James Taylor

Interview

In 1983, Taylor got sober, attending AA. But it is an ongoing process, getting clean. He took methadone to address his heroin usage, and that became a “powerful addiction” in itself. “It really lives in your bones; I mean, it just takes for ever to get over it.” It helped to see addiction as a “physical disease”, too. “You’ve trained your body to accept a substance when you feel stress, but that help doesn’t last for ever. It has a negative progression. That’s the only reason people get better. And so you’re left with a feeling that when you encounter stress, you feel it physically, and it feels like withdrawing. It’s a nasty way to feel. And the only advice I give to people who are recovering from addiction is that physical exercise is the only antidote to feeling like you can’t stand being in your own skin.” Is that how it feels? “It’s terrible. It’s like you don’t want to be here,” he says, motioning to his body. “But in here is where you live.” For 15 years, Taylor exercised for hours every day: running and rowing. “It set me free,” he says.

He hopes this year to perform to help get out the vote ahead of the US presidential election. He met Donald Trump once, “in an airport. I just thought of him as a frivolous, minor player. It drives me crazy how unworthy he is of our attention and how much of it he has.” He is rooting for the Democratic candidates Deval Patrick and Elizabeth Warren – both from Massachusetts, where he now lives. “But at this point, I’d be happy to see pretty much anyone in – the bar is so low. Because the very worst person possible that you could think to be heading the thing is there. It’s like the Confederacy has won the civil war.”