by John Taylor
65 A Million Tiny Seductions
Although I had often been extremely depressed and despondent because of the state I had gotten myself into as a result of not being able to control my intake of drugs and alcohol, I wasn’t ready to accept that many of my “problems” were intimately tied up with mood-altering substances.
I just thought the problem was that I was so fucking unhappy.
I was difficult to be around. I felt hemmed in. I would go from one situation to another, but whether I was in the studio or at home with Amanda, wherever I was, I just didn’t want to be there.
And I should have been happy.
What was the matter with me? I’d actually bang my head against the wall and moan, like the character in the Monty Python series, “What is wrong with me? Why is it all so difficult?”
No life skills.
I must have missed those classes at school.
I did have my daughter, and I was determined that she would be a music lover, so I was particular about her musical diet. I could sing Bob Marley songs to her any time of day, and our one-hour “Kool and the Gang Dance Class” was compulsory. But when I look at photographs of myself from that time, I see someone who is clearly in pain, is suffering from some undiagnosed disease of the heart.
The struggle was not with little Atlanta. She was a funky playmate whom you could take anywhere, but her mother and I both had issues and they were rearing their heads, unresolved. Surrendering to family life was not easy for either of us.
I found myself resenting those who looked from the outside to have a regular family life. I would pull up at traffic lights and look into the SUV stopped next to me, look at the family on their way to a ball game, kids and parents having fun together, and I would hate them.
I was angry because I just couldn’t seem to make that side of my life work. Simon had been diligent about his family. There was never any doubt in his mind about the importance of having a strong family structure, and his three daughters were thriving. He had a family who loved spending time in each other’s company.
Yes, I now had my own daughter, but her mother and I could not settle down. Once the novelty of playing house had worn off, we both reverted to our old ways, looking outward in very different directions. Our needs could not have been more different.
Amanda was a decade younger than I, and she was just getting into the big schmooze, the million tiny seductions required to make her famous. When I came home, I wanted to chill, and she would be off out. We were not on the same planet. All we had in common was Atlanta.
What was the price of a normal life? Another deal with the devil? Maybe it was time to start talking to the guy in white. God?
In 1994, with the strain on our marriage becoming increasingly apparent, we started going to therapy.
The sessions lasted an hour, three or four times a week. One of us would go in first while the other waited outside in the car. At the end of the week, we would do a session together and see if what either of us had learned independently could be applied to practical use as a couple. I was not sure we were really getting anywhere, but at least we were still together.
I had done therapy before and was a pretty competent manipulator of therapists. There was power and comfort in knowing I could get my way. But this time it was different, and pretty soon, it felt like my psyche was being held together by these sessions.
I had to go to London to work with the band, and I said to the therapist, “You have got to find me somebody. I need somebody in London that I can talk to when I get off the plane.” I didn’t think I could go straight to see the band. I needed somebody in between.
So I got off the plane at Heathrow and went directly to visit a therapist in Earls Court. I talked to him for twenty minutes or so, until he stopped me and said, “I am not the person for you. Go and talk to Lois Evans at the healing center in St. John’s Wood.”
So I called her and gave her my sixty-second pitch: “I need to see you. I need this, I need that, me, me, me.”
“I think I can fit you in—how about seven thirty?”
I went up there and fed her the same old lines I’d been giving every therapist I had ever seen: “Poor me.”
And she saw right through it. I’ll never forget what she said.
“If you can get sober, you could really be somebody.”
It was the most extraordinary line, and it made absolutely perfect sense.
After everything that had happened in the eighties, part of me wanted to say, “But don’t you know—do you know who I am?” But another part of me knew exactly what she meant.
She said, “John, you need to get sober. If I am going to treat you, I need you to be clear and consistent. And while you are drinking and taking drugs, however frequently or infrequently, I cannot get at you. I recommend you get into a thirty-day rehab. Take the time off work; you can afford it. The best ones are in America. I will give you the names and numbers of a few places and I suggest you go and call them right now, because if you can get sober, then we can get at what the trouble is.”
I made a call to the Sierra Tucson center in Arizona, and they said, “We will send you a package right away.”
Then I called Nick.
“I just met this woman and she thinks I need to go into treatment. She thinks I am one of those Betty Ford types.”
“No. Really? Do you think you have got that kind of a problem?”
“I don’t know, man.”
A few days later, the package arrived.
It was a video.
I put it on. Images of people holding hands and saying prayers filled the screen.
I couldn’t believe it. What the fuck was this? For a day or two I had been relieved, buoyed by the thought that maybe there was a solution, but this couldn’t possibly be it.
What did I need with holding the hands of strangers reciting prayers? I had done that back at St. Jude’s. I needed something more specialized, more sophisticated.
A few nights later, I went out with my brother-in-law Bruiser. We went to the London Coliseum to see Tristan and Isolde. It was long and difficult, and when we got out I was thirsty. We went for sushi and one drink, and the next thing I know, we are at Chelsea Arts Club ordering shots at the bar. Then I’m back in the West End, alone, after midnight, at Brown’s, scoring blow, and then, later—much later—at some stranger’s house, telling people that the key to success lay in Buzzcocks, talking a load of fucking nonsense.
So confused. Don’t know the way forward, don’t know the way back.
Some impulse got me on my feet and out of the door. It was way past dawn. I had no idea where I was.
I needed to piss, I needed to shit, I needed to vomit. I needed a cab. Was it a cab or was it a winged horse? Whatever it was, it got me back to Ossington Street. It must have been ten in the morning when Amanda answered the door with Atlanta at her side. Atlanta had so much to tell me. Important news about bears and horses.
I couldn’t tune in to her frequency. I was letting everybody down. Badly.
There was a wisp of a thought, that maybe Sierra Tucson was the way to go.
I had a day of work ahead of me, but that wasn’t going to happen. Another dead day ahead.
Amanda took control. She told me to go to bed. She would call the office.
66 Tucson
When I woke up, it was already evening, and I just knew. I was going to have to go through with the rehab. Call the damn place, pay the price, and deal with the praying and hand-holding when I got there.
Rehab. What a loser. Was there a more blatant, obvious acknowledgment that I had totally fucked up my life? As I lay in bed with last night’s booze and drugs oozing out of my pores, I was haunted by the familiar wave of regrets: the opportunities I had wasted in the eighties, the bad choices I had made, over and over, again and again. What an asshole I was! “I could have been a contender.”
Et cetera ad infinitum.
Was it really alcohol and drugs that had washed me
up on this beach of disillusionment at the age of thirty-three? Disillusioned is exactly what I was. The illusions had all long gone.
I had been in London for less than a month. Perhaps two or three weeks had passed since I had been told I could “really be somebody” if I could stop using drink and drugs.
I flew out to LA on the Thursday, giving myself a long weekend to acclimatize, maybe one last party, and booked myself a flight to Tucson for the Monday morning. Atlanta and Amanda stayed on in London, Atlanta assuming Daddy was off to work again. The band supported this trip of mine into the unknown.
Monday morning, I was driven to the airport by my assistant, Bev Raff, who had been working for me for some months. I was in turmoil, didn’t want to go, trying to talk myself out of it, looking for an escape route. Out loud I said, “This is pointless, ridiculous. It’s just going to be a waste of time.”
Thank God she wasn’t a yes-man. If it had been an episode of Entourage, Bev would have said, “You’re right, JT, fuck it. Let’s go to Vegas instead!” But she didn’t; she kept on driving. After a moment or two, she said, “You never know, John, you might make some new friends.”
“Fuck you!”
LAX loomed like prison gates. There was no turning around. The rehab center was several miles outside the city of Tucson, Arizona, set deep in the heart of nowhere. Hot. Dry. The facility building looked a little like a seventies motel, the rooms set around a swimming pool area. I had stayed in worse.
Except if you needed to leave this place, you had a long, hard walk back to civilization. I suppose you could have arranged to have your wife meet you outside the gates with the getaway car, like a prison break, but as far as I could tell, contact with the outside world was to be extremely limited.
• • •
On arrival, I was processed by the duty doctor. I signed the papers and put my life into the hands of the medics. It was an act of faith, the first faith I had in years. I didn’t see it like that in the moment though; in the moment it was terrifying. I was paranoid and filled with suspicion this might be a conspiracy—by bandmates, wife, assistant, whoever—to get me out of the way, get me sectioned, committed to an asylum. I was so in my head, so sure that I had become such a useless piece of meat, that they would all be better off without me, would like to see the back of me for good, that I thought this might be my One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest moment. Lock me up, put me on meds, and throw away the key.
The first two nights, they don’t let you into the main house, not until they know that whatever you’ve got in your system is out. Sometimes it’s longer. After forty-eight hours, I was given a small double room, which I shared with an Aussie guy who worked in TV. Two single beds, simple but clean.
The philosophy at this particular rehab was to empty your body of all toxins, so there were no processed sugars allowed, no processed food of any kind, no soft drinks, and no stimulants like caffeine. Cigarettes were allowed in designated outdoor areas, but I was really only ever a smoker when I had a drink in my hand or a coke rush going on.
As I was coming down to my natural state, all vulnerable and exposed, the therapists started to zap me with huge amounts of information—philosophical, biological, psychological: This is what happened and why you got into such a mess, and this is what you can do about it.
It was all about us, as a species, but it was also very much about me. Apparently some of us are more likely to succumb to addiction than others.
I was one of those in the “more likely” category.
Why else would I be here?
I was introduced to a new idea in rehab, that it wasn’t necessarily my fault that I had not been able to control my drink and drug use, that I had something not dissimilar to having a defective gene that was unable to process alcohol and drugs in the way that others could.
• • •
I had never talked about my drug and alcohol problems with the guys, and certainly not with my parents. It’s not the English way, and I had way too much shame about it. But here, it was talked about all the time; it was all anyone talked about! I took to rehab, to the work and the analyzing, and to the psychology.
It was unavoidable that I would be somewhat of a celebrity. There were too many videos on MTV for me to be incognito. Everyone knew who I was, eventually. But what could I do? Grow a mustache?
I wasn’t given any special treatment though. I was just another addict among addicts. After all the time I had spent in isolation, absorbed by my uniqueness, I liked the feeling of camaraderie there, the problem sharing.
Not everyone had the same enthusiasm as me. A lot of them were there because the boss had ordered them to do something about their drug use if they wanted to keep their jobs, or their wives had said something similar about the marriage, or a parent had told the off-the-rails offspring, “You won’t get another penny out of your mom and me if you don’t get a hold of yourself and stop drinking.”
I had always thought my problems were down to the bad choices I had made and because I had been a stupid, bad person. The idea that this might not be so was a revelation. Rehab was not judgmental. I was told, essentially, that I belonged to the branch of Homo sapiens that could not process alcohol properly, which meant that all that lack of control had not been my fault.
It was no one’s fault.
One unexpected benefit that would come from accepting that I had a disease I had been born with would be the dissipation of all blame, toward everyone and everything—myself included. That would in turn point me in the direction of love, learning to love myself and those around me in a way I had not ever been able to do before, nor had I thought it would ever be possible.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean you stop apportioning blame overnight.
And who are you going to blame when you feel like shit and your life is falling apart around you? Someone who is very close to you, someone you have at one time loved very much and who most likely loves you right back. When you are angry and lash out, it’s those closest who get sideswiped.
I expressed a lot of anger toward my parents. They were at the top of my blame list. Recently, I had gotten quite mean with them. We had stopped having conversations, per se; I just punished them any chance I got, wanting them to know how much pain I was in and how I was struggling at the game of life. The poor things, they just could not understand where I was coming from but, then again, neither could I. Not until now.
Third week at rehab was family week, and the patients were all encouraged to invite their most intimate and significant family members for a week of fun, games, and inward-looking group therapy that would prove to be useful and insightful to all.
I called Mom and Dad.
“4742163.”
“Hey, Dad, I’m in Arizona, at this hospital-type place. It’s good, good. I’m learning a lot about myself.”
“Really, John? I’m happy to hear it. Your mother and I have been worried. Where is Atlanta?”
“At home in London. Dad, they have a family thing here; it’s a week where all the relatives are invited to come and take part. Do you and Mom want to come out?”
“Oh John, I don’t think so. It’s a long way, isn’t it? I don’t think your mom and I are really up for that. Thank you though.”
“OK, all right. Fine.”
I hung up.
Typical.
Family week would turn out to be an extraordinarily powerful event, even without Mom and Dad. They would have most likely spent the week in a state of daze and confusion anyway; just getting over the travel, and the jet lag would have been challenging for them. This would be work I would have to do without them, but perhaps it would not be too late for them to benefit. Amanda came out with Atlanta, who, at two and a half, assumed she was at a resort.
Family week works because it is not just about your own family; you get to see how other families deal with their issues, and everyone takes part in everyone else’s process.
Again, not very English, not at all. There
were fifty or more of us in rehab at the time I was there, broken down into five groups of ten or so. Everyone in my group took part in our family therapy, and we took part in theirs. It was mind-expanding, beautiful. I wish everyone could have an experience like that, and I will be forever grateful for it.
I was ready. We saw a lot of pain, and equally, a lot of healing.
67 Day 31
After thirty days in rehab, reality TV has no interest for you. Too much real life and too many real tears, all that pain and vulnerability.
I had never been exposed to so much feeling, nor had I ever been encouraged to talk so openly about my own feelings. In rehab, I understood how easy it could be to love someone I had known only for a few days, having been exposed to their heart and soul.
Loving in a new way.
We talked a lot about honesty and authenticity, a word and a value I have since become obsessed with. It’s about not acting, but being who you are, being prepared to honestly present yourself to the world.
On the last day, our group therapist chose a song that she felt was representative of each person, and everybody held hands while she played this song.
Just like in the video.
For me, she chose the Foreigner song “I Want to Know What Love Is.” It’s one of my favorite love songs of all time. My friend Mick Jones wrote it for his wife, Ann, Mark Ronson’s mom. Everybody was bawling by the end of that.
The people I met at rehab formed the first sober group that I had around me. I exchanged a lot of phone numbers and stayed in touch, and when I was playing dates in cities around the United States, I’d look up the guys from rehab.
But one by one, they almost all fell away. They would say, “I don’t really do those meetings anymore,” “I’m not getting anything out of it,” or “I think I can drink.”
But I didn’t feel like that at all. I knew I couldn’t drink, and I felt better. The fog, the existential fuddle, the paranoia, and the self-hatred that were in me when I went in, it all cleared quite quickly.