THE BERKSHIRE EAGLE – Kim Taylor: 32 years later, still a special place

By: Kim Taylor, Special to The Eagle

The first time I tried to find Tanglewood, I drove right past it. (The first time in my adult life, that is.) I had been hired by Peter Gelb, then the BSO’s assistant manager, now the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, as his assistant. I hadn’t been back to Tanglewood since childhood visits.

Several U-turns later, I spotted the tiny wooden sign, swinging in the breeze from a wooden pole, with the hand-painted letters “Tanglewood.”

It was so amazingly non-annunciatory! How Bostonian, how New England, how Tanglewood-ian.

That was 32 years ago and not a lot has changed on that front. The signs have been reworked into a slightly larger version, but there is still, blessedly, nothing to really herald this world-class destination sandwiched between the towns of Lenox and Stockbridge.

The Berkshires were a very different place back then.

There was a single restaurant in Lenox, now long gone, called Ganesh which morphed into Café Lucia. And there was Loeb’s, our life line to the outside world as the repository of the morning papers. None of us had TV in our rental homes — there was no cable, no Internet, no cell phones. The land lines at Tanglewood were, at best, temperamental, and would quickly sputter and die at the mention of lightning.

Back then, the press office at Tanglewood was housed next to the Main Gate; it had a flat, tar roof upon which the sun would beat down mercilessly. If one could wheedle a fan from Jim Kiley, who ran the physical plant, one was very lucky.

Before each concert, the office would be converted into a makeshift bar for the press. There were plates of Freihofer’s chocolate chip cookies and lots of gin.

In many ways, a trip to Tanglewood was much more of an elitist excursion. Although the years of passing out paper skirts to under-dressed patrons had disappeared, ticket holders for the Shed dressed for the occasion: the women in silk wraps and heels sure to be ruined by the Tanglewood turf.

My first summer began with an all-Copland concert conducted by the composer himself. There were performances by great singers of the era — Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Jon Vickers paired with Jessye Norman in the second act of Wagner’s “Tristan,” a remarkable Verdi “Requiem.”

Seiji Ozawa presided over it all in his impeccably tailored, white mandarin-collared Hanae Mori creations with his mane of jet-black hair.

Seranak — the name deriving from an acronym of Serge and Natalie Koussevitzky for their former home overlooking Tanglewood, the Stockbridge Bowl and clear down to Connecticut — was acquired in 1981. It soon became the locus of post-concert soirees and a pre-concert supper club. One of the earliest parties there, after the BSO had reclaimed it, was an 80th birthday celebration for Copland, attended by Ozawa and Leonard Bernstein.

I was given the task of capturing the cake-cutting in a photo. “Get those three together and do it now!” hissed Gelb.

New at wrangling anything, I tried in vain to corral them for a photo. The BSO’s late photographer, Walter Scott, gently put an arm around Lenny (as he was known to all) and Aaron and signaled me to grab Seiji. Voila, success!

The visitations by Bernstein were always a high point of the summer. When he arrived “on campus” in his gleaming vintage Mercedes convertible with its “Maestro One” license plates, one could feel the electricity ripple through the grounds. Everyone was at attention.

I found that being the junior press officer made for good scapegoat material.

In the early ‘80s, Bernstein had designated one of his performances as a benefit for the Tanglewood Music Center. The three-sheet (the in-house name for the large posters by the Main Gate) neglected to mention this. Bernstein, for whom the strict rules regarding automobiles on the grass were discarded, noticed this omission upon driving past the entrance. He was furious. I was summoned.

There clearly had been some miscommunication about this but since these posters were within my purview, I was the one who was told to explain. I delivered an abject apology. He was gracious and forgiving, surveying me with a cigarette in one hand and silver cup of some libation in the other.

I escaped unscathed.

I was also summoned a number of times to try and assuage visiting conductors who were less than pleased with the reviews they had received. One such visit occurred at Wheatleigh, the elegant resort near Tanglewood. For a 26-year-old, this was very heady stuff, waiting in the Italianate grand foyer.

I was shepherded to the garden where an illustrious German maestro was pacing and whacking the table with the newspaper in question. This is “schrecklish” (German for “terrible”), he kept shouting. “I want this man brought to me.”

I tried to explain that this wouldn’t be possible, which further infuriated him. He muttered, “In Germany, we handle this differently.” Indeed.

Tanglewood, ultimately, is more than the sum of its parts, more than patchwork memories of a Mahler symphony, an appearance by an Ewok, a glimpse of greatness, the image of the orchestra resplendent in white. It is walking across that great expanse of lawn and feeling there may be a greater truth to be revealed or that somehow, one has access just for this moment, to something greater than oneself.

There is a mystery and a beauty that belongs to this place. On a summer Sunday afternoon, with a cool Berkshire breeze and a cloud scuttling by and the orchestra about to tune, one can’t help invoke Robert Browning: “God’s in his heaven; all’s right with the world.”

Caroline “Kim” Taylor joined the Boston Symphony’s press office in 1979. She rose to director of public relations and marketing for the BSO and married James Taylor on Nov. 18, 2001, having been introduced a few years earlier by film composer and conductor John Williams. Currently, she is a trustee of the orchestra.

[Source: BerkshireEagle.com]

THE BERKSHIRE EAGLE – Lessons from Above

By Clarence Fanto – Berkshire Eagle Staff

Is there intelligent life on another planet? That was the show- stopping question posed by Kim Taylor , James Taylor ‘s wife and mother of their twin sons, Henry and Rufus, to astronaut Dan Burbank, flight commander of the International Space Station, during a super high-tech satellite video link on Sunday afternoon.

“Looking at 200,000 stars, many of them with planets,” he responded without hesitation, “it’s almost inconceivable to me that there isn’t.”

“It’s highly likely that there is,” he added. “It’s almost impossible that we would be the only intelligent life. But the distances are too daunting that we could ever reach it.”

To the great amusement of the 20 Taylor family members, friends and staff gathered at his recording studio for the Earth-tospace event, the video and audio link through NASA’a Mission Control in Houston went dead for a few seconds just at that point.

After the signal was restored, James Taylor asked whether “there’s any chance any of us seated here could get a chance to go up into space.”

Burbank replied that there’s a future in privately funded space flight – “you could make an industry out of it, much more cost-

effective than the government.”

“This is the hardest thing people have ever done,” he cautioned, “and we’re hardly able to do it. I’m so grateful to wake up every morning to do this mission.”

A strong advocate of future space exploration, Burbank declared that ” people need frontiers, to be on the edge. I welcome the enthusiasm of young kids, we need their brains and smarts to keep this space program going. It’s what we’re meant to do.”

He predicted that by the time the Taylor twins and their friends grow up, “space travel will be very commonplace.”

As the available time for the satellite link expired, Taylor expressed his gratitude for the opportunity to chat with an on- the- job astronaut. ” It’s been phenomenal for us,” he enthused.

“We’re all fascinated by this stuff,” Taylor told The Eagle later. ” I wish we had the national will to push forward more with space exploration.” He expressed interest in boarding a commercially available flight “to see how I respond to weightlessness.”

“I’d love to go up there and see what it’s like,” when asked if he harbors dreams of a space flight.

Taylor ‘s fascination with exploration stems in part from his late father. Dr. Isaac Taylor spent 1955 and 1956 as a Navy lieutenant at McMurdo Station in the Antarctic, helping to build a medical dispensary at the under-construction U.S. research center, which connects by road to the South Pole. Taylor noted the coincidence that his first “pivotal live performance,” at the 1969 Newport (R.I.) Folk Festival, coincided with the first moon walk.

“I do have, as a layman, a scientific sort of curiosity,” he said, “so I found it fascinating” to talk to astronaut Burbank. “I had no idea this would go off as well as it did.”
Caption: James Taylor , his wife, Kim, and twins Rufus and Henry listen intently to flight commander Burbank.

[Source: BerkshireEagle.com]

The Berkshire Eagle: Taylor, family, friends connect with space station commander

James, along with his family and a group of friends, connected with commander Dan Burbank as he was 220 miles above Earth, to see an amazing view of our planet and to play a duet!

Awestruck.

That describes the reaction of James Taylor, his wife Kim and their twin sons, Rufus and Henry, as well as 20 friends, relatives and associates gathered on Sunday for a close encounter of the most unusual kind with outer space.

Through an iPad and satellite hookup from the high-tech recording studio at Taylor’s hilltop home base overlooking Lenox, to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston and then 220 miles above the Earth to flight commander Dan Burbank aboard the International Space Station, the conversation about space exploration and music flowed freely, thanks to a near-flawless technical setup.

A high-def, two-way video screen and camera displayed stunning images of the space station — the size of a football field — and its rotating view of planet Earth for the Taylor gathering, while Burbank had a chance to play a duet with his favorite singer.

Check out the full article in our Press Archive.

THE BERKSHIRE EAGLE – Taylor, family, friends connect with space station commander

By Clarence Fanto – Berkshire Eagle Staff

Awestruck.

That describes the reaction of James Taylor , his wife Kim and their twin sons, Rufus and Henry, as well as 20 friends, relatives and associates gathered on Sunday for a close encounter of the most unusual kind with outer space.

Through an iPad and satellite hookup from the high-tech recording studio at Taylor ‘s hilltop home base overlooking Lenox, to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston and then 220 miles above the Earth to flight commander Dan Burbank aboard the International Space Station, the conversation about space exploration and music flowed freely, thanks to a near- flawless technical setup.

A high-def, two-way video screen and camera displayed stunning images of the space station – the size of a football field – and its rotating view of planet Earth for the Taylor gathering, while Burbank had a chance to play a duet with his favorite singer.

The video teleconference was arranged after Taylor ‘s personal assistant Ellyn Kusmin spotted an email from NASA scientist Dan Cook, head of Behavioral Health and Performance Space Medicine sent to Taylor ‘s website, like any fan. “We get at least 1,000 e-mails a month,” said Kusmin, “and I read as many as I can but I have to say I am very glad that I read this one. At first I thought it was a hoax. But it wasn’t.”

Final preparations for the technical setup were accomplished over the past week, leading to a “window” of available satellite time starting at 1 p. m. Sunday, through the efforts of Taylor ‘s IT consultants Sam Sorrentino of Lee and Scott Kirshner of Mad Macs, Inc., in Pittsfield.

” It’s unbelievable!” Taylor exclaimed as the video image of Burbank in the research studio of the space station came into view. At that moment, the space station was over India, rotating in a low orbit 180 to 200 miles above the Earth at 17,500 miles per hour.

Burbank, strapped into his chair in the gravity-free space station environment, made no effort to conceal his enthusiasm. “It’s such a treat, wonderful to see you all,” he said, promptly displaying his guitar floating on the module’s ceiling.

Longtime Taylor fan

As a longtime fan of the singer- songwriter, Burbank has been taking virtual guitar lessons offered free on Taylor ‘s website.

The admiration was mutual as Taylor , a space buff deeply fascinated by science, technology and all matters mechanical, enthused that “we couldn’t be more thrilled to have this opportunity to visit with you.”

As the spacecraft spun far above the Himalayas, the Pacific and Hawaii – all in a matter of minutes – Burbank acknowledged that in the earlier days of space flight, “we used to feel disconnected from family and friends … but now I get a chance to speak to someone I’ve looked up to musically, all my life.”

“That’s very flattering, it’s a great honor for me to have you say that,” Taylor responded.

Following a demonstration of weightlessness as Burbank untethered himself and floated to the ceiling of the module, he described how the human body ” very quickly adapts to this environment perfectly.”

Showing off fitness center

“You never get tired of this, flying like Superman through the space station,” he said. Burbank even showed off the adjacent fitness center, equipped with a specially adapted treadmill and other gear.

“We can work out just like in the gym,” he observed. “Our crews are coming back from missions as healthy as when they left; in some cases, they’re even stronger.”

Burbank also made it clear that he and his five crew members – representing the United States, Russia and the European Union – were fully primed for a potential mission to Mars.

Inevitably, the talk turned to music.

“How do you hold your guitar?” Taylor wondered. “I rely on gravity, myself.”

Burbank showed the Velcro and strap that keep his instrument secure. “With all we have to do up here, there’s nothing like playing guitar with James Taylor ,” he said. “I’m a little terrified right now.”

“We’ll talk you through it,” Taylor replied as the two sang an impromptu duet (despite a two-second satellite delay) of the captain’s request, “Secret O’ Life.”

“One of my favorites of all time,” Burbank said gratefully. “It even has a couple of space references, and some great philosophy, too.”

80 entrees to chose from

In response to a question from Kim Taylor about the onboard cuisine, Burbank reeled off choices from a rotating menu of 80 entrees ranging from steak to pork chops to lasagna, with shrimp cocktail to start, all prepared in labs at NASA in Houston and at the European Space Agency in Paris – a year’s supply in the fridge.

” For some reason, we’re each eating 4,000 calories a day to maintain weight,” Burbank said. ” We’re not sure why, maybe because our brains have to be so engaged all the time, but I’ve lost 10 to 15 pounds.” Burbank is midway through his four-month assignment aboard the space station.

When JT queried Burbank about the number of rooms in the space station, Burbank launched a quick tour, floating and flying from module to module (there are 13 in all), pointing to his guitar afloat up top – “that’s for my mental health.”

“That’s where I keep my guitar,” Taylor quipped.

Burbank showed off the spacecraft’s cupola, “where I play my guitar and gaze out at Earth,” with brilliant sunrises and sunsets every 45 minutes. “We go from bright sunlight to total darkness in only eight minutes,” he pointed out. “I call it, being up on the roof.”

“How great is that!” Taylor exulted as the Earth came into view on a corner of the video screen. “I think I can see our house.”

Burbank waxed poetic as he described the shimmering color kaleidoscope of sunrise from outer space – “spectacular, from indigo to brilliant blue to aquamarine.”

‘All comforts of home’

Showing off his “phone-booth sized” sleeping cubicle, with a sleeping bag and a computer for sending e- mails home, Burbank described it as including “all the comforts of home.”

He also demonstrated the safety features of the space station. “If we ever needed to get out of Dodge, they’re all ready to go,” pointing to two spacecraft primed for launch at short notice, if needed.

For Kim Taylor , the event had family resonance since her late uncle, Rufus Hessberg, was one of the nation’s leading experts in aerospace medicine and served as director of space medicine for NASA from 1973 to 1979.

“A lot of the work he and his people did paved the way for the rest of us,” Burbank told her. “It’s amazing, the connections we all have.”

[Source: BerkshireEagle.com]

NEW YORK TIMES – Taylor Takes on Dickens in A Christmas Carol

By DANIEL J. WAKIN

The American balladeer James Taylor will plunge into the world of Charles Dickens. Mr. Taylor will play the role of Bob Cratchit in a production of A Christmas Carol by the Berkshire Theater Group next month. The show is adapted by Eric Hill from Dickens’ ghostly tale; Mr. Hill will co-direct along with E. Gray Simons III, the theater group said in an announcement on Friday. “I know that James will bring his inherent charm and gentleness to bear in his portrayal of Bob Cratchit, a good and unpretentious man,” Mr. Hill said. A Christmas Carol will run Dec. 17-30 at the Colonial Theater in Pittsfield, Mass.

[Source: NYTimes.com]

NEW YORK TIMES – Rescuing 1970 From The Remainder Bin

By DAVID BROWNE

JAMES TAYLOR wraps up a tour with Carole King. A new Jimi Hendrix album makes its debut in the Top 5. Elton John has joined forces with one of his heroes, the extremely hirsute singer-pianist Leon Russell. Fans think music should be free for the taking.

Is this 2010 — or 1970? The answer, strangely enough, is: both.

From Michael Jackson’s bank account to robust ticket sales for Roger Waters’s “Wall” tour, pop has witnessed its share of unlikely comebacks this year. Perhaps the least expected, though, is that of the year 1970, just in time for its 40th anniversary. (Pop-culture nostalgia tends to run in 20-year cycles, making this revival even more surprising.)

Mr. Taylor and Ms. King’s “Troubadour Reunion” shows — the second-highest-grossing tour of the year after Bon Jovi’s, according to Pollstar, which tracks tour grosses and ticket sales — recreate the period four decades ago when Mr. Taylor’s career was kicking in (with his Sweet Baby James album) and Ms. King, a veteran Brill Building songwriter not yet known for her own records, was simply the pianist in his band. On Oct. 19 Mr. Russell and Mr. John will release their first-ever collaboration, The Union, which recalls the months in 1970 when Mr. John opened for Mr. Russell at halls like the legendary Fillmore East. Valleys of Neptune, an album of exhumed recordings by Hendrix, entered the charts earlier this year at No. 4, just like his Band of Gypsys did, at No. 5, in 1970.

Even a relatively youngish act is paying homage. Marc Cohn, the piano-playing balladeer best known for the adult-contemporary standard “Walking in Memphis,” has just released Listening Booth: 1970. On it this gravel-road-voiced singer remakes and rearranges songs familiar to anyone who was glued to AM or FM radio that year: “Wild World,” “The Tears of a Clown,” “New Speedway Boogie,” “Into the Mystic,” “The Letter” and “Maybe I’m Amazed” among them.

What’s genuinely striking about these echoes of 1970 is that the year has rarely been treated as one of pop’s landmarks. In the annals of rock history it’s never ranked in the league of 1956 (the arrival of Elvis Presley), 1964 (the Beatles overrun America), 1967 (hippies reach the mainstream during the Summer of Love), 1969 (Woodstock), 1977 (punk, via the Sex Pistols, hits the States) and 1992 (the year grunge came to the malls, thanks to Nirvana and Pearl Jam). Even next-to-recent possible candidates for these slots, like 2001 (the White Stripes and the Strokes revive “garage rock”) or 2002 (the premiere of the regrettably influential America Idol), 1970 doesn’t receive much respect.

Looking back, it’s easy to see why. That year alone an astonishing number of defining acts from the 1960s collapsed. Paul McCartney announced he wouldn’t be working with the Beatles in the foreseeable future, while Simon and Garfunkel, who’d just released the instant standard “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” quietly broke up after a tour that amounted to only six concerts. (That sequence was eerily repeated this year, when the reunited duo canceled its summer tour in the wake of Art Garfunkel’s vocal-cord paralysis.)

It was the year Peter, Paul and Mary began an eight-year hiatus, Diana Ross left the Supremes, Lou Reed parted ways with the Velvet Underground, and Sam split with Dave. Even the Monkees, by then down to only two members, Micky Dolenz and Davy Jones, made their last recordings and expired along with the decade that created them.

Seeking to capitalize on the success of Woodstock — both the 1969 festival and the hit movie the following March — promoters in 1970 aimed to duplicate that gathering with their own multi-day, multi-act festivals. But most were disappointments or, at worst, catastrophes, plagued by riots, unbridled drug use and clashes with police or local officials not eager to have tens or hundreds of thousands of rock fans invade their towns. From the New York Pop concerts on Randalls Island to a Rolling Stones show in Helsinki, concertgoers felt it was perfectly acceptable to storm the gates and demand to be let in gratis — a precursor to the expectation among future music fans that they shouldn’t have to pay for music on the Web.

Simultaneously the country wasn’t in such terrific shape either. A list of events that could have been subjects for 40th-anniversary celebrations this year would have included the Kent State shootings, the Weather Underground’s accidental demolition of a brownstone on West 11th Street in Greenwich Village, the near-disastrous Apollo 13 expedition, the beginning of the Charles Manson trial (with opening statements that linked the murders to Mr. Manson’s obsession with the Beatles’ White Album) and the first use of the Republican Party’s so-called Southern Strategy. No wonder few want to commemorate 1970.

Yet that very confluence of events now marks 1970 as one of rock’s (not to mention the country’s) most fascinating and underappreciated years. Theories about when the ’70s began vary; some have argued for 1972 or 1973, just as the ’60s didn’t truly begin until President John F. Kennedy’s inauguration in 1961. But looking back, 1970 was truly the year in which any remaining slivers of idealism of the ’60s gave way to the buzz-kill comedown of the decade to come.

Mr. Taylor and Ms. King’s joint tour, with a repertory heavy on Earth Shoe-era signifiers like “Fire and Rain” and “You’ve Got a Friend,” reveled in that moment in time, down to video screens that projected photos of their early-’70s selves. The title track of Hendrix’s Valleys of Neptune recorded in 1970 but never before released, is another reminder of the newly fluid, lyrical direction in which he was heading before his death that September. (And let’s not forget that Janis Joplin overdosed that fall as well.)

Mr. Cohn’s Listening Booth tells the story of the year just as lucidly. What came to be known as easy-listening rock arrived during this time with hits like Bread’s “Make It With You,” here redone as a pillow-soft R&B duet with India.Arie. Mr. Cohn also revives Smokey Robinson and the Miracles’ “Tears of a Clown,” which capped Motown’s first major singles era. (The mid-’70s work of Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder took the company in darker, more personal but equally exhilarating directions.) The juxtaposition of John Lennon’s “Look at Me” (from his Plastic Ono Band solo album) followed by Mr. McCartney’s “Maybe I’m Amazed” (from his own, first post-Beatle record, McCartney) subtly evokes the Beatles’ nasty breakup, which reached its apex when Mr. McCartney filed a lawsuit against Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr at year’s end.

In another sign that 1970 may finally be receiving a degree of respect, Mr. Cohn and his producer, John Leventhal, treat each song with careful, respectful solemnity. They strip down Cat Stevens’s “Wild World” and Simon and Garfunkel’s “Only Living Boy in New York” to parched, small-combo basics as if each was a modern standard on par with timeless cabaret songs.

As Mr. Cohn’s album somewhat acknowledges, the rock landscape effectively flip-flopped by the end of 1970. Bands were suddenly out of vogue. The advent of the solo singer-songwriter — Mr. Taylor, Mr. John, Ms. King, Mr. Stevens and many more — reflected a cultural shift from solidarity to solipsism. Rock experienced its first rattling generation gap. In a leading British music poll Led Zeppelin replaced the Beatles for the first time as the most popular band in that country. Debut albums by Black Sabbath and Emerson, Lake and Palmer, out that autumn, proclaimed the arrival of a louder, far less subtle music for those already too young to recall the Beatles on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”

Forty years later a generation gap continues to divide fans. (Do you prefer the Arcade Fire or Kesha?) And a new generation of balladeers, the likes of M. Ward and Bon Iver, offers an alternative to rock the same way Mr. Taylor and his peers did. Despite its plethora of bad news, the grooves of 1970, rock’s forgotten year, play on.

LA TIMES – Carole King and James Taylor reflect on their Troubadour tour: The musicians look back on their recent surprising success as their road adventure comes to a close.

By Randy Lewis

One of the biggest surprises in pop music so far this year has been the runaway success of James Taylor and Carole King’s Troubadour tour, which was spawned by the outpouring of affection the veteran singer-songwriters elicited in 2007 with their first joint performances in decades for the 50th anniversary of the fabled Troubadour club in West Hollywood.

Their summer tour, which included a multi-night stand in May at the Hollywood Bowl, drew a predictably respectful crowd of baby boomers who had lapped up this music when the pair first came to fame in the early 1970s. But it also pulled in younger generations of fans in their teens, 20s and 30s who weren’t born in 1970-71, when Taylor’s “Sweet Baby James” and King’s “Tapestry” rode high on the sales charts.

The current tour, which sold out at nearly every stop, placed among the top five highest-grossing tours nationally and worldwide during the first half of 2010, according to Pollstar — something neither performer expected. And the combination CD and DVD recorded during those 2007 shows, “Carole King and James Taylor — Live at the Troubadour,” debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 Albums chart and, 10 weeks later, remains in the top 20, having sold 329,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Not bad for a couple of old folk-rockers.

Taylor, 62, and King, 68, closed out the tour Tuesday with a final stop at the Honda Center in Anaheim. Interviewed a few hours before the show, the pair didn’t close the door on future shows together, but King said it marks the end of a particularly satisfying chapter for them.

They spoke with The Times about the peaks and valleys of this musical journey.

As this tour comes to an end, are you sad, relieved, or both?

Taylor: I think both, sad and relieved. Carole, what do you think? Grateful, I’d say.

King: Relieved is not exactly the right word. The grueling schedule of a tour like this is something neither of us will miss. I’m happy and sad and grateful and just a mix of emotions — and gratitude. I think James has it right.

Taylor: The [attendance and revenue] numbers of course are great, and very validating. But the main thing is the quality of the reactions of the audiences we’d played to. We’ve simply been overwhelmed by the emotional strength of the response…. I think there’s something about going back and forth from Carole to me.… We’re going back and forth on things we did from 40 years ago, and the audience is having a parallel experience to the one we’re having on stage.

King [to Taylor]: I love when you do that: You really articulate what I’m thinking. And I would like to expand on what James said. The multi-generationalness was surprising. You would expect people [in the audience] who either do or do not remember the ’60s, and what they were doing at the time. But I’m also seeing so much I wasn’t expecting: people my grandchildren’s ages…. Something about this music is touching people across generations, and that’s surprising.

The standard line about the success of “Tapestry” and “Sweet Baby James” is that they offered much needed emotional stability and reassurance following so many years of social and political upheaval in the ’60s. How does that explain why these songs seem to resonate with so many people four decades later?

Taylor: I guess the message is that upheaval never goes away.

King: The times we are in are very challenging. You can say that about any times, but these are really challenging for many people. The fact that this [material] is resonating with them speaks about emotion, and music that can stand on its own, without the need for a big presentation…. When we do “You’ve Got a Friend,” we were in one theater with a proscenium and I got to see the

screen with the projections of pictures of James and me and the band members back in the day. I think it reminds people that life does go on, that they’ve been through tough times and they got through and they’ll get through it again. And I think it lets younger people see, “Wow, my mom and my dad made it through that, I guess we can make it through this.”

What moments stand out for you?

King: One night James spoke about someone he had met who had lost a child at a very young age. He didn’t say much about it; James just said that a lot of people are here to celebrate something, and a lot of people are grieving something here…. At one show we met a mother in a wheelchair who was newly diagnosed with ALS [amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease]. I shook this woman’s hand, and the daughter was sitting there with her. The woman was just taking it in — not serene exactly, but accepting of her illness. Her daughter had tears streaming down her face as she was telling us how much the music means to her mother.

Taylor: I wanted to mention a funny thing that happened when we were in L.A., at the Hollywood Bowl. I don’t remember which night it was, but Henry and Rufus, my 9-year-olds, were at the show. I was in the dressing room with [wife] Kim and we were just changing after the show. Henry came to the door and stuck his head in and said, “James Bond and Indiana Jones are waiting in the corridor, Dad.” It’s amazing to see what has an effect and what doesn’t. Carole, remember when we were in Melbourne? Lady Gaga has one of those deep emotional connections, to Carole particularly, and she came by to meet us. Rufus and Henry were standing in the room, the green room, where we received them. And Rufus turned to me and said, “Dad, why is she wearing a rubber bathing suit?”

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER – Carole King and James Taylor – Concert Review

Bottom Line: A nostalgic and surprisingly intimate night of songs and stories and celebration of friendship.

It’s a good thing the pairing of Carole King and James Taylor was an exhibition rather than a competition because her energy and enthusiasm made it no contest Tuesday night in Anaheim. He was funny and fuzzy all night, but she came to play.

King’s voice never was perfect, but it remains distinctive, and she didn’t shy away from Big Singing — as many of her contemporaries do — on the final night of an 11-week tour. Her uninhibited rasp is diametrically opposed to Taylor’s eyes-closed, still-silky strains. And while he recited, she performed.

And what a performance. Showcasing most of her landmark “Tapestry” album and some of the pop classics she penned with ex-husband Gerry Goffin, King was all smiles as she worked the near-sellout crowd. She and Taylor traded lead vocals on almost every other song and sang together on most, but it was her material and delivery that made the nostalgic show so memorable.

Taylor called the closing show of their Troubadour Reunion tour “bittersweet.” And that sentiment extends beyond the boomer Rock Hall of Famers onstage to the concert industry itself.

The U.S. jaunt began in early May to coincide with the release of the pair’s CD/DVD “Live at the Troubadour.” The disc was recorded during six shows in November 2007 that helped mark the 50th anniversary of the West Hollywood venue where King and Taylor first played together during the early ’70s. It has sold more than 330,000 copies, spending all 10 of its chart weeks in the top 20.

But few could have foreseen the extent of the tour’s success: grossing more than $60 million while playing to 95% capacity. The secret? A surprising intimacy, a swarm of terrific songs and the genuine camaraderie onstage.

The band intros came early because, as Taylor said, “The thing that made this tour authentic for Carole and me is that we have the original band” that played those early Troubadour shows. The stars and guitarist Danny Kortchmar, bassist Lee Sklar and drummer Russ Kunkel acknowledged one another throughout the night with pointed fingers and applause.

But how to even try re-creating the intimacy of the Troubadour? An in-the-round show with a slowly rotating circular stage — one revolution every 15 minutes or so — situated midfloor. It cut the huge arena down to size and gave everyone a good view, aided by a ring of several video screens.

The expertly paced show ran more than 2 1/2 hours, with a 20-minute break. They opened with Taylor’s “Something in the Way She Moves,” with just him, Sklar and King at her piano, tightly grouped as if on some dive’s tiny stage. From there, they traded songs: her gorgeous “So Far Away”; his “Carolina in My Mind,” which began with the headliners beautifully harmonizing; her “Jazzman,” with Kortchmar’s guitar filling in for Tom Scott’s signature sax parts; Taylor’s “Country Road,” which featured a drums-and-voice clap-along break.

“(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” closed the first set, which was good because it was a show-stopper. King, appropriately billed first and sporting black tights and spike heels, flirted with the boys in the band as she slinked around the stage singing the classic she reclaimed from Aretha Franklin. The crowd stood.

Three other songs from “Tapestry” — the kind of classic rock you never hear on radio stations that are branded as such — highlighted the second set: “Where You Lead,” with its gospel-tinged opening; the bouncy “I Feel the Earth Move,” accompanied by archival footage of people dancing; and “It’s Too Late,” a standout of the post-psychedelia/pre-disco singer-songwriter era that sounded as good as ever. Its extended piano break reminded of Traffic’s “The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys.”

They traded verses, appropriately, on a stirring version of “You’ve Got a Friend,” during which King had a little fun with the lyrics, singing, “Tonight’s the end of this amazing tour, here near the house of the corporate mouse.”

During the final number, Taylor’s “You Can Close Your Eyes,” King put her head on his shoulder. An emotional end to an exceptional evening.

Venue: Honda Center, Anaheim (Tuesday, July 20)

SET LIST
Something in the Way She Moves
So Far Away
Honey Don’t Leave L.A.
Carolina in My Mind
Way Over Yonder
Smackwater Jack
Country Road
Sweet Seasons
Mexico
Song of Long Ago
Long Ago and Far Away
Beautiful
Shower the People
(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman
**Intermission**
Secret O’ Life
Crying in the Rain
Where You Lead
Sweet Baby James
Jazzman
Will You Love Me Tomorrow
Your Smiling Face
It’s Too Late
Fire and Rain
I Feel the Earth Move
You’ve Got a Friend
(Encore)
Up on the Roof
How Sweet It Is (to Be Loved by You)
You Can Close Your Eyes

OTTAWA CITIZEN – King, Taylor still got a friend, or two: Summer concert tour proves duo’s enduring popularity

When a James Taylor/Carole King co-headlining Troubadour Reunion tour was announced last winter, the concert industry reacted with the sort of laid-back reserve befitting the two mellow-rock icons. Few predicted that arenas full of smiling, dancing, sometimes weeping baby boomers — and their kids and grandkids — would blow up the box office in a summer that has seen its share of bad news for the touring business.

In an era of production bombast and fleeting popularity, a couple of sexagenarian singer-songwriters with classic songbooks put together a warm and intimate show and ended up with the surprise hit tour of the summer. Loyal fans wanted to be part of this one-time-only event, recession be damned. Not only has the tour grossed a remarkable $58 million, but the good vibes, in ’70s parlance, created by the duo’s pairing has provided Concord Records with a hit project in King and Taylor’s Live at the Troubadour CD/DVD (from the 2007 club shows that ultimately spawned the tour), portions of which have become popular programming for PBS.

“Essentially, a tour runs on hits and people’s emotional connection with the material,” Taylor says. “That’s the lifeblood of this thing, how people are emotionally connected to the material that Carole and I are doing, what it means personally in their lives.”

Though putting together Taylor, 62, and King, 68 — artists whose careers have been intertwined, but had not played live together since the early ’70s — looks like a great idea on paper, but so do a lot of tour concepts.

Asked why this tour outperformed its expectations, Sam Feldman, who manages Taylor with Michael Gorfaine, emphasizes the importance of “two of the world’s most iconic artists” joining forces. “Carole and James personify a time in music that had a massive emotional impact on the biggest segment of the population,” he says.

“It’s more than nostalgia for a particular act, or an album or two,” Los Angeles Times critic Ann Powers says. “It’s nostalgia for a moment, when people felt hopeful and there was a lot of possibility. And it’s not like going to a Rolling Stones concert, where you feel, ‘Wow, in my youth I was so wild, and look at me now, I need a hip replacement.’ It’s a gentle trip back. It’s a hug, not a strut.”

BILLBOARD.COM – James Taylor and Carole King Craft Season’s Hottest Tour

When a James Taylor/Carole King co-headlining Troubadour Reunion tour was announced last winter, the concert industry reacted with the sort of laid-back reserve befitting the two mellow-rock icons. Few predicted that arenas full of smiling, dancing, sometimes weeping baby boomers-and their kids and grandkids-would blow up the box office in a summer that has seen its share of bad news for the touring business.

In an era of production bombast and fleeting popularity, a couple of sexagenarian singer/songwriters with classic songbooks put together a warm and intimate show and ended up with the surprise hit tour of the summer. Loyal fans wanted to be part of this one-time-only event, recession be damned. Not only has the tour grossed a remarkable $58 million, but the good vibes, in ’70s parlance, created by the duo’s pairing has provided Concord Records with a hit project in King and Taylor’s “Live at the Troubadour” CD/DVD (from the 2007 club shows that ultimately spawned the tour), portions of which have become popular, pledge-inducing programming for PBS.

Alex Hodges, COO of Nederlander Concerts and co-promoter of the final show on the tour, says it’s a must-see for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the artists’ collective body of work. “They have done this for a long time and captured new audiences for decades,” he says. “The Troubadour return a couple of years ago set this up in a way that is unequalled. It’s a boost for the live event and concert business that needs bright spots.”

It makes sense that older music fans would have more discretionary income, but these are times of double-digit unemployment and devastated portfolios. So how much, then, is a memory worth? “In this economy, who has money to plunk down to come see this show?” King wonders. “Yet people are finding the money somehow, and we’re so grateful. I think we represent a kind of calm in the storm.”

An unrepentant road dog who has, at this stage of his career, become a summer concert tradition for many, Taylor knows what draws fans, and he saw plenty of potential in a tour with King. “Essentially, a tour runs on hits and people’s emotional connection with the material,” Taylor says. “That’s the lifeblood of this thing, how people are emotionally connected to the material that Carole and I are doing, what it means personally in their lives.”

Though putting together Taylor, 62, and King, 68-artists whose careers have been intertwined but who had not played live together since the early ’70s-looks like a great idea on paper, so do a lot of tour concepts.

“[Taylor’s co-manager] Sam Feldman called me last fall and said, ‘Don, I think I’m going to put James Taylor and Carole King together and go on tour. What do you think?’ ” recalls veteran promoter Don Fox of Beaver Productions. “I said, ‘I think it will do pretty good.’ All of a sudden we went on sale and it was, ‘Whoa! This thing is phenomenal.’ ”

Asked why this tour outperformed its expectations, Feldman, who manages Taylor with Michael Gorfaine, emphasizes the importance of “two of the world’s most iconic artists” joining forces. “Carole and James personify a time in music that had a massive emotional impact on the biggest segment of the population,” Feldman says.

“It’s more than nostalgia for a particular act, or an album or two,” Los Angeles Times pop critic Ann Powers says. “It’s nostalgia for a moment, when people felt hopeful and there was a lot of possibility. And it’s not like going to a Rolling Stones concert, where you feel, ‘Wow, in my youth I was so wild, and look at me now, I need a hip replacement.’ It’s a gentle trip back. It’s a hug, not a strut.”

SOUNDS LIKE A PLAN

According to Billboard Boxscore, Taylor/King is among the elite tours so far this year, surrounded by stadium-level rock acts like AC/DC and Bon Jovi and ranked neck and neck on the Boxscore charts with the Black Eyed Peas and Taylor Swift. Total ticket sales exceed 700,000, and the total tour gross should end up around $63 million by the time all 58 shows are tallied, according to Taylor’s management. The tour has averaged a whopping 95% capacity.

The genesis of the tour dates back decades to the pair’s milestone early-’70s shows at Los Angeles’ famed Troubadour club, first in November 1970 and then most famously for two weeks in 1971. (The band that backed them then, and backs them today on the current tour, included the legendary assemblage of El Lay studio musicians known as the Section-guitarist Danny Kortchmar, bassist Lee Sklar and drummer Russ Kunkel.)

Taylor and King were already intertwined musically (though never romantically): In 1970 Taylor released “Sweet Baby James” (on which King appears), yielding the massive hit “Fire and Rain” and later notched his first Billboard No. 1 with the King-penned “You’ve Got a Friend.” For her part, King, already a Brill Building super-songwriter, was quickly becoming a top-shelf performer and recording artist, having just released the landmark album “Tapestry,” which boasted such hits as “So Far Away,” “It’s Too Late” and “I Feel the Earth Move.”

Those Troubador shows, with those backing musicians, in many ways set both artists off on a string of successes that won them the hearts and minds of their generation. Taylor has remained a hard-touring artist, King less so, but their careers have remained connected in the eyes of fans. Those shows were also a watershed moment for King and Taylor, and it seems the two were intent on recapturing that magic.

“Carole and I would talk over the years about getting back together and doing it again, and when we heard that the Troubadour was going to have a 50th anniversary in 2007, that was our opportunity,” Taylor says. “We jumped on that one, and got Russ and Lee and Danny back together. We did that gig, and that gave us the foothold to go forward.”

“We were very careful about how we priced the tickets and where and when we went on sale,” says Feldman, who worked closely with King’s manager, Lorna Guess, and agents Rob Light from Creative Artists Agency (CAA) (Taylor) and Dan Weiner of Paradigm (King) on plotting the tour. “Putting one show only on sale for the Hollywood Bowl to start the buzz proved to be a solid decision. Having the rest of the tour dates come first out of the box in the new year fanned the flames.”

While so many are talking about new models and innovative touring deals, the Troubadour Reunion tour is decidedly old school, and not because of the familiar songs performed. Rather than opting for a partnership with one promoter, this tour cut deals individually in each market with a wide range of promoters, many of them independents.

“We purposely did not use one national promoter, as I’ve always believed that there is a best promoter for the job in each market and, more often than not, that promoter is the promoter of record,” Feldman says. “I don’t like to change horses unless there is a damn good reason. As it turns out, there were no weaknesses in the campaign. There was Don Fox at Beaver Productions, Live Nation, AEG, Gregg Perloff at Another Planet, Jam Productions, Nederlander and Andy & Bill Concerts. They all did a great job.”
Fox adds, “It obviously worked.”

After late-March shows in Australia and the Pacific Rim, the tour began in North America on May 7 in Portland, Ore., and runs until the end of this month. One planned May 14 Hollywood Bowl show went up last November and turned into three, and the tour was suddenly a hot property, with large arenas being the primary showplace.

“Management said, ‘Let’s get the Hollywood Bowl tickets on sale early,’ and that’s management’s world, so we said, ‘OK,’ ” King says. “That was a good instinct on their part, because one show sold out, then two, then three. They said we could add a fourth show, but we felt we should stop while we’re ahead.”

Taylor says there’s a “certain natural progression” to how the tour unfolded. “We decided to go to Australia because Carole and I have had offers before to go to Australia-it was a friendly outpost to hone the show,” he says. The instincts were dead on, as the Pacific Rim run produced $15 million in gross and 80,000 tickets sold. “Then the agent came back with the information that the arenas would be best, that it would match the demand for tickets.”

King found the idea of playing large arenas like New York’s Madison Square Garden (three sellouts) “sort of horrifying, because we perform introspective songs intimately,” she says. “Even with the Troubadour band, it was scary to think about how that would play in arenas. And James came up with the wonderful idea of doing it in the round and that made all the difference. It means that nobody, no matter how high up or far away, is more than half an arena away.”

The tour played primarily indoors, but worked outdoors as well, blowing out the Hollywood Bowl and the Santa Barbara (Calif.) Bowl, where Nederlander VP Moss Jacobs promoted a sold-out date. “The audience understood the unique nature of it and that it was, perhaps, a once-in-a-lifetime event,” Jacobs says.

Despite the large capacities, the tour captures the intimacy that the co-headliners were shooting for. “Carole and I have the sense that we’re playing to the audience, but we’re also playing to each other,” Taylor says. “As it turned out, we needn’t have had any worry about who to play to. We’ve been so overwhelmed by the audience participation, the level of energy they come back with. It’s like you count off the first tune and they bear you to the end of the show like a running river.”

King says her trepidation was soon gone. “I knew that people would turn out to see us because of our history, and people have told us many times that we are the soundtrack of the lives of a certain generation,” she says. “But I wasn’t sure that we would deliver. I knew we would deliver the essence of who we are, but I wasn’t sure it would translate out as far as it does to every member of the audience. But it does. When James says we play to each other, we do. But the audience is very much a part of what we do. The large group of people becomes a single collective friend.”

For most of the show, King plays piano while Taylor plays guitar, backed not only by the Troubadour band but supporting musicians Robbie Kondor (keyboards), Arnold McCuller (vocals), Andrea Zonn (vocals/violin) and Kate Markowitz. The headliners sing together on every song, trade hits and interact with each other, the band and the audience. The bulk of “Tapestry” is included in the set list, as is Taylor’s “Greatest Hits,” plus King songs made famous by other artists like “Up on the Roof” and “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.”

It was King who proposed that the arena setup, a la the Troubadour club, feature some “sort of cafe/onstage seating,” as Taylor puts it. “It meant an extra truck out on the road to do that, but that’s doable-except that it presented us a real problem of, ‘How do we price those tickets? How do we sell them? Who do we invite to be in there?’ ” Taylor says.

“That’s where the lucky accident of my relationship with [Tickets for Charity founder] Jord Poster came in, and Tickets for Charity gave us a great way to handle that. We realized that we’d have to set the ticket price higher than what people were paying on the floor, but we didn’t want to set them so high that it would be abusive or so low we’d just be asking for scalpers. What we did was turn them over to Tickets for Charity. They set the price and gave the proceeds over to charity.”

Working with Tickets for Charity on the approximately 120 seats per show has an added benefit, in Feldman’s view: “This has proven to be quite effective in thwarting scalpers in that we basically structured a secondary ticket market with funds for charities, as opposed to into someone’s pocket.”

Any tickets not sold through Tickets for Charity-there have been few-go to “the occasional real fan who ordinarily wouldn’t have been able to afford that seat but is really stoked to be in it,” Taylor says. The Tickets for Charity effort has raised about $1.5 million, and counting.

The tables around the revolving stage give the show a TV studio audience feel and the artists “identifiable faces to play to,” according to Taylor. Two cameramen onstage transmit the action to even the most distant seats on eight large video screens. The cameras “never, ever interfere with the audience’s enjoyment. All they do is bring more enjoyment to the audience,” King says. “So when James and I do our two songs on a stool up front, people say, ‘I saw the tears moistening in your eyes at the end of “You Can Close Your Eyes.” ‘ I’m like, ‘Oh, my gosh,’ but that’s how close it is.”

Though it doesn’t boast any pyro or explosions, the production is more elaborate than either artist is accustomed to. “The most that Carole and I are used to going out with in the past is maybe four trucks and five buses,” Taylor says. “[On this tour] we’ve got nine buses and a dozen trucks. This is really a large production, not by the standards of a Jimmy Buffett stadium tour, or a U2 or a Rolling Stones, but from the point of view of a couple of singer/songwriters like Carole and me.”

I’M A STEAMROLLER, BABY

Taylor, who’s been a touring staple since the early ’70s, has strong feelings about the current state of the concert industry. He finds high ticket prices particularly irksome.

“Carole and I were really clear about pricing. Rob Light, Sam Feldman and Lorna Guess all agreed that we need to be really sane and considerate with our ticket pricing,” Taylor says. “What’s the matter with a modest return on a ticket price that people can afford? I don’t understand why people need $1 million a night to take their guitar out of the case.”

That’s not to say, given the unique nature of this tour, that the Troubadour Reunion couldn’t have charged much more. “When Carole and I come out and do a tour like this, it’s sort of once in a lifetime. When this thing ends it’s a memory, it’s history,” Taylor says. “We’ll probably come out with some kind of DVD recording because we’ve been working on that, but this thing will go away. So this could be the kind of thing where you could say, ‘OK, we’re going to ratchet the ticket prices up to $300-$400 for the best tickets to shoot for the moon.’ ”

And people would’ve probably ponied up, Taylor concedes. “But when you do that, it means they’re not going to go to two other concerts that year. That’s going to be it for their summer,” he says. “It’s greedy, it’s wrong, it’s not necessary. People can come out and see us without taking out a second mortgage.”

So if the concert industry is slumping this summer, those in charge shouldn’t expect sympathy from JT. “It’s good that people are pushing back against high ticket prices,” he says. “Some of [the pricing] has been really unseemly. I’m glad to see some reality injected into the system. Now we’ve got Live Nation and Ticketmaster and Irving Azoff’s fantastic stable all at one conglomerate. It makes me uneasy,” he adds. “Hopefully, that kind of centralization, that kind of corporate expansion, will result in better service for people, but that hasn’t been the case in the past.

“The fact that live touring has been bought up more and more by fewer and fewer companies, who buy each other out as well, has actually meant that ticket prices and extra charges and parking [have increased]-if you hitchhike to some of these shows, you still have to pay parking. You’re not able to bring your own blanket in, you’ve got to buy the $5 beer or you’re going to go dry. Those things are an insult. They really have started to drive people away, to make the experience so mercenary.”

Going to see a concert “is not life or death,” Taylor says. “For many years this has been something I’ve felt really intensely about, that people overcharge, that corporations pull all of the money out of it without investing anything in sound or customer service or bettering the experience. Carole and I are trying to deliver as much as possible to the audience, and there are entities out there who would see that as an opportunity to pull more money out of it. It’s time for these guys to wake up and realize that audience satisfaction is really what we’re talking about.”

Not surprisingly, working with independent promoters on this tour was another idea Taylor supported. “Competition makes for a healthy marketplace,” he says. “If there is only one game in town, then the quality of the experience from everybody’s point of view will start to disintegrate. We really do like to support independents and whenever possible we have done that.”


LEGACY PROJECT

Beyond the tour, the recorded project from the shows that inspired it has also been a winner. The November 2007 Troubador performances, six shows in three nights, were recorded by Peter Asher and directed and shot by Martyn Atkins for the CD/DVD release.

“As soon as everyone heard and saw the results, there was a sense of inevitability about [a tour] because it was such an amazing event,” says Robert Smith, VP of A&R at Concord Music Group and executive producer of the “Live at the Troubadour” CD/DVD.

The CD/DVD was released May 5, the week the U.S. shows began, and the synergy was captured in a way most album/tour projects strive for but don’t always reach.

“We began talking about putting out the CD/DVD with both artists and management last year when they were beginning to plan the tour, and as soon as we knew it was going to launch in the U.S. in May we went into overdrive to make sure we could get the package together so we could have an on-sale to coincide with the tour,” Smith says. “You always hope for those drivers that occur in the marketplace, not just to launch a project like this, but to sustain it. I can’t recall a release so perfectly timed to take advantage of a tour, and general interest from the public.”
Portions of the DVD were shown as part of a one-hour PBS pledge drive for the month of June, which “whet the appetite of fans,” according to Smith, who says pledges for PBS were “way above expectations.”

So far the project has sold 309,000 units, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Of those, 96,000 came from nontraditional retail (digital, Internet, mail order and venue sales), 101,000 came from chains, 14,000 from indie retailers and 98,000 from mass merchants.

“In this economy and record-selling climate, this [project] is doing extraordinarily well,” Smith says, “and will continue to do well. This isn’t something we put out and hope does well for two months and then we move on. This is a legacy project they’ve created and it will keep selling. It’s too important not to.”

LAST BALL

It’s clear that the executives working on this tour find it rewarding beyond the box-office success. CAA’s Light says these shows “remind us all of why we got into this business in the first place,” and he credits “two great artists who had a very clear vision, combined with great management and a great co-agent in Dan Weiner.”

Weiner credits the headliners and managers and says, “The greatest joys were the glowing calls that I received from folks after the concerts, and for the opportunity to see so many of the shows as an audience member from the first note to the last.”

The touring industry is notorious for extending reunions and successful concepts to the point of diminishing returns, but both King and Taylor seem adamant that their July 20 gig at the Honda Center in Anaheim, Calif., will be it for the Troubadour Reunion.

“It’s not likely there will ever be another Troubadour Reunion tour,” Taylor says, though he notes that a one-off benefit or European tour is conceivable. “It’s tempting. When something works there’s a great pressure to keep the big ball rolling, but the same reason it was difficult for us to finally get together and do this-it took such an effort, the initial thing at the Troubadour followed by this massive plan-it tends to argue against it ever happening again. Carole and I would be very surprised.”

The Troubadour Reunion tour “was a confluence of events and people being together at the right time and place, and it came together very organically,” King says. “This wasn’t us saying, ‘How can we make more money?’ Making more money is certainly not something we object to, but it has to come from something we really wanted to do.
”We knew it would be fun. ‘Fun’ is an understatement-it’s joy. Every minute on that stage for every one of us is joy. In order to protect that, one of the things you have to do is say, ‘Let’s not stay at the ball too long.’ “