(Credits: Far Out / Eric Koch / Anefo / Nationaal Archief / CMA / Warner Records.)
Fri 6 February 2026 18:00, UK
The cornerstone of every great Beatles song was that push and pull between John Lennon and Paul McCartney.
Both of them were equally great at what they did, but their approach to music was always going to be what made every song better and also what tore them apart by the end of the group. But even if they were able to go their separate ways and be equally as great, Lennon remembered not having nearly as much love for every single band that the Fab Four took under their wing.
Granted, that’s not what they were designed to do in the first place. Apple Records did have a lot of great talent on its roster, but there was no doubt that people were interested in the label for The Beatles first and the rest of the bands second. But, really, it was better for the band to put their money back into the service of making music rather than have to worry about putting it into taxes later in life.
Hell, even the first few records coming out on the label weren’t half bad, either. Billy Preston could turn any song he touched into gold when he started playing, and while Badfinger may have had a bit of help from McCartney when working on ‘Come and Get It’ and even got George Harrison to do the guitar solo on ‘Day After Day’, they were the benchmark for what power pop was always supposed to be.
But none of them would have been possible without James Taylor kicking the door down for everyone else. Taylor was among the first people that the band signed, and when listening to a lot of his records, it wasn’t hard to see what made him so great. He had been learning all of the greatest songs to play with Carole King when she started performing live, but the beautiful picking parts that turned up on ‘Carolina In My Mind’ and ‘Fire and Rain’ wouldn’t have felt out of place next to Macca’s brilliant ballads.
So it makes sense that McCartney was the one ushering him through the door. Harrison may have been enamoured with the song title ‘Something in the Way She Moves’ when writing his own classic, but for someone that was already out in left field like Lennon was, he wasn’t exactly thrilled with albums that were so downtempo and sleepy as Sweet Baby James was when it came out.
He had been used to peeling back the layers of his mind by the time the band broke up, so relying on acoustic ditties wasn’t going to work anymore for him, saying, “I just never have time for a whole album. I’m not stuck on Sweet Baby [James Taylor]— I’m getting to like him more hearing him on the radio, but I was never struck by his stuff.” If he were to look at the lyrics a little more closely, though, Taylor had a bit more of an edge to him than Lennon would have originally thought.
His journey to becoming one of the greatest singer-songwriters in the world didn’t come without some hardship, and ‘Fire and Rain’ tells a lot of his dark chapters as clear as day. He had already spent some time in an asylum, and while his soothing voice is still one of the most pleasant sounds that the 1970s ever spat out, it’s not like you can ignore the fact that the song’s about one of his friends who succumbed to their demons.
If anything, this was a fellow songwriter trying to understand themselves the same way Lennon was on Plastic Ono Band, and while it might have sounded a bit more tuneful, that didn’t mean that it was too soft by any means. Everyone has their own way of expressing their pain, and there is no shame in being able to make some of the darkest experiences in your life somehow sound hopeful.
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