Carly Simon Was Afraid of the Spotlight - and Still Is

win a Grammy, and marry singer James Taylor. Her music spoke to the openness of her generation and earned her critical acclaim worldwide. In hits like Yours Sylvain, Carly Simon exuded fearlessness poise, but backstage she was grasping for both. She disliked the spotlight and had to will herself out of a case of stage fright to continue performing. When Carly Simon started out, she never planned on performing. When I started recording, that was all I was going to do.

I wasn't going to get out on stage and do anything on stage. I wanted to make demos for other people to record my songs. So I recorded, hoping that Dion Warwick would record one, hoping that Judie Collins would record. So just I just made a glorified demo. Turned out to be so glorified that that we had string players and we had arrangements, and things got more and more became something that a record company wanted. So Electric Records signed me, and that was Jack Holsman, who was the

head of Electra at that time. Well, yes, and what was the song you were trying to demo that Jack Holdsman said, let's put this out with you singing. What was that song? Well, the first demo I made in a studio had five songs, which was just me and guitar and another cat named Dave Bromberg on on a guitar. Five songs, two of which I think made it to

the next demo. There was a song called a Loan which I wrote on the beach and Martha's Vineyard about being alone and romantic and happy, and and there was another song called I'm all it takes to make You happy. There's happy songs. Then there was a song that I wrote with Jake Brackman called, that's the way I've always heard it should be, and that song I played on piano, and that that got to the next demo, and Jack Holsman heard that. Clive Davis heard it first, and as

did a bunch of other people. And they heard my first demo, and they didn't know what to make of me. They didn't know if I was a jazz singer, a blues singer, a rock and roll singer, a theater singer, a cabaret singer. They didn't They didn't know what to how how to apply me to the merchandizing scheme. Did you try to suggest to them what kind of singer you were? No, because I didn't. I didn't fit my

own self into a category. I had imitated a whole lot of people, and I had developed my own voice, but with so many influences that I hadn't I hadn't cut myself off from my influences and made a whole me. The umbilical cord was still attached to Odetta, was still attached to Annie Ross of Memberson Wis, and Ross still attached to Pete Seeger. To the various influences I mean,

I still have trouble with that. People say that the reason that I haven't been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is that they don't is that I'm not really a rock and roll singer or that, or that I sort of go in a lot of

different directions. I've made four albums of standards for example, which I didn't you know, which I didn't write, which were written by Cole Porter and George Hirshwin and Rogerson Hard and the great, the great people who could write great songs for singers because they weren't one and the same in that period. But what's interesting to me is that when you are years old, that's the way it always should be. Is your first song that's a hit song? Yes,

and you wrote that with Jake. And I want to explain to people because everybody, I mean many people know Jake Brackman as a famous songwriter and partner reviewers. Where did you meet him? I met Jake at summer camp. We were both counselors at Indian Hill Camp in the Berkshires, and Jake was the um, the swimming counselor, and he also taught literature. These were very lardy kids, and I was the guitar teacher, all all the kids met me for the first time. They had known each other from

the summer before. Jake wasn't there yet because he had hepatitis and was in the hospital. But they said, oh wait till you meet Jake, you'll be you'll just fall in love with each other or be friends for the rest of your life. I don't think anybody had ever ever quite introduced me to somebody before I actually met them with those terms that they would be lifelong friends.

And the day that he got there, they prepared to cook out, the campers did, and they said, now we want you to come down to the cookout, and Jake will come down to the cookout, and you'll stand opposite each other, but with with your backs to each other, and at the count of three, you'll turn toward each other and you'll see what we mean about that, your two halves of one person. And so it was one

too three. We turned across this fire which was raging between us, and we both smiled and we recognized each other in ourselves and vice versa, and it was quite amazing. And Jake just dropped me off here today. What was it about him? Was he writing? Songs and was he he was a musician and into songwriting, and no Jake was at that point he had just graduated from Harvard. He was the editor of The Crimson and he went

in he was writing for Newsweek magazine. He was writing for Talk of the Town, and he was he was the young writer on the scene. He was the young prose writer on the scene when we started writing songs together. He then also got into to working with Terence Malock and he worked on Days of Heaven and on bad Lands, and he wrote King of Marvin Gardens with Jack with Jack Nicholson in that, and so he's he's a man of all words, most of them quite quite funny. He's

an unusual beyond journalism in screenwriting. He was a lyrict as he was writing lyrics. He had never written lyrics before. But I had this melody Da da Da Da Da Da Da Da da da and the whole song because I've written that for for an NBC special called Who Killed Lake Erie. That was the background music for that. So when I was going to make this demo, I couldn't get lyrics for it because if I write a melody first, I can't seem to find lyrics to it.

It's got to be the other way around. I write lyrics first, and so I had this melody and Jake was by then my best friend, and I said, do you want to try to write a lyric? So I gave him on a little cassette. I gave him that melody, and he came back a day or two later with with a full lyric except for one verse, which we edited out. My friends from college. There all they have their houses, and there they have their silent news, tears, angry their children hate them for the things they're not.

They hate themselves, Oh what they and yet they drink, they laugh, Close the wound, hide the sky the lyrics because they're very pungent lyrics in that song. They hate themselves for what they are. Who is he talking about? Well, his girlfriend was just about to move in with him. Jake and I lived apart, will live one block away from each other, but we shared each other's lives and our friends were each other's friends, and I met most of the people that I know today through through Jake

or vice versa. So his girlfriend, Rickie was just about to move in with him, and he realized that she was going to be moving into his rooms. And that's an invasion of territory for certain people. And it, I mean, it means a whole lot. It means not only are you going to be in my rooms, but you're I'm not going to be able to get you out of my rooms if you're living with me. So from Jake's point of view, that that song was, you know, are we going to marry? Are we not going to marry?

And we had talked a lot about marriage and a lot about the fact that being in love with somebody, living with somebody didn't necessarily indicate that you had to get married, as it had a situation for our years. We're different, Um what what? What? What? What situation of yours? Were you referring the men in your life? Every man that I was, that I was with, I felt I had to marry if I was going to sleep at them, or if I was going to have sex with him in any way, I felt as if I as if

I had to marry them and have children. And so times were changing, and this was this was a very different era that Kennedy years were upon us and the hippie dom, the Woodstock era. The times were hugely changing. I mean, I didn't didn't necessarily have to marry the person that you were living with and raise a family of our own, you and me. Um, that's the way they I've always heard it should be you want to marry me, and then oh, will marry you, but resignation

with resignation exactly. And so that's how the song really came to life. Was about the disillusionment of my parents marriage, which was about walking home at night and tiptoeing by my mother's bedroom and she she calls out, sweet dreams, but I forget how to dream. And my father sitting in the the room with his cigarette, cigarette glows in

the dark. And so it's it's it's all about the separation of the people who are supposed to be married or supposed to live in one happy house together, really not happy in living in that house. Now that affects you when you see them. You wrote a book, and a lot of it includes some of your childhood and your marriage and everything. You know, you're both your marriages and you I think your book only goes up through your first marriage. But the idea being that you know,

what do you leave in and what do you leave out? Well, you know this was very important. When I first got asked to write my memoir was six and I was and I was called on the phone by Jacqueline Onassis and she said, Carle Carling, you would make a wonderful

writer of a memoir. And so that's how I started, and I wrote about sixty pages at that point, and realizing that I was leaving out the very nucleus of the story, which was about my parents and their marriage and the the thing that happened to their marriage, which was that which was the great divide of having my brother's tutor come to live with us, and he and my mother fell in love, and that was a separate relationship which existed in the same house that she lived

in with my father and us and and all and all of the kids. So trying to leave that out was almost impossible when that formed the very essence of me that I was trying to write about in the first place. Everything was a lie. Everything that I saw as the truth I was denied the veracity of. And so when I said, well, Mom and Dad are still in love, aren't they, to my older sisters that say, yes, they are. They're very much in love. And then I would ask my mother and father. You know, you don't

ever kiss? Can I see you kiss? And my father would bend my mother down in a theatrical kind of bogus kiss and looked strange to me. There was something very awful about it. But I was supposed to believe that they were in love. They would perform for you, tend to mollify you well once and then she was off with what was what was his name, Ronnie? Where was Ronnie from? Ronnie was a teacher or he was going to teaching school at Columbia at the time. He

was nineteen and she was forty two. And where was he from? Ronnie? He was from Pittsburgh, Ronnie from Pittsburgh, and they were they were in love for many years. It killed my father a combination of that relationship that she had with Ronnie and the fact of his relationship at Simon and Schuster, where he he started to do things in a in a way that the accountant who they had brought on board in the company, this guy

named Leon Schuster, didn't want him to do. And so therefore my father, at the same time as as he became sort of sick with grief over or his relationship with my mother. He got more and more out of the loop at Simon and Schuster, and they sort of tried to move him up or out of the mainstream with Max and Leon and and that kind of killed him all further. And then he drank too much, too much, he ate too much ice cream and smoked too many cigarettes,

and that made him ill. And so it was a perfect storm and he got and he died at the age of sixty. Now signed for people who don't know the Simon and Simon and Schuster was your father and company. Yes, at the met Max Schuster, his old college friend from Columbia. They met they were both selling pianos at Steinway, I guess at Steinwan soon and they said, let's let's go out to lunch and let's let's go into business together.

Oh what shall we do? What about books? And so they made a little sign which they put on the office at the office space that they had rented, saying Simon and Schuster publisher what book? And the first book that they published was the Crossword Puzzle Book, which made them a fortune and which started them off with great footing, with good footing, great speed, opportunities to galore, and they

were the very center of the publishing world. And yes, yes, and your mother where My mother was from Germantown, Pennsylvania. Her mother, she by, was Cuban and came to the United States on a banana boat. She was Cuban, but she was from Africa, but her grandmother had spent some time in Cuba. I have the whole lineup. Are your part black or you part of Cuban or both? I'm black. Yeah, she's an African Africa. Yes, your maternal grandmother. Yes, and

she was African and went to Cuba. That's right, that's right. And then she was schooled in England, and so she spoke with an English accent and she was shamed of what she probably didn't even know she was, but she bleached her skin her whole life, and so she passed as white. But she spoke with an English accent. And we used to always ask her about what her background was, and she would say, when I die, you will find nothing but nothing. And I never talked about the past.

So we weren't able to get very much out of mother. Yes, we weren't able to get anything out of her, but she was such a character. Did your mother have a career? My mother did not have an official career. Now, she was a singer, but she and she was a wonderful singer, but she her career was raising her four kids. In your home and your father from a young age becomes a very successful uh publisher in the name, is really

a pianist. In fact, when he when he had a bunch of heart attacks and strokes towards the end of his life and he didn't have his mind and he didn't have the capacity of the full fullness of his mind, he always thought he was going to Carnie Hall, when in fact he was just going downtown to dinner with my mother. And you'd say, Sis, you forgot to get off at fifty seven Street. I'm gonna be late. Because he always thought he was going to be playing it.

He didn't always think, but once in a while he had the fantasy that he was going to be playing at Carney Hall. He was a great pianist. Yes, so music in your home is classical music on the part of my father and a circle of people coming in and out of your home who were celebrities. And I have two uncles, one on my father's side and one on my mother's side, started jazz magazines, one downbeat and

the other metronome. So they were very good friends and they and they had all the drummers and the jazz players in this house that we lived on the eleventh Street, so there was music from from the jazz era. And then my mother always sang the show tunes because this

was the great era of of Oklahoma. And Carouse and Porgy and Bess was actually for formed for my mother and father first by George and Ira Gersh when they came over to our house and my mother was asked to sing summertime since she had a beautiful soprano voice, for them to see how it would sound in the

soprano voice, or to see what it's it's. I don't know exactly what they went over there for, but my mother ended up singing soprano and on summertime, and my father ended up ended up correcting a couple of her notes, and that embarrassed her tremendously, and she always used that as the excuse as to why she had an affair and cuckold at him one of them. Yes, yes, now, now your brother, you've got two sisters. What did your brother end up doing for a little my brother is

a photographer, very well known photographer in his field. He's got a bunch of books out. And he started by touring with Bob Marley, and he toured with a grateful Dad, taking all of their their pictures. And then then he's um oh, and then here he was the Mets. He was the official Mets photographer. And he's he's done a wide varieties. Is an excellent photographer. And your sisters, My

sisters are both musicians, Myers. My eldest sister, Joanna was was an opera singer of some merit and quite a lot of class and finesse and stature, those four things. And she was very good. Besides, and she she was a soloist with a lot of different conductors, Eugene Ormandy and and and she was in New Yorker, or she was with Ormandy in Philadelphia. She well, she sang with orchestras all over the world. Yes, she sang with subin Mayta and shared of time. So you and your sister

played together. Correct. My sister Lucy, now she hasn't been mentioned yet. She is the middle sister, and she um she is a composer of music for the Broadway Theater she wrote The Secret Garden. So you and Lucy used to perform to Lucy and I were saying, as the Simon and sisters, Yes, where you and what do you wish? They asked the three when we're going up fishing for her and fish they live in the beautiful sea that's

of silber, and go that we said we can? And Lincoln and and was that around the time that you were in your mid twenties, when we were about to break out with your It was? It was when earlier? It was when I was in college. Where'd you go? I went to Sarah Lawrence? Of course you know why there's a joke and the and the and and you were singing with her in what clubs in Manhattan? We decided one summer she she had learned some chords on the guitar, and um, we only had one guitar. But

we wanted to spend the summer. We wanted to go up to the Cape for the summer. So we hitched up to the cape. Was the Cape always a part of your childhood? Was that the Simon family, Yes, it was a part of your child martha S vineyard was, and so we we basically hitchhike up to the cape with one guitar, and and and went to Provincetown and we got a job there and we had to learn

immediately some more chords on the guitar. But we kept on switching around guitars and we played things like the Banana Boat song, which we didn't know that my grandmother had any any any part of being a part of at that point. But we sang other Harry Belafonde songs too, and we sang folk songs. We sang some Joan Bayaz, but we expanded our repertoire that oh yes, yes, definitely, and we built the ship Titanic. When does it change?

And when? Because when I think of you, just not only in your work, the quality of your work, the beauty of your work, the range of your work, the songs in terms of them, some being fun and playful and something really sad. All of a sudden you go from being this child of privilege in Manhattan and you're in this famous family and everything, then all of a sudden you become a big star. Was that difficult for you?

It was? It was difficult on many levels. It was difficult because, um, it was actually the summer that Lucy and I played in London. It was and it was the summer of the Beatles, and it was the summer of the King's Road, and it was such a great time. And I fell in love with an englishman who was sort of a manager and a mentor, and Lucy fell in love with with a man that she was seeing, a doctor who she was seeing back here. And when we we we had a kind of a falling out

over Sean Connery, actually, which is in my book. We imagined ourselves to be sort of vying for his attention in some quirky way. It went around to that. And when we got back to the United States after that

summer of sixty five, we stopped singing together. Whether it was because of that rift over Sean Conner over Sean, or whether double a seven, or whether it was the fact that Lucy was was in love with her husband who's still her husband, David, we kind of went our own separate ways, and and I got courted by Albert Grossman and John Court, who who were Dylan's managers, and they called me over to gross Court. Was that period

the day before Bob Dylan's motorcycle accident. I met with him with Bob Dylan, and he rewrote a song for me that was uh An Eric von Schmidt's song called Baby let Me Follow You Down, and he rewrote it for me, and as he was rewriting the words, he just he was very high. This was the cause of his accident. I don't think it's any secret is that he was really going nuts with drugs at that point.

But he stretched out his arms like this, like that and say, just believe me, believe me, you gotta go to Nashville, go to Nashville and do your record there. And then the next day he was in then even back then, Yeah, this was just I guess after was that after Nashville Skyline. No, it couldn't have been. No, no, but he had just done some some recording in Nashville, and he thought that is the place that I should

record my record. But because he was just getting together with the band at that point, so and I and I was getting together with Robbie Robertson to go into the studio and do some work with that song that Bob Dylan had written for me, as well as um a song called just Because I asked a friend about her. George Jones song, is it he she thinks I still care or he thinks I still care in that in

the case of me and so Um, I worked. I worked with Robbie for for for that week, went into the studio, had a bad couch experience with the with the engineer who put the song in the wrong key for me. I sang it and what was supposed to come out as what does bad couch experience? It means you know the Hollywood couch experience to couch you, Well, yes, I wouldn't. I wouldn't be used be couched. I refused

to be couched, and so they kind of sabotaged. I felt that record in response to your anti couching policy because I got up from the couch and I said, I am not that green, not knowing what I amanned at all, but I thought green was a good color to say. I wasn't. So you feel that he might have been some malicious tinkering with the song, Well, yes, And I was shelved at Columbia because that was the label I was going to be on. This was six, So I was shelved for three years, at which point

I became a fat secretary. What does that mean? I worked for a television production company and where it was called Canean Productions in New York, where was their offices on Street near CBS West Way West. And and you you did that for how long? A year? Not three years? A year? Yes, but I was fat for three years. Now for you, what's fat? You're like ten pounds overweight? No, I don't. I would think. I waited about hundred sixty.

And you got there was a result of what There was this thing that was advertised as milkshakes, and they were to be bought at this place on forty fifth Street, and they were advertised and they were the most delicious things you'd ever tasted. But it promised that there were only forty seven calories, but and that they were all really ice, that what you were eating was ice. I don't remember. I don't remember, but but the lines were

around the block. It was it was a sham at any rate, and were eating this beverage thinking that I was gonna I was losing weight. I was eating them. Were stashed them in the freezer and eat them for weeks and gain weight and more weight and more weight. Well, I met Jake around that time too. At the end of that the end of that period. During that period of working for Cane and Productions is when I I started working for their TV show called from the Bitter End.

And I was the talent, yes, but it was a TV show that was based on the Bitter End, and so they had performers such as Marvin Gay and and they had come they had the same type of performers that would be at the actual Bitter End, and and I was I was the person who would take them tea and would see that they were they were happy and happily ensconced in their dressing room. When when the song with Jake, That's the way I always heard it to be came out was what year and what happens?

You become famous, you become successful? Well, all right, So then I made my first album, which which I thought was going to be a collection of demos, and that's the way I've always heard it should be. Was on that record. Jack Holsman thought it could be you know, it could if I promoted this record, it could possibly be something, and he asked me to perform. And I was asked actually on the basis of the album to

open up for Cats Evens at the Troubadour. This was just after the record had come out, which was the end of seventy and so I said, oh, no, no, no, you know, I don't do that kind of thing. I just um, I I was this, this album is just for other other singers to hear and hopefully pick out a song for them. But Jack Holsman and Steve Harris, the A and R man at Electra were persistent and they said, well, what would it take to get you to perform with Cat Stevens to open for Cat Stevens?

Who's who who has asked for you to open his act? And and I was thinking on my feet and I and I've been reading Rolling Stone, and I followed James Taylor's career. I didn't know him, but I was following his career because I thought he was absolutely totally great, and I knew that he was on the road, and so I also knew his whole band. And I said, okay, get me Russ Kunkle as a drummer, because I knew Russ was on the road with James. And so the

next day, It's amazing how how things work. Stars are aligned. The next day I got a call from Jack Holsman saying, okay, well, Kuncle's available when to rehearsal start? And I said, what do you mean Uncle's available? I said, well, James was just in an accident, in a motorcycle accident yesterday. All these motorcycle accidents changing in my life, and so be careful. What you wish for goes on its way. So so

I started rehearsals the next week. But Jimmy Ryan, who became my guitarist for many, many years, and Paul Glance, a friend of Jimmy's, and the three of us rehearsed in New York for three days, and then we went out to l A rehearsed with Russ for one day. And by that time I hopen open for Cats seven, six April six. Yes, and that changed things for you. That was that. That was a convincing night. We played two shows every night and four shows on the weekend.

I met all all kinds of people. It was like the lights were shining on me. I couldn't I couldn't say no at that point. And I and even though I was suffering tremendous stage fright, I had various things that tricked me out of being afraid did you move to l A? No? No, No, you never lived in l A? No? Why well? I lived in l A for various when when James and I got married, we lived in l A to make certain records there. But you visited or did you visited? We rented houses. In fact,

the house that bought after him we lived in. Yes. Did he like l A? Did James like? I think we both found it agreeable and and it was convenient while we were recording. Studios were right there l A too. Sally was actually both the kids were just brand new and were able to be with. We could take them to the studio and there was no school to be involved. You know, it was it was, It was great. It was really great the years that Where did he like

to live? What was home to him? Martha's Vineyard? Yeah, that's home to him. He was mostly comfortable there, it was, Yeah, but he's most comfortable there, not in New Yorker either. No, No, I don't think either of us were really And we kept on trying to figure out what to do all the time in New York. We neither of us really knew what to do. How did poaching Kunkle for your recordings in l A lead you to and you don't have to talk about this if you don't want to.

Your first marriage, well, I met James the first night that I was performing at at the Troubador. He came backstage into the dressing room too, I don't know, see Russ or see me or whatever, and he was just kind of sitting sitting there in the corner until Joni Mitchell came in and said, come on, James, we have to leave now. So that's the first time I actually

met James. Even though we passed and met a couple of times on the vineyard in a peripheral kind of way as youngsters, as as very young kids, we've met his family had been up. And then how soon after that did you get married? Well, then we we met.

After that, we met the following Thanksgiving. Well, the Thanksgiving I went to his show at Carnegie Hall and I went backstage in between acts and I said to him, you know, we we said hi again and how are you and it was just, you know, it was in between the show and everybody was drinking beer and James's band was hanging out and James said, and I said to James, you know, if you're ever in New York and you want a home cooked meal, please please give me a call, and he said, how about tonight, And

so that was That was the first of many home cooked meals. There's one big home cooked and one large home cooked meal. I'm sure with someone who is as talented as you, and it made so much music as you have so much great music, someone who's as gifted

as you, there must be countless moments like that. But share one with us when you were doing it, when you're in a studio or you're performing, or you're doing a duet with somebody, something in your life as a musician that it just sticks with you was like, this is it, this is what it's all about. There's so I'm very lucky that so much comes to my mind. That it's very hard to pick up one because there there are many many. Um which one do you want? You choose? Give me one from give me a hint.

We'll give me one from when you did the songbook, when you did the Sanders album. Stephen came to the studio to the recording studio while I was recording it, which was live with an orchestra, Not a Day goes By, and I was pretty tense. That Stephen Sondheim, the Great Stephen Snheim, who had written the song that I was singing, was in the studio very proprietary, but his material, yes.

And so I was in the in the vocal booth, and there's a little window in a vocal booth, and so I wanted to avoid the window because he could see me through the window. So I hunched down on my knees. I got down on my knees and did the vocal sitting on my knees in a in a in a slightly compromising position because I just had to hunch down. And then I got up at and it was a fairly I thought it was, under the circumstances,

a pretty pretty good vocal. And I got up afterward, and I walked back into the control room and his head was in his hands and he was weeping with with tears of gladness. I'm happy to say, what a wonderful thing. Oh God, that's that's pretty heraldic. Not a day goes by, not a thing, but coming up. Carly

Simon talks about the roots of her stage fright. I talked to another musician from New York, this one from Queen's who also defined his generation people who weren't prepared for for what it is that I was in the world that I came from. Nobody nobody said, well, will you make your living as an artist? But that wasn't it possibility? Certainly, you can make your living as a rock and roll artist. And I mean forget about like the greatest songwriters or something like that, just even a songwriter.

Take a listen to my entire conversation with Paul Simon at Here's the Thing dot Org. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Carly Simon has earned every bit of fame she's achieved, but one could argue she was destined for stardom. Her childhood was peppered with remarkable characters. Albert Einstein at the dinner table, Jackie Robinson playing second bass in her backyard. As a grow up,

she amassed her own exceptional circle of friends. One spontaneous evening that I will never forget I was lucky enough to count myself among them. I get the call from Jim, your ex husband, Jim Hart, and Jim calls me and says, now, Carly, and I I would love you to come to the house and we're gonna have a quick El Fresco meal. Don't be late. It'll be you and Carly and I and a mystery guest. And I get to the house and you know who shows up. And I'm apoplectic, you know,

I mean, I was beside myself. I don't know what to say because she turned me Jacqueline Kennedy, and she said, to me, so tell me about acting. She said, I want you to talk to me about acting. Was my son John is very interested in acting? And literally I remember looking at going you want me to talk to you about acting? I said, you're kidding, right? And now then,

how could this be possible? But did you feel you're friends with the former First Lady of United States, one of the most famous women that ever lived, and other friendships of yours that I've known, Mike and Diane, you were very friend with Nichols and his wife? And uh is that easier for you? Did you find in your life that is your life progressed for you? Was it easier to be friends with people who had the same kind of issue, have fame and so farther as you did?

I don't think so. I don't think that really had very much to do with it. I mean, I met Jackie originally because of the book idea that she had and because she was working in that business, she was working at Double Day. But I also met her on the vineyard before, at a party at the Styrons and Bill and Rose Stein's, who see, the vineyard has a population that includes a lot of great sort of literary figures, Bill Styron and Art buck Wall, John Hersey and Mike Wallace.

Lilian Hellman was actually the first of those people, and she she probably attracted the Styron's up there, and it just became an enclave that particular area of the vineyard.

And so when James and I got married, we were we were half in that scene and half in the carpenters, just the people who were who were building our house, and we played volleyball without on the lawn and went clamming with and but there was a kind of a nice melange of of those two groups, and James and I weren't were not the only people who straddled both sides. Because because I don't necessarily think it's easier to be

with celebrities. I think if you have friends, I mean, in the first place, I think it's very hard to make friends past the age of thirty. That's um. I find that that a lot of the celebrity friends that that I've made because the attraction of the similar, similar celebrities attract or something don't don't you, or they're they're they're they're not they're not wholesome in a certain way. And it's a little bit like being with the record company.

When you don't have a successful record, and the first record that you've had that's that's really successful, you get a first throw for your bed, you know, and then the next one you haven't done that well, and you get a Cartier pen and then then finally you you've really dropped off the charts, and you get like a little basket that's filled with with shredded paper and a shampoo from Keels, And so in that way, it's a little bit when you're sort of courting the friendship of

somebody that you're a new friend with and you're so excited that you've made this friend who you've admired from afar for so long, and you sort of you court them with attention and things that don't don't continue as you get to know them, or they or they offend you once, or there's a falling out, or there's a there's a disruption, or there's a jealousy, or there's something, and then then there's a you know, the first year

of courting, there's there's there's a great gift. Now I'm talking about the metaphor of a gift because it can

come in all different ways. And then and then it decreases down to, you know, the Santa Claus slippers, and there's not there's there's there's a kind of a feeling that you're only as good as your last present from them is, and and you're so easily you're so easily wounded by things that they do, or if they don't write you as long an email back as you've written to them, you know, you count the number of lines that you've written here, I wrote this whole long letter

about what you meant to me and all the things we did together. And then they answer you back saying I'll file that away. Love. You know, I find that for me. I'm remarried, and I've got little kids, and I've got a three year old or one and a half year old and a five month old. I've got three You've had three kids in three and a half years. I have exactly what I wanted. But my friends fall off because I've had this choice and these I've got my kids. My wife is my dear friend. What about

friends from high school? I'm in touch with one guy from high school and he lives in Norman, Oklahoma. But I'm not in high school. Like I said in my book, high school was a skin that I shed. All I care about is now, can you discipline yourself to that degree? It just happened to me automatically. Don't they refer to the best? Um? I just don't want those things to intrude sometimes like I cancel. I mean this, the smells, the things that you eat, the the sensory, those beautiful

things and good things, you know. I mean. I walked around after a very corrosive custody battle, and even when I thought I it had subsided, I'd be having dinner with somebody who they'd mentioned themselves, or someone close to them whose circumstances mirrored mind, and it would come right back to me. If you could see the sparks coming off my fingertips. I was so charged. What about all the good things too. I mean that's different, but so but how can you how can how can you segregate

them to that degree? It's just it's just how do you write a song? Well, that's how do you sing the way you do? It's a talent. I have to take my feelings. I can't. I can't. I can't explagate in the same way that you seem to be able to. I mean, I I write about things that I feel, and the past and the present and the possibly the future merge. And I can't possibly tell you that that my past isn't just as much a part of my

present as my present. I mean, it is your your your combination, your wholeness becomes it's parts of like your building blocks of your years. So for the person who was preternaturally shy, it seems you don't really enjoy performing. You've always are quoted as saying, what do you do? I mean, as you have a preparation before you fly on an airplane, was there a preparation before you performed live? Well, you want to get back to the origins of why I'm so afraid to be in the in the spotlight?

Or is that I mean because I had a terrible stammer for for ever since I could talk. Your mother told you to sing, so she told me yes. But that didn't always work in school. I couldn't do that. They didn't have butter at school, and so I I um every time I was called upon in class, even if I knew an answer, I couldn't say it. But I didn't want to admit that I couldn't say it. So the choice was to just pretend that I didn't know it, or pretend or just go? Which would you do?

So I pretended that I didn't know the answer, and then I I never wanted to be called upon, and that and that just that just graduated to the same thing in college. I mean, the same situation in class in college, and the same situation. I am afraid to talk. I am doing so now by the very skin of my chinny, chin chin. Where is that? I'm mixed? I miss mixed a metaphors. What was the preparation before you would perform? Well, at least my band members would all

have to hit me, spank me. That's that was on the couch again. No, that wasn't on the couch. That was definitely and just before I go on stage, so that the physical pain would would override the emotional struggle. Yes, that's interesting, Yeah, just as when I mean, I was once sitting with Stephen Sondheim on on a piano bench. He was working on that show called Merrily, and I was starting to have an anxiety attack and just getting more and more um thinking that my heart was going

to beat out of my chest. I was so scared. It wasn't there was no reason to be. I was just having an anxiety attack, and so I pinched my ear lobe, thinking that that the physical pain again would distract me from the emotional fear. And the blood started pouring out of my ear onto my white unto my white shirt. So I mean, yeah, but I'll do anything to avoid that mental pain that I remember. Johnny Ray was a singer from this from the fifties who would cry when he would sing, and I'm the same way.

There's some songs I can't get through, like what um, well, just recently that's the way I've always heard it should be. I was singing that for a group of people who were trying to learn it because we were going to do it for a concert on Martha's Vineyard, and I got to the verse about you say, we'll soar like two birds through the clouds, but soon you'll cage me

on your shelf. I'll never learn to be just me first by myself, and I just it just all came flooding back, all the feelings of being possessed and wanting to possess and wanting to wanting to combine. You just we're just sitting here as human being so much wanting to merge, and yet we can't. And it's so frustrating we can't. So we're sitting here. You mean you can't and your you and that partner, or we meaning all of us can't. All of us can't. Isn't amazing? Oh God,

there is such an authority on love. There are times that there are times so sorry I asked you to come here. And now. One of the things that that that does make you blend more easily, that acts as a as a lubricant to being able to pass yourself to another person is music. And it is the thing

that is the common denominator. Is something that you listen to at the same time you feel at the same time you It goes through your body at the same time, the vibrations the actual vibrations you are felt in your body, and and that's a way to emerge. That's certainly was my way of merging, because that's something that I could do. But merging together when when James and I used to sing together, that was about as great as it got. You thought that way? Or yes, absolutely, he felt that way.

Do you think he dug doing them with you too? I don't tell you. I don't know what. Do you how he felt with you? He's pretty reticent. Yeah, he wouldn't say that, but my my my kids would and do, and I sing with them and we are as one when we sing. My uncle he would always end everything that he did with this song called look at the blue Birds and the blackbirds. Do you know that song? I don't know why I thought of it, but but

I'm gonna sing it if I remember it. Look at my doorstep, look at my doorstep, Look at the blue birds, look at the blackbirds, look at the good luck, look at the bad luck, look at the good duck and the bad luck. There we never knew bluebirds, knew any blackbirds, never knew blackbirds knew any bluebirds, never good luck ever to perch out there. I overheard boom boom boom, those birdies talking boom boom, boom boom, And this is what they had to say. Now, first the bluebirds saying, you

gotta have Sonny, you wearther. So the bluebirds and the blackbirds got to getther. And then the blackbirds said, we're birds of a different fairther. So the bluebirds and the blackbirds got to getther. Well, when they talked it over, they let the blackbirds bring the rain, and then the bluebirds all agreed to bring the sunshine again. But you can't have rain of sunshine that lasts forever. You can take those bluebirds, you take those blackbirds, you put them together,

you get fair weather. And that's the reason the bluebirds and the blackbirds got to getther. I did in his key, not in mind, but what the hell live Jesus Martha's vineyard zone Carly's son that thank you, thank you. After our interview, I realized I still had a couple more questions for Carly Simon, so I called her up. Hey, Alec, who were the people who are your contemporaries, who you worked with, who made the deepest impression on you? Um, well,

it would have to be certainly James Taylor. I mean why, Well, before I met him, I listened to his music and it stirred something very immediate and heartfelt and specific. I mean, there was an arrow that was directly from him to me. You know. One one of the things that the incredible pain that I feel from not having that returned, you know, from from not from not having that accepted in the words that James will not talk to me. That that's not that, that's not a mutual thing, and I don't

know why. And it's one of those things where you have to you have to go on and live the destiny of your life by yourself. His music had a tremendous effect on me. Cat Stevens did too, because I was listening to a lot of of his music around that time. But then there was there were um all all of the great musicals of the of the forties and fifties, especially Guys and Dolls and Kiss Me Kate at Brigadoon, South Pacific, um uh, you know I And then there was the the operas like a Mall and

the night visitors like like the Manati operas. And because there was so much music of different of different um types going around, my house. Joey was the person who brought in the classical music, but so in my father because he played the you know, he he played such a variety of classical music on the piano. And then and then Joey was the opera singer, and she brought that into the house and in that form. And and then my mother was the one who primarily listened to

the to the theater music. But my uncle's were both the founders of jazz magazines and and they they were, you know, they were the ones that listened to Dave Brubeck and and Lamberts, Hendricks and Ross and brought those people. So there were there was a whole huge variety of of visitors in my head of of all kinds of music. I would say that that other than Polka's, I didn't listen to a lot of Folcus And I didn't I wasn't very much in the country music at that time either.

I mean, it wasn't it had hadn't made itself into mainstream. But but yeah, I didn't. I didn't love the twang. You see all these songs about love, thoughts about love, or in so many of your songs, who's the love of your life. Well, I guess my kids. But that with that question, I think he probably understand that it's just, um, it's it's breathtaking, how how much, how on a different, on different level it exists, and but it teaches you

about it teaches you about a brand new level. And and as far as romantic love, I don't I don't necessarily want to go there because that doesn't necessarily last as long as as as the as the other kind of soul of I mean, I suppose there must be some people who favor one child over another, and that must be very hard for them to say, well that it's both of my kids, with three of my kids, when it's really only one. I don't know. I don't have I haven't had that experience because because I love

my children equally and so much. In this this is a lot left over. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to. Here's the thing