<Tr> <Td> "You've Got a Friend" (1971) </Td> <Td> "Long Ago and Far Away" (1971) </Td> <Td> "Don't Let Me Be Lonely Tonight" (1972) </Td> </Tr> <P> "Long Ago and Far Away" is a song written by James Taylor and first released on his 1971 album Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon . It was the follow up single to You've Got a Friend and became a Top 40 hit in the U.S. and a Top 20 hit in Canada, and made the Top 10 on the Adult Contemporary chart in the U.S. It has also been covered by New York Voices and Johnny Mathis . </P> <P> Taylor wrote "Long Ago and Far Away" in 1970, about a year before it was recorded for Mud Slide Slim . Joni Mitchell sings background vocals and Carole King plays piano . It is a sad song that Taylor biographer Timothy White calls "among the most wistful of Taylor's vast catalogue of secular hymns ." The theme of the song is how things don't turn out as planned, how dreams don't usually match the ultimate reality and how expectations don't last . The lyrics evoke a motif common in Taylor's songs, that of the sea and sailing away for one reason or another . Other images in the lyrics include "tender dreams" and "broken glass ." Towards the end of the song the singer asks why his song is so sad . The phrase "long ago and far away" never appears in the lyrics . Rather, Taylor sings that "Long ago a young man sits and plays his waiting game ." In 1998 Taylor noted that the lyrics in the second verse "Love is just a word I've heard when things are being said" was the "most coherent" part of the song for him at that time, stating that "it is a musing on the nature of expectations, and how they don't last . </P> <P> Critic Al Rudis notes a resemblance between some of the melody of "Long Ago and Far Away" and that of "Sunny Skies," a song from Taylor's prior album Sweet Baby James . Journalist Peggy Mulloy Glad regards it as an example of how Taylor can use his vocal and guitar playing to "communicate the pain, melancholy and desires that most people experience but few can express ." </P>

James taylor long ago and far away backing vocals