SANDERS Theatre seems to have no character of its own. When a poet reads there, it drips with academia. When defendants and lawyers exonerate the Chicago 7 there, it is electric with immediacy. And there are times when it is warm and befriending.

The friendliness was there last Saturday night when James Taylor-tall, almost lanky, with his shirttail out, wearing orange socks and sandals-walked onto the Sanders stage. He sat down and gazed at the packed house. He hesitated, and after a simple, sheepish "hi," he took the audience into his mind for what later seemed the shortest of times.

Taylor came out of North Carolina by way of Greenwich Village. He said Saturday night that he learned his first song-a chewing tobacco commercial-at age three. He ended up singing and playing guitar with a blues group in the Village. The group, Taylor said, competed with bands "made up of kids from the suburbs whose fathers had bought them electric guitars and Super Beatle amplifiers."

But talented people who are determined to succeed do not stay in the Village. They get out, and some, like 23-year-old James Taylor, make it. Taylor went first to England, Paul McCartney arranged the recording of his first album on the Apple label. And in his first song Saturday night-McCartney's "A Little Help From My Friends" -Taylor was telling us that friends had helped him make it out of the Village.

Taylor is very much like Neil Young in his stage presence, in the way he tells stories and brings an audience to him. But he is not as boyish as Young: he has been down a harder road. In "Something's Wrong," which he wrote under the influence of New York City, he sings to himself:

Someting's wrong, that restless feeling's been preying on your mind

Road maps in a well-cracked ceiling-the signs aren't hard to find

Now I'm not saying that you've been mistreated

No one's hurting you-nothing's wrong

A moment's rest was all you needed

So pack your things and kindly move along.

On stage, Taylor plays quietly-his motions subdued and even. He accompanies himself with a single guitar. This solitude fits him well, because his music draws entirely from within. It is an autonomous force and thus carries more impact when James Taylor plays it alone-without the double-tracking of the studio, without percussion or brass. Indeed, these elements seem superfluous once you've seen the music played in its pure form.

Deep-rooted lyrics are a vital part of Taylor's music. In "Sweet Baby James" he sings:

There's a song that they sing when they take to the highway

A song that they sing when they take to the sea