James Taylor, a 49-year-old father of two grown children, says he's finally grown up.
"I feel like I'm a man now," Taylor said. "I used to think you were a man when you were 30. In my case it was not true."In the past year, Taylor's second marriage ended, and both his father Ike and best friend and musical collaborator, Don Grolnick, died of cancer. Three years earlier, he lost his brother Alex to alcoholism, reminding him of his own struggles with heroin and alcohol.
Taylor said he was aware of the troubles of growing up when he sang "Let the boy become a man" on his 1971 album "Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon."
"It just takes a long time to get here," he told Time magazine. "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."