Carole King – You’ve Got a Friend (Live at Montreux, 1973)

The Song That Wrote Itself Through Her

Released in May 1971 as a single by James Taylor, “You’ve Got a Friend” climbed to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on July 31, staying there for one week. Taylor’s version spent weeks on the chart and became his first and only number one hit. Carole King included the song on her album Tapestry, released in February 1971, but never released it as a single herself. King told interviewers the song was as close to pure inspiration as she’d ever experienced, that the song wrote itself, written by something outside herself, through her. She didn’t write it with James Taylor or anybody specifically in mind, but when he heard it during the recording sessions, he really liked it and wanted to record it.

Taylor’s single dominated both the Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary charts, spending a week atop the Easy Listening charts as well. Billboard ranked it as the number 16 song for 1971. In the United Kingdom, it reached number four, matching the success King was experiencing with Tapestry across Europe. The double success of Taylor’s version and King’s album helped cement the song as one of the defining tracks of the singer-songwriter movement. Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway released their version on the same date as Taylor’s single, May 29, 1971, and reached number 29 on the Hot 100 and number eight on the R&B chart. The song won Grammy Awards for both Taylor as Best Male Pop Vocal Performance and King as Song of the Year at the 14th Annual Grammy Awards in 1972, making King the first woman to win Song of the Year.

King had reportedly written the song in response to a line from James Taylor’s 1970 hit “Fire and Rain” that went “I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend.” The song was about friendship itself, about always being there for the ones you love, that universal concept of human connection. King was recording Tapestry in January 1971 at A&M Studios in Los Angeles while Taylor was working on Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon down the hall, and they’d become close friends through their Laurel Canyon circle. King had spent the previous decade writing hits for other artists with her ex-husband Gerry Goffin, but this was different, a complete song from music to lyrics entirely her own. Taylor told audiences he first heard it at The Troubadour in Los Angeles, where King offered it to him to record.

King recorded “You’ve Got a Friend” with producer Lou Adler at A&M Studios in January 1971, featuring James Taylor on acoustic guitar, Charles Larkey on acoustic bass, Danny Kortchmar on congas, and a three-piece string section. King played piano and sang the lead vocal. Taylor’s version featured Kortchmar on acoustic guitar and congas, Leland Sklar on bass, Russ Kunkel on drums, and backing vocals from his then-girlfriend Joni Mitchell. The two versions were recorded simultaneously with some shared musicians, creating an interconnected history between the recordings. King’s arrangement was more intimate and piano-driven, while Taylor’s featured his distinctive warm vocal delivery that made the song a radio staple throughout the summer of 1971.

“You’ve Got a Friend” appeared on King’s second solo album Tapestry, released on February 10, 1971, which spent fifteen consecutive weeks at number one on the Billboard 200 and remained on the charts for 318 weeks. The album sold fourteen million copies in the United States and over 30 million worldwide, becoming one of the best-selling albums of all time. King won four Grammy Awards in 1972 including Album of the Year for Tapestry, Song of the Year for “You’ve Got a Friend”, Record of the Year for “It’s Too Late”, and Best Pop Vocal Performance Female, becoming the first solo female artist to win Record of the Year and the first woman to win Song of the Year. Taylor’s version appeared on his fourth studio album Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon, which reached number two on the Billboard 200 and featured Taylor’s friend Danny Kortchmar playing on both King’s and his own versions of the song.

The Montreux Jazz Festival performance on July 15, 1973, captured King at a fascinating crossroads in her career. The concert marked her first performance outside the United States and took place two years after Tapestry altered the course of pop history and one month after she issued the album Fantasy. Director Raymond Jaussi filmed the entire show at the Montreux Pavillon, though the footage remained unreleased until Eagle Vision issued it as Live at Montreux 1973 in June 2019. The early segment of the concert exuded the intimacy that made Tapestry a personal touchstone to millions, with King addressing a crowd cozy enough to sit cross-legged on the floor before her. For the capper to the show, King performed two songs alone at the piano, “You’ve Got a Friend” and “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman”. The solo piano performance showcased King’s unadorned artistry and warm relationship with her audience, stripped of the eleven-person band that backed her on the Fantasy material earlier in the set.

The song has been covered extensively across genres and generations, with Dusty Springfield recording it in early 1971 during sessions for her album Faithful, though that version remained unreleased until 1999. Barbra Streisand included it on her 1971 album Barbra Joan Streisand, while Johnny Mathis released an entire album titled You’ve Got a Friend on August 11, 1971. Aretha Franklin recorded it three times, most famously on her 1972 live gospel album Amazing Grace as part of a medley with “Precious Lord, Take My Hand”. Michael Jackson, Anne Murray, Donny Hathaway, and The Isley Brothers all released versions in the 1970s. In 2001, Taylor’s version was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, followed by King’s version in 2002. Taylor and King performed the song together during their massive 2010 Troubadour Reunion Tour, creating emotional moments in arenas across America with entire crowds singing along.

“You’ve Got a Friend” remains the defining collaboration between Carole King and James Taylor and one of the most enduring songs about friendship ever written. Music critic James D. Perone identified the song’s themes as an expression of universal, sisterly, brotherly, agape-type love of one human being for another, regardless of gender. The song proved that friendship could be as powerful a subject for pop music as romantic love. Taylor performed an acoustic rendition of the song at Hôtel de Ville in Paris in 2015 at the invitation of Secretary of State John Kerry in tribute to victims of the January 2015 terrorist attacks, while King performed it at the 2021 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony when she was inducted for the second time as a solo performer. King told CBS This Morning that she always makes sure to credit the Grammy to herself for “You’ve Got a Friend” while clarifying that the lyrics for “It’s Too Late” were by Toni Stern. The song that wrote itself through Carole King in January 1971 continues to resonate more than fifty years later, proving that when inspiration strikes with that kind of purity, the results can indeed be timeless.