'We didn't communicate a whole lot and he was sort of distant.' 'He didn't have an awful lot to do with - with me as I was growing up,' Taylor recalls. Only 18, he became hooked on heroin within a year. After graduating from high school at McLean, he set out for New York City to play in a rock 'n' and roll band. You know? And ths basically sort of gave me time out and protection - real protection.' 'It allowed me to think of myself as - as different and to realize that I had to find my own way. 'My family was kind enough and smart enough to - to sort of put me in.a nut house, for - for a while,' he says. 'It was a - a rough passage for me,' he recalls. His parents committed him there when he was just 17, after he was diagnosed as suicidal. Taylor started writing songs during a stay at a psychiatric hospital, McLean, outside Boston. His writing habits began early but not easily. And - and basically, wander around on the guitar, until something starts to present itself.' 'So, my guitar technique.is central to it,' he says. He can do things that help them show up, though, like playing the guitar, Taylor explains.

'They sort of come through me,' Taylor says. 'I tend to write out the first iteration of a lyric here and then go over here and make variations on it, on the page opposite,' he explains.Ĭreating songs is a process that he says he can't explain. He shows off his current lyric book with working titles. When he writes, his music comes first, then the lyrics. This is two or three times more sophisticated than what I made my first two albums on,' he says. 'You could definitely record an album on this. He collaborates with a special piece of equipment - a recording studio that fits on a tabletop.

James taylor fire and rain