Photo: James Taylor
Six-time Grammy award winner James Taylor is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, having sold more than 100 million records worldwide with hits including ‘Fire and Rain,' 'Country Road,' 'Sweet Baby James,' and 'Carolina In My Mind’.
He was signed up to the Beatles record label Apple Records, married to singer Carly Simon, was instrumental in launching the career of Carole King, and is the first act to have a top 10 album in each of the last six decades, according to Billboard.
How influential has he been? The singer Taylor Swift was named after him, too.
Taylor, now 76, speaks with Sunday Morning's Jim Mora about his life and career ahead of his New Zealand shows ‘An Evening with James Taylor and His All-Star Band’ set for Auckland on 30 April and Wellington 1 May.
“I’ve got great memories of Auckland, sailing in the harbour there too,” he tells Mora.
For Taylor, his songwriting skills have won him acclaim for more than 50 years now.
In 1971, he was on the front cover of TIME Magazine with the caption saluting him as “The New Rock".
He was a huge success, but he was also battling the personal demons of addiction and depression at the time.
James Taylor memorably was on the cover of TIME magazine before he was 25 years old. Photo: Supplied
Taylor said he worried at the time if he got clean it might have an effect on his music.
“(I wondered) whether or not substances were an important part of it, and that it wasn’t going to work any more after I got clean … what it basically comes down to is you can’t write any more songs when you’re dead, either. It was sink or swim.
“You hope for recognition, you hope for attention, you know, and to get your music heard, but you can never really understand what it's going to be like to sort of go from a private person to being a sort of a product.
“It’s been a challenge for a number of people in my generation … a number of artists who were really overwhelmed by fame and success.”
Taylor’s best known songs tap into universal feelings, and kept an accessibility that means his music still resonates decades later.
“(‘Carolina In My Mind’) was a song about being homesick, about missing home, really about the impossibility of going back,” he says.
“And about all of that happening in spite of having essentially won the lottery (with his career).
“I still play that song most nights. I don’t know what it is but it’s a rock for me. It somehow sets me up and I always make a a connection. ….One way or another, it takes me back.”
“So much was packed into such a short period of time in those days,” Taylor remembers.
Taylor became the first non-British act signed to the Beatles’ label Apple Records, and worked on his debut album in 1968 in the same studio the Fab Four were using.
“The Beatles had decided to take a break from recording the White Album and had closed down the studio for a couple of weeks.
“I was using the time that they weren’t using basically sort of charging in there and trying to nail down a couple of tracks in between their sessions.”
Ultimately, Taylor kicked the heroin addiction that threatened his life and found a new way to carry on his career. He's performed for American presidents - and yes, he's even performed with Taylor Swift, who grew up on his songs.
“I’m hugely grateful that I had people who helped me and got me into the program and got me clean.
“I think that there’s a connection between what music does for you and what drugs and alcohol do.
“Both are ways of getting out of the prison of yourself in a way. Both are in a way therapeutic.
“I think it’s probably true of most people who are addicted that they’re self medicating at some level. It’s not really about celebration, it’s more primal than that. Of course after a while it just turns into a losing game.
“If you’re addicted and you get clean you’re going to get a new life and you can’t anticipate what that’s going to be. But it was such a gift.”
