45 Years Ago: Did James Taylor Play to 250,000 in Central Park?

James Taylor endured his share of critical and commercial setbacks during a fallow stretch in the middle of the '70s. But by the end of the decade, he was undeniably one of the biggest rock stars on the planet.

He capped his remarkable run on July 31, 1979, playing to a packed crowd during a free concert in New York City's Central Park. The show was held to help raise funds and awareness for a campaign to restore the park's Sheep Meadow to its former glory, and came amid a summer tour to promote Taylor's ninth LP, Flag.

Released in May 1979 to relatively lukewarm reviews, Flag nevertheless extended the chart resurgence Taylor enjoyed with JT. Taylor's Grammy-winning 1977 record marked his migration from Warner Bros. to Columbia Records under the terms of a hugely expensive new contract.

READ MORE: Top 10 James Taylor Songs

Flag would include a pair of songs ("Brother Trucker" and "Millworker") that were originally written for the stage musical Working, based on Studs Terkel's oral history of 20th-century American employment. The LP also featured covers of "Up on the Roof" from the songwriting legends Gerry Goffin and Carole King as well as the Beatles' "Day Tripper." "Up on the Roof" crested in the Top 40 and then Showtime broadcast a special around Taylor's two-night stand in July 1979 at the Blossom Music Center in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio.

Taylor leveraged all of this attention to Central Park's advantage, putting his name behind an effort to repair Sheep Meadow. Subjected to spotty maintenance, the area had fallen into disrepair after years of hosting major events. According to officials at the time, Taylor's show drew an eye-popping 250,000 people. Some were surely only there because it was a fun way to spend a free evening in New York City, but it was still pretty impressive.

Questions Over James Taylor's Attendance Figures

In more recent years, that 250,000 headcount has come under question. As with Paul Simon's similarly well-attended Central Park show in 1991, it seems likely that initial estimates may have been too high. “You look out at the sea of people from the stage and your mind tells you, ‘That’s what hundreds of thousands of people looks like,’” parks commissioner Adrian Benepe admitted to The New York Times in 2008. “Now we know it’s 48,500.”

Whatever the real attendance numbers were, however, Taylor's show worked: In 1980, Sheep Meadow received a much-needed re-sodding, and then reopened to the public in 1981.

The Central Park concert was followed by an even more high-profile performance that found the politically active Taylor once again donating his time and music. He joined up with an array of other artists (including Crosby, Stills and Nash, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, and the Doobie Brothers) to form Musicians United for Safe Energy – a.k.a. M.U.S.E. They'd take part in a series of shows that were later commemorated with the No Nukes film and triple live LP.