More Room in a Broken Heart: The True Adventures of Carly Simon

by Stephen Davis

  The HBO special Carly Simon Live from Martha’s Vineyard was broadcast later that summer, to unusually high ratings. The following year, eleven songs from the concert were released on VHS video and on Carly’s first ever concert recording, Greatest Hits Live.

  Carly’s uncle Peter Dean died that year. At his funeral in New York, Carly and her sisters were approached by any number of attractive women of a certain age, many of them African American, who were eager to express their condolences and let the Simon sisters know how close they had been to their wonderful uncle, and how much they had loved him.

  Late 1987. Carly and a reporter were walking down Central Park West on their way to an interview lunch. There were giant posters of Carly’s smiling face along the broad avenue and everywhere in New York, an almost surreal effect for her, as the city’s bus stops advertised her endorsement of McCall’s, a venerable magazine for women. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a little man approached Carly carrying a large book. The book was a collection of photographs taken by Rolling Stone’s Annie Leibovitz in the seventies, and the man wanted Carly to autograph her page. This was the image of a perspiring James Taylor carrying Carly Simon, piggyback style, neither wearing much, that had been published in Rolling Stone in 1979. The little man handed Carly a pen, but as she was about to sign, she noticed that the autograph hound had already gotten to James Taylor. In precise lettering, James had carefully written, “A NARROW ESCAPE,” and drawn an arrow pointing at himself. Carly was flustered at this, but signed the book anyway. (It was a spurned autograph hunter who had murdered John Lennon in the same neighborhood, so she preferred to take no chances.)

  She married James Hart at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Edgartown, Martha’s Vineyard, on December 23, 1987. The couple honeymooned on the neighboring island of Nantucket. The children celebrated Christmas with James and his wife. Jim Hart kept his small bachelor’s apartment in New York and lived with Carly, mostly on the Vineyard. He resolved to write a novel, befriended Mike Nichols and some of Carly’s other friends, and was quickly accepted into her tight social circle. Carly’s old friends, who had tried in vain to start conversations with shoe-gazing James Taylor, could hardly get the new guy to shut up.

  Carly took a call from Mike Nichols again in late 1987. He wanted her to score an entire film this time. Working Girl would star Harrison Ford, Melanie Griffith, and Sigourney Weaver. The script was a Cinderella tale of a Staten Island secretary, working on Wall Street, who attracts the company’s boss. (This was Carly’s mother’s story as well.) Nichols wanted another big anthem like “Coming Around Again” and also wordless interludes for moods and scene changes. Carly spent most of 1988 working on the music, coming up with “Let the River Run” as her clarion paean to hope and achievement. Once “the river” in her lyrics had only referred to sexuality and desire. Now the river ran more gently through the experience of life itself. Jim Hart gave Carly the dreamers awakening the nation and the notion of a New Jerusalem, familiar to him from William Blake and almost all the Romantic poets. Producer Rob Mounsey gave the track an urban jungle feeling with big drums and a gospel choir. Big rhythms, rock guitar, and a booming vocal from Carly gave the song incredible momentum and drive. Mike Nichols loved it.

  Carly wrote several pretty, sentimental love themes for use in the film, which were orchestrated by Don Sebesky. One of these, “Carlotta’s Heart,” has a wordless Carly vocal as well. Another has Carly singing over the famous boys’ choir of St. Thomas’s Church on Fifth Avenue. The Working Girl soundtrack is filled out with contributions from pianist Grady Tate, Rob Mounsey, vintage Sonny Rollins, and the Pointer Sisters. There was a last-minute crisis when the studio wanted to replace “Let the River Run” with something by the Eagles. Mike Nichols prevailed, and “Witchy Woman” stayed out of the picture.

  Working Girl arrived in movie theaters in December 1988 and was an instant success, earning more than a hundred million dollars at the box office. The soundtrack was released by Arista in early 1989, and “Let the River Run” was a national hit single. Carly’s movie music began to attract shiny statuettes: a Grammy and a Golden Globe. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences took note and nominated her for an Oscar.

  Jacqueline Onassis called Carly in early 1988 and invited her to a business lunch in Manhattan. She described to Carly her harrowing experience with Michael Jackson, then the biggest star in the world, who seemed to be reneging on a deal to publish the ghostwritten memoirs that Jackie had commissioned. Mrs. Onassis asked Carly for advice on how to deal with Jackson and his management. (Jackson’s book, Moon Walk, was published in 1988 and became an international bestseller.)

  Jackie explained that, as an editor at Doubleday, she had mostly published books about the fine arts, ballet, and décor. But her bosses were asking her to acquire autobiographies by celebrities, and Jackie said that she had a feeling that Carly had an incredible story and a great book in her. Carly later wrote: “I didn’t say ‘no,’ but I didn’t mean ‘yes.’ In fact, I tried because it was Jackie.” In a flurry of concentrated remembrance that summer, Carly wrote eighty pages of a memoir about her parents and their family. Then she tore the pages up in a burst of self-recrimination about what she was revealing. “I could talk about my own life, with all its long and shortcomings, but not those of other people. It was impossible.”

  Next Jackie suggested to Carly that she write a children’s book, or a series of books, that drew on her experiences as a child and the stories she had told her own children. So Carly wrote a text about a little girl who couldn’t get to sleep and eventually came up with a solution that magically let her (and her mother) get some rest. Doubleday gave Carly twenty-five thousand dollars as an advance. Carly gave half of the advance to Margot Datz, a Vineyard artist who had painted murals at Carly’s house and her nightclub. As Carly began working with Jackie they became good friends, sharing working lunches, occasional movies in New York, cigarettes, and confi dences. (Jackie had a major crush on Massachusetts senator John Kerry, who reminded her of Jack Kennedy if he had lived longer.) Carly found Jackie, then sixty, to be reassuring and fascinating, an idealized paradigm of her own mother. Jackie moved around Manhattan in taxis and town cars, incognito, with no bodyguards or the Secret Service protection to which she was entitled as a former First Lady. When discussing Carly’s book project, Jackie made clever suggestions about the text and illustrations in a soothing, collaborative manner that Carly found flattering. Carly felt that Jackie was trying to almost bond with her imagination, because all her comments were so insightful.

  Carly later said she thought Jackie was sympathetic to her because she was so incapable of hiding her feelings that Jackie could be herself—“the eighth grader she really was”—when she was with Carly. “I wasn’t deferential to her. I would swear and cuss. Jackie loved naughtiness.” But at first this insouciance came with a price. “I tried so hard to act the part of being relaxed around her that I would come home with a stiff neck and a migraine headache. After a while, it became much easier, especially on the Vineyard. I have a circular garden, and we would sit there and have little sandwiches—smoked salmon, watercress. Jackie loved to eat.”

  Carly’s first book, Amy the Dancing Bear, was published in 1989 and sold unusually well, reportedly over a hundred thousand copies. Doubleday then asked for another book from Carly and Margot, again offering a twenty-five-thousand-dollar advance, which Carly accepted. The next time they met for lunch, Jackie asked how much the company had paid her. When Carly told her, Mrs. Onassis took off her sunglasses, looked wide-eyed at Carly, and whispered, “ Carly—you got screwwwed!”

  Carly recalled, “All the children’s books had fragments of my life, to be sure. (My life as a bear, for instance.) Jackie was a wonderful editor. Over the years I did four books with her.” The second book, The Boy of the Bells, a Christmas story, was published in 1990 and concerns a boy who enlisted Santa Claus’s help in helping his mute sister regain her voice. The Fisherman’s Song (1991) i
s about a girl whose lover (the illustrations made him look a lot like a young James Taylor) sadly leaves her alone on a far-off island. The final book in this collaboration, The Nighttime Chauffeur, is about a boy named Ben who wants to drive the Central Park carriages all night. Carly has said that the books she wrote for Jackie were high points in her career, and ended only with Mrs. Onassis’s death in 1994.

  In the summer of 1988, Carly took her children out of the Manhattan schools and moved the family to Martha’s Vineyard full time. She and her husband redesigned the vegetable garden that she and James Taylor had planted fifteen years earlier, in 1973. A doctor diagnosed Carly’s stage fright as an inner ear disorder and prescribed low doses of Inderal, one of the so-called “beta blockers” designed to combat anxiety and panic disorders.

  In September, Sally Taylor went off to boarding school in Massachusetts while Ben, now eleven, was sent through the island’s public school system. Jim Hart, who was now attending AA meetings, was attentive and helpful; there was little drama between Carly and her second husband, which is perhaps one reason why the next few years were very productive for her.

  CARLY COMES TO DINNER

  Carly worked on two albums in 1989. The first was My Romance, her second album of standards from the American songbook. Clive Davis wanted an album of new songs, but Carly was written out from the Working Girl project. So Arista agreed to a svelte album of classic songs instead.

  My Romance was recorded with a live orchestra at the Power Station in New York during two weeks in January. Carly worked on the vocal arrangements at the piano in her Manhattan apartment with arranger Michael Kosarin before the sessions, and gave the tapes to the legendary Marty Paich, who wrote the orchestrations. Most of the songs were downbeat and torchy, inspired by the albums Frank Sinatra made with Nelson Riddle in the fifties. Carly chose familiar songs by Rodgers and Hart, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Howard Dietz, and Arthur Schwartz, as well as “Danny Boy” (dedicated to Allie Brennan, who, Carly wrote, “lullabyed me with ‘Danny Boy’ when all else failed to pacify me”). Carly wrote one original song, “What Has She Got?” with Jake Brackman and Michael Kosarin, about being envious of a female rival. The recording ensemble included drummer Steve Gadd, two bassists, and a forty-piece orchestra.

  “Let the River Run” had been released as a single at the beginning of the year. During the sessions for My Romance, Carly’s single got to number five on the adult contemporary chart and number forty-nine on the Hot 100.

  Carly and Jim went to the Academy Awards ceremony in March 1989. “Let the River Run” had been nominated by the movie industry in the category of Best Song. Carly knew she wasn’t going to win, but everyone insisted that she attend the Oscars. At the hotel, she took a long time dressing and being styled, and in the end wasn’t happy with her hair. But it didn’t matter anyway, because no way did she think she had a chance of winning. On the way into the Shrine Auditorium in Santa Monica, she spied fellow nominee Phil Collins on the red carpet and almost fell over herself telling him that she was unworthy and that he would surely win. Carly later said she had no memory of winning, or of getting to the stage to accept the gold statuette. She managed to thank her husband by name “for the best lines in the song” before the music came up and the presenters led her off to the press room, where flash cameras strobed at her like a million suns.

  Carly was dazed and exhausted. Outside the Shrine, Oscar in hand, she sat down on the curb to wait for her limousine and was nearly trampled by hordes of Hollywood types rushing to get to their limos first as the ceremony was ending. “Let the River Run” was the first movie theme to win all three major industry awards. The Oscar, the Grammy, and the Golden Globe all went up on the mantel of the Vineyard house.

  Then Mike Nichols called again. He was working on his next film, an adaptation of Carrie Fisher’s 1987 novel Postcards from the Edge. He wanted another grand theme from Carly, another compulsively listenable song to play as the credits rolled on a story about fighting addictions (and your mother). Carly came up with the slightly spooky song “Have You Seen Me Lately?” Meryl Streep recorded the version that was supposed to be used in the film. Nichols liked it, but Carrie Fisher apparently didn’t, and the song was removed from the credit crawl of the (mediocre) movie at the last minute. Carly would use the song as the keystone of her next album of original songs, about which Clive Davis was already pestering her management.

  Summer 1989. James Taylor took Sally and Ben on his annual tour of the nation’s “sheds,” outdoor suburban amphitheaters. Fifteen-year-old Sally was singing backup along with James’s famous singers Rosemary Butler and Arnold McCuller. James was now an exercise buff, and he often took the children on hiking or sailing trips, and on yearly vacations to remote locations for exploration and discovery.

  On Martha’s Vineyard, Carly had built a large swimming pool, and a party barn for events she hosted to benefit the island’s charities, and an occasional politician (all Democrats). She usually offered herself as a prize in the annual Vineyard Community Services celebrity auction run by the ancient newspaper humorist Art Buchwald. High bidders could buy a day of sailing with newscaster Walter Cronkite on his yacht, get some depressing literary advice from novelist Bill Styron, or Carly Simon would come to their houses and make them lunch. Or sing a song. (Usually both.) Carly’s prizes were often the auction’s top earners. This year, the auction included a tour of the Ghostbusters II movie set, hosted by its producer, Dan Aykroyd; a tour of The Washington Post, with its owner, Katharine Graham; and a picnic at Chip Chop, a famous Old Vineyard summer house formerly owned by the actress Katharine Cornell, now the seasonal home of Mike Nichols and Diane Sawyer.

  Carly, looking summery tanned and rail-thin, joined Art Buchwald at the Edgartown hotel podium for the action of the item labeled “Carly Comes to Dinner.” He opened the bidding at three hundred dollars and then coaxed it to five thousand and then ten. Then, cheered on by their attractive blond wives, two youngish Connecticut businessmen in blue blazers and red flannel trousers went at it hammer and tongs, matching bids until Buchwald stopped the bidding at twenty-six thousand dollars. After consulting with Carly, Buchwald announced that for twenty-six grand apiece, Carly would come and sing three songs in each of their homes. Carly would also bring peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. “It was the least I could do,” she told the venerable Vineyard Gazette newspaper.

  One afternoon that summer, Carly was having lunch with some people at her mother’s house. The other guests were her mother’s neighbors, plus a prominent Chilmark selectman (a New England town official) and his wife. Andrea Simon was feeling somewhat peevish, and was suffering from diverticulitis, an intestinal disorder. (She wasn’t allowed to eat anything with seeds; this removed strawberries from the menu, which annoyed her.) Someone raised a glass and proposed a toast to Carly for winning the Oscar. Andrea raised her glass and told Carly, “You’re not the best singer, you’re not the best composer, but you did get the Oscar.” Carly was very wounded by this. Later, one of the lingering guests chided Andrea, accusing her of being jealous of Carly. “You’re damned right I’m jealous of Carly,” the old woman said with a laugh. She later called her daughter to apologize.

  September 1989. Mick Jagger was calling. The Rolling Stones would tour America again that fall, after a disagreeable hiatus of eight years. (It had been an incredible nineteen years since the founding of the group.) Carly promised Mick she would come to one of the band’s concerts when the tour arrived in New York. But her husband, Jim, had by then heard all the gossipy stories and idle speculation about the fabled relationship between his wife and Mick Jagger. James Hart was as jealous of Mick Jagger as James Taylor had been, if not more so.

  Then Mrs. Onassis called. Her son, John Kennedy Jr., then twenty-nine and a recent law school graduate, had just failed the New York State bar exam—for the second time. This wasn’t cool. (New York Post: “Hunk Flunks!”) John was a Rolling Stones fan, and now his mother asked Carly (her autho
r) to take him to the Stones concert and introduce him to Mick Jagger, in the hope that this would pick up JFK Jr.’s spirits. Carly called John, who protested that he was too humiliated to appear in public, but Carly went into her “Auntie Carlton” mode, and persuaded the young Kennedy heir to come to the show.

  The Stones’ epochal 1989 Steel Wheels tour arrived in New York in October 1989. These stadium shows, projected to audiences via immense JumboTron video screens, were a huge comeback for the once self-proclaimed “greatest rock-and-roll band in the world.” Carly rode out to Giants Stadium in New Jersey with her party. A meeting with Jagger before the show had been arranged, but as they moved through the crowded, mazelike corridors of the lower stadium, they were told that only three people—Carly, Ben Taylor, and John Kennedy—would be allowed into Jagger’s dressing room.

  Jim Hart waited in the hall outside and fumed. He had an acute sense of social radar, and understood that his exclusion was no accident. He was also frustrated because Carly was supporting him while he was trying to write a novel, and the writing wasn’t going well. “I was out-of-my-mind jealous about Carly being with Jagger,” he said later. He glared at Carly during the show, which disturbed John Kennedy. At the end of the evening, back at Carly’s apartment, Hart raged at her. He had sometimes lost his temper when Carly’s incessant fears and irrational phobias got the better of him, but now Hart was so angry that Ben Taylor, age twelve, dialed 911. Carly locked herself in the bedroom while two New York City cops got her husband to calm down. Carly stopped taking Mick Jagger’s calls—at least for a while.