Fire and Rain: The James Taylor Story - Hardcover

Halperin, Ian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1559725338 ISBN 13: 9781559725330

Publisher: Birch Lane Pr, 2000

Synopsis

A biography of the pop-folk star whose music career began in a mental institution and then a fateful signing on the Beatle's Apple Records label covers his battles with drug addiction, his troubled marriage to Carly Simon, and three decades in the music business.

About this title

About the Author:

Ian Halperin has interviewed more than 100 musicians, family members, music industry figures, and others to paint a detailed but ultimately sympathetic portrait of Taylor's incredible life and career--the first-ever biography of this pop-music icon.

From Kirkus Reviews:

The turbulent life, loves, and career of pop star James Taylor. With such classic hits as ``You've Got a Friend,'' ``Carolina on my Mind,'' ``Handyman,'' ``Mexico,'' and ``Fire and Rain,'' the venerable Taylor has been one of popular music's biggest stars since the late '60s, when he went to England to begin his recording career. As Halperin shows repeatedly, Taylor, who battled an addiction to heroin and other drugs for years, has not had an easy time of it. His story, however, hardly starts out as the saga of a tortured artist. He was born to Isaac and Trudy Taylor, a happy, loving couple who lived in an upper-middle-class region of Massachusetts, waiting to occupy a great deal of the biographers time. Halperin contends that the younger Taylor's self-destructive habits were inherited by the men in his family (James's older brother, Alex, also suffered from a heroin addiction, which eventually killed him). Halperin, glossing over Jamess normal teenage angst and his isolation from other young people, also makes a case, a much stronger one, that James began his descent into addiction when Isaac began to withdraw from his family. Whatever their cause, Jamess feelings of alienation would lead him into a mental hospital during his late teens. Even after Taylor's first taste of success, with 1970's Sweet Baby James, which landed him on the cover of Time in 1971, he would slip back into battles with drugs and alcohol. According to Halperin, those consistent transgressions into his old ways, together with their mutual jealousies, eventually destroyed his marriage to fellow pop star Carly Simon. Despite the amount of time Halperin spends on Taylor's considerable difficulties, the affection he has for Taylor's music, best exhibited by the interviews with fans that are scattered throughout the book, shines throughout. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Birch Lane Pr
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1559725338
• ISBN 13: 9781559725330
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 273