“Fire And Rain” by James Taylor

"Fire and Rain" sits at the heart of Sweet Baby James, James Taylor's second album, put out by Warner Bros. in 1970, and it's about as naked as a pop single got that year. Taylor wrote it about the rough stretch at the start of his career: the suicide of Suzanne Schnerr, a childhood friend, which happened while he was in London making his first record; his fight with drugs; the strange weight of fame; and the depression that set in when his band the Flying Machine came apart. A line naming that band spawned a long-running rumor about a plane crash that never happened.

Peter Asher produced, and the playing is hushed and patient: Taylor's acoustic guitar, Carole King on piano, Russ Kunkel on drums and Bobby West on double bass. It climbed to number three on the Hot 100, his first top-ten hit.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.