James Taylor is an American Standard
10 months in a psychiatric hospital and a star by age 21 — now a new album, memoir join 100 million records
James Taylor is back with a new album, American Standard, and a memoir showing how his life story — including 10 months in a hospital for depression — made him a major artist by age 21. At 71, he’s back.
“These are the songs that Lennon and McCartney listened to and that so many of my generation that got started in the ’60s,’’ Taylor says of the new album. “They’re so much more sophisticated than what music has become .’’
“Break Shot,’’ his new memoir, read aloud on an Audible audiobook, describes the “break shot’ in pool: one hit scatters the balls in every direction. It’s a metaphor for the way his family and world were rocked during his teenage years in the mid-1960s.
James Taylor songs have roots in his family’s depression and joys
“My story is entwined with the story of my family: The Taylors have enjoyed many blessings and a good deal of pain,’’ Taylor explains. “Most of the songs I have written have been a way of trying to work out what happened to us.’’
The Taylor family moved from Massachusetts to an isolated rural home in Morgan Creek, North Carolina after 1951 when his father, a physician, joined the faculty of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
His father would rise to be dean of the UNC Medical School.
One of five children, the isolation of the wooded hills helped James Taylor grow his imagination.
He told CBS Sunday Morning, “a fantasy could last all afternoon. I don’t think I would have become a song writer if I didn’t have all those happy days to let my imagination roam.’’
Those days also helped him write his classic “Carolina on My Mind’’ at age 19, soon after he met a girl named Karen during a trip to Spain.
The memoir title, “Break Shot,’’ references “the moments in my life when my family, my life and culture just jumped the tracks all at once’’ in the turbulent mid-1960s.
Alcoholism, depression, culture transformed him — and music
“My father’s alcoholism reached a peak and that lead to my folks breaking up and I was, I think, a very sensitive kid and away at school deeply unhappy so I left school and went to a psychiatric hospital in Boston called McLean and spent 10 months there,’’ he told CBS.
The turmoil, from the depression and addictions and mental health struggles, is referenced in his classic “Fire and Rain’’ where he writes:
“Won’t you look down upon me, Jesus. You’ve got to help me make a stand You’ve just got to see me through another day. My body’s aching and my time is at hand. And I won’t make it any other way. Oh, I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain. I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end. I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend. But I always thought that I’d see you again.’’
“Fire and Rain’’ and “Baby James’’ were both written by or before age 20. Before he was 22, he’d been signed by the Beatles for their brand new record label, Apple. By March 1971, he was on the cover of Time Magazine.
His 2020 album is devoted to American standards he learned as a little boy in an age where songs were listened to so the words and melodies would be engrained upon your memory.
Today music is in the background. In the days of record albums, songs took center stage. Taylor recalled:
“ I used to listen to my parents record collection endlessly. You’d lie on a floor, usually on a carpet, look at the window, look at the album cover, read it through and just gaze at the art and listen to the music.’’
