Columbia released JT in June. James’s new album sold two million units by the end of the year. His singing with Linda Ronstadt and Graham Nash (and Leah Kunkel) transformed “Handy Man” into an Appalachian soft blues song that got on the radio all that summer and climbed to number four. (James would win a Best Pop Vocal Grammy Award for “Handy Man” the following year.) The philosophical “Secret O’ Life” established James as a national junkie savant, dispensing quiet teachings and aperçus like a secular American guru. James and the band went out on the road for the summer. Carly was worried about him. But then, she was worried about a lot of things. Baby Ben still wasn’t sleeping. She had a permanent foreboding, she told friends, and a lingering feeling that something was wrong.
Then she had her own hit record that summer. United Artists Records released “Nobody Does It Better” in July and it proved to be Carly’s biggest hit since “You’re So Vain” of four years earlier. The single, awash in strings and flourishes of brass, was number two for three weeks on the Hot 100 and number one on the adult contemporary chart. Many fans thought Carly wrote the song, but Marvin Hamlisch and Carole Bayer Sager received the Academy Award nomination for Best Song.
Carly went to the gala premiere of The Spy Who Loved Me in New York. She recalled, “There was a huge blackout in the Northeast the day of the screening. As Roger Moore was drifting to earth with that famous Union Jack parachute, he started falling more slowly, and my voice in the soundtrack got lower and lower, and then there was nothing. No Roger. No me. No lights in the theater.”
Peter Simon married his girlfriend, Ronnie Susan Goldman, on Martha’s Vineyard that summer. Carly attended the ceremony, conducted by Peter’s spiritual adviser, Baba Ram Dass, formerly Professor Richard Alpert of the Harvard psychology department. The wedding reception was held at Andrea Simon’s house, Highmark, with its infinity view of the sea. The wedding ensemble was led by John Hall, the lead guitarist of the rock band Orleans. Hall came over to Carly’s house to rehearse the day before, and she showed him some clever wedding lyrics—at Ram Dass’s slight expense—she wanted to insert into “Chapel of Love.” She also fronted the band doing the Beatles’ “Things We Said Today,” which sounded great in the open summer twilight as bride, groom, and guru danced barefoot, holding hands.
At some point Peter asked Ram Dass to speak with Carly. Kindly and heavily bearded, the guru had a calmness about him that Peter thought might appeal to Carly, who was living a somewhat frazzled existence then. “Be here now” was Ram Dass’s mantra, describing a way of living that emphasized presence of mind and an absence of anxiety over events that were beyond an individual’s control.
Carly liked him, and told him her troubles. She said that her image of herself wasn’t clear, and that this bothered her. She spoke about her marriage, and the competitiveness between her and her husband. She told him that she had this feeling that something was not all right. Carly recalls, “He was immensely alert and a great listener. He made me believe that I was all right, but not full of illusions about myself. I said I thought that our feelings of competitiveness were a good thing. He said that wasn’t an illusion. He agreed with me that I was earthbound, and unready to assume my mystical duties. The main thing he told me that was I was all right. I need confirmation of this every couple of weeks.”
Later that summer James was home from the road, and he and Carly went to the old Jungle Beach in Chilmark with some house guests and friends. There was a strong undertow that day, so no one was in the water. James was quiet, mostly listening to the conversation on the hot and sunny day. When some clouds moved in, the sea picked up and James went in for a swim. He swam straight out to sea with long, easy strokes. Soon he was a quarter mile out, and barely visible. By the time a series of combers began to crash on the beach, he had disappeared. Carly grew alarmed. She walked down to the water. Her husband wasn’t in sight. She came back to their blanket with tears on her cheeks. Why did he need to be so reckless and frighten her? Someone was suggesting they try to get help when James could be seen walking back to them from way to the east, where the inexorable current had carried him.
WHY’D YOU TELL ME THIS?
James Taylor hated November in the Northeast. Its shorter days and colder nights reminded him of his traumatic prep school days, which is why for the past few years he and his wife and children decamped to sunny southern California, where he could make his records without the rigors of what later came to be called seasonal affective disorder.
But in 1977, Carly Simon didn’t want to go to California, and James wasn’t about to go without her, so during the winter of 1977/ 78, the family stayed home. The plan was that she would record her next album in New York, with a new producer. Sometime in the spring, they would return to California, where James would cut the follow-up to the bestselling JT album.
So in November 1977, Carly began work on Boys in the Trees with producer Arif Mardin. He was one of Atlantic Records’ Turkish mafia, close to the label’s cofounders Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegun. He was a consummate New York record man—suave, savvy, sophisticated—and he had worked with major stars from Aretha Franklin to Diana Ross to Bette Midler. His specialty was lush orchestration that could propel a diva into a sonic cloudscape beyond her usual comfort zone. Elektra executives thought he would supply Carly with a more grown-up sound with which to cross over from the rock market to a broader commercial appeal.
Arif Mardin didn’t hear a hit single in the new material Carly brought to the early recording sessions at legendary Atlantic Studios (Ray Charles et al.) on Broadway and A&R Studios in Midtown. But in December, providence intervened, under pressure, in the form of Carly’s last producer, who sent her a tape of a new song by the Doobie Brothers’ singer Mike McDonald. Carly: “Teddy Templeman sent me a tape, a ‘la-la-la-la-la’ tape to what is now the melody of ‘You Belong to Me,’ and I had to fill in the spaces—within minutes!—because the Doobies were in the studio and seriously about to record the song. It didn’t have any words, except the very, very important ones: ‘You belong to me.’
“So the rest of the lyrics, on my version, was a direct-to-the-gut response to his ‘you belong to me’ start. I put myself into the position of a woman whose man is being attractively waylaid by another woman. I wrote the lyrics in the kind of short time that panic elicits—panic that someone else will steal your job. Teddy gave [the lyrics] to the group and they recorded it on the spot. Several months later, I recorded it too, and it became my first [self-written] hit in a while.
“I always found it odd that during all those months Michael [McDonald] and I never spoke. It was all done through middlemen: the producers. Although when my version went Top Ten, Mike McDonald very graciously sent me a plant.
“I know for sure that my audience used to think the song was about James—but no, not really. In fact, later on, I was shopping at Tiffany’s on Fifth Avenue. A man came up to me and said, ‘James Taylor—that rat. How could he have done that to you?’ This was overheard by a woman, who joined in and said, ‘Yes, Carly, you have to fight back. Get him out of your life, be strong.’
“This was always a problem for me in those days. I so often had to reassure those that really care about me that ‘It’s only a song’ and that I operate under poetic license all the time. Then of course there are those times when I take no poetic license—songs like ‘Anticipation’ and ‘Like a River’—and there are those that are very reporter-esque and utterly true to fact. I found this to be the most satisfying thing about being a songwriter, or any kind of fiction writer: that you can so easily disguise or mislead. I could be lying to you now… but I’m not.”
Carly was recording in New York City for the first time since she’d made her first album at Electric Lady in 1970. Carly: “I now met many of the musicians I would play with for years to come: [drummer] Steve Gadd, [bassist] Richard Tee, [keyboardist] Hugh McCracken, [multi-instrumentalist] Mike Mainieri, [arranger/ guitarist] David Spinozza—to mention some of those spe
ctacular New York chaps.” The rhythm section of Steve Gadd and Richard Tee was the nucleus of the performing band Stuff, which recorded for Warner Bros. and played clubs while mostly doing daily service in Manhattan’s busy recording studios. Various permutations of these above players would now record and perform with Carly over the next decade, identifiably her “middle period,” from 1978 to 1988.
But in many instances the guiding spirit of Boys in the Trees was James Taylor. Sticking close to his wife, and spending some serious time with her in the studio, he produced, arranged, sang, and played on most of the album’s tracks. He’s first heard on “You Belong to Me,” as a vocalist, riding the rail between soft rock and soft jazz, a locus now owned mostly by Fleetwood Mac. James plays expert-level guitar on the title song, a haunting (and very memory-driven) acoustic ballad/ art song about a risible girl’s adolescence. The album’s fulcrum is a duet between Carly and James on “Devoted to You,” the old Everly Brothers standard from 1958. James did the vocal arrangement and plays guitar on Carly’s cod calypso “De Bat,” based on a true-life incident on Martha’s Vineyard.
“Tranquillo (Melt My Heart)” was Arif Mardin’s attempt to land Carly on the dance floor in the au courant disco world of Saturday Night Fever, John Travolta, and the Bee Gees. The lyrics are mostly about their son, baby Ben Taylor, who was still crying all the time (and still no one quite knew why). The lyric wondered, “Can’t stay up and won’t go to sleep / What does it mean?”
“He was just a very noisy, crying baby,” Carly remembered, “and I started calling him ‘Tranquillo’ as a nickname, thinking that I would magically imbue him with that characteristic. And he cried all the harder, and of course I was… Well, I always picked him up whenever he cried. He would quiet down and I would kind of sing this song to him.”
James Taylor wrote (but doesn’t play on) “One Man Woman,” on which Carly is expertly backed by the Stuff players, augmented by Michael Brecker, whose soulful saxophone solos were deployed by both Carly and James on their records. Other tracks on Boys/ Trees include the operatic “Haunting,” with both of Carly’s sisters on backing vocals; “In a Small Moment,” a guilty moment closely observed; “Back Down to Earth” (with John Hall on guitar); and “For Old Time’s Sake,” sentimentally cowritten with Jake Brackman—for old time’s sake.
Elektra really liked the album. “You Belong to Me” was obviously a hit single—everyone loved David Sanborn’s alto sax solo—and the duet with James felt like money in the bank. For the album sleeve, photographer Deborah Turbeville shot Carly in gauzy soft focus, all lingerie and stockings in a ballet studio. Once again Carly would be portrayed as the barely dressed temptress of the seventies, the leggy fallen woman. A nipple reportedly had to be airbrushed into detumescense before Elektra would print the album jacket.
Carly and James celebrated Christmas for the first time at 135 Central Park West. It was a happy time in their occasionally fraught marriage. A week earlier a film crew from one of the syndicated midnight rock programs had caught them in their tiny wooden music room in the Vineyard house singing James’s “You Can Close Your Eyes” together; James played guitar, eyes mostly closed, sitting between Carly’s sheltering legs. Their new duet, “Devoted to You,” was symbolic of what these two rock stars had been through together, and their hopes for the future. This—a creative partnership with an artistic genius whom she really loved—was what Carly Simon had hoped for, from the beginning. All things seemed to be going this proud couple’s way at the beginning of 1978, with the only clouds in their coffee being the persistent fevers and constant upset of their now year-old son.
THE GORILLA IN THE ROOM
Winter 1978. Thumping disco music still rules radio playlists, and the Sex Pistols—filth-spewing avatars of the UK punk movement—have just broken up on their first and only American tour. A new band called Blondie, starring sexy Debbie Harry from New Jersey, is spearheading (along with the Police) so-called New Wave music—pop songs with a fast beat and edgy, self-conscious lyrics.
Elektra is ruthlessly pressuring neurotic, stage-frightened Carly Simon to tour in support of her forthcoming album, and she glumly assents. Arlyne Rothberg books a dozen shows for later in the spring, mostly in the Northeast, supported by David Spinozza and the studio musicians who played on Boys in the Trees. James and the children will come along for the ride, and Carly vows to do her best, and not fall apart.
In February the family went on vacation to Tortola, in the British Virgin Islands. The rented house was on the beach, on the island’s west end. One day James was taking the meat out of a coconut with a butcher’s knife when he was distracted by a pelican landing in the water nearby. The coconut slipped out of his hand and the blade sliced his palm; he thought right away it was bad. He knew he had severed a nerve because he had no sensation in his left hand. On the thumb-edge side of his left index finger, it was a minor cut for a civilian, but a major injury for someone who played the guitar for a living. This injury would prevent James Taylor from touring that summer, resulting in what he later called “psychological effects of losing about two years of confidence off my guitar style, because of an accident to my hand.”
While his hand was healing he tried to keep busy. He and Carly sang on Kate Taylor’s first album for Columbia. They sang on three tracks for John Hall’s solo album for the same label. James was asked to contribute a song to a new musical, Working, based on Chicago journalist Studs Turkel’s interviews with working people. The song he came up with, “Millworker,” was the first he had ever written from a female point of view. He was so excited when he finished it, well after midnight, that he woke Carly to read the lyric to her. It took her three hours to get back to sleep. “I don’t exactly know who I’m giving this advice to,” James later told an interviewer, “but never wake up Carly Simon in the middle of the night.”
Boys in the Trees was released in April 1978 and became another bestselling record for Carly, reaching number ten on the album chart amid withering competition from disco queens and New Wavers. The “You Belong to Me” single topped out at number six. A twelve-inch remix of the song also sold well and was featured in the adult contemporary charts. A few months later, the “Devoted to You” duet with James stayed in the Top Forty for several weeks. It was a welcome comeback of sorts after the disappointing sales of Another Passenger of two years earlier.
In late April 1978, Carly Simon went on tour with her husband, along with their two kids, both of them sick, both throwing up in adjoining suites in rainy Boston’s best hotel. Then Carly started vomiting as well. This was her first tour with a band in five years, and expectations were astronomical. In the afternoon she went to the Paradise rock club on Commonwealth Avenue for the sound check with her cracking band of New York studio pros, powered by the formidable drummer Steve Gadd, under the direction of David Spinozza, who had his own jazzy album out and would open Carly’s shows with his own music. She canceled a pretour interview with Rolling Stone and then telephoned the writer from her hotel bed. “It’s the same thing the children have had for the past two days… ugh [gurgle]… I can’t even keep any liquids down… I’m so weak with hunger, I can hardly stand… Ohhh… Why did this have to happen—now?… I can’t go on tonight, and everyone will think I’m chickening out from stage fright—again.”
At the very last minute, when it was clear that all was lost, James Taylor told his wife to relax. As the dutiful and uxorious husband that he (ironically) styled himself, he would play the show instead. That night, nobody left the Paradise when the announcement was made that Carly Simon was ill and her husband would perform in her place.
David Spinozza’s soft jazz set left the audience a bit cold, but the band was topflight: Steve Gadd, Tony Levin on bass, Michael Mainieri on vibraphone, Warren Bernhardt on keyboards, and old friend Billy Mernit on piano. Then James Taylor came out to enthusiastic applause, looking pretty wacked, eyes totally pinned in his head. He mumbled incoherently about Carly not feeling well, leavin
g the audience even more confused than before. He remarked that his guitar strings were unusually loose because he had a bad cut on his fretting hand. Staring (somewhat disconcertingly) straight into the club’s main spotlight, he sang only one original song, the new “Millworker,” and plugged the Broadway show it was written for. The band then joined him for an oldies set: “Hey, Good Lookin’,” “Memphis,” “Let the Good Times Roll.” This was completely unrehearsed, and the musicians kept shooting anxious glances at one another as James plowed on. After another golden oldie crash-landed, James looked at his shoes and murmured into the microphone, “Just because… you’ve never been this close to a big star… doesn’t mean that you can’t shout abuse.”
“Sing some James Taylor songs,” someone yelled.
“I’m sick of that guy,” James replied, and launched into Carole King’s “Up on the Roof.” His encore was “Over the Rainbow.” James’s concert at the Paradise was short, but no one asked for their money back.
Carly was sufficiently recovered to go onstage in Boston the following night. She was still nauseated, and worried that she might puke on the front row. “I hope this is a loose set,” she told the sold-out club. “Anyone can go to the bathroom at any time—and so can I.” The clubs and theaters Carly played on this tour all lit the first ten rows so Carly could make eye contact with the audience. In attendance that night was a large contingent from the Taylor family, including James’s elusive father, Ike Taylor. Dr. Taylor, tall and imposing, was friendly. He drank a lot of beer and told people that, at home, he was known as the Doc of Rock.
Carly, dressed in a simple mauve top and a pair of slacks, frizzy long hair down her back—her body described (in a review) as “somewhere between willowy and skeletal”—opened with “Anticipation.” The crowd was adrenalized by her appearance and sinuous dance moves, and they were cheering her on. Then she moved on to “No Secrets,” the band expertly copying the sound of the records. Carly started forgetting about feeling ill and threw herself into the show. The first new song was “You Belong to Me,” rapturously received by the audience. “De Bat” fell a bit flat, but then James Taylor came out, alone, to give his wife a breather. Again staring directly into the spotlight, he performed “Up on the Roof.” (Reviewers noted that the applause he received for this was almost too thunderous, since it wasn’t his show.) But then Carly took the stage again and performed “You’re So Vain,” as Steve Gadd played some obscenely visceral drums. Now it was a rock concert, and the applause rivaled that for James. (This was a married couple that, on a good night, could seriously compete for audience adulation, in real time. Carly and James now found themselves in an unintended but brilliant marital game, one that no celebrity couple since Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton had ever experienced.)
More Room in a Broken Heart: The True Adventures of Carly Simon Page 25
