One Part Genius...The Trail to October Road

WHEN I WAS 14 years old the person I most wanted to be was James Taylor. It's a long time ago now. 1971. I remember clearly playing Sweet Baby James over and over, once or twice a night for a year - longer. I was obsessed, both with the music and with the front cover image of the singer. The depth of the obsession increased later that year as I found the first album on a teenage "big trip" up to London, in the discount racks of a shop just off Oxford Street. Inevitably, I loved that too, despite its differences with the uncomplicated, mostly acoustical collection that was SBJ. Then I waited in painful suspension for weeks for Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon to be released from captivity to the record shops of Great Britain.