"Relative Values"
Sunday Times Magazine (London)
15 March 98
"James Taylor and his son, Ben, both singer-songwriters."
Interviews by Nigel Williamson.
Photographs by Chris Floyd

James Taylor, 50, shot to fame as the definitive 1970s sensitive singer-songwriter with hits such as You've Got a Friend, Fire and Rain and Carolina in My Mind. His marriage to the singer Carly Simon in 1972 produced two children – Sally, 24, and Ben, 21 – but the couple divorced in 1980, and James battled and finally overcame a much-publicized drug addiction. He married Kathryn Walker, but they are now divorced. He still tours regularly and has sold more than 30 million albums. Hourglass is his most recent recording. Ben, a singer and guitarist, is setting out on a musical career. He has yet to sign a record deal but makes frequent appearances at his father's concerts. Sally is also a singer. James lives near Carly Simon on the island of Martha's Vineyard, Mass. Ben lives in New York but spends summers with his mother in his childhood home.

JAMES: Ben and his sister, Sally, came on the tour bus with me before they could even talk. Being a touring musician deprives you of family life, and you have to work to make time for the things that are important. They'd come out on the road for a few days at a time, but having a wife, a couple of kids and a nanny with you in that environment is hard. I longed for the children when they weren't there, and then when they were, after a couple of days I couldn't wait until it was over, because you're not getting any rest and you're not focusing on the show.

After Carly and I got divorced, the children lived with her, so the time I've shared with Ben and Sally for the past 18 years has mostly been on the road. Now he's an adult, I love having Ben with me on tour. But our relationship hasn't always been perfect. It's hard to incorporate kids from a former marriage into a second marriage. There are always tensions and issues, especially when you travel for a living. When you get home you feel compelled to spend time with your wife, but you also feel a great need to see your kids and participate in their lives and upbringing. My experience has been fraught, and I think it was hard for Ben to negotiate it, too. You have to do your best to spend time with them. Whether it's quality time or not, it's actually quantity that counts.

Ben and Sally were brought up mostly in the house I built on Martha's Vineyard. In those days you didn't think of a career or what was going to happen in five years' time, not when you were dabbling in drugs and living in the late-1960s context of "seizing the moment." I bought a plot of land, met Carly, my records were doing well -- and at the age of 25 I suddenly had a career, a wife, a home and a kid.

The house leaked and it was draughty and you could fall through a hole in the floor. It was a folly, just one step up from a kid's tree house, but Carly and I added to it after the children were born. When we divorced, Carly kept the house because it was home for the kids. It was a great place for them to grow up – until they were about 13. Martha's Vineyard is surrounded by water: you can walk from one end of the island to the other and you know everybody. When they were small, I remember Ben and his sister mostly just playing in the yard and in the landscape.

It was tough for them when we got divorced, although I don't think they were affected by reading about it in the papers. They were quite small. I think being the child of two celebrity parents – constantly defined by your connection to them – generally f***s you up, but Ben seems to have negotiated it.

I missed out a bit on their childhood, but I don't feel deeply remorseful. It sounds strange, but I think the degree to which I enjoy my life is the best gift I can give my children. They learn from what you are and what you do. It's very difficult for them to develop in the presence of an alcoholic mother or a depressed mother. I got cleaned up from drugs when Ben was four and Sally was seven. At least I never did time in jail or killed anybody – my crimes were victimless and inflicted upon myself. But I do think I was less available to my kids because of my addiction. On the other hand, the drugs actually saved my life in the early days. For a protracted time I couldn't see a way to cobble together some kind of life that would work. Drug abuse paved over that area. But addiction is a waste of time and the sooner you can get off it, the better for everyone.

Fatherhood was one of the things that pulled me towards life, as opposed to wanting to lock myself in a refrigerator. I have never found myself saying to Ben, "Don't take drugs." My history is so notorious that he could hardly take me seriously. What I said to them both was that they were going to be exposed to these things and that there would be a great temptation to do it. It may feel great and seem to solve a lot of problems, but you have to know there are some things that can really damage you. Ben moved through the teenage problems relatively quickly – he can talk about his experiences with drugs or feelings of aggression or alienation. But these days, kids have a lot of information very early. Both Ben and Sally knew more at 15 than I knew at 30, and that helped. We've always had a dialogue about sex and drugs that is non-judgmental. They knew I understood the pressure to do these things and I thing Ben's got a pretty good take on it.

I'm a better father now they're older. It's difficult when you're married to someone who feels put out by your spending time with your children and the connections with your ex-wife. The best a divorced father can hope for is to be a bridge into the world.

Ben always loved music, though he never had any formal training. His education was fragmented – looking back, it's shameful how we pulled them in and out of so many schools. They both picked up the guitar and I played with them a lot, particularly Ben, because I was around him more. Sally went away to school but Ben stayed at home and we shared a lot of music. Sally has a more developed stage style than Ben, but she is older. It wasn't me who first got them singing during my shows. The other guys in the band would put them in front of a microphone and I'd turn round and Ben would be there. It started about five years ago.

I am aware that I shouldn't inflict too much nepotism on my audience, but they seem to be interested and it's like an apprenticeship for Ben. I can't give him much because I've never learnt to do anything in my life other than make music and tour. I don't want to force him into it, but I'd like to make it available.

Part of my recovery has been physical activity. Ben's very athletic and we take a lot of vacations together, canoeing , cycling, cross-country skiing. We just took a trip down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon for one month, with Sally as well. We'd spent two years planning it. Ben and I also spent three weeks on a volunteer wilderness project, working on trails in the Rockies. We built a bridge and switchbacks and upgraded a five-mile stretch of trail. It was really good for us.

Ben and I have a two-way relationship. I probably push him around a little, but I think of him as a friend, an equal. I don't think of him as an extension of me, but it's going to be difficult for him because other people will for a while. I learn a lot from him too. It's a great thing to have your children grow up and find they're still willing to spend their time with you.

BEN: I can remember from very early on travelling with my father and thinking that being on the road and playing concerts was a very cool thing. I was enchanted by the whole process: the rehearsals, the music itself and especially the tour bus. To this day, the only time I get a good night's sleep is if I'm in one of the bunks travelling on the bus.

To watch my father on stage was amazing, and it's still my favorite thing. I can go on the road with him for a month and be awestruck every single night. I'm his greatest fan. Every tour he's ever done – and he tours a lot – I've spent a least a couple of weeks with him. He and my mother separated almost before I can remember, so I don't have many memories of him being around the house. When they split up, Mum got the house, but his presence is definitely still there. He built it and there are remnants of him in every little corner. I still spend my summers there. I've never really regretted that I hardly remember my mum and dad being together. I think it was probably for the best. I don't even know how old I was when they broke up. It was presented to me as not being very different from how it had been. Often one of them would be away working, so it wasn't as if they were always at home together in the first place. Apart from maybe a brief initial phase, I don't ever remember being upset. After my father left, I'd occasionally go and stay with him in New York, but the most joyous moments were when we travelled. We took a bike trip around Hawaii when I was 12; we went to Europe a couple of times and we sailed in the Caribbean. The places we went to recreationally get mixed up in my mind with the times I was with him on tour.

I think the child of any parents will come up with a list of pros and cons about them. But having celebrity parents certainly hasn't made life more difficult for me. It's given me access to different things, like the opportunity to travel, and I have always felt blessed for that. I suppose there is a downside, but I've obviously been quite good at defending myself against it. And now I'm trying to break into doing music, it's an advantage knowing what to expect.

For awhile I had a problem with people introducing me as the son of James Taylor and Carly Simon. But the way I look at it now is that a large part of what I am comes from who my parents are. And people introduce me like that because it does say something about me. It doesn't mean I'm any better than anybody else, or deserve to be treated differently, but I'm honored to be identified with them. I idolize both of them musically. They're great people and they never embarrass me.

I picked up a guitar when I was around 10 – I suppose it was inevitable. That was the time when I was really starting to admire my father. I'd see him up on stage and I was curious to see whether I could do that too. I asked him to teach me, and he showed me my first few chords. He was always my favorite musician, but when I started playing, everybody said I sounded so like him. And that intimidated me because I was afraid that I could never be as good. If I was going to sound like him, better just to let him be the one doing it. That fear kept me from writing my own music for a long time. Eventually I went away for a couple of months to the Caribbean to write a bunch of songs, and I fell in love with the process. But I still don't think I'll ever be as good as he is. When my father finds I'm interested in something, he's amazingly supportive, but I think it's constantly going through his mind as a parent not to put pressure on me.

I always come on to sing at the end of his show, and I sit there in the audience for the first half, looking up at this man and listening to his voice and thinking there is no way I can possibly do this. I'm nervous of the crowd and in awe of him. That only gives way as I get into the performance.

I don't know if we've got closer as I've got older, but I do think the dynamics of the relationship changes. It's now at the point where he doesn't have to feel responsible for telling me what to do with my life. Of course, now that's the position, I've reached a place where I want his advice and I ask him. That makes things more comfortable. When you hit my age and get your independence, if you're lucky it can turn the relationship into something wonderful – and that's definitely happened between him and me.

I never really went through a rebellious phase. I never had any resentment against my parents, because they never pressured me, and they never told me not to do anything. They told me their ideas, what they'd found from certain experiences, and discussed them. When I went out as a teenager and experimented with things, I was confident I could let my parents know about it. That made me feel a lot safer, because if anything went wrong I knew I could turn to them and be honest. And drugs and alcohol weren't as intriguing to me, because they were straightforward about them. They said, if you're going to experiment, that's what you're going to do, but this is what can happen.

My father's a big exercise buff, and he started incorporating that into what we did in our free time together. We dream up adventures and make plans for about 365 days of wilderness trips a year and out of that we get to take about six weeks. We go mountain biking or cross-country skiing and four years ago we took our first trip down the Colorado. It took three weeks and I loved it so much that when we got back I got a job with the company that took us. I'm a wilderness freak. When we went again last year with my sister for a month, it was a good time, but I enjoyed the first trip more. There is a little bit of rivalry between Sally and me. The quality of time I spend with my father is diluted when there is another child around to get some of the attention. For selfish reasons, I try to keep time with my father and time with my sister separate. I hate to admit it, but we've always been rivals for his attention.

I know, as a musician, that I'm always going to sound like my father and that's either wonderful or terrible, depending on how many people have told me that week! His music is my foundation, though there are clear differences. I always ask his advice and I hope I always will. All songwriters occasionally hit a block – but very few can call up James Taylor and ask for help.