I wasn’t sure what our bond would turn out to be, but having this new person in my life gave me the courage to finally pull the plug on my marriage. I dreamed of a bigger life than Andrew did. I don’t even know if he dreamed, and if he did, I had no idea what his dreams were. I told Andrew I wanted a divorce. He was surprised, which just served to prove how disconnected we’d become. He said we should work on it more with Marci. I told him we’d been working on it for years. I was done. The divorce consisted of Andrew relinquishing any claim to ownership of my copyrights, and me leaving our apartment with only my clothes and my Tapestry and Sweet Baby James albums.
Fourteen
I HAD BEEN SPENDING more time in LA because both Melissa and Peter had moved there, and I decided to see if it would work for me.
I knew I couldn’t do the train thing again, so I discovered Captain Cummings’s series of tapes on overcoming your fear of flying. He was a pilot for American Airlines and his tapes came highly recommended by Neil Diamond’s wife, Marcia, who suffered as I did. I booked my flight (on American, of course) to LA.
I boarded the plane, carry-on in hand. It contained my headphones, my tape player, my tapes that I’d been listening to for two weeks now, and my Valium. I was shown to my seat by a stewardess whose face I studied intently, trying to determine if she was meant to have a long life or if this was going to be her last flight.
Okay, Carole, listen to Captain Cummings now. As the engines geared up for takeoff, I put on my headphones because I knew that for the entire flight my thumbs were going to have to remain upright, as if the plane needed two extra thumbs to keep it in the air, to remind it to stay UP.
Oh! It’s a little bumpy. I hate when it gets bumpy. But Captain Cummings did say it’s just like a car driving down a road. The road has a few bumps, it means nothing. I looked for the stewardess. She was busy with babies and old ladies, but she saw me craning my neck to make eye contact and eventually came over. I whispered to her, “How long do you think this turbulence is going to last?”
“Turbulence?” she said, surprised. “I don’t feel any real turbulence.”
“You don’t?” I said, stunned. “What do you call this? It’s very bumpy, isn’t it?”
“I just call this light chop.”
“Oh. I call it turbulence.”
“I’ve had a lot bumpier flights, believe me. You should see it when the plates fly around.”
I took a deep breath. Captain Cummings had never mentioned flying plates. She began to walk away. “Wait! Wait,” I said. “But how long will this . . . whatever this is, last? When does the pilot say it will be smooth again? Can you ask him?”
“I’ll try and find out,” she said, walking away while making a mental note to avoid my aisle. We finally hit a smooth patch and I got a little cocky. I was feeling numbness in my thumbs, and was overwhelmed with the urge to shake my hands out, but I couldn’t. I’d made a deal.
Who was it I made this deal with? God? “Hello, this is God talking. If you keep your thumbs erect for five and a half hours, you will have a safe flight to Los Angeles.” But could God really need me and my thumbs to keep the plane up? Isn’t that His job? No, it couldn’t be God.
Well, who was it? Was it the Devil? “I’ll get you to California,” he’d say, “but you’ll have to give me five hours of unrelenting fear. Deal?” And I guess I said “Deal.”
I RENTED A HOME on Kings Road, just above the Sunset Strip. Looking out at the expansive view of the city twinkling brightly from almost every room, I was thrilled to be away from the physical and emotional claustrophobia of New York. The house was comfortable and homey, with three bedrooms.
Bruce Roberts moved into one of them, because being alone was still not my strong suit. When I was alone, all of my fears would come up. I would lose pieces of the adult woman who was becoming so competent and get dragged back into old familiar worries that I had as a girl about dying.
Meanwhile, producer Cubby Broccoli agreed to let me write the lyric to “Nobody Does It Better,” but I had to finish it alone in LA while Marvin remained in London scoring The Spy Who Loved Me. This was my least favorite way of writing because you don’t have the instant feedback from your partner of “I love that line” or “You can do better.”
I prefer being in the same room with the composer. He or she plays a couple of chords and I start to hear words and one line triggers a melody or a melody line triggers a lyric. We become one, inspiring each other to write the best song we can, and if something sounds untrue or mundane or tired, we’re both there to try for something better together. Maybe he or she has a better lyric line, or I have an improvement on the melody, and if so, we both know it. There is constant honesty. I have given a complete lyric to a composer and he or she has put a melody to it, and vice versa. But writing together will always be my favorite way to craft a song.
Marvin would call from London, and I would sing him the new lines. He would write them down and then sing them back to me at the piano. “Good,” he’d say in his abrupt way. “Try to finish it soon. I can’t hold them up on this.” When Marvin was in the midst of taking care of business, he was all business. But with that part out of the way I was finding he could be very romantic and tender, even on the telephone.
Bruce acted as my sounding board, and I finally did it. I loved the finished song, but I had yet to hear it sung by anyone other than Marvin or me, and neither of us could be considered “singers” in the real sense of the word. And while I wasn’t required to get the title in, every Bond song thus far was the name of the movie it was in, so I was proud of myself for getting it into the song’s first verse:
But like heaven above me,
The spy who loved me
Is keeping all my secrets safe tonight
Now we needed to find someone to record it.
We both loved Carly Simon, so Marvin flew to New York City and played the song for her in her living room. She loved it as soon as she heard it, and they laid it down immediately on a tape recorder in her home. Marvin flew out to Los Angeles before returning to London to finish the scoring, and we both played the demo for Richard Perry, who proclaimed it a hit. Knowing the added plus that it was going to be the new Bond theme, he agreed on the spot to produce it.
Richard recorded the basic track in LA and put Carly on it. Then he and I traveled from LA to London for Marvin to record his orchestra on the song.
We had to fly. Over an ocean. And I did it. And the song sounded great. Carly’s voice and Richard’s production made the song very sexy, and my feeling that it was going to be a big hit was quickly borne out. The record went to number 2 in America and in England and it stayed there for weeks.
Fifteen
WE STARTED WORKING ON my album. I had seven songs I wanted to record, and in the course of making the record, I cowrote three more. I liked working with Brooks Arthur, even though I did play each track for Richard Perry to get a second opinion. Brooks made me feel secure and nicknamed me Lark, and with each take I would hear, through the studio speakers, “Beautiful, Lark! Uno mas!” I actually felt happy in the recording studio, and Brooks’s encouragement and enthusiasm for my voice helped me feel less insecure.
I had California’s best session players (Nicky Hopkins, Russ Kunkel, Lee Ritenour, Jim Keltner), Paul Buckmaster (a brilliant arranger who had worked with Elton John on his first five albums) did all of the string arrangements, plus famous friends (Melissa, Peter, Bette, Tony Orlando, Brenda Russell) sang backup for me. It never ceased to surprise me that in the midst of all of this, there was me, the nonsinger singer making her own album.
WHEN MARVIN FINISHED HIS work in London, he came to LA and we quickly became a couple.
It’s easy to think you’re in love when you have no idea what love feels like.
Together we were like two Jewish jumping beans, I with my fears and rituals, and him with his monumental mood swings. Still, he acted and looked like the grown-up while I was still a needy child-woman, and tha
t seemed to work for us. We were best together when we were writing, and we spent a tremendous amount of time doing exactly that.
One day when I was going to the recording studio, Marvin said, “I’d like to write a song with you for your record.” I was so flattered. That was a big compliment coming from him, because he was so successful in my eyes and had worked with only great singers. It validated me.
That night we sat down and wrote a really tender ballad called “Sweet Alibis.” Marvin was brilliant at knowing how to write for the artist who would be singing his song. He kept the melody small in range, staying where he knew my voice would sound its best. When I recorded it, he played the piano and basically coproduced the song with Brooks Arthur. And with that song my album was complete.
It stunned me that Marvin didn’t seem to appreciate how musically dazzling he was. He knew how to put an act together better than most directors who did that for a living, and he proved a savior many times over to three huge, first-named stars: Barbra, Liza, and Ann-Margret. They all depended on him to diagnose the weak spots of their acts. If Marvin was there, you felt safe. He was as kind as he was talented.
On the cover of my album I stood shyly against an all-white background, wearing a tee shirt and a pair of white painter’s pants, head down with a sprig of violets coming out of the pants pocket. I felt it represented the vulnerable side of me, which matched my singing voice. Today, for more and more people, album art is a two-inch square image at the iTunes store, and before that we had a quarter-century of five-inch CDs, but before that people really looked at album covers because they were large. You often studied the back cover while you were listening to the record, each song in its carefully considered order, with credits of the musicians and writers. And liner notes that someone actually thought about and wrote, and listeners enjoyed reading.
THE RECORD, SIMPLY TITLED Carole Bayer Sager, was released near the end of 1977. My version of “You’re Moving Out Today” was released as a single in America and it enjoyed even less success than Bette’s had. So imagine my surprise when I got a call from Steve Wax from Elektra Records telling me that my single was in the Top Ten in England and moving up the charts in Australia, where it soon spent a month at Number One.
Bette’s label and my label were under the same umbrella outside of the United States. To this day I have no idea why they decided to release my version internationally.
Bette was furious, and I could understand why. She was the star. This song was her inspiration. She accused me of planning the entire maneuver, sabotaging her record just to elevate mine to platinum status in a country half a world away.
“Bette, I swear to you, I had nothing to do with this,” I said. “I didn’t even know they were putting it out. No one told me a thing.”
Her eyes narrowed until they were almost crossing themselves. “Falsehoods! Untruths! Fiction! I don’t believe a word!” And she stormed off in a huff, and we didn’t speak for over two years.
When we made up, which was inevitable given that she knew in her heart she had no bigger fan than me, the incident was never really mentioned. She just let it go. But then, we carry each other’s history, and how many people can you say that about?
And as another friend once told me, “If you get eighty percent in a friend, or a husband, consider yourself lucky. If you want more, you’ll spend your life alone.”
NOT LONG AFTER IT came out, Andrew called to tell me how painful it was to hear my name or see it in print, and asked me to change it back.
“Are you fucking insane?” I said, perhaps insensitively. “You insisted I use the name when I didn’t want to. Now I’ve really had hits. How can I go back to Carole Bayer? I’m known now as the girl with three names.”
The album didn’t sell a huge number of copies, but there was a lot of industry buzz. I was surprised and delighted by how many important publications and reviewers liked it. Robert Hilburn, the music critic for the Los Angeles Times, included it in his year-end Top Ten and wrote, “This debut is the most appealing adult mainstream collection since Janis Ian’s Between the Lines . . . Sager’s lyrics carry a quiet wisdom that is both contemporary and relevant: Her singing may be a bit mannered and ragged on first listening, but it eventually asserts a character and conviction that gives the songs added bite.” Wow. In my own way I could sing.
Like Peter’s albums, mine proved to be a great platform for other artists to hear a song they liked and figure, “I can sing it better than she did.” And they did. Dusty Springfield, Diana Ross, Ann Peebles, Rita Coolidge, Rosemary Clooney, and Barbara Cook, among others, all recorded songs from the album.
Joe Smith wanted me to play a few clubs to support the record, so Marvin helped me put a small act together, and I performed it in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and finally LA at the Roxy. I had not gotten on a stage and performed in quite that way since my days at New York University.
I had this need to take chances and push myself into uncomfortable situations like performing. My stage fright was unbearable. My eyes would always go to the one person in the room who seemed not to be having a good time, and I would continue to check in with that one unhappy face. Still, somehow I got through all four cities. Marvin would tell me how magical I was when I captured the audience. I sang with conviction, believing my words to be true. I also found that when I relaxed I could ad-lib and sometimes be funny, which the audience loved. Once I felt that connection, I would actually enjoy the rest of the set, but I didn’t know how to hold on to those feelings from one city to the next. I felt like one of those vending machines where the coins get stuck on the way down and are never truly deposited.
Sixteen
ONE NIGHT MARVIN CAME over and handed me a small box that I recognized instantly from its iconic color. I couldn’t imagine what he might have given me from Tiffany, but I certainly was not expecting a sparkling diamond heart on a thin platinum chain. He put it around my neck.
“Oh my God, Marvin. It’s so beautiful. I’m stunned that you would buy me something so beautiful.”
“I want you to wear this so you know how I feel about you,” he said. It was a little more than a carat, and no one had ever given me a diamond before. He made me very happy.
JUST AS THE FIRST song of mine that was recorded went to Number One, the first song I’d ever written for a motion picture was nominated for an Academy Award.
Nobody does it better
Makes me feel sad for the rest
For most people, this line evokes sultry Bond vixens drifting across the screen and the throaty, velvet voice of Carly Simon. For me, on the night of April 3, 1978, it meant a wardrobe crisis and the worst bout of stage fright in my thirty-four years on the planet.
Marvin and I entered the enormous Dorothy Chandler Pavilion with our mothers in tow and began to move to our seats on the aisle in the fifth row. My mother walked in regally, or at least as regally as you can manage at five foot two, with her head held high and her ample chest puffed up and out. She was dressed as though she were about to open as a headliner in Las Vegas: all in gold, like the trophy she was hoping we’d go home with. As she walked, I could hear the cling-clang of her one too many bracelets.
“These are great seats,” she said. “I think I’ll sit right here in the ‘Carole Bayer Sager’ seat. After all, you wouldn’t be here without me.”
I was about to keep moving down past the place where my name was taped but Marvin, in his black Armani tuxedo—the outfit he looked and felt most comfortable in—intervened.
“Come on, Anita, move two seats over,” he said. “That’s Carole’s seat and then there’s mine. Move down next to my mother. See how nicely she’s behaving?” Lilly Hamlisch, portly in the same black dress she wore when cleaning her house, was seated somberly, looking like she could just as easily have been at a funeral. My mother, Anita, who was happy talking to anyone, even—and often, preferably—herself, launched into a jittery monologue.
“Exciting, huh, Lilly? Who ever
thought we’d see this. Your son, my daughter—I only wish Eli was alive to see this.” Lilly, who was rummaging through her bag, didn’t respond. Anita, lacking all boundaries, reached over into Lilly’s bag. “Is that a tissue? You better give me one, too, Lilly,” she said. “I don’t know if I’ll be crying tears of joy or sorrow.”
“Mahvin,” Lilly said in her thick German accent, “make her stop. I only have two tissues, one for me and one for you.” Anita, paying no attention, continued. “Well, this certainly makes up for the debacle of Georgy. What a night this is. What a thrill!”
“Mom,” I finally said. “Please, leave Mrs. Hamlisch alone. Can’t you see she’s not a talker?”
“These people have no idea how to have fun,” Anita mumbled to herself, then laughed. “Ha! No one’s going to spoil my night.”
She was having the time of her life, oblivious to the fact that I was paralyzed with fright. I guess anybody would be nervous on a night like this—until now I’d only seen the Oscars on television. Even when I was really young, they let me stay up and watch. But I wasn’t just nervous. I was convinced that there was no way I was going to be able to get out of my seat if we won.
Looking around the star-studded auditorium, I was sure I didn’t belong there. My dress wasn’t glamorous; my hair was not just ordinary but brown. I was too short, I had no breasts, and my weight was not where it should have been. There was no way I could enjoy myself. I had taken a Valium but it hadn’t kicked in yet, and I was wondering if I should maybe take another half of the one probably crushed by now in my overstuffed purse.
“I am so scared,” I said, trying to take a breath. “You have no idea.”
“You’re scared?” my mother said. “You should be excited. Look where we are!”
“Don’t be silly, honey,” Marvin said. “It’s the greatest thrill in the world to win an Oscar. Trust me. I ought to know. And if we win, I’ll hold your hand and lead my little princess to the greatest moment of her career.”
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