Sick and Sad Again Waiting for the Rain to End

James Taylor and Carole Male monarch, who played piano on 'Fire And Rain'. Keystone/Getty Images hibernate caption

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James Taylor and Carole King, who played piano on 'Fire And Rain'.

Keystone/Getty Images

James Taylor at present has a happy grinning, and at 52, he is tall, thin and more often than not relieved of hair. In the old pictures from the '70s, he has long black pilus and a somber, gaunt expression. His voice hasn't inverse. Even in the saddest songs, it'due south always had a kindly nature to it. He was born in New England and raised in North Carolina, and you tin hear the influence of both regions.

NPR 100 Fact Canvas

Title: Fire and Rain

Artist: Words/music James Taylor

As performed by James Taylor

Reporter: Noah Adams

Producer:

Editor:

Length: 12:30

Interviewees: James Taylor

Recordings Used: Fire and Rain, James Taylor

Taylor wrote "Fire and Rain" in 1968. The song has three verses. One is about a friend who committed suicide, another is about Taylor's habit to heroin, the tertiary refers to a mental hospital and a ring Taylor started chosen The Flight Machine. Each poetry is followed by the same chorus, `I've seen fire and I've seen rain. I've seen sunny days that I thought would never stop. I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend, but I always thought that I'd see you once again.' James Taylor told me he can't stand to hear his songs on the radio. He dives for the dial if "Burn and Pelting" comes on. Merely it remains a vocal he likes to sing and one that audiences always wait for.

"I tried to figure out at i signal how many times I'd sung information technology," Taylor says, "and I think it'due south probably budgeted a one thousand times now. I sung it yesterday at lunchtime for a benefit, and that may have been the thousandth fourth dimension. For a while I thought it would be nice to build an odometer, like a big odometer that was visible on stage that had a big plate on the top of it that one struck with a mallet, you know, and--that every night we'd set it dorsum to 999 and so turn it over to the ritual thousandth singing of 'Fire and Rain,' and so strike information technology with the mallet to drive information technology home."

After such a long run, it's understandable that "Burn and Rain" could flatten out emotionally for Taylor after all these years. But his fans' reactions to the vocal proceed to surprise him.

"I'm surprised really at how durable information technology is or how reliable the connection--the emotional connexion information technology makes is," Taylor explains. "But does it ever go flat for me? Yes. Yep, it has. And the way--if I'm distracted or overwhelmed, I tin can forget where I am. I hateful, at that place'due south a vocal with three verses with the same form and three choruses following them. There's no span, there'due south no release, no break. Then I can forget where I am. It's a terrifying thing, and information technology doesn't happen ofttimes, but it does, as they say, concentrate the mind."

"Yous desire to feel as though you lot're making a connection with information technology. It helps to have an audition there receiving information technology, because then you desire it to happen for them, too. Information technology's, like, simply a common--you know, making music for an audience is a communal process. And so, you know, they're resonating with it, I grab that, too. That'southward contagious."

Each of "Fire and Rain"'southward verses deals with an adversity Taylor has dealt with in his life. The commencement is about a friend, Susanne, who he establish had died,

"At the fourth dimension, I was recording in England with The Beatles, and my friends had sort of kept the information well-nigh this expiry from me considering they thought, yous know, `This is a crucial time for him, he's doing his work, and we don't want to upset him or bring him down.' And then my friend Richard Corey told me about it, but he had known about it for a calendar month or so before he mentioned information technology to me. So that'southward where `they let me know you lot were gone' comes in."

The second verse is when y'all're still struggling to get off hard drugs,

"That was in New York, and that was when I came dorsum to this country from London and was surprised that I'd picked up a habit. So I was physically very uncomfortable and having a rough time."

And the third verse in the mental hospital at Stockbridge.

"Up at Austin Riggs in Stockbridge. Yeah. It was--that is non a very--that'due south not so much a specific one, it's simply sort of--I don't know what--kind of by and large introspective kind of verse, I estimate."

Taylor notes that if "Burn and Rain" were prose rather than poesy, it might be more open and explicated and described and have less of a connexion with people. For Taylor, it'due south not virtually the actual information of the song, merely the emotional connection with that information.

"Yous know, when someone understates something completely, you lot know, like a song like "What'll I Do?" you lot know, `What'll I do when you are far abroad and I am blue? What'll I practise?' you know, when it's minimally stated, information technology merely becomes pure emotional, you lot know? It'south--information technology nearly makes you laugh the way it makes you cry, you know, because it's and then directly stated that it'south almost like it punches a pigsty in y'all. It, like, lets it out of a place where it doesn't unremarkably come out of, you know. Some haikus are like that. You read them and information technology'southward sort of like it'south almost funny how directly people are beingness, you lot know? "

Surprisingly for a vocal with every bit deep every bit "Burn and Rain," the songwriting process was uncomplicated for Taylor, who says its creation was almost therapeutic.

"It does come up very quickly," Taylor explains. "It did come very, very fast. But it was a swell relief. That song relieved a lot of sort of tension. There was things that I needed to get rid of or at to the lowest degree get out of me or make it front end of me or at to the lowest degree have some other human relationship than feeling them internally, either by telling somebody else or by but putting them out in a form in front end of me so that I could say, `There they are,' you know, externalizing information technology somehow. And that part was hard, having the feelings that needed to exist expressed in that way. Merely information technology was actually a relief, like a laugh or a sigh.

But these days, the songs don't come as hands.

"They come less frequently and peradventure I don't have the same urgency to get them out. It's still a please to write something and I even so love it, but I think a couple of things have changed. One is that I'm older and that I'g non as emotionally intense. I've found other solutions--emotional solutions in my life. Another matter is that I'm more distracted. It's just very difficult for me. I remember songs demand to come out of--really out of a state of boredom almost as much equally annihilation else. Y'all need to accept empty time in club to receive them. I'm much more distracted now and there'due south less time for them to come through. And I think the other matter is that there is a modify between feeling the need to limited something from the inside out and being aware of yourself in the market place and feeling equally if the songs are somewhat being pulled out of you lot as something that'south expected of you. So I've become more aware of it as something that I'm expected to do. And, you know, at the time that I wrote that song, I really didn't conceptualize that anyone would hear it, you lot know? I mean, the motivation for writing information technology was quite pure. And that's not the case so much anymore."

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Source: https://www.npr.org/2000/06/26/1075908/npr-100-fire-and-rain

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