Sweet Dreams and Flying Machines: The Life and Music of James Taylor

by Mark Ribowsky

Overview

In 1970 a scraggly, antiheroic man from North Carolina by way of Massachusetts began presenting a comforting yet biting new sound. Within a year, when young ears sought the latest in rock, there was "Fire and Rain" and "You've Got a Friend," and a new Southern California-fed branch of pop music. James Taylor was its reluctant leader. 

Remarkably, Taylor has survived: his 2015 release, Before This World, edged out Taylor Swift and went to No. 1 on the charts. Today he is in better physical (and probably mental) condition than during the whirlwind era when he influenced music so heavily, the decade when magazines and newspapers printed feverish stories about his gawky hunkiness, his love affair with Joni Mitchell, his glittery marriage to Carly Simon, his endlessly carried-out heroin habit, and sometimes even his music. Despite it all, Taylor has become the nearest thing to rock royalty in America. 

Based on fresh interviews with musicians, producers, record company people, and music journalists, as well as previously published interviews, reviews, and profiles, Sweet Dreams and Flying Machines is the definitive biography of an elusive superstar.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780912777689
Publisher:	Chicago Review Press, Incorporated
Publication date:	04/01/2018
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 17.00(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Mark Ribowsky has written thirteen books, including Whiskey Bottles and Brand-New Cars and widely praised biographies of Tom Landry, Howard Cosell, Otis Redding, Phil Spector, and Stachel Paige. He has also contributed extensively to magazines including Playboy, Penthouse, and High Times. He lives in Boca Raton, Florida. 

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Troubadour
Chapter 1: How Sweet It Is
Chapter 2: “If You’re Taylor and a Male . . .”
Chapter 3: Carolina in My Mind
Chapter 4: The Need for Connection
Chapter 5: A Victim of Hippiephrenia
Chapter 6: Something’s Wrong
Chapter 7: Apple Scruff
Chapter 8: It’s Like Being Dead
Chapter 9: California Scheming
Chapter 10: Acts of God
Chapter 11: “Where’s Joni?”
Chapter 12: Granfalloon
Chapter 13: “That’s My Husband”
Chapter 14: “That James Taylor Thing”
Chapter 15: “A Functional Addict”
Chapter 16: “He Goes Away Forever Every Day”
Chapter 17: Mockingbirds
Chapter 18: Sparks in the Darkness
Chapter 19: Never Mind Feeling Sorry for Yourself
Chapter 20: Hourglass
Sources
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Ribowsky (who’s also written books about Lynyrd Skynyrd, Otis Redding, Phil Spector and Tom Landry) weaves a captivating tale that includes Taylor’s struggles with drugs and depression, his affair with Joni Mitchell, his marriage to Carly Simon and his enduring, decade-spanning success.” —Parade


“[Sweet Dreams and Flying Machines] merits a place on the shelf as it traces Taylor's career through the 2015 release of the billboard chart-topping Before This World.” —Library Journal


“Ribowsky is especially effective weaving Taylor’s career into the complex story of the music industry’s evolution.” —The Washington Post


" Ribowsky artfully chronicles Taylor's life" and "offers a rich and nuanced portrait." —BookPage


"In this unauthorized James Taylor biography, author Mark Ribowsky covers everything you'd want to know about the music legend." —Boston Magazine

From the Publisher

05/15/2016
Notoriously reticent singer-songwriter Taylor has been the subject of numerous biographies over his almost 50 years in the music business. One of the best things in Ribowsky's (Dreams To Remember: Otis Redding, Stax Records, and the Transformation of Southern Soul) book is the extensive bibliography. Unfortunately, though the author interviewed several influential figures, he did not have contact with Taylor himself, and this title suffers in comparison with recent autobiographies such as Carly Simon's Boys in the Trees and Carole King's A Natural Woman. Ribowsky relies on (sometimes conflicting) secondhand information and speculation; compounding the distance from the subject source and despite the wealth of insight there are some factual errors regarding who recommended Taylor to Apple Records and personnel on his recordings. Apart from these lapses, it merits a place on the shelf as it traces Taylor's career through the 2015 release of the billboard chart-topping Before This World. VERDICT Taylor continues to produce compelling music with a large fan base. Casual enthusiasts wanting an up-to-date career overview will find it here.—Bill Baars, Lake Oswego P.L., OR

Library Journal

2016-03-28
A biography that confirms both the best and the worst that fans have heard about the archetypal 1970s singer/songwriter.Ribowsky (Dreams to Remember: Otis Redding, Stax Records, and the Transformation of Southern Soul, 2015, etc.) offers little new in this overwritten, underreported biography of James Taylor (b. 1948), which mainly draws from what others have written about him and from detailed analyses of his albums by the author. Assessing a mostly forgotten album from 35 years ago, the author writes, "while the album was easy listening comfort food, its creator was his usual mess," an assessment that pretty much summarizes the biography's perspective on his subject. Though Taylor remained addicted to heroin even through his troubled marriage to Carly Simon—"two broken people waiting for a merciful end" to their union—the addiction was less a disease than a symptom of a troubled soul. Privileged and self-centered, he sang of himself as a sensitive soul yet he treated women in particular as disposable, and it was not until his final marriage that he seemed committed to any sort of monogamy. The author depicts him as some sort of sex addict as well, with Oedipal undertones, in the sort of psychobiography that would benefit from the support of primary sources. Yet the firsthand interviewing seems minimal and inconsequential in a book that leans heavily on Rolling Stone interviews, previous books on Taylor, and Carly Simon's recent autobiography. Ribowsky does a better job of putting Taylor's achievements in the context of the soft-rock Los Angeles of the 1970s and recognizing their durability, though his claim that "Taylor is the nearest thing to rock royalty in America" is the kind of hyperbole one writes to justify a biography with little new in it. Just another in the onslaught of rock bios and memoirs—a disappointing follow-up to the author's excellent Dreams to Remember.

Kirkus Reviews