Sweet Dreams and Flying Machines

In 1971, the great rock critic Lester Bangs famously denounced James' Taylor's music (in the essay, "James Taylor Marked for Death") as "I-Rock, because it is so relentlessly, involutedly egocentric," making Bangs want to push Taylor (and Elton John) off a cliff.

Rock historian Mark Ribowsky (Dreams to Remember: Otis Redding, Stax Records, and…