Boys in the Trees: A Memoir

by Carly Simon

  Did I? It seemed to me I had a few options. I could see myself as a girl unable to keep Jack Nicholson’s interest, or I could tell him off, or I could act the way I felt, which was like a stupid, rejected fool who felt like crying, and who would never, ever attract anyone ever again. I did none of these. Jack was a handsome, famous, funny, clever man whom I’d met three or four times. I wasn’t in love with him. My ego may have taken a momentary whack, but the end of my brief fling with Jack was akin to a promising summer rental that gets canceled at the last minute.

  In the wake of Jack, I was gently passed around, as if in a fraternity, not the first woman to experience this and not the last, either. Beginning with Bob Rafelson, his brother Don, Pierre Cottrell, and Michael Crichton, it felt like a club in which Jake was the hub, one where you had to please the man just below in order to graduate to the next. I didn’t feel unappreciated, though I was always aware I was giving myself away too cheaply. In college I had read Margaret Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa, which described sex as natural, guilt free, and causing no deep feeling or rivalries. Could sex be casual, or was it reserved exclusively for two people who had dedicated themselves to a lifetime together, as my own mother had spuriously tried to instill in my brain?

  Mommy’s words still resonated in my head as though I were twelve years old. If I had sex with someone I had no intention of marrying, I felt guilty, fake. Nevertheless, by 1970, I’d had sex with boys and men who, unlike Nick or Willie, were nowhere close to potential marriage material. Nobody, it seemed to me, had it right about sex, especially my mother. Sex was up to me to define, and I’d do it my own way. The only issue was finding coherence in all the dogmas I’d heard my whole life, while still feeling responsible toward myself. Did sex really have to be as formal as an evening at the opera? Couldn’t some encounters be as casual as a midnight swim? Like so many women, I was trying to reconcile these competing thoughts, the difference being that all of a sudden I had a vehicle to explore them—the sheer wonder of an original lyric. The more I sang it, the truer it became. To help define what I needed to know about aspects of myself as a woman, I needed the help of the only man I loved so deeply without the encumbrance of romance. Together we wanted to know the deeper truths of our time, and what we might risk as we found our way.

  The couples cling and claw

  And drown in love’s debris

  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.

  When Jake gave me those words to the music I’d written, his lyrics matched the melody perfectly. I sat before my Tonk piano in my south-facing Murray Hill apartment, singing the song over and over again, alone, poised, at least in my mind, to live a life where I was far more than just the “girl.”

  Jake Brackman and me writing our first song, “That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be,” 1970.

  My first band hits the road. Clockwise from left: me, Jimmy Ryan,

  Andy Newmark, Paul Glanz.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  record numero uno

  Everything felt new for me in 1970: my Murray Hill neighborhood, my physical and emotional proximity to Jake, and the fact that for the first time in my life I was living alone, just me and my fluffy fake-fur foldout couch, my clothes, my shoes, and my music, strewn around five wildly imaginative Stanford White rooms. (It was a look, a style, and a kind of architecture that I would try to copy everywhere I went from that time on.) I’d set up my new sound system—containing all my newest, highest-fidelity equipment—in the room I called “my office.”

  One night, during the winter of 1970, Jake invited me over to his house for an Indian takeout dinner. (Dinner at Jake’s was pretty much an ongoing invitation.) Janet Margolin, an actress who’d starred in the film David and Lisa, was there, along with her husband, Jerry Brandt. Jerry was a music manager who managed the Harlem Boys Choir, among other acts. I wasn’t entirely sure if Jake had choreographed this introduction for professional reasons, but sometime in between the raita and the naan, Jake asked me to play our new song.

  When I finished singing “That’s the Way…,” Jerry was incredibly enthusiastic. “Can you and I get together?” he asked. “Would you like to make a record?”

  “Actually,” I said, “I’d love to be a writer more than I’d like to be a performer.” Being a performer just wasn’t something I was ready for, I went on. “I never really loved being onstage with my sister, and now I just want to sit back and write songs and be the”—what was the word?—“composer-at-arms.”

  “Sure, sure,” Jerry said, knowing, as he must have, that anything was possible under the tutelage of Jerry Brandt. Jerry suggested that he drop by my apartment for lunch the next day, before asking, slightly opaquely, if I happened to have a copy of the I Ching. I didn’t have one, so Jerry said he would bring his.

  Jerry arrived the next day with his I Ching under one arm. He was handsomer than I remembered, and had a thrilling, contagious energy. We made some intense small talk, Jerry’s black eyes on me the whole time, and I offered him a Swiss cheese, chutney, and red onion sandwich on rye. Jerry seemed to delight in the strangeness of this combination. “Is this some style thing?” he asked. “Anything with anything?” He then suggested that we “throw the I Ching,” and asked me if I’d ever done it before. I hadn’t, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t intrigued. From his pocket he took out a few ancient-looking coins. “Ask a question,” he said.

  I demurred. “You ask one. This was your idea, Jerry. You must have some reason.”

  He did, too. “Will it be to our mutual benefit to work together professionally?”

  Jerry tossed the coins, translating their meaning by turning to the page the coin pattern referenced. Then as now, I’m an I Ching novice, and I suppose the answer was likely to be interpreted in whatever way the coin tosser chose. In this case, if I’m remembering it right, the answer had to do with a bear declining to step on the foot of the mouse and choosing instead to take on bigger challenges, like, say, a moose. It could have been something else, but whatever it was, the bigger question of whether Jerry and I should work together was Yes.

  Jerry asked if I knew the guitarist David Bromberg, and it turned out I did. Dave was a great guitarist, and Jerry proposed assembling a group of musicians to help make a demo that he could take around to various record companies and try to sell me to one of them as a solo artist, and maybe even ignite a bidding war.

  All of a sudden, we were in action. The next thing I knew, I was in an uptown studio along with Dave Bromberg and several other musicians, recording three of my songs—“That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be,” “Alone,” and “I’m All It Takes to Make You Happy”—and two other songs by writers I’d never heard of. Jerry looked on the whole time and left the studio with a cassette, as did I. Still, in the back of my mind was the unspoken question: Why was I recording two songs by other songwriters when I knew I only wanted to use my songs as demos for myself as a composer?

  As far as I knew, I was merely agreeing to record some demos that would then circulate into the hands of other artists who might say, “Wow!—what a wonderful song—and perfect for me.” They would record it and I’d be off and running to the bank, accompanied, perhaps, by some kind of minimal fame: my name on a piece of sheet music, that kind of thing. Whatever denial I was in, I still hang onto some semblance of it today. I can’t seem to fully give myself over to being a performer. And even when I am being a performer, I keep hoping I can get off the stage sooner rather than later.

  * * *

  The first record company Jerry Brandt took the cassette to was Columbia. The president, Clive Davis, purportedly listened to two of the songs before ejecting the cassette and throwing it across his office. “What do I want with a Jewish girl from the Bronx?” he’s said to have responded, though knowing Clive as I do now, I think the story must be apoc
ryphal.

  I think Jerry reported these words back to me, incorrectly, to make a point, that point being, You’d better listen to his words, Carly, because you’ll be lucky if anyone else ever wants you!

  The sadistic implication was that if anything worked it would be because he, Jerry, would use his persuasive powers. And then came this from Jerry: “I think Jac Holzman at Elektra will take you.”

  Apparently, Elektra Records held weekly lunch meetings where everyone at the label convened around a big round table to listen to that week’s submissions. The voting was democratic. A photographer on staff told me afterward that when my tape was played, every single person in the room voted it down. No one, it seemed, could figure out who I was stylistically, or how to market me. Was I a jazz singer? A pop singer? A folkie? Jac Holzman, the president of Elektra, had the right to veto anything he felt strongly about, and this time around he exercised his veto power. “There’s something about her I just feel,” he said, news relayed to me by Jerry Brandt a day later. Elektra Records wanted me! I was in! I was on!

  Immediately, Jac and I began discussing producers. Jac mentioned that he had just worked with Eddie Kramer on the Joe Cocker LP Mad Dogs and Englishmen. He set up a meeting with Eddie, who showed up in my apartment and listened to me playing piano and singing, “That’s the Way…,” “Alone,” and a few other songs before I picked up my guitar and played a few of my guitar-based compositions. Eddie was South African. Even if he didn’t have a posh accent like Willie, I was still a hopeless Anglophile (and that evidently included South Africa and most likely Australia!), and could have happily dined out on dialects ranging from Cockney to Cantabrigian, plus anything in between. They brought back the very best memories of Willie. It was only a matter of time before Eddie and I found ourselves in the Electric Lady Studios on Eighth Street in Greenwich Village, the studio on the East Coast.

  Among the many people I saw wandering the halls of Electric Lady was Jimi Hendrix, blow smudged around his nostrils, followed by throngs of half-naked, elaborately painted girls, their own nostrils quite white, the whole crew on their way to a back restroom that I later found out was elaborately painted in psychedelic colors.

  The very first song Eddie and I recorded was “That’s the Way…” It made sense, of course, and was the song with which I was most familiar, too. Eddie recorded it with only me playing piano and a metronome keeping time. I then met a very fine arranger, Ed Freeman, who not only arranged the string parts wherever they were needed, but helped me with what are known as “head arrangements”—that is to say, just enough information for the musicians to follow in order to communicate that “non-arrangement” feel, but enough organization or structure to keep everyone on the same road.

  Then things started to get a little complicated.

  One night, Eddie Kramer and I went out for dinner, ostensibly to discuss ideas for tracks and overall album themes. Then we went out on a few more dates. One culminated—or should I say deteriorated—into a drunken night out on the town. Eddie and I made out, and then went even further, the evening ending up with me under the covers in Eddie’s bedroom. For reasons I can’t recall, Eddie and I ended up having a terrible fight, but it was devastating enough for me to fire him, or for him to quit outright, and I can’t remember for the life of me which.

  Well done, Simon Sister! It’s your first album. What are you going to do, produce it yourself? Believing I knew how to produce an album may have been a reckless vanity, but with Eddie gone, I couldn’t exactly press the rewind button. I was fortunate that Jac Holzman was around to put me at ease, along with his quiet, thoughtful, conservatively dressed brother, Keith, who urged me to do everything I could to convince Eddie Kramer to return to work on the album. In the meantime, I did most of it myself, very unprofessionally, shepherding copies of rough mixes of songs up to the Gulf & Western Building on Columbus Circle, where Jac presided over his enormous lunch table.

  With his good taste, his congeniality, and the intelligence and good manners with which he treated his staff, Jac was a model for other record executives. It was 1970, and Jac knew exactly where to be in 1970. He had just released the Doors’ Morrison Hotel. He and Jim Morrison were close friends. The following year, when he heard Jim had died—Jac and I were having dinner at the time, discussing material—he was devastated, practically inconsolable.

  The closest thing to an in-house manager in those days was a label’s A&R man, A&R being short for Artists and Repertoire, a job title that often means that that person becomes your best friend and companion on trips and concert tours. Steve Harris was that person for me. Over lunch in countless Chinese restaurants or in the halls of Electric Lady, he and I discussed all current and future steps concerning the sound, shape, and image I wanted for my debut album. Taking our lead from Jac, it could be summed up as: “Add strings to ‘That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be’ and ‘The Love’s Still Growing,’ and let’s add some cello on ‘Reunions,’ and oh, wait, the lyrics in ‘One More Time’ shouldn’t repeat themselves on the final verse!”

  I was frankly uncomfortable to be alone in the studio with the engineer, Dave Palmer. Dave was very, very good at what he did, but as expert as he was, I balanced it by being pretty bad. Not only did I not know what to do, I pretended I did know what to do, and ended up mixing about half the album (today, a listener can definitely tell which songs I had a hand in mixing). In retrospect, Dave must have had conflicted feelings about this tall, unknown girl with an overbite taking over at the board, pushing the knobs up and down, and advising him to “lower the reverb and add compression, also bring up the snare, my vocal is too soft on the second chorus.”

  Another upsetting event was that Jerry Brandt told me he could no longer stay on as my manager. His wife Janet didn’t want him getting too close to me, or Jerry and me spending so much time together. All I could think of was that Jerry had stopped believing in my talent or, aware that Eddie Kramer was no longer involved in the production, assumed my first record would be a disaster. I was so upset that today I’m shocked I even managed to finish the album, but thanks to Steve Harris, Jac, and his brother Keith, who stepped in to spend a lot of time in the studio, I somehow did.

  Ultimately, Jac, Keith, and Steve also—don’t ask me how—convinced Eddie and me to make up our differences, and persuaded Eddie to return to Electric Lady to finish the recording of the few songs that weren’t yet finished, and especially, to mix “That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be.” Of all the songs, that was the one Jac believed in the most and was most eager to hear in its finished version. Little wonder Jac was so important to so many artists he took under his wing. Elegantly fierce, he was a gentleman with a strong sense of self, whereas Steve Harris by contrast was fun and funny and lighthearted. The result was my debut album, called, simply, Carly Simon.

  But what should I do about the cover art? A few weeks earlier, I’d posed uncomfortably on a studio floor for a full-body, leaning-on-my-shoulder, head-to-one-side photograph. The art director ultimately decided to crop the photo to create a frontal head shot, turning it forty-five degrees to the right, so it would appear I was gazing head-on at the camera. Still, one side of my face couldn’t help looking as though gravity was yanking it floorward. My makeup added a big bruise to one cheek, which retouching never rectified. My brother Peter did a second photo session at his Massachusetts farm, during which I posed in a long pink dress, my legs crossed underneath me. Eventually, the other photo, which ended up on the back cover, would have an interesting effect. In it, I looked a lot like Mick Jagger. It could be that Mick and I actually looked somewhat alike, but that photo served to make people—including Mick himself—aware of the resemblance.

  Once the album was done, I was damned if I was going to think further than the artwork and the credits. I needed a rest or, an even crazier idea, a vacation. I had no interest in promoting my record with a tour, or via television appearances. Why? Stage fright, pure and simple, or more to t
he point, my fear of stage fright. I had no interest in facing down my various phobias. I wanted only one thing: for my album to serve as a demo and a showcase for my songs, so that other singers might someday want to record them.

  My fear of going onstage, mixed with various other free-floating phobias that were preventing my life from going forward, drove me into the arms of one of the smartest, most humane, and delightful psychiatrists I’d ever met. I’ll call him Dr. L. He was also determined to help me overcome the obstacles in my way. Performance anxiety. High-strung-ness. Self-esteem issues. My therapy with Dr. L would last for years.

  In the weeks after I finished my album, another album was on my turntable day and night, an album I memorized and sang along with, and no doubt millions of other women across the country were doing the same: Sweet Baby James, by James Taylor. One night, as Joey and I were walking home on Fifty-ninth Street from the movies, we passed by a newsstand, and there was the new issue of Time magazine, with a cartoon drawing of James Taylor’s face on the cover and the headline THE NEW ROCK: BITTERSWEET AND LOW. Without thinking, I blurted, with confidence: “I’m going to marry him.” How did I know this? People have asked me over the years. The only answer I can come up with is that he, James, was perfect for me in every way. If you believe in predestination or clairvoyance, that would be a terrific example of why you’re right to.

  The Taylor family was hardly unfamiliar to me, as they had been coming to Martha’s Vineyard since the early fifties. I had met young James on the porch of Seward’s, had been very curious about him since. The family patriarch, Dr. Isaac Taylor, was a strong, formidable-looking man, handsome and brilliant, the dean of the medical school at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, where James was raised. In the summers, the Taylors lived in a modest cottage perfectly situated on the island’s South Shore, down a dirt road that ended up on Stonewall Beach. Once, when I asked a friend of my mother’s what the Taylors were like, she was elliptical, but implied the family had a complicated history. In fact, she said, they were quite “mad.”