Several months before we left Edmonton to embark on our Grand Victorian Progress (as we have started calling this trip), our friend Anne Marie dashed off an email to us saying that she had just read James Taylor was performing on a Queen Mary crossing and what were our crossing dates again? Darned if his crossing and our crossing weren’t the same, and we rejoiced in this good fortune and added the concert to our list of things we were looking forward to doing/seeing/experiencing.
Then, friend Leigh sent a note just as we were leaving saying OMG!!!! James Taylor!!!! ON YOUR SHIP!!!!
Because we were neophyte passengers in this world of trans-Atlantic crossings, we checked with our travel agent before departing to find out what we could about the concert that James Taylor (hereinafter referred to as JT for convenience) was supposed to be delivering, and she said that tickets to the concert were part of the overall cost of the crossing!!!! Guaranteed tickets!!!!! She explained that once we were on board we just had to wait for information.
So we boarded our ship and waited in great anticipation. We boarded Wednesday. No news of a concert Wednesday. No news of a concert Thursday. We were in Halifax Friday and still no news. It wasn’t that we didn’t believe our agent, it’s just that, well, we were sure it couldn’t be right.
Then Friday night after we left Halifax, Captain (not the Captain, but Captain), announced in his daily broadcast that we had on board James Taylor and were looking forward to his concert. Information would come out in a separate newsletter Saturday.
We barely left the cabin for fear we would miss the newsletter and lose out on the experience. Finally, after dinner, it came, complete with a form to fill in indicating what performance we would attend.
The theatre is not large enough to seat all passengers at once, so JT was giving two concerts, and as we were in the late dining group we had first crack at the Monday concert which started at 10:30. People at the early dinner were part of the Tuesday at 8 concert.
We filled in our form and dashed down to the purser’s office to turn it in, not wanting to risk the chance of missing out on seats.
In the meantime, we now knew for certain he was on the ship, and started keeping a lookout for him. Ha. Our cabin wasn’t quite in the cheap seats, but we were also not in the expensive staterooms either, so we didn’t see him wandering about the ship or at meals.
The Mary ((as some experienced crossers called her) is a very status conscious world. If you can afford the big luxury staterooms as big as our first house, you get to eat in a different dining room, the Queens Grill. If you can afford the not-quite-so-big but still luxurious staterooms, you eat in the Princess Grill. I suspect he and his family ate in the Queens Grill. We ate in the Britannia. Lovely, but not Queens or Princess status.
In the meantime JT was scheduled to do a one-hour sit down interview with the social convenor (well, she was the communications person and i believe she is a respected BBC interviewer, but my God her voice was awful and she was so perky and ebullient you wanted to smack her). The interview was open to who ever wanted to be there (the theatre seats at least 1000 people) and passengers were invited to submit questions to be included in the interview.
Needless to say we went to the interview. The room opened a half hour before the interview was to start and people started lining up outside an hour before that. (no reserved seating). The chirpy cruise director started gushing about him, doing her introduction, and he simply walked out in the middle of her introduction and sat down. Tall, lean, wearing a hat. She was nonplussed, but of course not speachless, and after a moment setted in to the interview.
The questions are forgettable, well, at least I can’t remember them, but they were better than the usual run of the mill questions (the “how did you feel when you won???” type questions were absent) and he gave honest, thoughtful, thorough answers. He didn’t hesitate or prevaricate. And at one point he answered a questions by saying he wished he could remember what happened, but he couldn’t, then talked about being a recovering addict. We’ve been fans for years so none of this was news to us, but it was refreshing to hear such candid conversation.
The interview went from 4-5, then JT left and went to a side room, where he signed autographs and met one-on-one with everyone in the line up. IThe late dinner sitting was at 8:30 and people were still lined up when we went for dinner. We talked to one woman who stood in line for five hours to get her moment with him, and the man I sat beside at the concert itself said that he had waited three hours, and had had ten minutes with him, that JT was a self-effacing, thoughtful man who answered his questions and tried to connect with who he was talking to.
Self evident statement: JT is really tall. I knew that from watching televised concerts. But during the interview, when the interviewer sat on the chair on stage, her legs bent at a 90 degree angle. JT is so tall, his knees were practically under his chin.
The concert itself was amazing. It was scheduled to last 45-60 minutes (all ship entertainment lasts an hour), started at 10:30 on the dot, and went into five encores lasting until midnight. Well beyond the 45 minutes scheduled. He did several songs from his new album about to come out so we didn’t know them, but we’re buying it when it comes out!!! Of course he did Sweet Baby James, In My Mind I’m going to Carolina, I’ve seen fire. Because of the short time frame, there wasn’t a lot of chatter. But he did bring his wife Kim and their son out on stage to do a number with him.
Then just to make sure he was at the pinnacle of how I can feel about a rock star, the server at our table the next day told us that JT had done a special concert for crew because of course they were all still working when the scheduled concerts had been on. How nice is that?
(As a side note the night before the concert we attended another concert, a nice young man dedicated to keeping the music of the 60s and 70s alive. He did really good cover versions of a lot of our favourites from that era. He quipped that it was hard being the concert BEFORE James Taylor, but come to think of it, he would rather do that be the performer who FOLLOWS JT.)
As we were disembarking, we got an up close and personal look at the man, wearing his hat, as he and his family were disembarking about the same time. About 10 feet away everyone being totally cool and letting him have his space.
It was great.
