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Last week in Chapel Hill, Isaac and Trudy Taylor, who were recently separated, reminisced about the children and their musical success. "I always had paternal fantasies about my children doing something collectively for society," Dr. Taylor admitted, "though I guess I had something like the Mayo brothers in mind." Their musical mother is also proud. But she, too, recollects that in those days "I always assumed they'd be doctors." Like so many parents in an age of affluence, the elder Taylors provided their family with a free and loving childhood, apparently dedicated to scrupulousness in behavior, delight in the natural world, self-expression and faith in the day-to-day goodness of human nature. At the same time, they assumed that their children would automatically develop the driving will to endure the tough, pragmatic grind usually required for worldly success. The contradiction, as a great many parents and children learn, can cause great strain. "The basic orientation in my family," Livingston Taylor remembers, "was that simply because you were a Taylor, you could and should be able to accomplish anything."
For James, trouble began after he was sent off to strait-laced and demanding Milton Academy, outside Boston. Says he: "There were things going on in my head other than what the Milton people thought was right and proper." Milton's dean, John Torney, recalls James with a sigh. "We just weren't ready for him," Torney explains. "James was more sensitive and less goal oriented than most students of his day. I'm sure James knew about drugs long before anyone else here."
Soon thoroughly miserable, James nevertheless struggled on for the better part of 3½ years, well liked but withdrawn, notable mainly for his height (he was known as "Moose") and for a certain mastery of poetic metaphors in English class. He dropped out for part of a term, and with Alex, he joined a North Carolina band called the Fabulous Corsayers that played straight rock 'n' roll. Back at Milton, he grew suicidal, and at 17, he signed himself into the McLean Hospital, a mental home in Belmont, Mass.