Graham Chaplow: I wish I could have it all back again

Graham Chaplow.

Tribute bands are a dime a dozen in this neck of woods, so it's nice when a truly original music act or icon literally drops by our backyard to play.

I was tallying them up recently; bands who I consider still had enough original or key members, or artists who were still relevant that have played in The Bay since the '70s: Donovan and The Byrds at the Municipal Theatre; Georgie Fame, Stevie Winwood and Steely Dan at Church Road Winery; Manfred Mann at the Opera House in Hastings; and of course, Eric Clapton (performing his classic Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs in its entirety) and the late and very great Ray Charles, at The Mission (some, Stevie Wonder fans too, still don't get just how important he was).

Touchstone acts who helped capture the mood of an era and who moved a generation. Singer/songwriters who wrote and performed classic songs that set the benchmark for everything else that followed, and James Taylor, performing at Church Road on Waitangi Sunday (although he'd probably be too modest to acknowledge it), is one such artist.

It will be 50 years ago next year that he first came to our attention via The Beatles fast imploding, but-they-were-too-stoned-to-notice, Apple Corps, with his somewhat overproduced but wonderful first self-titled album.

But it was in the early 70s, along with Carol King and the likes of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Neil Young, when he hit pay dirt.

He was (and still is) huge.

My wife and I were in our early 20s, living in the UK. I worked at a record store in Doncaster in South Yorkshire and scored Taylor's first two Warner albums (Sweet Baby James and Mud Slide Slim) as part of my remuneration; much to the chagrin of my wife's Alf Garnett-styled grandfather who stood at the foot of the stairs in his semidetached wearing a knotted handkerchief (like Monty Python's Gumby) berating me for playing 'rockabye sweet baby James' too loud upstairs.

We were in our very own Till Death Us Do Part situation.

From our window I could see the black slag heaps of the coal mining village of Stainforth; the unending smell of coal dust permeating the cold night air.

Taylor's songs reminded me of summer days back home in Hawke's Bay; of life growing up with my then recently deceased father; one in particular - Long Ago and Far Away (with Joni Mitchell) - reducing me to tears (it still does).

We purchased a rusted out grey Cortina and drove to Lincolnshire to see Taylor headlining the 1971 Lincoln Folk Festival, along with Sandy Denny, Tom Paxton, Tim Hardin and The Byrds.

There's a photo of me, hair dishevelled, sprawled in long grass after sleeping in the Cortina, oblivious of the notices pre-warning us of grass snakes.

After The Byrds, Taylor's solo performance was sublime: shy regarding his audience's adulation and spurning the music paparazzi needing photos.

In London, in a bedsit in Willesden Green, his albums, along with Carol King's Tapestry, became integral ingredients of our communal existence.

Our room was part of a twin house duplex owned by a survivor of the Holocaust - of the Nazi concentration camps; a deeply troubled Polish Jew and his doting wife, Mr and Mrs Meth (when I hear Taylor singing King's You've Got a Friend I still recall Mr Meth emptying the shilling coins from our meter).

Communication between multinational tenants was via the upstairs rooms through tin cans connected by a length of string. It left the internet for dead. Aussie and American hippies, Geoff and Ralph, guitars in tow, would knock at our door and ask to listen to my James Taylor albums.

Our room had an overgrown vine back garden; ideal for hippy gatherings once word got out by way of the cans.

Strawberry sponge cakes and lashings of ginger beer and sing-alongs from the James Taylor songbook would then ensue. Life was sweet and so much simpler.

From You and I Again off Taylor's recent album, I wish I could "Have it (my time) all back again".

Sad thing is, in light of Trump's ban on certain immigrants, Taylor's Waitangi concert may reawaken memories of Mr Meth and the tyranny of Nazi Germany, because that's where we're going back to.

- Graham Chaplow is a retiree, volunteer teachers' aide and award-winning writer.

- Views expressed here are the writer's opinion and not the newspaper's. Email: editor@hbtoday.co.nz