They were friends once. Pretty obvious, because Jason Isbell and Ryan Adams have a lot in common. Not only are they highly talented songwriters, there are few better in the Americana genre these days. They also both have a history of addiction. While Isbell has been sober for 11 years, Adams has only recently managed to get off alcohol and pills – and with it may/hopefully behave better in the future. Adams is now touring again through America and the countries that still want him. Apparently he couldn’t find a concert agency in Germany recently. The past still weighs too heavily.
When it became known in 2019 that Ryan Adams had treated a number of women badly and exchanged sex messages with a minor whom he believed to be of legal age, not only the business partners but also most friends withdrew – or stayed, but said like producer Don Better nothing to do with the matter. (Obviously none of this was justifiable, at least there were no charges against Adams, but he could not bring himself to come up with a real apology until months later.) John Mayer or Benmont Trench continued to play on Adams’ albums, Lucinda Williams found some balancing words. Jason Isbell first criticized his own role: “I was disappointed in myself that I didn’t even realize what was going on there,” he said in 2020 in “GQ” magazine, and that he has since thought more about his friendships and about what kind of friend he wants to be himself. “But above all, I feel sorry for the people, the women, who had to endure all this.” Of course, anyway.
Three years later, when asked about his former friendship with Ryan Adams, Isbell is still struggling with the right attitude on the difficult subject. We brought this up because Isbell wrote a song called “When We Were Close” about a friendship that just couldn’t be saved. He quotes a Townes van Zandt and a Steve Earle song, suggesting that the song is about his colleague Justin Townes Earle, who died of an overdose in August 2020. Isbell doesn’t want to be specific: “I prefer not to talk too much about it because I think the song is self-explanatory – and if not, then I probably didn’t write it well enough. It’s about complicated relationships and someone who died before there was a chance to make up. This feeling: Maybe things wouldn’t have worked out between us anyway, but now the chance is definitely over.”
When Isbell talks about the difficult dealings with addicts, he’s also speaking from his own experience – so he doesn’t have any easy solutions to offer. “I’ve experienced it myself: At what point does the help that others give you mean that they are supporting the wrong behavior – and thus preventing the necessary development? Where’s the limit? It’s definitely very narrow, and it’s also constantly changing. There’s no one-size-fits-all rule for that.” Now how about Ryan Adams – does he deserve a second chance? “There should always be room for forgiveness – but the person who wants that forgiveness has to do something about it! First something has to happen from the side. In Ryan’s case, I don’t know how he’s developing. He’s playing concerts again, and Brad Pemberton and Don Was and so on are supporting him – but otherwise?”
Isbell sighs, it remains complicated. “If all this happens in public, it’s even more difficult. Desiring forgiveness is not the same as expecting rehabilitation. So wanting to restore the image. Forgiveness has nothing to do with bad reputation or fame. To be honest, I find that songwriters at the highest level already get more than they deserve anyway. We don’t work as hard as normal people. We have it very, very well. After all, nobody has the right to be a famous songwriter. You have the right to write songs and perform and all that, but you can’t expect it to make you better than everyone else. So if someone is a little less famous now, so what? That is much less important than real forgiveness.”