According to the man who made the song famous, James Taylor, "Fire And Rain" was written in three parts and during a very dark time in his life.
In Rolling Stone magazine during a 1972 interview, Taylor said, "The first verse is about my reactions to the death of a friend (Suzanne Schnerr). The second verse is about my arrival in this country with a monkey on my back, and there Jesus is an expression of my desperation in trying to get through the time when my body was aching and the time was at hand when I had to do it. And the third verse of that song refers to my recuperation in Austin Riggs which lasted about five months."
Schnerr was a childhood friend of Taylor's, who, while Taylor was in England recording his first album, committed suicide. Taylor's friends and family made the gut-wrenching decision to keep the news from Taylor while he was recording that album for Apple Records and getting help on it from none other than Paul McCartney and George Harrison. It would not be for six months after her passing that Taylor found out. He was devastated by her passing.
The second verse was also that dark period after finding out of his friend's passing and coming home from England, feeling a bit like a failure because that self-titled debut did not sell well, and Taylor became depressed over it.
As for the third verse, Taylor wrote it about that time he was coming to grips with the early part of his career, recovering from his drug addiction at the Austin Riggs Center in Massachusetts, still battling the depression of letting famous people down and feeling melancholy over the breaking up of his first group as highlighted by the last line of that verse -- "Sweet dreams and Flying Machines in pieces on the ground" referenced the failure of the band Flying Machine, not to be compared to the British group who scored the Top 10 hit "Smile A Little Smile For Me" in 1969.
Taylor was only 21 years old when he finished his composition he called "Fire And Rain." His producer on that self-titled debut, Peter Asher of Peter & Gordon fame, saw something in Taylor even though that first album did not sell well. Even as Apple Records dumped his contract, he got picked up by Warner Brothers. Asher believed he can shape Taylor into an artist everyone would recognize.
On December 8, 1969, Taylor and Asher arrived at the Sunset Sound Recorders studio in Hollywood to begin work on that second album. The centerpiece of the album was to be the title track from it -- "Sweet Baby James." Once that track and others were finished, Taylor showed Asher the composition he had written which would turn out to be the breakout single. Asher liked it and set up the recording with people who knew their way around songwriting and recording.
On piano was a friend to both Asher and Taylor, the one and only Carole King. Session musician Russ Kunkel played the drums, opting to go with brushes instead of sticks for most of the song. And Bobby West played bass guitar. Once he understood the mood of this dark, lonely song, West changed up basses, going with the deeper-sounding double bass, which would underscore the entire meaning of "Fire And Rain."
The song took a few takes to put down. The album took 10 days to record in December 1969. And by February 1970, "Sweet Baby James" was released as the second album by Taylor. And the plan was to release "Sweet Baby James" as the first single from the album. To this day, Taylor states that "Sweet Baby James" is the best song he's ever recorded.
Problem was that audiences were not keen to the single when it was released and "Sweet Baby James" did not even make the Hot 100 chart, another setback in the young career of the 22-year-old born in Boston and raised in North Carolina while his father was a professor at the University of North Carolina in Chappell Hill.
The album lingered with little fanfare and Taylor went off to Hollywood to make a movie with Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson and actor Warren Oates called Two-Lane Blacktop.
Nearly six months passed by from the album's release until August 1970. Taylor had finished working on that movie and was in between living in Asher's house and good friend and fellow guitarist Danny Kortchmar's apartment. Warner Brothers wanted to give another song a chance to succeed and impressed on both Asher and Taylor the song they thought would work was "Fire And Rain," the deeply personal record Taylor didn't see any commercial success with, saying he never thought people would be that interested in his life.
Without much else going on in Taylor's life, "Fire And Rain" was released in August 1970 and on September 12, 1970, made its Hot 100 debut at No. 83. The next week, it pounded up the chart 33 places to No. 50.
And on September 26, 1970, "Fire And Rain" jumped into the Top 40, debuting at No. 40. The song had caught lightning in a bottle and many music fans were caught up in the message of Taylor's depression, his deep feelings for losing his friend Suzanne and the failure of his first album.
"Fire And Rain" continued its strong flight up the chart, from No. 40 to 30 to 17 and right into the Top 10 at No. 10 on October 17, 1970. After a leap to No. 6, "Fire And Rain" jumped to No. 3 on October 31, 1970, where it would hold for three straight weeks in that peak position.
Though it wasn't exactly the song Asher and Taylor saw doing the job, Taylor was now a star. And as "Fire And Rain" became a huge hit, many fans bought the "Sweet Baby James" album. Not only did it feature the hit song and title track, it also featured the folksy "Country Road," the blues "mocker" "Steamroller" (which Elvis Presley would make into a Top 40 hit with his Hawaiian concert version called "Steamroller Blues") and a track Taylor wrote called "Suite For 20 G," which stood for the $20,000 Taylor was promised once this album was delivered from studio to record stores.
Like "Fire And Rain," "Sweet Baby James" hit No. 3 on the album chart. More importantly, the strong reviews for Taylor's album got him recognition in the business and the album earned a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year. Taylor's album, though, would lose to Simon & Garfunkel's opus "Bridge Over Troubled Waters."
For as depressing a tune as "Fire And Rain" was, it did have an underlying positive tone to it and turned Taylor into an underdog-who-made-it status. King, it was said years later, was inspired to write "You've Got A Friend" because of the line "I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend" in "Fire And Rain." She recorded "You've Got A Friend" for her historic 1971 classic album, "Tapestry," but would also give to Taylor to record. Put on Taylor's next album, "Mud Slide Slim And The Blue Horizon," also produced by Asher, "You've Got A Friend" would climb to No. 1 in July 1971 and be the lone No. 1 hit in Taylor's career.
In 2015, Taylor was invited on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert to talk about "Fire And Rain" and to do an "update" to the song with the host. Putting in numerous pop culture references since the song was first released 45 years earlier, "Fire And Rain" became "Fire And Rain ... And Calzones." For the new lyrics, Taylor sang, "I've seen man buns, Myspace and the Baha Men, but I never thought I'd see a new Star Wars again," as well as "I've seen grandmas reading 50 Shades of Grey" and "Quidditch teams and skinny jeans cutting blood off from my thighs."
It absolutely put a peppier feel to the original version that Taylor wrote at 20 years old because failure was all he saw.
After 14 Top 40 hits, five of which were Top 10s and that one No. 1 hit, it's safe to say James Taylor's fortunes changed in an awfully amazing way.
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