{"id":46969,"date":"2024-09-12T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-12T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/gorilla\/"},"modified":"2024-09-12T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2024-09-12T00:00:00","slug":"gorilla","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/gorilla\/","title":{"rendered":"Gorilla"},"content":{"rendered":"

The year was 1975, and James Taylor needed a hit.<\/p>\n

Sweet Baby James<\/i> (the start of a six-album run on Warner) was a worldwide smash, landing him national magazine covers and charting hits in \u201cFire And Rain\u201d (#3) and \u201cCountry Road\u201d (#37). The introvert\u2019s introvert seemed to shrink from the attention, retreating into a series of albums that often felt like they were tacking left, then right, in search of a way forward.<\/pbut><\/pstrange><\/p>\n

Mud Slide Slim And The Blue Horizon<\/i> (1971) felt like Sweet Baby James II<\/i> to a certain extent, but only JT\u2019s cover of pal (and briefly, bandmate) Carole King\u2019s \u201cYou\u2019ve Got A Friend\u201d achieved any notable chart success. The shambolic One Man Dog<\/i> (1972) felt both relaxed and tossed-off, while Walking Man<\/i> (1974) felt both slick and bland. Each spun off a charting single (\u201cDon\u2019t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight\u201d and \u201cWalking Man,\u201d respectively), but neither came close to the success of Sweet Baby James<\/i> or even Mud Slide Slim<\/i>. In fact, Walking Man<\/i> has been described<\/a><\/u> as \u201ca critical and commercial disaster\u2026 his first album to miss the Top 5 since his contract with Warner. It received poor reviews and sold only 300,000 copies in the United States.\u201d<\/p<\/pbut><\/pstrange><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, two other factors loomed large in Taylor\u2019s life: family\u2014he and fellow singer-songwriter Carly Simon<\/a> married in 1972 and their daughter Sally was born in 1974\u2014and the heroin addiction that would plague him for another decade. How those played into the decision-making that led to his 1975 album Gorilla<\/i> is anyone\u2019s guess, but it seems clear he was determined to make a more focused album with wider commercial appeal\u2014and boy, did he succeed.<\/pmeanwhile,><\/p<\/pbut><\/pstrange><\/p>\n

Under the supervision of Warner house producers Lenny Waronker and Russ Titelman, Taylor assembled an album that leaned on A-list guest stars (Simon, Graham Nash, David Crosby, David Sanborn, Randy Newman, Lowell George) and a surprising, exuberant blue-eyed cover of Marvin Gaye\u2019s r&b classic \u201cHow Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)\u201d more than it did on Taylor\u2019s own songs. Granted, the gently celebratory, Taylor-penned \u201cMexico\u201d made it to #49 (#5 Adult Contemporary), but deeper in the tracklist lie song titles so generic as to verge on parody (one is called \u201cMusic,\u201d another is \u201cLove Songs\u201d). <\/p>\n

Gorilla<\/i> saw Taylor\u2019s sunny side ascendant on tunes like \u201cYou Make It Easy,\u201d \u201cLighthouse\u201d (featuring Crosby and Nash) and his luminous lullaby to his daughter \u201cSarah Maria.\u201d What shone through here also was consistency; Gorilla<\/i>\u2019s second-tier tracks are among the strongest and most upbeat representatives of that category in JT\u2019s entire catalog. There were occasional downbeat moments, including the melodic yet snappish \u201cI Was a Fool To Care,\u201d but as All Music Guide <\/i><\/u>tartly notes<\/u><\/a>, \u201ceven \u2018Angry Blues,\u2019 which confessed, \u2018I can’t help it if I don\u2019t feel so good,\u2019 didn\u2019t sound like things were that bad.\u201d<\/p<\/punder><\/pmeanwhile,><\/p<\/pbut><\/pstrange><\/p>\n

And indeed they weren\u2019t; riding the high of hit single \u201cHow Sweet It Is\u201d (#5, #1 Adult Contemporary) Gorilla<\/i> reached #6 and reestablished Taylor as a hit-maker. After the equally star-studded if not quite as successful In The Pocket<\/i>, Taylor would jump ship to Columbia for 1977\u2019s JT<\/i>, which reached #4 and cemented his status as the personification of the American confessional singer-songwriter.<\/pand><\/p<\/punder><\/pmeanwhile,><\/p<\/pbut><\/pstrange><\/p>\n

It\u2019s ironic, then, that the album that pulled James Taylor\u2019s career out of the power dive it had fallen into is one of the man\u2019s least personal and confessional ones; Gorilla<\/i> only hints at the depth and power of Sweet Baby James<\/i>, but hits were what the man needed in that moment, and hits are what this album delivered\u2014that, and consistency. The outcome has been another 50 years of sterling songcraft and performances.<\/pit's><\/pand><\/p<\/punder><\/pmeanwhile,><\/p<\/pbut><\/pstrange><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":35092,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5945],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-46969","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-james-taylor","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46969"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}