The album James Taylor used to divorce Carly Simon
James Taylor wasn’t exactly at his best as the 1980s began. After dominating the 1970s with his signature brand of singer-songwriter folk rock, Taylor was going through a professional and personal rough patch. His marriage to fellow singing superstar Carly Simon was on its last legs, and his recurring heroin habit had returned. Instead of facing the issues he had, Taylor kept himself busy with frequent touring instead.
“You could fall in love, but if one of the people is addicted, it’s not going to work,” Taylor told Parade in 2022. “The whole person is simply not available.” For her part, Simon acknowledged that Taylor’s drug addiction, and his coping mechanisms to deal with it, forced them apart after a decade or marriage.
“Little by little, the unknowables started to creep in and started to forecast something greater than I would know what to do with,” Simon told Dan Rather in 1981. “He put it so well in one of his songs. … He says, ‘Angry men, hungry women.’ And I was hungry for more intimacy, and he withdrew from my emotional power.”
The song that Simon is referring to is ‘Hard Times’, the opening track to Taylor’s 1981 album Dad Loves His Work. The album’s title was a direct reference to an ultimatum that Simon made to Taylor: either he take a break from touring in order to focus on their marriage and be a more attentive father to their two children, or Simon was going to walk. The album title was Taylor’s acknowledgement that he was choosing his music over his family.
Dad Loves His Work is a schlocky soft-rock/yacht-rock album whose buoyant sound covers up some dark themes. Even though his voice is still pristine, Taylor sounds embittered towards just about anyone around his orbit – Simon, his family, his father, and his fans. Although he has since denied it, the album’s hit single ‘Her Town Too’ seems to make direct allusions to the dissolution of Taylor’s marriage to Simon.
The early 1980s would be a difficult time for Taylor. After a traumatizing encounter with Mark David Chapman, frequent touring only continued to fund his drug habits, and attempts to shake the addiction with the help of methadone weren’t working. It wouldn’t be until the middle of the decade that Taylor would fully kick his drug use, where a trip to Brazil set him back onto a healthier course. Dad Loves His Work was a particularly low point for Taylor, but it would eventually lead to a healthier life.
