Girls Like Us

by Sheila Weller

  In 2005 Carly recorded her fourth album of standards, Moonlight Serenade. It became a huge adult contemporary hit. Many older artists—Rod Stewart and Linda Ronstadt, among them—recorded standards. But for Carly alone they were not a warmed-to novelty, but rather a plumb line to her childhood. She followed up that success in February 2007 with Into White, which also invoked the past, its title song written by her old friend Cat Stevens. The most arresting track consists of Carly, Ben, and Sally singing a slow, spectral version of James’s achingly beautiful “You Can Close Your Eyes,” which he had written for Joni. James had been a drugged-out, absent father during Sally’s and Ben’s childhoods, and that fact had anguished Carly. Now, like so many second-chance older dads, the decades-straight-and-sober James Taylor was earnestly arranging play dates for his and wife Kim’s young twin sons. A woman did have to have the placidity of a river to put up with life’s stream of ironies.

  In early 2007, Carly and Jim Hart finally divorced. Ending her second marriage, to a man she deeply loved, was crushing. Still, in time, as ever, a new man emerged in her life. Richard Koehler is different from the others: not a musician, not a writer. Rather, he is a (handsome, blond) laparoscopic surgeon and former combat Marine, some years Carly’s junior. Additionally, Sally and her husband, Dean Bragonier, moved onto Carly’s Vineyard compound, where Ben, too, lives. In early autumn 2007, while Carly was recording a new album of almost all-new songs, Sally gave birth to a son, Bodhi. Thus Carly is now a grandmother, as are Carole and Joni. And so the river flows, the circle game repeats, the rutted road gets easier to walk down.

  And that is how it is for all three of these women—all three of these girls like us—who were born into one female culture and changed it—year by year, song by song, risk by risk—so sweepingly and daringly.

  SOURCE NOTES

  Most of this book was reported through interviews that were conducted in person, by phone, and via e-mail. The majority of sources were interviewed numerous times. My list of interview subjects appears, alphabetized, in the Acknowledgments; my articles and book sources appear in the Bibliography. Here is a nonalphabetized rundown of the sources I most relied on for each specific chapter. A few sources spoke only on condition of anonymity, an accommodation I agreed to only after feeling confident of the respectability of the source’s motive for the request. In other cases, people who were elsewhere named in the book requested anonymous sourcing for one or two particular anecdotes or opinions. In these cases, “a confidant” or “a friend” is used in the text, and the person is generally not re-enumerated as “Anonymous” below.

  The following publications are abbreviated thus: Chicago Tribune: CT; The Idaho Statesman: IS; Los Angeles Times: LAT; The New York Times: NYT; Rolling Stone: RS; The Village Voice: VV; The Washington Post: WP.

  OVERTURE: THREE WOMEN, THREE MOMENTS, ONE JOURNEY

  naming herself

  AUTHOR INTERVIEWS with Camille Cacciatore Savitz, Barbara Grossman Karyo, Leslie Korn Rogowsky, Joel Zwick, Al Kasha, Danny Kortchmar, Roy Reynolds, Jerry Wexler, and two anonymous sources.

  BOOKS: Rosen, White Christmas (for the anecdote about 1906 Lower East Side settlement worker). Brownmiller, In Our Time. Brooklyn (New York City) telephone directory, 1955.

  ARTICLES: General reading throughout Carole articles bibliography.

  exposing herself

  AUTHOR INTERVIEWS with Duke Redbird, Nicholas Jennings, Jeanine Hollingshead, Betsy Siggins, Richard Flohill, John McHugh, Martin Ornot, and Larry Klein.

  BOOKS: Jennings, Before the Gold Rush.

  ARTICLES: Bayin, “Joni & Me,” Elm Street, 2000. Crowe, “Joni Mitchell,” RS, 1979.

  OTHER: Author heard the recording of Joni Anderson’s October 21, 1964, performance at the Half Beat on Chuck Mitchell’s reel-to-reel tape recorder at Mitchell’s home in Iowa, and tape-recorded it.

  daring herself

  AUTHOR INTERVIEWS with Steve Harris, Jac Holzman, Jim Hart, Ellen Questel, Leah Kunkel, Russ Kunkel, Jessica Hoffman Davis, Mia Farrow, Tamara Weiss, Betsy Asher, Jake Brackman, and the then heroin-dealing Beverly Hills doctor’s son.

  BOOKS: Holzman and Daws, Follow the Music. Thom, Ms.: 25 Years of the Magazine and the Feminist Movement. Brownmiller, In Our Time. Carabillo, Feminist Chronicles. Heilbrun, The Education of a Woman.

  ARTICLES: “James Taylor,” Time, 1971. Braudy, “James Taylor…,” NYT Magazine, 1971. Dunbar, “Making It in Low Key,” Look, 1971. Van Matre, “Singing-Songwriters,” CT, 1971. “Rock: Year of the Woman?” NYT, 1971. Brenner, “I Never Sang…,” Vanity Fair, 1995. Hilburn, “Cat Stevens and…” and “Carly Simon Has…,” LAT, 1971. Crouse, “Carly Simon Review,” RS, 1971. White, “Carly: Life Without James,” RS, 1981. “Sony/ATV Music Publishing…,” Business Wire, 1997.

  OTHER: Author conducted e-mail correspondence with numerous significant second-wave feminists, including Kathy Amatniek, Roxanne Dunbar, Gloria Steinem, and Jacqui Ceballos.

  CHAPTER ONE

  AUTHOR INTERVIEWS with Gerry Goffin, Camille Cacciatore Savitz, Barbara Grossman Karyo, Joel Zwick, Jerry Wexler, the late Jack Keller, Beverly Lee, Mike Stoller, Donny Kirshner, Barbara Behling Goffin, Cynthia Weil, and Al Kasha.

  BOOKS: Guralnick, Last Train to Memphis. Branch, Parting the Waters and Pillar of Fire. Emerson, Always Magic in the Air. Wexler and Ritz, Rhythm and the Blues. Whitfield, A Death in the Delta. Salamon, Facing the Wind (about Willowbrook). Madison High School 1958 yearbook.

  ARTICLES: Kamp, “The Hit Factory,” Vanity Fair, 2001.

  OTHER: “Hitmakers: The Teens…,” A&E, 2001.

  CHAPTER TWO

  AUTHOR INTERVIEWS with Frank McKitrick, Sandra Stewart Backus, Marie Brewster Jensen, Bob Sugarman, Joan Smith Chapman, Henry Bonli, Elsa Boni Ziegler, D’Arcy Case, Graham Nash, Chuck Mitchell, Dave Naylor, the late John Guerin, Luc Dagenais (archivist of the Grey Nuns of Montreal), and Christopher J. Rutty, Ph.D. (founder and president, Health Heritage Research Services, Toronto).

  ARTICLES AND TRANSCRIPTS: Matteo, “Woman of Heart and Mind,” Inside Connection, 2000. Edmonton Press Conference, 1994. “My Top Twelve,” BBC-1 Radio, 1983. “Rock Master Class Interview,” 1985. Enright, “Words and Pictures,” Border Crossings, 2001. “Biography,” Jonimitchell.com. Jacarello, “Both Sides, Now,” BBC-2 Radio, 1999. Lydon, “In Her House, Love,” NYT, 1969. McFayden, “The Teacher and…,” The Age, 2002. Crowe, “Joni Mitchell,” RS, 1979. Various short articles, The Regina Leader-Post, 1955–57. Bayin, “Joni & Me,” Elm Street, 2000.

  OTHER: Personal diaries of the Grey Nuns of Saskatchewan.

  CHAPTER THREE

  AUTHOR INTERVIEWS with Jeanie Seligmann, Lucy Simon, Jessica Hoffmann Davis, Tim Ratner, Nick Delbanco, Ellen Questel, Jake Brackman, and Jim Hart.

  BOOKS: Delbanco, Running in Place. Schwartz, All in Good Time.

  ARTICLES: “Carly Simon,” Current Biography, 1976. “Richard Leo Simon…,” NYT, 1960. Brenner, “I Never Sang…,” Vanity Fair, 1995. “Timeline,” CarlySimon.com. PeterSimon.com. Fong-Torres, “Carly” RS, 1975. Young, “Carly Simon’s Land…,” RS, 1978. White, “Carly…,” RS, 1981. Tosches, “Free, White, and Pushing 40,” Creem, 1984.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  AUTHOR INTERVIEWS with Cynthia Weil, Barry Mann, Gerry Goffin, Brooks Arthur, Marilyn Arthur, Mike Stoller, Jerry Wexler, the late Jack Keller, the late Al Aronowitz, Donny Kirshner, Al Kasha, Camille Cacciatore Savitz, Barbara Grossman Karyo, Jesse Goffin, Jeanie McCrea Reavis, and Dawn Reavis Smith.

  BOOKS: Emerson, Always Magic in the Air. Gitlin, The Sixties. Gould, Such Good Friends (and author’s own interview with Lois Gould in the early 1970s). Raskin, Hot Flashes. Bosworth, Diane Arbus. Adams, Superior Women. Branch, Parting the Waters and Pillar of Fire. Posner, Motown. Accessed through Web site only: The Civil Rights Movement: A Photographic History (“The March on Washington, 1963: We Stood on a Height”), by Steven Kashen. Jones, How I Became Hettie Jones.

  ARTICLES AND DOCUMENTARY TRANSCRIPT: Lichtenstein, “
Carole King Steps…,” NYT, 1970. “Louise Goffin Interview,” Rock Electronic Telegraph. Kamp, “The Hit Factory,” Vanity Fair, 2001. Fox, “Betty Friedan…,” NYT, 2006. “Hitmakers: The Teens…,” A&E, 2001. “The Mad, Happy World…,” Life, 1961.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  AUTHOR INTERVIEWS with Bob Sugarman, Joan Smith Chapman, Sandra Stewart Backus, D’Arcy Case, Colin Holliday-Scott, Shawn Phillips, Deborah Symonds (about Child Ballads), Betsy Siggins, Chick Roberts, Gene Norman, Neil Norman, Beverly DeJong, Bruce Sterling, George Mihalcheon, Walt Drohan, Doug Bovee, Eric Whittred, Sandra Jarvies, Duke Redbird, Jeanine Hollingshead, John McHugh, Martin Ornot, Larry Klein, and Nicholas Jennings.

  BOOKS: Students’ Association of…, Tech Record. Van Ronk with Wald, The Mayor of MacDougal Street. Von Schmidt and Rooney, Baby, Let Me Follow You Down. Dylan, Chronicles. Symonds, Weep Not for Me. Phillips, California Dreamin’. Petrie, Gone to an Aunt’s. Fessler, The Girls Who Went Away. Jennings, Before the Gold Rush. Hadju, Positively 4th Street. Gruen, The Party’s Over Now. McLauchlan, Getting Out of Here Alive.

  ARTICLES AND TRANSCRIPTS: Charles, “The Joe & Eddie Story,” Goldmine, 1993. Joe & Eddie album liner notes. Lacayo, “What Women Have Done…,” Time, 2007. “Coffee Houses” and Fowell, “Fowell on the Coffee House Beat,” The Telegram, 1964. White, “Joni Mitchell,” Billboard, 1995. Crowe, “Joni Mitchell,” RS, 1979. Enright, “Words and Pictures,” Border Crossings, 2001. Edmonton Folk Festival, 1994, www.jmdl.com. Yee, “Songwriting and Poetry,” WP, 1969. Brand, “The Education of…,” Co-Evolution Quarterly, 1976, and a general reading of all Joni’s interviews.

  CHAPTER SIX

  AUTHOR INTERVIEWS with Carly Simon, Lucy Simon, Helen Whitney, Lanny Harrison, Ellen Questel, Nick Delbanco, Mia Farrow, Jessica Hoffmann Davis, Danny Kortchmar, Jake Brackman, Al Kooper, Arlyne Rothberg.

  BOOKS: Holzman and Daws, Follow the Music. White, Long Ago and Far Away. Delbanco, Running in Place, The Martlet’s Tale, and Grasse 3/23/66. Asbell, The Pill. Blacker, You Cannot Live As I Have Lived…. Donaldson, The Big One…. Cohen, Beautiful Losers.

  ARTICLES: Braudy, “James Taylor,” NYT Magazine, 1971. White, “James Taylor,” RS, 1981. CarlySimon.com. Blacker, “Sex Addict, Crack Fiend…,” The Independent, 2005. Hawtree, “William Donaldson…,” The Guardian, 2005.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  AUTHOR INTERVIEWS with Gerry Goffin, the late Al Aronowitz, the late Jack Keller, Cynthia Weil, Barry Mann, Donny Kirshner, Stephanie Magrino Fischbach, Danny Kortchmar, Charlie Larkey, Abigail Haness Marshall, Roger McGuinn, Connie O’Brien Sopic, Joe Butler, Steve Katz, Michelle Phillips, Lou Adler, Russell Banks, Jerry Wexler, Billy James, Michael Schwartz, John Fischbach, Toni Stern, Ralph Schuckett, Peter Asher, Betsy Asher, Madeleine Wild, and Richard Corey.

  BOOKS: Spitz, The Beatles. Aronowitz, Bob Dylan and the Beatles. Katz, Home Fires. Tamarkin, Got a Revolution! Walker, Laurel Canyon. Davidson, Loose Change. Kort, Soul Picnic. Phillips, California Dreamin’. Hoskyns, Hotel California. Holzman and Daws, Follow the Music. Biskind, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. Bergen, Knock Wood. Gitlin, The Sixties. Crosby and Gottlieb, Long Time Gone.

  ARTICLES: Perusal of Eye magazines, 1967–69. Braudy, “James Taylor,” NYT Magazine, 1971. Larocca, “The House of Mod,” New York, 2003. Miles, “The Ultimate Carole King Interview,” Rock’s Backpages. Lichenstein, “Carole King Steps…,” NYT, 1970. Echols, “Thirty Years…,” Los Angeles Weekly, 1994.

  OTHER: Author’s personal memories of U.C. Berkeley and the Bay Area 1964–67. Authors’ interviews about Jim Morrison in the mid-’60s, with various surfers, for 2006 Vanity Fair article “Malibu’s Lost Boys.” Liner notes of CD reissue of Now That Everything’s Been Said.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  AUTHOR INTERVIEWS with Chuck Mitchell, Eric Andersen, Tom Rush, Armand Kunz, Jeanine Hollingshead, Henry Bonli, Jane Bonli, Elsa Bonli Ziegler, Larry Klein, Tim Campbell (re Canadian Match Program), the late Estelle Klein, Joy Schreiber Fibben, Gene Shay, Steve Katz, Roy Blumenfeld, Al Kooper, Mort Rosengarten, Joe Boyd, and Estrella Berosini.

  BOOKS: Hemenway, The Girl Who Sang with the Beatles. Roiphe, Up the Sandbox. Spitz, Dylan. Hajdu, Positively 4th Street. McKenney, My Sister Eileen. Kooper with Edmonds, Backstage Passes. Collins, Trust Your Heart. Holzman and Daws, Follow the Music. Cohen, Beautiful Losers. Crosby and Gottlieb, Long Time Gone. Hoskyns, Hotel California. O’Brien, Shadows and Light. Fleischer, Joni Mitchell.

  ARTICLES AND INTERNET-FOUND TRANSCRIPTS: Astor, “Songs for Aging Children,” Look, 1970. Patterson, “The Boy on…,” Rock Radio Scrapbook. Jacarello, “Both Sides, Now,” BBC-2, 1999. Fawcett, “A Search…,” California Rock, California Sound (via Internet). Ward, “The Queens of Rock,” Us, 1978. Smith, “Off the Record,” 1988. Small, “Joni Mitchell,” People, 1985. “Joni Mitchell,” RS, 1969. “Rock ‘n’ Roll’s Leading Lady,” Time, 1974. Flanagan, “Secret Places,” Musician, 1988. Brand, “The Education…,” Co-Evolution Quarterly, 1976. Crowe, “Joni Mitchell,” RS, 1979. Didion, “Goodbye to All That,” in Slouching…, 1967. Iyer, “Leonard Cohen,” Shambhala Sun, 1998. McClain, “Two Single Acts…,” Detroit News, 1966.

  OTHER: Tape of Chuck and Joni Mitchell interview with Murray Burnett for Philadelphia Radio, 1966. Tape of Joni Mitchell at the Second Fret, 1966. Author heard both at Chuck Mitchell’s house and recorded and transcribed them. Personal letters of Chuck Mitchell. Author’s personal knowledge of downtown New York scene in 1967.

  CHAPTER NINE

  AUTHOR INTERVIEWS with Carly Simon, Ellen Questel, Jake Brackman, Jessica Hoffman Davis, Jeanie Seligmann, Myron Yules, the late Danny Armstrong, Arlyne Rothberg, and (for domestic violence law) Patricia Barry, Esq.

  BOOKS: Gitlin, The Sixties. Indian Hill Camp 1967 yearbook. Biskind, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. Holzman and Daws, Follow the Music. Katz, Home Fires.

  ARTICLES AND TRANSCRIPTS: Sexton, “Carly Simon,” The Independent, 2006. “Timeline,” CarlySimon.com. PeterSimon.com. Christgau, Christgau’s Record Guide, 1981.

  OTHER: Author’s experience working at Eye magazine from September 1967 to August 1968. Author’s conversation with Jill Clayburgh, during an interview for McCall’s magazine, in 1978.

  CHAPTER TEN

  AUTHOR INTERVIEWS with Estrella Berosini, Salli Sachse, Russ Kunkel, Graham Nash, Ronee Blakley, Nancy Carlin, Trina Robbins, Cary Raditz, Debbie Green, the late Estelle Klein, Peter Asher, and a friend of the Gibb family from Don Mills, Toronto.

  BOOKS: Crosby and Gottlieb, Long Time Gone. Holzman and Daws, Follow the Music. Zimmer, Crosby, Stills & Nash. Fleischer, Joni Mitchell. Cross, Room Full of Mirrors. Hoskyns, Hotel California. Paglia, Break, Blow, Burn. Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra.

  ARTICLES AND TRANSCRIPTS: Brown, “Joni Mitchell,” RS, 1968. Dunn, “Question and Answer,” RS, 1994. “Diary of a Decade,” Greater London Radio, 1990. “Joni Mitchell,” RS, 1969. Ruhlman, “From Blue…,” Goldmine, 1995. Houston, “Joni Mitchell,” Salon.com, 2000. “Joni Mitchell’s New Album…,” RS, 1970. James, “Joni’s Miles…,” Circus, 1975. LeBlanc, “Joni Takes…,” RS, 1971. “Joni…Interview,” Details, 1996. Dick Cavett Show, 1969. Hilburn, “Crosby, Stills…,” LAT, 1969.

  OTHER: Recording of Joni Mitchell and James Taylor at Royal Albert Hall in London, October 1970. Author’s own experience in Ibiza and Morocco, and writings published in Rolling Stone from 1969 to 1970. Author’s post-Woodstock interview with Jimi Hendrix, which turned into “I Don’t Want to Be a Clown Anymore,” for Rolling Stone, October 1969. James Taylor quote re Carole King: liner notes of CD reissue of Tapestry.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  AUTHOR INTERVIEWS with Charlie Larkey, Stephanie Magrino Fischbach, John Fischbach, Danny Kortchmar, Graham Nash, Gerry Goffin, Leah Kunkel, Russ Kunkel, Abigail Haness Marshall, Lou Adler, Toni Stern, Madeleine Wild, Ralph Schuckett, Michael Schwartz, Betsy Asher, Peter Asher, Connie O’Brien Sopic, Richard Corey, Susan Braudy, the late Estelle Klein, Estrella Berosini, Kris Kristofferson, Cary Raditz, Jerry Wex
ler, Barbara Behling Goffin, Ronee Blakley.

  BOOKS: Kort, Soul Picnic. Roszak, The Making of a Counter Culture. Reich, The Greening of America. Katz, Home Fires. Hayden, Reunion. Gitlin, The Sixties. Thom, Ms.: 25 Years of the Magazine and the Feminist Movement. Brownmiller, In Our Time. Heilbrun, The Education of a Woman. Beattie, Chilly Scenes of Winter.