Dedicated to Beth (www.youtube.com on her birthday... October 4, 2011. This song is about being there for others and being a friend for someone in need. Along with Tapestry tracks like "So Far Away" and "Home Again," it is a reflection on how friends can be just as important as family. King said the song "was as close to pure inspiration as I've ever experienced. The song wrote itself. It was written by something outside of myself, through me." Carole King's good friend James Taylor played acoustic guitar on five songs from the album, including this one. He and Joni Mitchell also sang backup on this track. Taylor recorded his own version of the song on his album Mud Slide Slim And The Blue Horizon, which he was recording nearby while King was working on Tapestry; Danny Kortchmar, who played guitar on King's sessions and was in her band The City, was good friends with Taylor. Taylor's version came out as a single in April of 1971, and became a huge hit, going all the way to #! 1 in the US by July and hitting #4 in the UK. When Tapestry was first released, Taylor was a much bigger star than King, and in the spring of 1971, they toured together with King opening for Taylor. The song was never a hit for King, since she didn't release it as a single (James Taylor got there first), but the album was a smash, spending 15 weeks at #1 in the US and 302 weeks (that's 6 years) on the charts, making it the longest charting album by any female solo artist. To this day, many singer
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