There are very few things able to bring back the early 1970s to me more effectively than James Taylor tracks.

That was an odd period. I had recently arrived in London from the North, and was about to discover that, down there, the matching floral shirt and tie was a bit yesterday. Hired by J Walter Thompson to assess how well the agency’s ads worked in consumerland, I was almost immediately introduced by a young lady to Taylor’s terrific album Mud Slide Slim.

This – along with the amazing Can I Have My Money Back? by Stealer’s Wheel – still evokes the changeover from 1960s folk-rock to 1970s Glam for me. Joni Mitchell’s seminal Blue has a similar effect, but it was the accoustic guitar-picking of Taylor that really engaged me. It offered a view of masculinity that chimed with both the zeitgeist, and my own self-image. Fed up of being thought gay, I found it reassuring to listen to another bloke whose music was as gently heterosexual as mine. Culture Club and Queen were quite some way in the future.

My special memory of the time is going to a midsummer concert in a huge public park near Crystal Palace, where Taylor was headlining. It took place during that all-too-brief time when the police turned a blind eye to harmless grass smoking. Grass was benign compared to the skunk too often peddled today, and so the average copper quite rightly preferred the music on offer to an insensitive intervention on behalf of the law. I seem to recall that lots of joints were available and being liberally handed round. I seem to remember getting pleasantly stoned.

After a cast of performers that included Lou Reed and Yes, Taylor came out and performed all his best stuff. As the baking-hot afternoon turned into early evening, his set came towards the end, and as you’d imagine, the encore was Fire & Rain.

As he fiddled about and various roadies adjusted sound levels, dark clouds began to hover heavily over the venue. By the time he began this final number, forks of lightning were flashing. And as a great song eased along towards its conclusion, rain began to fall. It was at this point that the bloke sitting next to me sucked on his toke, and uttered these words:

“Man, this is fucking terrific shit”.

Of course this was a naive epoch. Of course, we all got haircuts soon afterwards as a sound alternative to starvation. And of course, we all bought property and became gardeners, parents and then disapproving commentators about the nihilism of punk. But during that one afternoon in 1973, everything was perfect.