Words by Riley Fitzgerald
Graphic by Press

In a new interview with The Guardian, singer-songwriter James Taylor reflects on the time he spent in London while signed to the Beatles‘ Apple Records in the Sixties.

Taylor arrived in London in 1968, at the height of the counterculture.

With drugs so readily available and the 20-year-old Taylor more than readily indulged.

At the same time, John Lennon had ended a long flirtation with alcohol and LSD was also moving on to harder substances.

“I shouldn’t go into this kind of stuff,” Taylor shares. “It’s not an AA meeting. But you used to be able to buy something called Collis Browne’s Chlorodyne, which was an old-fashioned medication.”

“Essentially,” he continues, “it was a tincture of opium, so you’d drink a couple of bottles and you could take the edge off.”

“I was a bad influence to be around the Beatles at that time, too,” James reveals. “I gave John opiates.”

When asked Taylor is unsure if he introduced the Beatle to them or if Lennon already had experience using the drug.

“I don’t know,” he states.

Towards the close of the Sixties, both John Lennon and Yoko Ono would both go through periods of heroin addiction.

“Heroin,” John shared with Rolling Stone in 1970.”It just was not too much fun. I never injected it or anything. We sniffed a little when we were in real pain. I mean we just couldn’t – people were giving us such a hard time… We took H because of what the Beatles and their pals were doing to us. And we got out of it.”

John would eventually get clean in 1969 and write ‘Cold Turkey’ about the experience.

Or so the story goes.

Others contended Lennon and Ono continued to use the drug up until the time of Lennon’s death in 1980.

In the book, The Lives Of John Lennon author Albert Goldman claims that Lennon did not kick the habit until 1979 and that he only did so with the assistance of a sensory deprivation tank.

Taylor himself would enter a rehabilitation center a year after being released from his Apple Records contract and returning to the US in 1969.

You can read the full Guardian interview here.