --> 0:04:09.280 Standard is Taylor's first album in five years, but hardly 0:04:09.360 --> 0:04:12.800 his first time playing covers. He's been singing them for 0:04:12.840 --> 0:04:15.640 a long time. If you don't count his version of 0:04:15.720 --> 0:04:20.240 the nineteenth century Stephen Foster song Old Susannah on Sweet 0:04:20.240 --> 0:04:23.120 Baby James, then you'd have to count his version of 0:04:23.160 --> 0:04:25.599 Carol King's You've Got a Friend on his next album, 0:04:25.680 --> 0:04:29.520 mud Slide Slim. And then there's his duet with his 0:04:29.680 --> 0:04:33.599 then wife Carly Simon on Anez and Charlie Fox's mocking 0:04:33.640 --> 0:04:37.039 Bird in nineteen seventy four, and his great reworking of 0:04:37.040 --> 0:04:40.760 the nineteen sixty Jimmy Jones hit Handyman on j T 0:04:41.360 --> 0:04:44.920 in V seven. I mean he released a whole album 0:04:44.960 --> 0:04:47.159 called Covers in two thousand and eight and the More 0:04:47.240 --> 0:04:50.560 Covers EP in two thousand and nine, and both of 0:04:50.600 --> 0:04:53.120 those have a lot of old soul R and B 0:04:53.480 --> 0:04:57.000 and motown songs on them. In a way, those covers 0:04:57.000 --> 0:05:00.559 are a form of autobiography. As he explained Send Break 0:05:00.560 --> 0:05:03.880 Shot and talked about in depth with me, Taylor grew 0:05:03.960 --> 0:05:06.839 up playing that kind of music alongside his brother Alex 0:05:06.920 --> 0:05:10.120 in a band they had called the Fabulous Corsairs. An 0:05:10.160 --> 0:05:14.200 American standard tells Taylor's story in a similar way. These 0:05:14.240 --> 0:05:17.640 are songs he grew up hearing. Some were on albums 0:05:17.640 --> 0:05:21.400 in his parents record collection in North Carolina. Some he 0:05:21.400 --> 0:05:23.880 heard on family trips to New York City to see 0:05:23.880 --> 0:05:28.480 Broadway shows, a regular event organized by his mom. He 0:05:28.560 --> 0:05:30.960 does a version of Surrey with the Fringe on Top 0:05:31.040 --> 0:05:33.720 from Oklahoma on the new album, and it's not even 0:05:33.839 --> 0:05:37.719 his first time recording a song from Oklahoma. More Covers 0:05:37.760 --> 0:05:40.680 starts with a lovely version of Oh What a Beautiful 0:05:40.720 --> 0:05:44.640 Morning that has that James Taylor trademark mix of bluesy 0:05:44.720 --> 0:06:02.400 fingerpicking and reserved bossonova swing me bloody dude, ore, Oh 0:06:03.320 --> 0:06:19.159 what are you? Beautiful? God wonderful, everything's go and my 0:06:19.600 --> 0:06:38.240 we oh word, utiful, beautiful. I asked him what keeps 0:06:38.279 --> 0:06:41.000 him going back to songs from that musical. It's really 0:06:41.440 --> 0:06:43.960 part of my DNA by now. I just listened to 0:06:44.000 --> 0:06:46.760 the cast album so many times, you know, when I was, 0:06:47.000 --> 0:06:48.760 when I was a kid. You know, it's it's a 0:06:48.800 --> 0:06:52.040 great one. It's got people will say, we're in love, 0:06:52.120 --> 0:06:55.760 it's got, everything's up to date in Kansas City. That's 0:06:55.760 --> 0:06:58.920 a great tune, you know. And uh, poor Judd is dead. 0:06:59.240 --> 0:07:03.320 That's that's also great. I don't know, I'm just a 0:07:03.400 --> 0:07:07.200 gal that can't say no. They're funny. Uh. They pushed 0:07:07.240 --> 0:07:10.800 the plot along, they established the characters, they deepen an 0:07:10.840 --> 0:07:16.280 emotional moment. You know, it's excellent songwriting craft. You know, 0:07:16.400 --> 0:07:19.960 it's like these guys really knew what they were doing. 0:07:20.240 --> 0:07:24.560 And in my opinion, it's the epitome of popular music. 0:07:25.000 --> 0:07:27.040 You know, that's sort of the high water mark for 0:07:27.160 --> 0:07:31.480 American popular music. Break Shot is an inside look at 0:07:31.640 --> 0:07:36.679 how Taylor's music first came together, the sounds and experiences 0:07:36.760 --> 0:07:39.480 that shaped him, and it also talks about how his 0:07:39.560 --> 0:07:45.120 family came apart during that same time. American Standard shows 0:07:45.120 --> 0:07:48.080 where his music came from and how it keeps going. 0:07:48.640 --> 0:07:51.320 When we sat down to talk, he had much more 0:07:51.360 --> 0:08:03.760 to say about both. James Taylor, Welcome to Inside the Studio. 0:08:04.240 --> 0:08:06.880 Thank you, Thank you. Joe. So, you have a new 0:08:07.160 --> 0:08:11.560 audio memoir, Breakshot. It's about your first twenty one years 0:08:11.560 --> 0:08:15.120 on this earth, and also a new album, American Standard, 0:08:15.480 --> 0:08:18.680 which is a collection that draws from the Great American Songbook. 0:08:18.720 --> 0:08:22.320 And right at the start of Breakshot, you refer to 0:08:22.360 --> 0:08:27.600 yourself as a professional biographer or autobiographer who usually talks 0:08:27.600 --> 0:08:30.080 about yourself with your guitar in your hand. That's right. 0:08:30.440 --> 0:08:32.760 It's just the nature of the way I write songs. 0:08:33.080 --> 0:08:38.120 They're very personal and they're very internal process sort of 0:08:38.480 --> 0:08:42.520 brought out into the open end. So I I do 0:08:42.640 --> 0:08:47.480 think of myself as basically navigating through life and describing 0:08:47.520 --> 0:08:50.480 that process. But what I was really struck by listening 0:08:50.480 --> 0:08:52.839 to the new record is that although these are other 0:08:52.880 --> 0:08:58.520 people's songs, there's a definite autobiographical quality to it, at 0:08:58.559 --> 0:09:00.960 least in that these are songs you grew up. It's true. 0:09:00.960 --> 0:09:04.200 I grew up listening to these songs, and when I 0:09:04.200 --> 0:09:07.599 picked up the guitar, I started trying to play them. 0:09:07.720 --> 0:09:10.920 And so the songs that we chose for the album 0:09:11.000 --> 0:09:14.199 actually are songs that I've had guitar arrangements of for 0:09:15.559 --> 0:09:20.040 many years, many years, and um and I got together 0:09:20.080 --> 0:09:24.320 with another great guitar player, John Pitsorelli, and John and 0:09:24.360 --> 0:09:28.280 I basically went back and forth and sort of solidified 0:09:28.320 --> 0:09:32.240 the arrangements and then cut them with two guitars, and 0:09:32.280 --> 0:09:36.040 that that basically is the is the core of the album. 0:09:36.120 --> 0:09:38.679 That those were the basic tracks. We cut them over 0:09:38.679 --> 0:09:42.320 about a two week period, but then we came back 0:09:42.360 --> 0:09:46.240 and worked on them. Uh, worked on the vocals, added 0:09:46.600 --> 0:09:51.120 solos here and there, and sometimes some rhythms, sometimes some drums. 0:09:51.679 --> 0:09:54.840 This you did your workspace at home the barn, going 0:09:54.840 --> 0:09:59.440 back starting to about two years ago in and you've 0:09:59.440 --> 0:10:02.160 said that that work in that way you and a 0:10:02.280 --> 0:10:04.679 and another guitarist is a little bit of a break 0:10:04.720 --> 0:10:07.679 from your normal m O. Yeah, it is. What I'm 0:10:07.720 --> 0:10:10.120 used to doing is write a song on the guitar, 0:10:10.679 --> 0:10:13.480 and then I typically will take it to my bass 0:10:13.480 --> 0:10:18.280 player and Jimmy Johnson or and or my my piano 0:10:18.320 --> 0:10:23.400 player Larry Golding's or Jeff Babco. That basically is the 0:10:23.440 --> 0:10:25.960 process of taking it from the guitar and teaching it 0:10:26.000 --> 0:10:30.480 to a band, typically Mike Landau on electric guitar, Jimmy 0:10:30.600 --> 0:10:34.160 Johnson on bass, Steve Gadd on drums, and you know 0:10:34.280 --> 0:10:37.120 that will be the rhythm section that cuts the song. 0:10:37.840 --> 0:10:40.000 But in this case, I wanted to keep the guitar 0:10:40.200 --> 0:10:43.280 the center of the arrangement because above all, these are 0:10:43.360 --> 0:10:47.160 guitar arrangements, my own guitar arrangements of these songs that 0:10:47.200 --> 0:10:49.599 I've lived with so many years, so it's got a 0:10:49.640 --> 0:10:53.480 really intimate quality to it. Two people sitting playing guitar, 0:10:53.559 --> 0:10:56.520 particularly on your version of God Bless the Child. I 0:10:56.559 --> 0:11:00.600 was struck by just how intimate that was. Then that's 0:11:00.640 --> 0:11:08.640 good shall get Then that's not loose, so the vibe said, 0:11:09.000 --> 0:11:16.839 and it still is nude. Mom may have popa me 0:11:17.400 --> 0:11:25.200 have God Bless the Child. That's God his own. And 0:11:25.280 --> 0:11:27.400 I was wondering. You know, you say these are songs 0:11:27.440 --> 0:11:30.400 that you first learned you were, say, fourteen fifteen years old, 0:11:30.480 --> 0:11:33.720 learning guitar um and is this the way you would 0:11:33.720 --> 0:11:37.480 have played them with your family, with your brothers, or 0:11:37.640 --> 0:11:41.559 say on the vineyard growing up playing with Danny Korchmar. 0:11:42.080 --> 0:11:44.680 You know that this two guitar approaches it a throwback 0:11:44.679 --> 0:11:46.960 in a way to that time. Yeah, some of them were. 0:11:47.800 --> 0:11:51.320 I think relatively few. Um of these songs would I 0:11:51.320 --> 0:11:55.080 have played with my family, although my brother and living 0:11:55.080 --> 0:11:57.400 soon and I might have shared a couple of and 0:11:57.480 --> 0:12:00.720 Cooch and I actually did play God Bless the Child 0:12:00.760 --> 0:12:04.000 together in in the sixties when we were here in 0:12:04.360 --> 0:12:08.120 New York with our our Flying Machine band. Um that 0:12:08.240 --> 0:12:13.080 was that was one of our our favorites. Uh we 0:12:13.080 --> 0:12:16.320 We did a number of songs from that era actually, 0:12:16.679 --> 0:12:21.000 and the Flying Machine so yeah, it's um. They they've 0:12:21.000 --> 0:12:23.560 all been with me for a long time. And I 0:12:23.600 --> 0:12:27.280 wanted to keep the focus on the guitar because often 0:12:27.320 --> 0:12:30.000 when you when you bring in a rhythm section, the 0:12:30.040 --> 0:12:34.880 guitar sort of disappears into it, you know, and I 0:12:35.000 --> 0:12:38.800 wanted to have that stay central. We wanted our songs 0:12:38.800 --> 0:12:42.960 to be simple and cut down to their essentials, but 0:12:43.080 --> 0:12:46.960 we also wanted to acknowledge how sophisticated and how rich 0:12:47.080 --> 0:12:50.959 these things were harmonically. You know, Back in those days, 0:12:51.679 --> 0:12:55.280 songs were written to be sung by anonymous you didn't 0:12:55.280 --> 0:12:58.240 know who would sing it. They were usually sold as 0:12:58.320 --> 0:13:02.240 sheet music. For one thirty three and a third LPs 0:13:02.360 --> 0:13:05.840 came out, they people started listening to these, you know, 0:13:05.920 --> 0:13:08.280 to recordings of these songs, but a lot of them 0:13:08.280 --> 0:13:11.640 were written before recording was good enough. You'd want someone 0:13:11.679 --> 0:13:13.679 to sit down at the piano with a sheet music, 0:13:13.760 --> 0:13:17.400 you know. I just think that nowadays, when we listen 0:13:17.440 --> 0:13:22.280 to recorded music, we're listening to a performance. We're listening 0:13:22.320 --> 0:13:26.320 to a specific artist and their statement of this song. 0:13:27.240 --> 0:13:32.120 But it's different from a song being enough on its 0:13:32.160 --> 0:13:36.120 own to hold your attention to to do its work, 0:13:36.559 --> 0:13:38.960 or as you're saying, because sheet music was so popular, 0:13:39.000 --> 0:13:41.160 made to be sung at home right exactly, or in 0:13:41.400 --> 0:13:43.640 the pub or at a party or yeah, and that 0:13:43.679 --> 0:13:46.440 gets too although we we we lose track of this 0:13:46.559 --> 0:13:49.920 sometimes that that gets to the almost folk music quality 0:13:50.160 --> 0:13:51.760 of this kind of stuff, that that there was a 0:13:51.760 --> 0:13:55.480 communal experience. These songs went out into the world, not 0:13:55.559 --> 0:13:58.040 just on records, but his sheet music and went into 0:13:58.040 --> 0:14:00.920 people's home. Some of these songs deep act to the twenties. 0:14:01.720 --> 0:14:05.120 Probably the most modern is Moon River, but some of 0:14:05.160 --> 0:14:08.240 them my Blue Heaven, go back to the twenties, and 0:14:08.280 --> 0:14:11.520 I was struck by how foundational they were too, even 0:14:11.559 --> 0:14:16.120 that rocket experience in the fifties and sixties, because of 0:14:16.120 --> 0:14:20.080 course My Blue Heaven Fats Domino great version of it. 0:14:20.160 --> 0:14:23.320 But even I was amazed. When I was researching teach 0:14:23.360 --> 0:14:26.160 me Tonight what you do on this record, I was amazed. 0:14:26.200 --> 0:14:28.880 I didn't know Stevie Wonder in the four Tops cut 0:14:28.880 --> 0:14:32.440 it um and and a little different than your version. Well, 0:14:32.480 --> 0:14:35.520 you know, my version is very much defined by my 0:14:35.560 --> 0:14:39.640 guitar technique and what my voice can do. So those 0:14:39.800 --> 0:14:43.800 limiting sort of lenses give it a sound. And you know, 0:14:43.840 --> 0:14:45.800 it's important that when you do a song. You you 0:14:45.880 --> 0:14:47.760 bring something new to it. You don't want to just 0:14:47.880 --> 0:14:50.520 copy something that someone else has done. What you're going 0:14:50.600 --> 0:14:53.760 to do is get a sort of a pale imitation 0:14:53.920 --> 0:14:56.880 of it. You need to you need to take it 0:14:56.960 --> 0:15:00.680 somewhere new and again. These songs have been made me 0:15:00.760 --> 0:15:03.240 for for a long time. But my my point is 0:15:03.280 --> 0:15:06.440 this that when you listen to music today, you're listening 0:15:06.480 --> 0:15:09.960 to a performance the way this person performed it on 0:15:10.000 --> 0:15:12.680 that record. That's what you're hearing, But you're not hearing 0:15:12.720 --> 0:15:15.120 the song. You know, if you try to get these 0:15:15.120 --> 0:15:18.760 songs to stand on their own, some of them do, certainly. 0:15:19.160 --> 0:15:23.600 But these songs from the American Songbook, you know as 0:15:23.640 --> 0:15:27.320 done by Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett, Sarah Vaughan and 0:15:27.360 --> 0:15:31.840 Dinah Washington, Nat King, Cole written by the Gershman's or 0:15:32.080 --> 0:15:36.120 Cole Porter or Frank Lesser, you know, the Rogers and Hammerstein, 0:15:36.240 --> 0:15:39.720 Rogers and Heart Learner and Low. They are at such 0:15:39.760 --> 0:15:44.720 a high level of musical sophistication, and all they have 0:15:44.880 --> 0:15:49.120 to sell them are the melody, the lyric and the 0:15:49.160 --> 0:15:52.440 harmonic context or the changes the arrangement. Then they go 0:15:52.480 --> 0:15:55.280 out into the world and get repeated a million times. 0:15:55.320 --> 0:15:59.360 But the songwriting craft itself is such a high quality. 0:15:59.800 --> 0:16:04.240 There really where we peeked out. And certainly they're what 0:16:04.880 --> 0:16:07.480 informed my music when I was growing up, with a 0:16:07.560 --> 0:16:12.040 number of other things blues, uh, Celtic music that's sort 0:16:12.080 --> 0:16:18.560 of English, Protestant hymnal Afro, Cuban music, Brazilian music. They 0:16:18.600 --> 0:16:23.120 also informed Lennon McCartney. They sang till there was You 0:16:23.440 --> 0:16:27.520 from from the music Man. These songs have had a 0:16:27.600 --> 0:16:31.200 huge influence on that generation of songwriters, and I think 0:16:31.200 --> 0:16:34.200 it's important to reintroduce them to keep them alive in 0:16:34.280 --> 0:16:37.640 our musical culture, because they're really an education. You know, 0:16:39.160 --> 0:16:41.200 not to be too preachy about it, you know, but 0:16:41.600 --> 0:16:45.760 they are great preach. Please go ahead, brother. There's a 0:16:46.120 --> 0:16:52.240 right cold and haze on the meadow. There's a righte 0:16:52.320 --> 0:16:58.480 cold in haze on the meadow. The corn is as 0:16:58.600 --> 0:17:07.600 I as an elefantsa and looks like it's climb and clean. 0:17:08.440 --> 0:17:14.880 Do the guy. You talked about them as an education. 0:17:15.400 --> 0:17:19.919 It was important to your parents, to your mother to 0:17:20.080 --> 0:17:22.600 educate you in this way. You talked about taking trips 0:17:22.640 --> 0:17:25.359 from Durham, North Carolina, up to New York every two 0:17:25.440 --> 0:17:27.760 or three months, to go to museums, but also to 0:17:27.920 --> 0:17:30.800 go to Broadway shows. That's right. She would take two 0:17:30.880 --> 0:17:33.240 or three of us. There were five of us kids, 0:17:33.280 --> 0:17:38.359 and she take a batch up um, usually the older ones, 0:17:38.600 --> 0:17:41.280 and uh, you know, expose us to a little big city. 0:17:41.359 --> 0:17:44.240 You know. When I was twelve, I got my first 0:17:44.240 --> 0:17:46.679 guitar on one of those trips to New York. You know, 0:17:46.840 --> 0:17:50.280 So that was I had played the cello before that, 0:17:50.320 --> 0:17:54.960 but but very reluctantly and not very well, although I 0:17:54.960 --> 0:17:57.359 think I think it did give me a you know, 0:17:57.480 --> 0:18:01.399 contributed also to what musical sund I had. So this 0:18:01.520 --> 0:18:03.919 first guitar is something you mentioned in break point. You 0:18:03.920 --> 0:18:07.639 say you got at home, restrung it pretty much immediately 0:18:08.000 --> 0:18:13.800 changed the nylon strings out for steel strings, right, and uh, 0:18:13.960 --> 0:18:17.840 your brother spray painted it blue. Yeah, he didn't do 0:18:17.880 --> 0:18:20.120 it right away. That was a couple of years later 0:18:20.200 --> 0:18:23.600 that he got hold of it. He hung it up 0:18:23.600 --> 0:18:27.480 in the closet by one of its strengths. He basically 0:18:28.240 --> 0:18:30.880 pulled the string out, wrapped it around the closet pole 0:18:30.960 --> 0:18:34.480 so that was suspended by a string, and then just 0:18:35.000 --> 0:18:38.760 put newspapers underneath it and spray painted it blue all 0:18:38.760 --> 0:18:43.879 over the frets, the strings everything. He also, uh he 0:18:43.960 --> 0:18:47.280 strung it to be to an open tuning, which meant 0:18:47.280 --> 0:18:49.320 it could be played with a bottleneck, you know. So 0:18:49.880 --> 0:18:54.159 he he was just dabbling himself with it. I see. Okay, 0:18:54.200 --> 0:18:57.119 So the the the idea of blue guitar strung to 0:18:57.160 --> 0:18:59.080 an open tuning to play the blues, it was a 0:18:59.080 --> 0:19:02.600 whole concept away. Yeah, yeah, it was. And and you 0:19:02.640 --> 0:19:05.360 know at that point, I I'd gone off to school, 0:19:05.440 --> 0:19:08.800 I was no longer around, so he he just uh, 0:19:09.080 --> 0:19:12.040 you know, I probably had my next guitar by then, 0:19:12.119 --> 0:19:14.919 which I had borrowed from a from a friend of 0:19:14.960 --> 0:19:19.680 the family. He had a Gibson J forty five and 0:19:19.200 --> 0:19:21.720 uh and that was my second guitar and was this 0:19:21.800 --> 0:19:25.560 year older brother Alex spray painted. So this was something 0:19:25.600 --> 0:19:28.600 that fascinated me. You talked about when you were, I believe, 0:19:28.760 --> 0:19:30.920 a junior in high school in Great Point. You talked 0:19:30.920 --> 0:19:35.440 about coming home for that year and playing in his band. 0:19:36.440 --> 0:19:38.199 Tell me a little bit about that. Well, you know, 0:19:38.240 --> 0:19:41.159 it was a typical high school garage band, you know, 0:19:41.600 --> 0:19:43.560 Alex said, you know, as I as I say in 0:19:43.600 --> 0:19:46.080 the in the memoir, he had really taken root in 0:19:46.160 --> 0:19:49.280 the South and the Southern culture, and he had discovered 0:19:49.320 --> 0:19:52.159 soul music, you know, and brought it into the house 0:19:52.240 --> 0:19:55.439 and all of us were just had our our minds 0:19:55.440 --> 0:20:01.320 expanded by Ray Charleson don Cove and Jackie Wilson and 0:20:02.400 --> 0:20:06.520 the Coasters and uh, you know, the Stax volt stable 0:20:07.000 --> 0:20:10.879 and so many and in the motown uh sounds and 0:20:10.920 --> 0:20:13.320 stuff in the in the early sixties. It was just 0:20:13.560 --> 0:20:17.359 amazingly rich ground and it changed everything for me. But 0:20:17.480 --> 0:20:20.760 he wanted to play these songs and um with a 0:20:20.880 --> 0:20:23.920 number of other high school students. We we got together 0:20:24.960 --> 0:20:29.000 a guy, Cam Shannon played Oregon, Vic Lipscomb played the bass, 0:20:29.320 --> 0:20:33.879 I played guitar. Alex sang um and I can't remember 0:20:33.920 --> 0:20:36.800 who our drummer was right now, but at any rate, 0:20:36.840 --> 0:20:41.320 we started hiring out to play play uh sort of 0:20:41.320 --> 0:20:44.920 fraternity parties at at the college, you know, University of 0:20:44.960 --> 0:20:48.720 North Carolina was the was what the town was basically 0:20:48.760 --> 0:20:52.480 built around. So we played for those audiences. We played 0:20:52.520 --> 0:20:57.159 for sock hops or uh you know, senior proms or 0:20:57.200 --> 0:20:59.320 whatever we could get. And we we you know, we 0:20:59.359 --> 0:21:01.600 had a U haul in a station wagon and we 0:21:01.600 --> 0:21:03.840 we hauled this stuff around and play and you were 0:21:03.880 --> 0:21:08.560 called the fabulous course aeras the fabulous Okay, and this 0:21:08.680 --> 0:21:12.160 kind of music in North Carolina at that time played 0:21:12.200 --> 0:21:15.520 for those audiences. This is a culture called beach music. 0:21:15.560 --> 0:21:17.720 Can you can you tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, 0:21:17.800 --> 0:21:22.320 you know, beach music was was what was played from Washington, 0:21:22.440 --> 0:21:26.240 d c. Down To the beginnings of Florida. It was 0:21:26.320 --> 0:21:32.159 like there was an entire seen spring break summertime on 0:21:32.200 --> 0:21:35.880 the water. It was where college students went from from 0:21:35.880 --> 0:21:38.480 all over the South. They went to the to the beach. 0:21:39.280 --> 0:21:43.480 And the bands that played those places, those centers of 0:21:43.960 --> 0:21:49.640 sort of you know, exuberance and uh, disinhibition, those sort 0:21:49.640 --> 0:21:53.280 of party centrals. There were bands that played those and 0:21:53.320 --> 0:21:56.679 that that was known as beach music. Primarily it was 0:21:56.760 --> 0:22:01.880 sold African American artists and uh, you know, it just 0:22:02.280 --> 0:22:05.480 caught on. It was a huge thing in the South, 0:22:06.080 --> 0:22:08.439 and we wanted to play those tunes. There was a 0:22:08.480 --> 0:22:10.720 circuit in the South. You know, this is in the 0:22:10.800 --> 0:22:14.560 segregated South in the early sixties and late fifties. You know, 0:22:14.640 --> 0:22:18.240 the civil rights movement was definitely on the University of 0:22:18.240 --> 0:22:21.199 North Carolina at Chapel Hill was was an early center 0:22:21.880 --> 0:22:25.520 of of resistance in the and you know, this was 0:22:25.560 --> 0:22:29.359 going on all over the South at that time. Black 0:22:29.400 --> 0:22:31.960 acts that wanted to play the South had to be 0:22:32.240 --> 0:22:37.240 extremely careful you know where they where they they stepped 0:22:37.359 --> 0:22:40.480 and uh so there was a group of clubs called 0:22:40.480 --> 0:22:43.920 the Chitland Circuit. You know. Um, there were a couple 0:22:43.920 --> 0:22:48.080 of clubs in in Raleigh and in Durham that we're 0:22:48.119 --> 0:22:51.000 on that circuit. And my brother just he took us 0:22:51.000 --> 0:22:53.399 to those places. I was a year younger than he, 0:22:53.840 --> 0:22:55.920 but he, you know, he said, come on, we're gonna 0:22:55.960 --> 0:22:58.640 hear We're gonna hear James Brown. It's gonna take your 0:22:58.640 --> 0:23:03.040 head off. So it was too It was amazing going 0:23:03.080 --> 0:23:05.480 back to that moment. You just brought up the civil 0:23:05.520 --> 0:23:09.400 rights error in the South on an American standard. You do. 0:23:10.119 --> 0:23:14.520 You've got to be carefully taught. You got to be 0:23:14.800 --> 0:23:23.120 talked to hate fear. You got to be talk from 0:23:23.320 --> 0:23:29.120 year to year. It's got to be drunk in your 0:23:29.320 --> 0:23:37.760 dear little here, You've got to be carefully talked. A 0:23:37.800 --> 0:23:41.119 song from South Pacific, you describe it as an important 0:23:41.160 --> 0:23:44.280 song to your mother. Can you tell me a little 0:23:44.320 --> 0:23:47.959 more about that and why it was appropriate for this record, 0:23:47.960 --> 0:23:51.560 which is tends more towards love songs that this record, 0:23:51.640 --> 0:23:54.240 but that song stands out, Yeah, and the plot of 0:23:54.280 --> 0:23:58.159 the musical South Pacific. It's a statement about about bigotry 0:23:58.200 --> 0:24:03.520 and about umcial hatred and and about the sort of 0:24:03.760 --> 0:24:08.920 rules that society puts down that that limit people. And uh, 0:24:08.960 --> 0:24:11.000 you know, basically what it says is that it's not 0:24:11.400 --> 0:24:15.119 human nature to hate people for this reason, just because 0:24:15.160 --> 0:24:19.560 there of another race or because there's something a general 0:24:19.720 --> 0:24:23.080 about you know that that you've arbitrarily sort of drawn 0:24:23.119 --> 0:24:25.920 a line and decided to hate people that are across 0:24:25.960 --> 0:24:29.640 that line. Um, you have to be taught to do 0:24:29.720 --> 0:24:34.399 that by your parents, by your society, by your church, 0:24:34.560 --> 0:24:38.439 by you know, your your context. You know, you have 0:24:38.560 --> 0:24:43.000 to be taught to hate. It's not natural. And that's 0:24:43.000 --> 0:24:45.760 what the song says. And it was an important song 0:24:45.840 --> 0:24:50.040 to my mom um in many ways. North Carolina was 0:24:49.560 --> 0:24:52.640 a was a culture shock to her, without a question. 0:24:52.800 --> 0:24:55.520 And your dad came from there. My dad came from 0:24:55.520 --> 0:24:58.600 North Carolina, went to the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, 0:24:58.680 --> 0:25:01.880 and then he went to medical school at Harvard and 0:25:02.400 --> 0:25:07.040 did his residency and internship at Boston City and Mass General. 0:25:07.560 --> 0:25:09.399 And that's where he met my mom while he was 0:25:09.480 --> 0:25:12.840 he was up there, and after they married and had 0:25:13.040 --> 0:25:15.840 a home mess of kids. In a very short time, 0:25:16.440 --> 0:25:18.960 Dad moved us all down to North Carolina, where he 0:25:19.000 --> 0:25:21.720 had taken a job at U n C. Where he 0:25:21.720 --> 0:25:25.400 had gone to school and studied pre men. Anyway, from 0:25:25.400 --> 0:25:28.560 my mom, that was she was a very progressive, as 0:25:28.640 --> 0:25:33.600 was my father, very politically progressive in liberal and my 0:25:33.680 --> 0:25:35.880 dad had grown up with it and he under sort 0:25:35.920 --> 0:25:39.159 of understood it, hated it, but understood it. But my 0:25:39.240 --> 0:25:42.240 mom was just so shocked by it because she was 0:25:42.320 --> 0:25:47.600 the daughter of a fisherman from Newburyport, Massachusetts, and so 0:25:48.240 --> 0:25:53.520 she got involved inevitably in the civil rights disobedience protests, 0:25:53.880 --> 0:25:58.560 picket lines and the like. That song is a rare 0:25:58.640 --> 0:26:00.840 thing to make that kind of a statement and a 0:26:00.920 --> 0:26:03.240 musical in point of factory, those who don't know, South 0:26:03.240 --> 0:26:06.159