Explore the guitar style of James Taylor

LessonsWriting

May 24

In 1968 James Taylor was 19 years old, a budding songwriter with ambition but no real plan, when he got what he has called “the mother of all big breaks”: a private audition for none other than Paul McCartney and George Harrison, arranged by Apple Records’ talent scout Peter Asher.

Taylor, despite his jitters over meeting two of his musical heroes, brought out his Gibson J-50 and fingerpicked his song “Something in the Way She Moves.”

James Taylor Acoustic Guitar magazine cover — *Excerpted from the July/August 2022 issue of* Acoustic Guitar, *available here*.

More than 30 years later, while inducting Taylor into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, McCartney recalled his first impression of Taylor as a “haunting guy who could really play the guitar and really sing beautifully.” McCartney and Harrison not only gave the young musician the thumbs-up, opening the door for Taylor to become the first non-Beatle signed to Apple, but Harrison later even paid the ultimate compliment by nicking Taylor’s title phrase to create a song of his own called “Something.”

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this story, though, is that Taylor himself, still a teenager, already had discovered so much of what would define his music across his career. The graceful melodies, the subtly unfolding harmony, the emotional intimacy in the words and in his smooth baritone, the guitar figures that became his trademark—the essentials of his style were fully present.

“I think that my musical style developed really in a vacuum,” Taylor told me in a 1992 interview for Acoustic Guitar (later published in the book Rock Troubadours). “It developed in North Carolina with a lot of time on my hands, empty, open time, and I think that’s true of a lot of musicians who develop their own thing. It takes a lot of time to practice, and it takes a certain amount of alienation to want to do that instead of wanting to do social things. It means that you in some way are cut off.”

While many artists take years of shows and albums to come into their own, and then continue to search and experiment in order to stay inspired, Taylor found the well of his music so early on—and it’s never dried up. Somehow, his music seems to exist outside of musical fashions and the times. In sound and spirit, the songs on Taylor’s 2015 album, Before This World, are clearly tied to “Carolina in My Mind,” “Fire and Rain,” “Sweet Baby James,” and other classics from decades before.

In Taylor’s music, the guitar provides much more than accompaniment. His singular approach to the instrument—picking style, chord choices, bass lines, melodies, embellishments—creates a landscape that’s fundamental to the songs. Even after a 50-year reign as one of our defining singer-songwriters, the source of standard repertoire played by countless acoustic guitarists, Taylor still stands out as a highly unusual player—with idiosyncratic technique and a sense of harmony far apart from the standards of folk or rock guitar.

Find the complete lesson in the July/August 2022 print or digital issue of Acoustic Guitar, and play examples inspired by his ageless songs. Also included in the issue is the complete lyrics and chords to “Sweet Baby James.”