All by Herself
Still going strong, Carly Simon discovers a new life on her own.
By Lynn Sherr
July 2004
Carly Simon settles into a sofa, her long legs forming an upside-down V -- knees together, ankles out -- as she flips through a leather-bound journal filled with fragments of song lyrics. "There's a really good one here. Oh, please be in here," she says, searching. Simon has filled scores of these books over the years with her musical inspirations. "I never stop writing," she says.
That's because songs are how Carly survives. She overcame a debilitating childhood stutter by turning her sentences into a rhythmic rap. She banishes stage fright by singing to one member of the audience. As she dropped into the valleys of her otherwise monumental career -- the breakup of her marriage to James Taylor, a 1997 mastectomy, periods of what she calls rejection by the music business -- Simon endured by writing her precise, confessional ballads, 20 of which are packaged in her latest CD, Reflections. Hits like "Anticipation," "You're So Vain" and "Coming Around Again" became the soundtrack of a generation, their sometimes bittersweet flavor part of the appeal. "Even hurt is nurturing," she acknowledges today. "It's like a seed that gets planted, that's eventually going to be a song. I'm going to find some comfort for myself, and if it's a really good song it might help other people too."
Simon grew up in a privileged New York family -- her father was a founder of book publisher Simon & Schuster -- of three musically gifted sisters: Lucy became a composer, Joanna an opera star. Carly's first album, 1971's Carly Simon, included the huge hit, "That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be." Her next chart-topper was "Anticipation," which she wrote at age 26 while waiting for a date with singer Cat Stevens. "I was nervously twitching around," she recalls, "going to the mirror to see if my hair was okay, to the other mirror to see if I didn't look too fat."
Her biggest song by far, "You're So Vain," the hymn to male narcissism that has been the target of endless speculation, was inspired when she watched a man walk into a party and flamboyantly wrap a scarf around his neck while gazing at himself in the mirror. "I just said, 'God, he's so vain,' " she recalls. So who is he? Carly merely grins. "I don't say who it's about because it's just one of the very few things I've managed to keep a secret."
"She is very strong, but you mustn't let the obvious strength confuse you about her fragility," says her good friend Nora Ephron, the director and screenwriter for whom Carly wrote two scores. "And you also mustn't let the obvious fragility confuse you about her strength. She's both."
Nowhere is that more evident than at home on Martha's Vineyard, where Simon, now 59, lives alone. Most days she gets up before dawn and spends time working on music or lyrics. By daybreak, she has slipped into a robe and set out on her rambling property to photograph the flowers, with only the dog for company.
"It's like a fairyland," she explains. "And I feel like a waif in a foamy night-gown, floating with the dappled sun." Later, the mood changes when she pulls on boots to spend hours mending fences and stone walls. In the evenings there's painting, or more music.
This is where she ultimately moved with her children, Sally Taylor, now 30 and married, and Ben Taylor, 27. Both have musical careers of their own -- and sound hauntingly like their parents. Simon is flattered that they acknowledge their roots. "Instead of putting us aside and saying, 'Don't ever talk about my parents,' they've both taken the stance of, 'What a compliment.' " Sally and Ben, she says, "were my closest ties, and continue to be my closest relationships."
No longer close is her connection to James Taylor, 56, who is remarried, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000, and whose latest album, October Road, went platinum shortly after its release in 2002. "I would say it's nonexistent," she says of their relationship. "I talked to him going down the aisle, bringing Sally to the altar." That was almost a year ago. "It's not the way I want it."
In 1987, four years after she and Taylor divorced, Simon married Jim Hart, a poet and businessman. Although they have not lived together in more than a year, and see each other rarely, they talk on the phone constantly. "We're still married and we still adore each other," she says. "Maybe we'll actually find some way of living under the same roof together in a different environment. Say it's a very atypical marriage." Carly's pain is visible.
Her son, Ben, once told her, "You don't have a nervous system. It lives in a plume outside your body." She admits, "I don't like competitions. I can't watch horse races because I can't stand it that one horse loses. Whenever I play games, I always give the win to other people." Famously sensitive to criticism, she can still quote negative reviews from decades ago.
But this vulnerable "social hermit" -- her phrase -- isn't retreating to her beloved private island kingdom. She's just bought an apartment in Manhattan. And there's that notebook, filled with the words that will become the music that keeps her going as it connects her to the rest of us, forever.
