James Taylor, Duct Tape and Helicopter Rides

Last night I saw James Taylor in concert for the 8th time. The first time was July 4th, 1976. The last time was in Rome, Italy. He's my all time favorite musician...his songs never fail to move me, despite having listened to them thousands of times over the last 40 years.  

And seeing him live always reminds me that despite doing two stints in a psychiatric hospital, and years of struggling with heroin addiction, he seems to have found some peace, and has brought so much pleasure to so many people for so many years.


The summer between my sophomore and junior years of college, I worked as a roustabout on an offshore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. This was in spite of the fact that my mother spent weeks pleading with me not to and sending me newspaper clippings of oil rigs catching fire or articles about horrible accidents in which people had been maimed or killed. 

The first morning when I reported for work, I asked an old-timer at the front gate where I needed to go to catch the chopper to the Pennzoil rig.  With the three and a half fingers on his right hand he pointed and mumbled "Over there".  Even though I didn't play the piano, I hoped I'd still have enough digits by the end of the summer that it would at least be a possibility.

Each week, I'd drive to Galveston, board a helicopter and fly 80 miles out to the rig, where I'd work 12 hours a night, from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., 84 hours a week. I'd try to sleep during the day, with helicopters landing above me, and the rig shuddering below me.

And then I'd fly back to shore for a week off. I spent my days off trying to get my circadian rhythms turned around, so that I could sleep at night and be awake during the day, just in time to go back out on the rig again and work all night and sleep during the day. It was miserable.

Because I didn't own a car, I borrowed one from my college buddy Bill Hailey, who loaned me his Ford Galaxy, since he was going to Japan for the summer. The car had an AM/FM radio and cassette deck which I suspended from the underside of the steering column using about a half a roll of duct tape. Each week when I'd pull into the parking lot where the helicopters took off, I'd tear through the duct tape, place the cassette deck in the trunk, grab my hard hat and rubber boots, and head out for another week-long hitch on the rig.  

I didn't own any cassettes (vinyl albums and 8 track tapes were still the norm) and because money was in such short supply, I wanted to buy a tape that I wouldn't get tired of listening to all summer. The choice was simple. The music which kept me awake on those long drives to Galveston at 6 o'clock in the morning was James Taylor's "Gorilla". I still love that album, and I every time I hear the song "Mexico", it evokes memories of the round trip I made each week and the grueling job that paid for my junior year of college.