Some days you’d think that Salman Khan was the only person who had the bright idea of putting tutorials on YouTube. But, if you’re an amateur guitarist, you know better. You know that guitarists have been posting free lessons on YouTube since Day 1, teaching newbies how to buy an acoustic guitar, tune it by ear, strum it, and play chord progressions. And, what’s more, you can find clips that will readily teach you how to play your favorite tunes, whether it’s Bob Dylan’s Love Minus Zero/No Limit or Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir.
Think you just hit pay dirt? Well, it gets even better.
You can take lessons straight from James Taylor, the singer-songwriter himself. On his YouTube channel/web site, Taylor demonstrates how to file your nails, tune your guitar, and then start playing his classic songs. Fire and Rain? JT has that covered. Carolina in My Mind? That too. And also Enough To Be On Your Way, Second Wheel, Little Wheel, and Country Road. Stick around for a while and you might get “Something in the Way She Moves” next.
James Taylor Sings James Taylor, a BBC broadcast from November 1970, appears above. Though the nearly 40-minute solo performance showcases a player who has developed and mastered his distinctive musical persona, it also showcases one who has only reached a mere 22 years of age. But don’t let his aw-shucks youthfulness fool you; by this point, Taylor had already endured a lifetime’s worth of formative troubles. He’d fallen into deep depression while still in high school, spent nine months in a psychiatric hospital, taken up and quit heroin, bottomed out and spent six months in recovery, underwent vocal cord surgery, taken up methedrine, gone into methadone treatment, had an album flop, and broken his hands and feet in a motorcycle wreck. Fire and rain indeed. But he’d also found favor with the Beatles, becoming the first American signed on their Apple label and recruiting Paul McCartney and George Harrison to play on his “Carolina in My Mind.” At the end of the sixties, the world at large didn’t know the name James Taylor, but his fellow musicians knew it soon would.
“I just heard his voice and his guitar,” said McCartney, “and I thought he was great.” Earlier in 1970, many listeners surely felt the same thing after dropping the needle onto Taylor’s breakthrough second album Sweet Baby James. By the time James Taylor Sings James Taylor went to air, he’d accrued enough of an international reputation to guarantee appreciation from even non-Beatles on the other side of the pond. Knowing his audience, Taylor opens with a rendition of Lennon and McCartney’s “With a Little Help from My Friends.” The Beatles connections don’t stop there: Songfacts reports that Taylor’s “Something in the Way She Moves,” the first single from his pre-Sweet Baby James Apple debut, may have inspired George Harrison to write “Something.” What’s more, Taylor had originally titled his song “I Feel Fine,” before realizing that the Beatles had recorded a song by that name. Though more troubled times lay ahead for the humble (if already well on his way to wealth and fame) young singer-songwriter, this production captures Taylor just before superstardom kicked in.
Every Moment Has A Song 