Aaron Neville: Love Songs & Hard Living

YEARS OF BAD CHOICES AND CRIPPLING ADDICTION MADE A MESS OF THE SINGER'S LIFE-BUT LOVE, FAITH AND SOUL GOT HIM THROUGH

- JANINE RUBENSTEIN

Today Aaron Neville is a happy, healthy 82-year-old man living on the New York farm he shares with his wife, Sarah A. Friedman, 56. Surrounded by animals and fresh air, he's found a peace that had long eluded him. "If I had my life to live over," says the singer over Zoom, "the things I would and wouldn't do: I wouldn't get a tattoo on my face. I wouldn't put a needle in my arm. I would try to be the best person I could be."

Growing up hustling and singing alongside his siblings and future bandmates in New Orleans, the Neville Brothers frontman and five-time Grammy winner-best known for his silky R&B classics like "Tell It Like It Is" and multiple hit duets, including "Don't Know Much" with Linda Ronstadt-has survived a life as rocky as his tenor is smooth. An early stint in jail for stealing cars, along with a decades-long struggle with heroin addiction, brought him to his knees time and again.

Looking back, Neville-who relapsed and began self-medicating with his first wife Joel Roux's prescription pills while grieving her death from lung cancer in 2007 ("I was a nasty case. I had been with her since I was 16. I knew nothing," he says)-credits his Catholic faith for giving him strength in his darkest times. "God carried me through some hell of a terrain," he says. But Neville, a dad to four children, emphasizes he's also done the work: "I feel like I had to see what I saw. It took who I was and where I came from to make me who I am." Here, in an exclusive excerpt from his gripping new memoir Tell It Like It Is (out Sept. 5), Neville relives the highs and lows of his tumultuous journey to success and sobriety. 

One of five children born to parents Arthur and Amelia, Neville made noise from the very beginning.