Now, almost exactly ten years since his last concert at the Playhouse, Taylor – who can trace his great grand-father back to Marykirk, near Montrose – will once again take to the Edinburgh stage, his first gig in the Capital since he played the Castle four years ago.

Tomorrow's concert will see the 60-year-old revisit many of his old hits that led him to be dubbed "the harbinger of the singer-songwriter era" by Time Magazine in 1971. Which all begs the question: does he ever get bored of playing the same songs over and over again?

"It's a great problem to have," says Taylor, "because it means that you're a success and people still want to hear your hits.

"How Sweet It Is, You've Got A Friend, Fire And Rain – these are relatively easy ones to do again and again. Having the audience receive them and respond to them, it makes it that you're grateful to be doing the songs. They're almost singing it for you. They're hearing the many times they've heard it, as well as the time you're performing it. You've arrived on safe ground."

Born in Boston, Mass-achusetts, Taylor's 40-year career began when his song Something In The Way She Moves won him his first recording contract, with the Beatles' Apple Records.

Things, however, didn't get off to such a good start. At 17 Taylor committed himself to a mental institution for nine months. Addicted to heroin, he went on to lead a drug-fuelled lifestyle that even had Blues Brother John Belushi (who himself died from a drug overdose after years of hard living) worrying about the state of his friend's health.

"I'm lucky that I didn't die or that I didn't hurt somebody else more than I did or do more damage than I did," he recalls from that period.

"I should have died about five times. Overdoses, mostly. I was barely surviving, busking and sleeping in other people's flats. Then Paul McCartney heard my demo."

A then hopeful teenager visiting London, when Taylor's producer, Peter Asher (brother of Paul McCartney's then girlfriend Jane), played the song to McCartney and George Harrison, it was as if "someone had opened up a door," Taylor says, "and the rest of my life was on the other side."

Indeed, things were looking up for Taylor. For a spell. A recording contract with the Apple label ensued, and during breaks in the recording of The Beatles' White Album, McCartney produced his debut, titled, simply, James Taylor. Then the dark times appeared again.

The album wasn't as well received as expected, and when Taylor returned to New York he ended up back in a mental institution for a second time.

But he came through it and his songwriting continued, and in 1970 the release of his album, Sweet Baby James, saw him discover main-stream success, newfound fans spellbound by his smooth, baritone voice and delicate, soft-as-snowflakes songs. As Taylor explains: "I write lots of songs that I guess you could call remedial, that are sort of therapeutic. Some-times I feel uncomfortable with that, as though they are too sticky or sentimental. But that's what I do. That's the kind of songs I write. They reflect who I am."

In early 1971, Taylor's old friend Carole King, showed him her new composition You've Got A Friend. Their recording of it went on to be a major hit – going to number one in the charts and firmly established Taylor as a songwriting star in his own right.

"That was much more generous than I ever would be," he says. "She started off being a member of my band, and was recording Tapestry, and as that became more popular she would do more and more songs in the set until essentially we were co-billed."

Taylor reunited with King last month for a gig in Los Angeles, and You've Got A Friend is still a firm staple on Taylor's concert set list.

Today, though, Taylor, who turned 60 on March 12, is almost the antithesis of his younger self. A picture of peace and tranquility, the three-times married singer confessed that the memory of some of his own achievements is dim at best.

After a turbulent marriage to fellow songwriter, Carly Simon, Taylor got clean in the 80s when he met and married the actress Kathryn Walker. Now, with his third wife, Caroline Smedvig, whom he married in 2001, he is the father of six-year-old twins, Rufus and Henry.

Taylor says his marriage to Smedvig affects the way he pens his song material. Two songs reflecting that, from his most recent studio album, 2002's October Road, feature on One Man Band – a DVD Taylor made about going back to basics.

One, called My Travelling Star, "is a song about the tension between home and the road," he says. "It talks about my fictional father, 'My daddy used to ride the rails.' And the simple message is that I hope I can stop and not be addicted to moving on."

Almost four decades after his first song was released, Taylor is a multi-Grammy Award winner; he was inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000 and his Greatest Hits album is one of the top-selling albums of all time, selling enough copies over the years to rack up platinum sales 11 times over.

Yet despite this he reveals: "I can go where I want in the world with relative anonymity."

Something suggests he might have a hard job convincing the 3000-plus James Taylor fans of that at the Playhouse tomorrow night.

• James Taylor, Edinburgh Playhouse, tomorrow, 8pm, £30-£40, 0870 606 3424