No, not this JT

the original JT

James Taylor.

Now, the most common image that comes to mind when the name James Taylor is mentioned is of the smiling, soft spoken bald guy with the guitar.


The guy who kind of looks like Slingblade singing about Showering the People you love with love and showing them the way that you feel.


But there's another side to James Taylor that some of you may not be familiar with. A darker side. The side that existed in the seventies and was strung out on smack and (speaking of smack) had quite the rough marriage to Carley Simon. This James Taylor was a bad motherfucker. This guy was the kind of guy that you wouldn't want on your jewelery store robbing team, because he'd probably be Mr. Blonde, going on a kill crazy rampage and cutting the cop's ear off.

This was a guy you didn't fuck with. Hell, his most well known song, Fire and Rain, was written in a mental institution. The same one that Sylvia Plath and Ray Charles stayed at.

Now, why do I bring this up?

There's a fellow that I work with that is borderline obsessed with Nirvana. I thought that people obsessed with Nirvana had all died out or became people who are obsessed with Tori Amos or something. But, apparently, there's at least one.

So that's gotten me thinking about the old discussion that went on in 1994 about how Kurt Cobain was this generation's John Lennon.

That's never sat well with me. It just didn't feel right. John Lennon set out to change the world through music. He was political and used his celebrity to draw attention to his causes. He sang about love and peace.

Kurt Cobain wasn't about any of those thing.

I was flipping through the channels and I flipped past old footage of James Taylor on some TV show, singing Fire and Rain. I thought again (it's not a new idea to me) about how much he looked like Cobain, sitting there in his sweater, looking intense and like he's in pain. Sure, the style of music and lyrics are totally different... but the subject matter wasn't really. Both sang about pain and loss. Both were skinny bastards who never really seemed comfortable having their picture taken. They're both men who just seem...bitter. Bitter about the attention they're receiving. Frustrated with the fans.



James Taylor sang these words in his song That's Why I'm Here

Fortune and fame's such a curious game. Perfect strangers can call you by name.
Pay good money to hear fire and rain again and again and again.
Some are like summer coming back every year,
got your baby got your blanket got your bucket of beer.



He's also the guy who sang this song about his pig he raised who had to be put down

When you where just a football at your mama's side,
I reckon everyone figured you for a barbecue when you died.
And here I'm thinking about you lying underground pushing up a pine tree in my field.
Oh, Mona, Mona, you can close your eyes. I've got a twelve-gauge surprise waiting for you

and this

Turn the whole wide world into a TV show so it's just the same game wherever you go.
You never meet a soul that you don't already know, one big advertisement for the status quo.
As if these celebrities were your close friends, as if you knew how the story ends.
As if you weren't sitting in a room alone
and there was somebody real at the other end of the phone, yeah.
Squibnocket, phone sex, just about to dial your number.



Some people, I'm sure, will argue this tell the end of the earth, but I think that if Kurt Cobain has to be called the next someone, he was this generation's James Taylor. I think that had he lived, he probably would have ended up much like James did. I think he would have mellowed and kept writing his poetry and I think he would have gotten much more musically literate. I think Nirvana wouldn't have lasted much longer, but I think Kurt would have been around for years and years, if he could have only stuck it out.

Just my thoughts.