Boys in the Trees: A Memoir

by Carly Simon

  The Taylors, she said—having heard this from up-island friends—were “North meets South.” They were a strange family, she added, with five children in all, very straitlaced New England, originally from Newburyport, Massachusetts, as well as North Carolina, adding that they socialized mostly with one another. The father, known as Ike, was a brilliant doctor but an alcoholic, and years earlier had bought a lot of land at the tip of the island. When the Taylor children were little, Ike spent many years as a naval doctor stationed in Antarctica, coming home infrequently. “There’s a lot of talent in that family,” my mother’s friend had said, raising her foxlike blue eyes at me. “Every single one of those kids.”

  The first Taylor I officially met was Livingston, James’s younger brother, in 1970, when I drove to their family home in Chilmark to rehearse with him for a duet we planned to perform at a film festival my brother Peter was launching in Vineyard Haven.

  That day, Livingston and I sat down for tea with James’s mother, Trudy. At the time, I was a little bit hoping to become Livingston’s girlfriend, but Liv, as everyone called him, was in the process of falling in love with his girlfriend Maggie, who ended up becoming his wife and manager for half a lifetime. I liked Liv enormously, long believing, as I still do today, that his talent is huge, and very much his own. James’s younger sister, Kate, was also living at home, and she and I were at the same stage of beginning to perform. Peter Asher, James’s manager and producer, was recording her, and would eventually market her first album, Sister Kate. Kate and I were competitive but extremely warm with each other, and during that visit she bowled me over with her weaving and knitting. She took after Trudy with those talents, and to this day there are dozens and dozens of Kate’s creations, both musical and textile, in my house. But at the time, I had no idea that someday—soon, too—every single one of these people would be a big part of my life.

  * * *

  My album was released in February 1971 to some very good reviews. In March of that year, as I stood in the tiny kitchen of my Murray Hill apartment, I received a call that would be pivotal. On the other end were Jac Holzman and Steve Harris from Elektra. “What would it take for you to open for Cat Stevens at the Troubadour on April 6?” they asked.

  I froze. The date was less than three weeks way. I had no interest in or intention of performing live by myself—I had sung many times before, but never on a stage for critics, never without Lucy, never with an actual band or with something to promote. I lived in New York; the Troubadour was in Los Angeles; and my incipient fear of flying was only increased by what I’d be flying to do. I wanted to hang up, but I was thinking fast, too. James Taylor was on the road, backed by a band that included drummer Russ Kunkel. Russ Kunkel, I knew, was the best drummer to come down the pike in a long time. All one had to do was pick up the needle and replay the tom-tom fills on “Fire and Rain” and “Country Road.” Smartly, I told Jac and Steve that if they could convince Russ Kunkel to be my drummer, I would agree to do it, knowing that getting Russ would be impossible. Jac and Steve couldn’t have quite conceived how quick-witted I could be when faced with my own phobias, nor could they (or I) have reckoned on the ways in which destiny occasionally throws you for a loop.

  The next day Jac and Steve called back to tell me they had tracked down a drummer whose sound uncannily resembled Russ Kunkel’s.

  “Oh yeah, and who would that be?” I asked, ready to say the deal was off.

  “Russ Kunkel,” Steve said.

  James Taylor, they explained, had been in a motorcycle accident on the Vineyard a few days before, breaking both hands and several other bones. His tour was off, or at least indefinitely delayed. I was suddenly struck dumb. My next thought was that Jac and Steve were kidding, as I’d been counting on Russ Kunkel’s unavailability so as to avoid opening for Cat Stevens in L.A. But they had outwitted me. It was fate.

  In a panic, I called up Jimmy Ryan and enlisted him to find a piano player and a drummer who could temporarily fill in for Russ Kunkel during rehearsals. In short order, Jimmy found one of the all-time talented drummers, named Andy Newmark, and Jimmy did double-duty himself on bass and guitar, hijacking keyboardist Paul Glanz from another band. We decided on a short set list: “In My Reply,” Livingston Taylor’s song, the one he and I sang on the Vineyard together; “One More Time,” a country tune I’d written for my first album; “Dan, My Fling,” a big ballad written by Jake and his friend Fred Gardner; Buzzy Linhart’s song “The Love’s Still Growing”—its Indian-esque tuning required a separate guitar onstage—and we’d close the set with “That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be.” We rehearsed four or five times, and thanks to Jimmy Ryan, who also served as our musical director, I thought we sounded pretty good.

  I didn’t have a manager at the time, which meant I was relying pretty heavily on Steve Harris, Elektra’s A&R man, to stay close to me and to book all our cross-country plane trips and hotel reservations. It was my first trip to California, and I was utterly terrified of flying. Still, Steve and I flew out west, first class, me floating on ten milligrams of Valium and Steve levitating above me on four times that much. It was the golden age of air travel, the era when 747s had swanky but likely bacteria-filled upper decks, bars, and even piano players. Steve spent the flight telling me Jim Morrison war stories. Three or four hours into the ride, Steve pointed out the Grand Canyon and the Rockies, guidebook destinations that I, a largely sheltered East Coast girl, had never seen before in my life.

  Los Angeles was completely thrilling, and as we drove into West Hollywood from the airport, I was on a manic high, even as we—Steve, Jimmy, and Paul—passed through L.A.’s flat, unattractive parts. Palm trees, but inside the borders of America! Finally we pulled up in front of the Hyatt Regency Hotel, a famous music hangout on the Sunset Strip. I couldn’t have been more excited to stay there. It was now forty-eight hours before the Troubadour opening, which would allow us to meet Russ Kunkel and have one rehearsal with him. Then we would have a lone sound check before we went onstage. The Troubadour gig with Cat Stevens was scheduled to last five nights in all, two shows a night, and after that, as far as I was concerned, I would be done with live performances forever.

  As I was walking through the lobby of the Hyatt to check in, I bumped into Kris Kristofferson, who was with T Bone Burnett and Stephen Bruton, the guitarist and songwriter. Kris introduced himself, and he and I had a small conversation, the kind, I would later discover, that Kris excelled at, one where meaning and implication are packed into the shortest, punchiest exchange. Kris tossed out a few Texan bon mots while squinting his sunken, intense, icy blue eyes—eyes like a Samoyed, I remember thinking. He had the look of a man who had just undressed you, and there would be no more clothes needed for a while. Every signal Kris conveyed said, “I’ve got to have you,” and I felt prematurely possessed.

  Kris shuffled his scruffy cowboy boots and picked up his guitar, and the promise of something tinkled into my collection cup like coins as he said, “Here’s thinking about you,” and then he tilted his head toward the door and was lost to the Los Angeles neon. I didn’t know how soon I’d see him again.

  My room at the Hyatt resembled a den of iniquity. With its platform bed and noxious-looking, fake-velvet bedspread, it looked in retrospect like it came straight out of the Amsterdam red-light district. Then again, this was the Sunset Strip, hardly my ideal, though I was also tripping on the strangeness and newness of L.A. The next day, the fifth of April, I met Russ Kunkel for the first time at the Troubadour. Russ was a beautiful, beaming spirit, with eyes that made deep and immediately comforting contact. He would become one of the most important, and musically influential, people I would ever know. That whole day I was enfolded by a sensation of scary bliss. Fear first—I had never performed onstage without Lucy—then bliss, as I felt ever so slightly in love with everyone who was going out of his or her own way to prop me up before opening night. Is this what fate was? You couldn’t get out of its way?

 
; On opening night I discarded my usual late-sixties-chick look, with its lace, beads, and braids, in favor of a new, carefully chosen outfit: a dark brown, short-sleeved, midlength dress and high Chelsea Cobbler red leather boots, a gift from Jac Holzman when I signed my contract at Elektra. It would just be me alone, ever alert, ever paranoid, and most of all, worried about every possible fearsome onstage scenario. I worried I would pass out, and that my band would be unable to revive me. I worried I would throw up. I worried that after I projectile-vomited, I might not be able to convince the other members of the band to blame it on an audience member in the front row.

  As for Cat Stevens, the two of us met briefly as I walked past his dressing room heading onstage. I didn’t want to stop and divert him from tuning up and whatever last-minute checks he was doing. For the past two or three months, I’d been listening to his latest album, Tea for the Tillerman, singing and harmonizing along to various cuts. I was a huge fan of his music, songs, production, and guitar playing, and had no idea whether he’d ever heard mine. Cat looked like a dark gypsy, and he seemed kind and friendly. “Good luck, luv,” he called out in passing.

  Steve Harris gripped me by the elbow, propping me up as I made my way down to the stage with my guitars. The club was small, and a bud vase with one pink rose stood on every table. Jimmy, Paul, and Russ were already onstage, which was a small comfort, but my overall terror made my hands feel like flippers, moist and bulbous. Here’s what I had to do: pick up my guitar, place it over my head by its strap, and play. Simple. Right now. My heart was beating so fast, I wondered if they would bring a phone to me onstage so I could call Dr. L and other doctors in other fields.

  I stared in silence at the audience as if frozen, and it was then I heard a sweet, familiar voice calling out to me. Shielding my eyes in the glare of the lights, I caught sight of Kate Taylor’s truly beautiful, shining face. Hers was a Vineyard voice, familiar, calming, and when I heard her greeting, my frozen right arm released and landed fortuitously on the first G chord of my first song, “One More Time.” The audience broke into applause. I have no memory of what I said in between songs, but I felt a definite rapport with the audience, and by the time I got to the fifth and last song, “That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be,” I walked confidently over to the piano. If possible, the piano made me even more nervous than the guitar, but as I began singing, the audience became especially quiet and focused. My father sits at night with no lights on … I hear her call “sweet dreams,” but I forget how to dream …

  During the song, the microphone began to drift to the left in slow motion. I grabbed it and brought it back to center, but as soon as I let go it began drifting again. Again, I brought it back to center, like a typist working on an old-fashioned machine. The only good thing about my ever-tipping moving mic was that it distracted my focus from my own nerves. By the end of the song, the audience, who had witnessed the quiet, ongoing struggle, were on my side and gave me a standing ovation.

  * * *

  Backstage, it seemed as though all of Elektra Records was packed inside my tiny, flower-filled dressing room, giving me the news that “That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be” had taken an enormous leap and was now number 24 on the Cashbox charts. At one point Cat Stevens showed up to congratulate me before vanishing into his own dressing room to grab his band and guitar. I had a second show to do that night, so once the hugs and congratulations had peaked, Steve Harris cleared my dressing room of everyone except one man—or was it a large boy?—sprawled on the floor in the far corner of the room.

  It was James Taylor. For some reason I hadn’t noticed him yet, but then I recognized him immediately. He was nodding off slightly, but since I didn’t know that drug expression yet, all I could think of was that he, James, was probably exhausted. He was barefoot, long-legged, long-footed—and his knees were bent. He wore dark red, loose, wide-wale corduroys and a long-sleeved Henley with one button open, his right hand clutching a self-rolled cigarette. His hair, simultaneously shiny and disheveled, fell evenly on both sides of his head, and he wore a scruffy, understated mustache, the kind so fashionable back in the early 1970s. He seemed both kempt and unkempt. Even sprawled out on the floor, everything about him communicated that he was, in fact, the center of something—the core of an apple, the center of a note. James came to, and he and I had a two-minute-long discussion about the Vineyard. He remained sitting in the corner before the door opened (for me, too soon) and Joni Mitchell, James’s girlfriend at the time, appeared, and without glancing at me said, “James, we have to go now.” James rose slowly to his feet, nodded good-bye to me without making eye contact, and followed her out the door. I wouldn’t see him again for seven months, though I thought about him regularly. In person he and I hadn’t had an instantaneous connection—James was too stoned—but over the next few days, I cast my mind back to the crazy prediction I made the night I spotted his face on the cover of Time magazine: that the two of us would someday get married. But how many women had this same fantasy? I would fade, foolish, into the millions.

  Me and Kris Kristofferson: “I’ve got to have you.”

  “Come let us drink again, before the second show …” Cat Stevens and me in London, 1971.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  soft summer gardens

  I had done something very much like jumping into the deep end of the pool when I knew only the doggie paddle. Dr. L said: “Just jump in, and don’t even think about it.” That’s really good advice if you’re psychologically stuck and if you’re absolutely sure there’s water in the pool. It worked. I had gotten on the plane, rehearsed one day with the band at hand, and then opened myself up to the competition, politics, and envy of show business, filled with smilers concealing knives, and the sound of whispering behind closed doors. But I had met Arlyne Rothberg through David Steinberg. She took me on as her client and protected me. For fourteen years, I had the best.

  I would be slow to understand the trap of showbiz, but by the time I had done a few more shows at the Troubadour, opening for Harry Chapin, Don McLean, and Kris Kristofferson, and then opening up at Carnegie Hall, Symphony Hall in Philadelphia, and in Boston Symphony Hall for Cat Stevens, I was caught under the udder of the cow. The smell of the crowd and the roar of the greasepaint. It was dangerous, but so very heady. As long as I was the opening act and the audience wasn’t really expecting something from me, I could deliver a small set. I got comfortable speaking between songs. I didn’t stutter very much. I can’t explain it, though I think it had to do with having a good number of word substitutions. If I had had scripted introductions to songs, I wouldn’t have had the easy mobility of being able to pause or to change a word. My stammer and I weren’t paying quite the same kind of attention to one another. Maybe doing something that I admired myself for brought me out of it? With the exception of one review I remember that compared me to a whinnying horse, I was getting the kinds of reviews that said, “Watch out for Carly Simon, she’s heading for the stars.”

  While in New York for our Carnegie Hall concert, I made a date with Cat Stevens. I invited him to my apartment for dinner. We had gotten to know each other while in L.A., but there had been other new friends there. Cat Stevens is a very cerebral and quiet-spoken man who dances out of that serene persona in his music when he goes for emphasis, for dynamics, for the big bang in a song. It has something to do with beauty by mistake. That chord that your fingers go to by accident and that takes the emotion around another corner from the one you expected, like the rock walls on the Vineyard. I learned it from listening to him while he was onstage, and from the hours and hours I listened to Tea for the Tillerman—till I was on my third vinyl copy. The night he was to come to dinner, I made chicken with cherries in a cream sauce and got a particularly nice wine. He was late. I got agitated. I closed my eyes in a deliberate attempt to relax and loosen up. I got lost in the boundaries of my expectation. Or was it fear? The darkness seemed infinite, which scared me. Would I ever be able
to control my emotions? I let a sliver of light through my eyelids and by the time I did, the fear had changed. It became practical. I looked at my watch. He was still late. I took my guitar in my cold hands and determinedly wrote “Anticipation,” sitting on my bed. It was all there. There was no time to wait for the song to emerge; he might arrive any second. The urgency brought it out. I sang it with a growl, the way he would: “I’m no prophet … I don’t know nature’s ways.” I tore into those words with a gravelly passion, the way Steve (his name: Steven Demetre Georgiou) might break out of the placid phrase just before the arrival of the other side of the coin. Gravel, sparks, guitar on the offbeat! Dynamic lunge.

  The song was all but finished by the time Steve arrived, but I didn’t go anywhere near playing it for him. Curiously, I had much more energy before he arrived at my apartment. Being with him, I was willowy and slow. I dedicated my album to him, and it had that song as its leadoff, and “Anticipation” was always the title from that night on. He and I became lovers for a very fine, but short, while. It felt astral. It feels too private to speak of our two bodies together, and too tender and spiritual to actually refer to it as sex. I loved to watch him as he slept, as he looked at the sky, or a piece of art. He rarely asked questions. When he did, it was in a wonderfully scratchy bass voice that sounded like an old man of the woods telling a tale of those who had passed by his tree hundreds of years ago. He gave me whispers and drawings of Blake poems. He told me about his childhood, his mixed Greek and Swedish parents, and we made a connection that has lasted.