James Taylor is an American Standard

10 months in a psychiatric hospital and a star by age 21 — now a new album, memoir join 100 million records

James Taylor in the 1970s. Public domain photo via Wikimedia Commons.

James Taylor is back with a new album, American Standard, and a memoir showing how his life story — including 10 months in a hospital for depression — made him a major artist by age 21. At 71, he’s back.

“These are the songs that Lennon and McCartney listened to and that so many of my generation that got started in the ’60s,’’ Taylor says of the new album. “They’re so much more sophisticated than what music has become .’’

“Break Shot,’’ his new memoir, read aloud on an Audible audiobook, describes the “break shot’ in pool: one hit scatters the balls in every direction. It’s a metaphor for the way his family and world were rocked during his teenage years in the mid-1960s.

James Taylor songs have roots in his family’s depression and joys