James Taylor looks out at the sprawling London skyline. “This is where it started,” he says. “The moment.” He made his first trip here in 1968, playing for Paul McCartney and George Harrison and becoming the first artist signed to the Beatles’ record label, Apple Records. This was before he moved to Laurel Canyon with the rest of the denim-draped California dreamers who defined the sound of the late 60s and far beyond. Before he met David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, Neil Young, Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, Carole King and Joni Mitchell. Before he and Mitchell fell in love. Before he wrote his pivotal album Sweet Baby James during a stint in a psychiatric hospital. Before his marriage to Carly Simon, which opened up his personal life – including his long battle with heroin addiction – to public consciousness. Before he sold 100m records, performed for the Obamas and the Clintons, and then, decades later, appeared on stage with one of the world’s biggest pop stars, Taylor Swift, who is named after him.
It has been quite the trip, he admits.
Taylor is in a reflective mood when we meet, and says he is always like this. “I’m a very self-centred songwriter. I always have been. It’s the personal stuff I like, for better or for worse.” He is here to promote his 19th album, American Standard; a covers album of the old standards and Broadway show tunes he was raised on. He says there was a period when his generation wanted to distance themselves from this music, but he now recognises it as “the pinnacle of American popular song ... It was sheet music, anyone would sing it, so the songs had to stand on their own. It’s what informed me as a songwriter, and others of my generation; Lennon and McCartney, Randy Newman, Elton [John] and Bernie [Taupin], Paul Simon ...”
He has also released an audio memoir – Break Shot – which takes him back to his turbulent early years, finishing with that first London trip. He is anxious, he says, about how the memoir will be received. It covers his father’s alcoholism and his brother’s death from the disease, as well as his own drug addiction, all of which, he worries, could be sensationalised. But the memoir is mostly about the shattering effect that early childhood trauma, addiction and grief can have generations later. It’s a subtle exploration of the “ripples”, as Taylor puts it. (...)
Taylor began playing guitar in his teens, strumming along to his parents’ record collection: Harry Belafonte, Nina Simone, Judy Garland, Lead Belly. Fingerpicking became his vernacular as much as his lyrics. His first big hit, Fire and Rain, about the suicide of a friend, includes the themes that came to define his songwriting – the precarity of our emotional lives, happiness as something to be treasured and the natural world’s capacity for renewal. The line “I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend,” prompted Carole King to write You’ve Got a Friend for him in response.
It was during high school that he and his family began to unravel. He was admitted to the McLean psychiatric hospital at 16 with what we would now probably call depression and anxiety, staying there for nine months. Two of his siblings followed him there. “When I jumped the tracks and went to McLean, it’s like they thought: ‘Yeah, that’s right, we need this help.’ It became an option.”
When Taylor left hospital, the fund set aside for his university tuition had been spent on his treatment and he decided to go to New York to pursue music. He formed a band, the Flying Machine, and developed a heroin habit. “To be able to take a juice that solves your internal stress ...” he trails off. “One of the signs that you have an addiction problem is how well it works for you at the very beginning. It’s the thing that makes you say: ‘Damn, I like my life now.’ That’s when you know you shouldn’t do it again.” His wasn’t the addiction of rock mythology, chaotic and glamourised. Taylor says mostly he used the drug to “get normal”. (...)
While in rehab, he had written most of the songs for his second album, his breakout, Sweet Baby James. He enlisted King to play keyboard; he then played on her 1971 album Tapestry. His relationship with Mitchell lasted a year, much of it on the road: she was composing the songs for her classic album Blue – he, meanwhile, was writing his third album, Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon, including the gorgeous You Can Close Your Eyes, written for her. But behind the scenes, their relationship was struggling. As Taylor’s career took off, his addiction dragged him down again. Mitchell mourned their split on her album For the Roses in the song Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire, a devastating eyewitness account of a person “bashing in veins for peace”. I ask Taylor if he is able to listen to Mitchell’s music from that time. “Blue, oh yes,” he says. “And she sings so beautifully on my songs.” What about Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire? He goes quiet. “It’s not like listening to me,” he whispers.
What is it like? He hangs his head for some time, silent. “I’m not able to listen to it,” he says.
by Jenny Stevens, The Guardian | Read more:
Image: Richard E. Aaron, via
It has been quite the trip, he admits.
Taylor is in a reflective mood when we meet, and says he is always like this. “I’m a very self-centred songwriter. I always have been. It’s the personal stuff I like, for better or for worse.” He is here to promote his 19th album, American Standard; a covers album of the old standards and Broadway show tunes he was raised on. He says there was a period when his generation wanted to distance themselves from this music, but he now recognises it as “the pinnacle of American popular song ... It was sheet music, anyone would sing it, so the songs had to stand on their own. It’s what informed me as a songwriter, and others of my generation; Lennon and McCartney, Randy Newman, Elton [John] and Bernie [Taupin], Paul Simon ...”He has also released an audio memoir – Break Shot – which takes him back to his turbulent early years, finishing with that first London trip. He is anxious, he says, about how the memoir will be received. It covers his father’s alcoholism and his brother’s death from the disease, as well as his own drug addiction, all of which, he worries, could be sensationalised. But the memoir is mostly about the shattering effect that early childhood trauma, addiction and grief can have generations later. It’s a subtle exploration of the “ripples”, as Taylor puts it. (...)
Taylor began playing guitar in his teens, strumming along to his parents’ record collection: Harry Belafonte, Nina Simone, Judy Garland, Lead Belly. Fingerpicking became his vernacular as much as his lyrics. His first big hit, Fire and Rain, about the suicide of a friend, includes the themes that came to define his songwriting – the precarity of our emotional lives, happiness as something to be treasured and the natural world’s capacity for renewal. The line “I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend,” prompted Carole King to write You’ve Got a Friend for him in response.
It was during high school that he and his family began to unravel. He was admitted to the McLean psychiatric hospital at 16 with what we would now probably call depression and anxiety, staying there for nine months. Two of his siblings followed him there. “When I jumped the tracks and went to McLean, it’s like they thought: ‘Yeah, that’s right, we need this help.’ It became an option.”
When Taylor left hospital, the fund set aside for his university tuition had been spent on his treatment and he decided to go to New York to pursue music. He formed a band, the Flying Machine, and developed a heroin habit. “To be able to take a juice that solves your internal stress ...” he trails off. “One of the signs that you have an addiction problem is how well it works for you at the very beginning. It’s the thing that makes you say: ‘Damn, I like my life now.’ That’s when you know you shouldn’t do it again.” His wasn’t the addiction of rock mythology, chaotic and glamourised. Taylor says mostly he used the drug to “get normal”. (...)
While in rehab, he had written most of the songs for his second album, his breakout, Sweet Baby James. He enlisted King to play keyboard; he then played on her 1971 album Tapestry. His relationship with Mitchell lasted a year, much of it on the road: she was composing the songs for her classic album Blue – he, meanwhile, was writing his third album, Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon, including the gorgeous You Can Close Your Eyes, written for her. But behind the scenes, their relationship was struggling. As Taylor’s career took off, his addiction dragged him down again. Mitchell mourned their split on her album For the Roses in the song Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire, a devastating eyewitness account of a person “bashing in veins for peace”. I ask Taylor if he is able to listen to Mitchell’s music from that time. “Blue, oh yes,” he says. “And she sings so beautifully on my songs.” What about Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire? He goes quiet. “It’s not like listening to me,” he whispers.
What is it like? He hangs his head for some time, silent. “I’m not able to listen to it,” he says.
by Jenny Stevens, The Guardian | Read more:
