Dustin and Angie performing - Fire And Rain
BackDustin and Angie performing - Fire And Rain at the Centennial Rodeo Opry in OKC's Historic Stockyards City on the June 28th, 2008. "Fire and Rain" is a song written and performed by James Taylor. The signature single on his second album, Sweet Baby James, the song brought Taylor widespread attention. The album was released in December 1969, with the song being released as a single the following February. "Fire and Rain" quickly rose to number three on the Billboard magazine charts. Moody, introspective, and laying bare deep emotional sensitivity, "Fire and Rain" became something of a prototype for the singer-songwriter genre that would boom in the few years following its release. Its apocalyptic imagery proved endlessly provocative to would-be interpreters. The sparse arrangement, centered around Taylor's ringing acoustic guitar figures, also became a signature sound for Taylor and was influential among other performers. Taylor has related different versions of what the song is about. In a BBC interview he stated that the song chronicled his experiences in mental institutions and the suicide of a friend. More recently, on the VH1 series Story Tellers, Taylor said that the song was, indeed, about Suzanne Schnerr, a friend of his who died suddenly while he was away from home. According to that account, he had been in a deep depression after the failure of his new band "Flying Machine" to coalesce (the lyric includes a reference to "sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground"; the reference is to the name of the band rather than a fatal plane crash, as was long rumored). As he was wondering what to do with himself, he received word of Schnerr's death, and the song explains that her death was a check for his own worries, a way of realizing the transience of life and his need to get back to his old friends. In other interviews Taylor has also indicated that a battle with drug addiction figured into the song. In 2005, Taylor laid the rumors to rest during an interview on NPR. He explained to host Scott Simon that the song was written in three parts: The first part was indeed about Taylor's friend Suzanne, who died while Taylor was in London working on his first album after being signed to Apple Records. Friends at home, concerned that it may have distracted Taylor from his big break, kept the tragic news from him, and it was only some time later that Taylor found out. The second part details Taylor's struggle to overcome drug addiction and depression. The third part deals with coming to grips with fame and fortune, looking back at the road that got him there. It includes a reference to James Taylor and The Flying Machine, a band he briefly worked with before his big break with Paul McCartney, Peter Asher and Apple Records.
Category: Travel
Uploaded: July 8th, 2008 @ 8:38 pm
Author: grantsrodeoopry
Length: 04:44
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Tags: and angie city dustin fire historic james jones okc oklahoma opry rain rodeo stockyard taylor
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