STILL SINGING THE BLUES

By SAM ALLIS/MARTHA''S VINEYARD

At 49, James Taylor has lost his hair and gained a great American face. It is a face out of Steinbeck: long and spare, radiating intelligence and surprising strength for a man known for his soft lyrics. His friend Yo-Yo Ma says Taylor possesses an inner steel core that has helped him survive the traumas in his life. There have been plenty. Last year alone, his second marriage ended, and both his father Ike and his best friend and closest musical collaborator, Don Grolnick, died of cancer. Just three years earlier, he lost his brother Alex to alcoholism, a tragic reminder of his own struggles with heroin and alcohol.

Taylor is by nature a shy man, most comfortable expressing himself through his music, but in a recent in-depth interview with TIME, he reflected on how those ordeals became rites of passage. "I feel like I'm a man now," he said, gazing toward a misty saltwater pond outside his home on Martha's Vineyard. "I used to think you were a man when you were 30. In my case it was not true. But you come to a time in life when you have to step forward. It's too late for me to be a boy anymore."

Strange words for a middle-aged father of two grown children, Sally, 23, and Ben, 24. But Taylor has been painfully wrenching his way into manhood since 1971, when he sang, "Let the boy become a man" on the album Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon. "I was aware of that back then. It just takes a long time to get here," he explains. "Recovery is part of it. Death is part of it. Love that goes bad is part of it. Failing to be a parent is part of it. You have to fail over and over in order to become a man."

Those struggles suffuse Hourglass (Columbia), Taylor's 17th original album, which will be released next week. The CD boasts an array of guest collaborators, including cellist Ma, Stevie Wonder, Sting, Shawn Colvin and Branford Marsalis. But it is vintage Taylor, blending ironic detachment with personal reflection. In Enough to Be on Your Way, the finest song on the album, he probes in part the death of his brother. During recent rehearsals with his band in Los Angeles, there was a long silence in the room every time he finished playing it.

Taylor has prospered in the fickle world of popular music for almost three decades and sold 29 million records by writing timeless songs like Sweet Baby James and You Can Close Your Eyes. Along the way, he has created a distinctive musical idiom. A James Taylor song is instantly recognizable for his limpid voice, sweet melody, deceivingly simple harmony and faultless guitar work. Its lyrics are those of an outsider. Yet unlike his contemporary Neil Young, Taylor is no musical rebel. He may have refined his idiom, but he rarely transcends it. His songs are as familiar and comfortable as old flannel shirts and just about as exciting. Even so he continues to please. Last month a large outdoor crowd at the New Orleans' Jazz and Heritage Festival sat through a downpour to listen as he played new tunes and old favorites. For aging boomers in particular, he mirrors their own misadventures with drugs, marriage and parenthood. For many of them, he is family.

"Some people see the things I do as a lot like what they're going through," he acknowledges. "It may provide them company in the loneliness of being human." At the same time, intense fame scares him: "It can't be true and it can't be sustained," he says. Over the years, Taylor has acquired a reputation for moral integrity, and as a result, he is flooded with benefit requests from politicians and causes. He remains proudly political, "a lefty like my pop," a genteel North Carolina physician who was an Adlai Stevenson Democrat and a strong advocate for socialized medicine. The doctor's son is appalled to think of the market as the answer to America's problems. It leads, he says, to "an armed-camp mentality."

The market forces of the record business have changed dramatically since Taylor began his career. His breakthrough album, Sweet Baby James, was made for a mere $8,000 in 1970. Hourglass, which was recorded in a rented house on the Vineyard, cost $400,000. One thing that has not changed is the often bumpy transition as an artist moves from oblivion to stardom. It can be a scary ride, and it almost killed Taylor. "I was just swept away," he recalls about his bouts with heroin and alcohol. He has been clean and sober for 13 years, and is convinced that 12-step programs are the only answer to substance abuse.

There is now a new woman in Taylor's life. He plans to build a house, improve his French and learn to play the cello. But the same angst that led him into drugs is still there. "I'm an entertainer, so I'm very sensitive to what other people's judgment of me is," he confesses. "When I engage someone else, I care very much what their opinion of me is, perhaps more than I might at this age." For Taylor, it seems, there is no escaping the loneliness of being human.