Less than a month after the tragic demise of Aaron Carter, his buddy and supervisor Taylor Helgeson is responding to criticism that he did not do sufficient for the 34-year-old singer, who had struggled with addictions to medication and alcohol for a lot of his too-short life.
“It seems like people are more upset that we didn’t publicly expose him. Why would you do that? To somebody you care about? If you really want to help them, you talk in private,” Helgeson tells Yahoo Entertainment. “And Aaron had real friends, real family. We talked much in private. We did a lot of work. You know, 2017, we had to take him to treatment. We did that.”
Helgeson had been mates with Carter for years, and he labored with him on his 2018 album, Love, by co-writing a few of the songs and touring with him. He mentioned that Carter requested him to assist handle him within the final yr.
“We know what we tried. We know what we did. I sleep easy at night knowing I tried my best for my friend until he died,” Helgeson says. “And if it was a cartoon and we could have tied him to the ground and dragged him to the treatment center, then we would’ve done that. But it’s not, it’s real life. And there’s a helplessness that comes with watching somebody go through addiction.”
He took specific difficulty with feedback from Melanie Martin, Carter’s on-again, off-again fiancée and the mom of their 1-year-old son, Prince. In response to feedback Helgeson had made about Carter’s demise, she accused the supervisor of getting “had a hand in his relapse.”
“This man did nothing to help Aaron. He enabled him so much,” she wrote. “All he did was put a wedge between Aaron and I for the party to start. He tried to take over and brought him things that should have NEVER been brought to anyone. Let alone an addict.”
Martin charged Helgeson with having “overworked” his consumer and persevering with to make use of him to receives a commission for interviews. (Yahoo doesn’t pay for interviews.)
Helgeson says there have been enablers round, however he was not considered one of them. He mentioned that when Carter requested him to handle his profession, Helgeson had insisted that he discover a extra secure dwelling life. Both he and Martin had accused one another of home violence.
“It caught me off guard to see those comments from his ex,” Helgeson says. “This was kinda mind blowing.” Especially as a result of, Helgeson says, he had insisted Carter take a while off.
Personally, Carter had voluntarily enrolled himself in outpatient rehab, in an effort to regain custody of his son, who’d reportedly been positioned with Martin’s mom on court docket order, and he was planning to reconnect with estranged relations, together with his brother Nick.
Then he missed a studio session and a present.
“And that was so unlike him. That was concerning. That was different. That was behavior we’d never seen before,” Helgeson explains. “Somehow he’d always managed to show up and, in the last month, two months, it changed. It changed a lot.”
Helgeson noticed his buddy for the final time at a recording studio, the place they have been going to work on a sequel to Love, two days earlier than his demise.
“I hadn’t seen him for a few months until I saw him then. I could just see by his face, how bad he was doing. Instead of having a recording session, we ended up… I wouldn’t call it an argument,” Helgeson says, “but we ended up having a talk. And he had to leave the session. You know, it wasn’t hostile. It wasn’t anything like that. It was just, you’re not OK right now.”
And that was it. Helgeson says he misses Carter very a lot, however he does not blame him for his addiction.
He needs individuals to know that his buddy was greater than no matter they assume they know.
“He was a giver. He was an incredibly generous person. And he loved people. He really loved people. And I think some of his downfalls were… he was open and really wanted that love back that, you know, when anybody would criticize him or make fun of him on the internet, he took those things really seriously. It really, really affected him,’ Helgeson says. “And that is the place you’d see a few of that habits of him kinda lashing out again, as a result of he’d be so damage. It wasn’t that he was offended, you recognize. He was a really delicate particular person, but additionally simply an extremely giving and beneficiant buddy. I imply, you could not ask for a greater buddy than Aaron.”
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