Pop Music : Taylor Coddles His Fans With Lullabies for Yups

It’s hard to remember that there was a time when two music-industry moguls started a lasting feud over which company would wind up with James Taylor in the mid-’70s as recounted in the current music-biz bestseller “Hit Men.” It’s hard to imagine a similar record company tug-of-war over this laid-back singer-songwriter in the age of Paula Abdul and M. C. Hammer.

But concert promoters battling over the rights to a Taylor contract? That’s still a viable scenario.

Taylor remains a top live attraction. The Pacific Amphitheatre was nearly full of fans worked up for his show on Saturday, and several of Taylor’s six nights at the Universal Amphitheatre, beginning Oct. 24, have already sold out. (He also plays the Santa Barbara County Bowl on Tuesday.)

At the Pacific it wasn’t hard to see just what Taylor’s enduring appeal is. Calming, humble and self-deprecatingly “mellow,” he’s the voice of reassurance to a generation. So dedicated is he to making his fans feel good about their own lives through song that he borders on being a coddler. Taylor showers the people with love, like a good motivational speaker, and manages to come off as a class--not crass--act in the process.

He’s easy. Where ‘70s contemporaries like Jackson Browne, Paul Simon and Linda Ronstadt have gone on to challenge themselves and their fans, Taylor remains resolutely user-friendly, a mirror that reflects his audience without blemishes. You’ve got a friend, indeed.

His opening number had Taylor coming on stage alone with an acoustic guitar, musing, “The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time. . . . It’s just a lov-e-ly ride. . . . See me sliding down and gliding down, and try not to try too hard.”

For anyone who looks at the world and sees a need for more, not less, effort, lullabies for yups like this one can’t help but sound like a snooze-alarm button on the clock of complacency.

Later on, playing a new song about a rural girl who’s lonely in the big city, Taylor showed off some nicely detailed verses that reminded you of what a talented writer he is (“Maybe move back down to Mobile / It’s not that far to fall”).

But he couldn’t help anchoring the song with an all-purpose inspirational chorus (“Hold tight to your heart’s dream / Don’t ever let it go / Don’t let nobody fool you into giving it up too soon”), as if he didn’t trust the story to tell itself without some editorial cheerleading.

On the other hand, compare Taylor’s show to, say, Ronstadt’s current series of concerts, and you’ll find an artist who still connects on an honest level with his fans in concert--no inconsiderable accomplishment after all these years.

Whereas Ronstadt clearly seems burdened by the albatross of singing all her old material, Taylor approaches the situation with winning good humor. “OK, well, it’s all pretty much downhill from here,” he joked after the standing ovation for a mid-set “Fire and Rain.”

And every time a fan would holler out a predictable request, he’d wearily hold up a copy of the written set list and point to the song farther down. Even if the implication was that the yellers were yahoos, the lines of communication were open.

And in chilly times, it’s hard to fault fans for wanting to be warmed, even while you might hope Taylor would avoid his apparent growing attraction to anthemic sorts of campfire sing-alongs and stick with the strictly personal.