A Tapestry, and Double-Dose of Magic (on Carole King and James Taylor, Troubadour and Breaking Addiction)

My plan for today was to write on evidence-based med­i­cine. But that can wait, at least until the morn­ing comes.

I came upon the most won­der­ful record­ing of a con­cert by Car­ole King and James Tay­lor played in Novem­ber, 2007 at LA’s Trou­ba­dour Club, a place I’ve never been. PBS aired the video, about an hour long in its fuller form, for its June fund-raising drive. I have tick­ets to see the pair at Madi­son Square Gar­den in a few weeks, and had seen yes­ter­day morn­ing a heart­en­ing review of the old friends’ joint con­cert tour.

Sweet Baby James (1970)

Even within the lim­its of our old TV and noth­ing approach­ing a Dolby sound sys­tem in our liv­ing room, the images – the sounds and smiles gen­er­ated by Tay­lor and King, fix­tures of my child­hood – made me trem­ble with joy. It was lovely beyond ver­bal expres­sion and I felt, among other things, glad.

Here’s the med­ical les­son — a sur­prise for me was Taylor’s aston­ish­ingly well appear­ance, in a born-in-1948-and-still-strumming sort of way. I’m speak­ing as a doc­tor now, as some­one who’s used to eying peo­ple for signs of ill health. He looked fit, com­fort­able and happy in jeans and a button-down blue col­lared shirt. He grinned broadly while he sang, surely tak­ing none of this for granted.

I couldn’t help but reflect on his past. He seems to have made it out of the woods. And how dark those were – to a teenager lis­ten­ing and watch­ing him from afar, circa 1973, it seemed like he might not pull through. For pur­poses of this post, I’ll stick with the parts of Taylor’s health his­tory that fell into the pub­lic domain long before the Inter­net entered our homes and minds.

Tay­lor, the son of a Harvard-trained physi­cian, strug­gled with depres­sion and seri­ous drug use, includ­ing heroin addic­tion, for years. In 1969 a motor­cy­cle acci­dent broke his hands and feet.  In the same decade as he offered fab­u­lous bal­lads — anthems like “Fire and Rain” and King’s “You’ve Got a Friend,” famil­iar even to my par­ents’ gen­er­a­tion — he rav­aged his body and then his marriage.

Tapes­try (1971)

King’s per­sonal story is less known to me, but the lyrics to Tapes­try are deeply ingrained. I know them as I know the red car­pet, flow­ered wall­pa­per and stodgy fur­ni­ture of my old bed­room. She looks beau­ti­ful now. Older and gray, for sure, but nat­ural, lovely, lively and play­ing strong.

The two together, even on TV, deliver a double-dose like magic. They’d per­formed together, in 1970, at the Trou­ba­dour and now were doing it once again, with grace. The gen­uine­ness of the friend­ship between them, man­i­fest in King’s glances over the piano toward Tay­lor and what might have been a few tears, and his beam­ing toward her, could not have been staged. They’ve had some dif­fi­cult times, for sure, but this was beautiful.

I’m afraid I’m gush­ing roman­tic, but as a doc­tor I’ve seen so many patients who’ve suf­fered through hard times alone, phys­i­cal and men­tal ill­nesses with­out any­one to turn to. You have to won­der, to what extent did Taylor’s sup­port sys­tem – his dad, who report­edly drove to retrieve him from some tough spots – and his endur­ing friend­ships and his fam­ily, old and new, help him to recover.

Not all drug abuse sto­ries end like this one. Our gov­ern­ment reports, based on a large 2003 sur­vey (which may under­es­ti­mate use of an ille­gal sub­stance), that nearly 120,000 Amer­i­cans said they used heroin in the month before the sur­vey and 314,000 took it the year prior. From 1995 through 2002, there were approx­i­mately 150,000 new heroin uses per year in the U.S. Most were over 18, male and addicted. As for depres­sion, the num­bers are huge and deaths, very real.

What I’m think­ing is this — how lucky Tay­lor is to have had the friends, fam­ily, finan­cial resources and courage to get the help he needed. The mes­sage he con­veys is that it is pos­si­ble, at least for some, to get through it, to get bet­ter and to move on.

And for me, how lucky I am to have those tick­ets. I can’t wait to see them in con­cert later this month, in per­son, live.