In 1970, James Taylor had his first big radio hit with “Fire And Rain”. On his sophomore Sweet Baby James record, Taylor wrote “Fire And Rain” by himself.
“Fire And Rain” begins with, “Just yesterday morning, they let me know you were gone / Suzanne, the plans they made put an end to you / I walked out this morning, and I wrote down this song / I just can’t remember who to send it to / I’ve seen fire, and I’ve seen rain / I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end / I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend / But I always thought that I’d see you again.”
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The song remains a fan favorite, even after so many years. Still, Taylor admits that he regrets some of “Fire And Rain”. It was partly inspired by the tragic loss of a close friend, although he wishes he had changed some of the words.
“I always felt rather bad about the line, ‘The plans they made put an end to you,’ because ‘they’ only meant ‘ye gods,’ or basically ‘the Fates,’” Taylor says. “I never knew her folks. But I always wondered whether her folks would hear that and wonder whether it was about them.”
What James Taylor Says About Writing “Fire And Rain”
“Fire And Rain” was inspired by the loss of a good friend. But it was also inspired by Taylor’s own battle with depression and addiction. The second verse begins with, “Won’t you look down upon me, Jesus / You’ve got to help me make a stand.” The lines are inspired by Taylor’s battle with drugs.
“The second verse is about my arrival in this country with a monkey on my back,” Taylor reveals. “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.”
It took Taylor three different times to write what became “Fire And Rain”. Painful at the time, Taylor recalls feeling a release when it was finally completed.
“That song relieved a lot of sort of tension,” Taylor tells NPR. “There were things that I needed to get rid of. Or at least get out of me, or get in front of me, or at least have some other relationship than feeling them internally, either by telling somebody else or by just putting them out in a form in front of me so that I could say, `There they are,’ you know, externalizing it somehow. And that part was hard, having the feelings that needed to be expressed in that way. But it was actually a relief, like a laugh or a sigh.”
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