Watch Previously Unseen James Taylor Performance Of ‘I Was A Fool To Care’
The song was originally from his US gold-certified sixth studio album ‘Gorilla,’ released in 1975.
As James Taylor continues his 2022 European tour, his official YouTube channel has premiered a performance from his 2015 North American itinerary. In the previously unseen clip, he and his band deliver the lesser-played but fondly-remembered “I Was A Fool To Care,” originally from his US gold-certified sixth studio album Gorilla, released in 1975.
Taylor had recently introduced the track into his live set for the tour, featured here in the show at Thompson-Boling Arena, University of Tennessee in Knoxville on July 28, 2015. Introducing it as “a sad love song about unrequited love,” the storied singer-songwriter gives a rendition that’s true to the original, with the addition of sweet harmony vocals by Arnold McCuller, Kate Markowitz, and Andrea Zonn.
Horns are supplied by Lou Marini, Jr. and Walt Fowler, and the band boasts other longtime Taylor collaborators Steve Gadd on drums, Michael Landau (electric guitar), Jimmy Johnson (bass), keyboard player Larry Goldings, and percussionist Luis Conte.
“I Was A Fool To Care” won praise at the time of Gorilla’s release, notably from the New Yorker’s Matthew Trammell, who considered it the best song on the album. The Gorilla album, released in May 1975, reached No.6 in the US and was certified gold by the RIAA that September. The song was covered, directly on YouTube, in 2016 by Canadian singer, writer, and multi-instrumentalist Mac DeMarco.
Gadd, Landau, and Johnson are all accompanying Taylor in his trimmed-down band for the current European run, which arrives at the 3Arena in Dublin tonight (26). Dates continue until November 20, when the tour finishes in Hamburg. The set list for the current shows includes two other songs that also originate from Gorilla: “Mexico” and Taylor’s hit cover of “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You),” a Motown hit twice over in the 1960s for both Marvin Gaye and Jr. Walker and the All Stars.
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