The James Taylor song he wrote about The Beatles | CPT PPP Coverage

Fortunately for Taylor, the band had only recently formed Apple Records and needed to acquire artists for their roster. The Beatles were blown away by his track ‘Something In The Way She Moves’, which convinced them to sign him to Apple Records. Shortly afterwards, Taylor got work underway on his debut at Trident Studios while the ‘Fab Four’ recorded The White Album in the same studio.

Despite Taylor living out his dreams in London, he found himself yearning for his home in North Carolina and used his feelings to fuel the song ‘Carolina In My Mind’. Speaking to Rolling Stone, the singer-songwriter explained how the priceless opportunity to work in close vicinity to the biggest band in the world somehow made him feel homesick.

Taylor said: “I was making my first album at Trident Studios in London, just as the Beatles were recording the White Album nearby. I realised how lucky I was to be listening to the Beatles playbacks and watching their process in the studio, but at the same time that I was surrounded by this holy host of my absolute idols, I missed my home in North Carolina. This captured that feeling of being called away to another place.”

In a turn of events, ‘Something In The Way She Moves’ would later inspire Harrison during the writing process of ‘Something’ on 1969’s Abbey Road. He once admitted: “I could never think of words for it. And also because there was a James Taylor song called ‘Something In The Way She Moves’, which is the first line of that. And so then I thought of trying to change the words, but they were the words that came when I first wrote it, so, in the end, I just left it as that, and just called it ‘Something’.”

However, Taylor gave Harrison his blessing and said in the book Hearts of Darkness: James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Cat Stevens, and the Unlikely Rise of the Singer-Songwriter: “I never thought for a second that George intended to do that. I don’t think he intentionally ripped anything off, and all music is borrowed from other music. So completely I let it pass.” Additionally, he admitted to pinching a guitar pattern in ‘Something In The Way She Moves’ from The Beatles song ‘I Feel Fine’, and added, 

“What goes around comes around.”

Without The Beatles taking a chance on Taylor, his career could have never materialised, and his big break may have evaded him. They didn’t just inspire ‘Carolina In My Mind’ but made his wildest dreams possible.