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.