Music James Taylor

SANDERS Theatre seems to have no character of its own. When a poet reads there, it drips with academia. When defendants and lawyers exonerate the Chicago 7 there, it is electric with immediacy. And there are times when it is warm and befriending.

The friendliness was there last Saturday night when James Taylor-tall, almost lanky, with his shirttail out, wearing orange socks and sandals-walked onto the Sanders stage. He sat down and gazed at the packed house. He hesitated, and after a simple, sheepish "hi," he took the audience into his mind for what later seemed the shortest of times.

Taylor came out of North Carolina by way of Greenwich Village. He said Saturday night that he learned his first song-a chewing tobacco commercial-at age three. He ended up singing and playing guitar with a blues group in the Village. The group, Taylor said, competed with bands "made up of kids from the suburbs whose fathers had bought them electric guitars and Super Beatle amplifiers."

But talented people who are determined to succeed do not stay in the Village. They get out, and some, like 23-year-old James Taylor, make it. Taylor went first to England, Paul McCartney arranged the recording of his first album on the Apple label. And in his first song Saturday night-McCartney's "A Little Help From My Friends" -Taylor was telling us that friends had helped him make it out of the Village.

Taylor is very much like Neil Young in his stage presence, in the way he tells stories and brings an audience to him. But he is not as boyish as Young: he has been down a harder road. In "Something's Wrong," which he wrote under the influence of New York City, he sings to himself:

Someting's wrong, that restless feeling's been preying on your mind

Road maps in a well-cracked ceiling-the signs aren't hard to find

Now I'm not saying that you've been mistreated

No one's hurting you-nothing's wrong

A moment's rest was all you needed

So pack your things and kindly move along.

On stage, Taylor plays quietly-his motions subdued and even. He accompanies himself with a single guitar. This solitude fits him well, because his music draws entirely from within. It is an autonomous force and thus carries more impact when James Taylor plays it alone-without the double-tracking of the studio, without percussion or brass. Indeed, these elements seem superfluous once you've seen the music played in its pure form.

Deep-rooted lyrics are a vital part of Taylor's music. In "Sweet Baby James" he sings:

There's a song that they sing when they take to the highway

A song that they sing when they take to the sea

A song that they sing of their home in the sky

Maybe you can believe it if it helps you to sleep

But singing works just fine for me.

Saturday night, it worked for everyone at Sanders-especially during the second of the two shows. The audience for the early show seemed restrained, perhaps because Taylor was following a strict schedule so that the second show could begin on time. But the timing for Taylor's second set was just right. He immediately brought the audience to life, and its response was genuine and outgoing.

It is difficult to describe the poetry that is James Taylor's. It is something that must be heard, and felt. It transmits a feeling of melancholy, followed by happiness. Your mind drifts with the words to far-away people and places. The feeling makes you glad, and that, I suppose, accounts for the response Taylor received. The applause after "Fire and Rain" -a song about Susan and sweet dreams and flying machines-was so sustained that Taylor seemed embarrassed. He drank some water, stared down at his guitar, and waited. Then he shook his head and played "Carolina In My Mind."

IT WAS this indefinable bond between performer and audience that brought Taylor back for three encores, ending with "Diamonds in the Rough." This last song seemed to describe James Taylor: a diamond in the rough, unspoiled by hard-found success, wanting only to write and play his music because "singing works just fine for me." He was tired-he had to go home to bed, he said-else it might have gone on for hours more. Home to bed, as in the lullaby for his nephew, "Sweet Baby James":

Goodnight you moonlight ladies

Rockabye Sweet Baby James

Deep greens and blues are the colors I choose

Won't you let me go down in my dreams

And Rockabye Sweet Baby James.