(2020) Interview 'I was a bad influence on the Beatles': James Taylor on Lennon, love and recovery
Taylor boarded a flight to London shortly after New Years Day 1968. His friend had given him the number of Peter Asher, the brother of McCartneys then girlfriend Jane Asher; he had just been hired as a talent scout for the Beatles new label. Asher liked Taylors demo and arranged an audition with McCartney and Harrison. I was very nervous. But I was also, you know, on fire, he laughs. In my sort of mellow, sensitive way. He played his song Something In the Way She Moves (a line Harrison pinched for the opening line of his song Something) and they signed him then and there to make his eponymous first album. At the time, the Beatles were making the White Album. We intersected in the studio a lot, says Taylor. They were leaving as I was coming in. I often came in early and would sit in the control room and listen to them recording and hear playbacks of what they had just cut. Did you hang out together? Yeah, he says. I ask if the band was unravelling by that point. Well, it was a slow unraveling, but it was also an extremely creative unravelling.
Heroin and other opiates were very available and very cheap in London at the time. I picked up pretty soon after I got here, he says. I started by
he pauses. I shouldnt go into this kind of stuff. Its not an AA meeting. Then he continues. But you used to be able to buy something called Collis Brownes Chlorodyne, which was an old-fashioned medication. Essentially, it was a tincture of opium, so youd drink a couple of bottles and you could take the edge off. Was it hard to kick the habit, given the circles he was moving in? Well, I was a bad influence to be around the Beatles at that time, too. Why? Because I gave John opiates. Did you introduce him to them? I dont know, he says. Lennon, by many accounts, picked up a heroin habit in 1968 that contributed to an unhealable rift in the band.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/feb/17/james-taylor-i-was-a-bad-influence-on-the-beatles-lennon-love-and-a-life-in-song
Interesting interview.