Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing.
Speaker 1: We can never know about the days to come, but
Speaker 1: let me think about them anyway. I don't wonder if
Speaker 1: I'm really with you now or just chase after song.
Speaker 1: Fine day and it's Abasia and it's Abasaition is Megan.
Speaker 1: It's hard, if not impossible, to imagine the nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: without musician Carly Simon. She gained near instant fame after
Speaker 1: opening for Cat Stevens at l A's Troubadour in nine.
Speaker 1: Within a year, she would make a chart topping album,
Speaker 1: win a Grammy, and marry singer James Taylor. Her music
Speaker 1: spoke to the openness of her generation and earned her
Speaker 1: critical acclaim worldwide. In hits like Yours Sylvain, Carly Simon
Speaker 1: exuded fearlessness poise, but backstage she was grasping for both.
Speaker 1: She disliked the spotlight and had to will herself out
Speaker 1: of a case of stage fright to continue performing. When
Speaker 1: Carly Simon started out, she never planned on performing. When
Speaker 1: I started recording, that was all I was going to do.
Speaker 1: I wasn't going to get out on stage and do
Speaker 1: anything on stage. I wanted to make demos for other
Speaker 1: people to record my songs. So I recorded, hoping that
Speaker 1: Dion Warwick would record one, hoping that Judie Collins would record.
Speaker 1: So just I just made a glorified demo. Turned out
Speaker 1: to be so glorified that that we had string players
Speaker 1: and we had arrangements, and things got more and more
Speaker 1: became something that a record company wanted. So Electric Records
Speaker 1: signed me, and that was Jack Holsman, who was the
Speaker 1: head of Electra at that time. Well, yes, and what
Speaker 1: was the song you were trying to demo that Jack
Speaker 1: Holdsman said, let's put this out with you singing. What
Speaker 1: was that song? Well, the first demo I made in
Speaker 1: a studio had five songs, which was just me and
Speaker 1: guitar and another cat named Dave Bromberg on on a guitar.
Speaker 1: Five songs, two of which I think made it to
Speaker 1: the next demo. There was a song called a Loan
Speaker 1: which I wrote on the beach and Martha's Vineyard about
Speaker 1: being alone and romantic and happy, and and there was
Speaker 1: another song called I'm all it takes to make You happy.
Speaker 1: There's happy songs. Then there was a song that I
Speaker 1: wrote with Jake Brackman called, that's the way I've always
Speaker 1: heard it should be, and that song I played on piano,
Speaker 1: and that that got to the next demo, and Jack
Speaker 1: Holsman heard that. Clive Davis heard it first, and as
Speaker 1: did a bunch of other people. And they heard my
Speaker 1: first demo, and they didn't know what to make of me.
Speaker 1: They didn't know if I was a jazz singer, a
Speaker 1: blues singer, a rock and roll singer, a theater singer,
Speaker 1: a cabaret singer. They didn't They didn't know what to
Speaker 1: how how to apply me to the merchandizing scheme. Did
Speaker 1: you try to suggest to them what kind of singer
Speaker 1: you were? No, because I didn't. I didn't fit my
Speaker 1: own self into a category. I had imitated a whole
Speaker 1: lot of people, and I had developed my own voice,
Speaker 1: but with so many influences that I hadn't I hadn't
Speaker 1: cut myself off from my influences and made a whole me.
Speaker 1: The umbilical cord was still attached to Odetta, was still
Speaker 1: attached to Annie Ross of Memberson Wis, and Ross still
Speaker 1: attached to Pete Seeger. To the various influences I mean,
Speaker 1: I still have trouble with that. People say that the
Speaker 1: reason that I haven't been inducted into the Rock and
Speaker 1: Roll Hall of Fame is that they don't is that
Speaker 1: I'm not really a rock and roll singer or that,
Speaker 1: or that I sort of go in a lot of
Speaker 1: different directions. I've made four albums of standards for example,
Speaker 1: which I didn't you know, which I didn't write, which
Speaker 1: were written by Cole Porter and George Hirshwin and Rogerson
Speaker 1: Hard and the great, the great people who could write
Speaker 1: great songs for singers because they weren't one and the
Speaker 1: same in that period. But what's interesting to me is
Speaker 1: that when you are years old, that's the way it
Speaker 1: always should be. Is your first song that's a hit song? Yes,
Speaker 1: and you wrote that with Jake. And I want to
Speaker 1: explain to people because everybody, I mean many people know
Speaker 1: Jake Brackman as a famous songwriter and partner reviewers. Where
Speaker 1: did you meet him? I met Jake at summer camp.
Speaker 1: We were both counselors at Indian Hill Camp in the Berkshires,
Speaker 1: and Jake was the um, the swimming counselor, and he
Speaker 1: also taught literature. These were very lardy kids, and I
Speaker 1: was the guitar teacher, all all the kids met me
Speaker 1: for the first time. They had known each other from
Speaker 1: the summer before. Jake wasn't there yet because he had
Speaker 1: hepatitis and was in the hospital. But they said, oh
Speaker 1: wait till you meet Jake, you'll be you'll just fall
Speaker 1: in love with each other or be friends for the
Speaker 1: rest of your life. I don't think anybody had ever
Speaker 1: ever quite introduced me to somebody before I actually met
Speaker 1: them with those terms that they would be lifelong friends.
Speaker 1: And the day that he got there, they prepared to
Speaker 1: cook out, the campers did, and they said, now we
Speaker 1: want you to come down to the cookout, and Jake
Speaker 1: will come down to the cookout, and you'll stand opposite
Speaker 1: each other, but with with your backs to each other,
Speaker 1: and at the count of three, you'll turn toward each
Speaker 1: other and you'll see what we mean about that, your
Speaker 1: two halves of one person. And so it was one
Speaker 1: too three. We turned across this fire which was raging
Speaker 1: between us, and we both smiled and we recognized each
Speaker 1: other in ourselves and vice versa, and it was quite amazing.
Speaker 1: And Jake just dropped me off here today. What was
Speaker 1: it about him? Was he writing? Songs and was he
Speaker 1: he was a musician and into songwriting, and no Jake
Speaker 1: was at that point he had just graduated from Harvard.
Speaker 1: He was the editor of The Crimson and he went
Speaker 1: in he was writing for Newsweek magazine. He was writing
Speaker 1: for Talk of the Town, and he was he was
Speaker 1: the young writer on the scene. He was the young
Speaker 1: prose writer on the scene when we started writing songs together.
Speaker 1: He then also got into to working with Terence Malock
Speaker 1: and he worked on Days of Heaven and on bad Lands,
Speaker 1: and he wrote King of Marvin Gardens with Jack with
Speaker 1: Jack Nicholson in that, and so he's he's a man
Speaker 1: of all words, most of them quite quite funny. He's
Speaker 1: an unusual beyond journalism in screenwriting. He was a lyrict
Speaker 1: as he was writing lyrics. He had never written lyrics before.
Speaker 1: But I had this melody Da da Da Da Da
Speaker 1: Da Da Da da da and the whole song because
Speaker 1: I've written that for for an NBC special called Who
Speaker 1: Killed Lake Erie. That was the background music for that.
Speaker 1: So when I was going to make this demo, I
Speaker 1: couldn't get lyrics for it because if I write a
Speaker 1: melody first, I can't seem to find lyrics to it.
Speaker 1: It's got to be the other way around. I write
Speaker 1: lyrics first, and so I had this melody and Jake
Speaker 1: was by then my best friend, and I said, do
Speaker 1: you want to try to write a lyric? So I
Speaker 1: gave him on a little cassette. I gave him that melody,
Speaker 1: and he came back a day or two later with
Speaker 1: with a full lyric except for one verse, which we
Speaker 1: edited out. My friends from college. There all they have
Speaker 1: their houses, and there they have their silent news, tears,
Speaker 1: angry their children hate them for the things they're not.
Speaker 1: They hate themselves, Oh what they and yet they drink,
Speaker 1: they laugh, Close the wound, hide the sky the lyrics
Speaker 1: because they're very pungent lyrics in that song. They hate
Speaker 1: themselves for what they are. Who is he talking about? Well,
Speaker 1: his girlfriend was just about to move in with him.
Speaker 1: Jake and I lived apart, will live one block away
Speaker 1: from each other, but we shared each other's lives and
Speaker 1: our friends were each other's friends, and I met most
Speaker 1: of the people that I know today through through Jake
Speaker 1: or vice versa. So his girlfriend, Rickie was just about
Speaker 1: to move in with him, and he realized that she
Speaker 1: was going to be moving into his rooms. And that's
Speaker 1: an invasion of territory for certain people. And it, I mean,
Speaker 1: it means a whole lot. It means not only are
Speaker 1: you going to be in my rooms, but you're I'm
Speaker 1: not going to be able to get you out of
Speaker 1: my rooms if you're living with me. So from Jake's
Speaker 1: point of view, that that song was, you know, are
Speaker 1: we going to marry? Are we not going to marry?
Speaker 1: And we had talked a lot about marriage and a
Speaker 1: lot about the fact that being in love with somebody,
Speaker 1: living with somebody didn't necessarily indicate that you had to
Speaker 1: get married, as it had a situation for our years.
Speaker 1: We're different, Um what what? What? What? What situation of yours?
Speaker 1: Were you referring the men in your life? Every man
Speaker 1: that I was, that I was with, I felt I
Speaker 1: had to marry if I was going to sleep at them,
Speaker 1: or if I was going to have sex with him
Speaker 1: in any way, I felt as if I as if
Speaker 1: I had to marry them and have children. And so
Speaker 1: times were changing, and this was this was a very
Speaker 1: different era that Kennedy years were upon us and the
Speaker 1: hippie dom, the Woodstock era. The times were hugely changing.
Speaker 1: I mean, I didn't didn't necessarily have to marry the
Speaker 1: person that you were living with and raise a family
Speaker 1: of our own, you and me. Um, that's the way
Speaker 1: they I've always heard it should be you want to
Speaker 1: marry me, and then oh, will marry you, but resignation
Speaker 1: with resignation exactly. And so that's how the song really
Speaker 1: came to life. Was about the disillusionment of my parents marriage,
Speaker 1: which was about walking home at night and tiptoeing by
Speaker 1: my mother's bedroom and she she calls out, sweet dreams,
Speaker 1: but I forget how to dream. And my father sitting
Speaker 1: in the the room with his cigarette, cigarette glows in
Speaker 1: the dark. And so it's it's it's all about the
Speaker 1: separation of the people who are supposed to be married
Speaker 1: or supposed to live in one happy house together, really
Speaker 1: not happy in living in that house. Now that affects
Speaker 1: you when you see them. You wrote a book, and
Speaker 1: a lot of it includes some of your childhood and
Speaker 1: your marriage and everything. You know, you're both your marriages
Speaker 1: and you I think your book only goes up through
Speaker 1: your first marriage. But the idea being that you know,
Speaker 1: what do you leave in and what do you leave out? Well,
Speaker 1: you know this was very important. When I first got
Speaker 1: asked to write my memoir was six and I was
Speaker 1: and I was called on the phone by Jacqueline Onassis
Speaker 1: and she said, Carle Carling, you would make a wonderful
Speaker 1: writer of a memoir. And so that's how I started,
Speaker 1: and I wrote about sixty pages at that point, and
Speaker 1: realizing that I was leaving out the very nucleus of
Speaker 1: the story, which was about my parents and their marriage
Speaker 1: and the the thing that happened to their marriage, which
Speaker 1: was that which was the great divide of having my
Speaker 1: brother's tutor come to live with us, and he and
Speaker 1: my mother fell in love, and that was a separate
Speaker 1: relationship which existed in the same house that she lived
Speaker 1: in with my father and us and and all and
Speaker 1: all of the kids. So trying to leave that out
Speaker 1: was almost impossible when that formed the very essence of
Speaker 1: me that I was trying to write about in the
Speaker 1: first place. Everything was a lie. Everything that I saw
Speaker 1: as the truth I was denied the veracity of. And
Speaker 1: so when I said, well, Mom and Dad are still
Speaker 1: in love, aren't they, to my older sisters that say, yes,
Speaker 1: they are. They're very much in love. And then I
Speaker 1: would ask my mother and father. You know, you don't
Speaker 1: ever kiss? Can I see you kiss? And my father
Speaker 1: would bend my mother down in a theatrical kind of
Speaker 1: bogus kiss and looked strange to me. There was something
Speaker 1: very awful about it. But I was supposed to believe
Speaker 1: that they were in love. They would perform for you,
Speaker 1: tend to mollify you well once and then she was
Speaker 1: off with what was what was his name, Ronnie? Where
Speaker 1: was Ronnie from? Ronnie was a teacher or he was
Speaker 1: going to teaching school at Columbia at the time. He
Speaker 1: was nineteen and she was forty two. And where was
Speaker 1: he from? Ronnie? He was from Pittsburgh, Ronnie from Pittsburgh,
Speaker 1: and they were they were in love for many years.
Speaker 1: It killed my father a combination of that relationship that
Speaker 1: she had with Ronnie and the fact of his relationship
Speaker 1: at Simon and Schuster, where he he started to do
Speaker 1: things in a in a way that the accountant who
Speaker 1: they had brought on board in the company, this guy
Speaker 1: named Leon Schuster, didn't want him to do. And so
Speaker 1: therefore my father, at the same time as as he
Speaker 1: became sort of sick with grief over or his relationship
Speaker 1: with my mother. He got more and more out of
Speaker 1: the loop at Simon and Schuster, and they sort of
Speaker 1: tried to move him up or out of the mainstream
Speaker 1: with Max and Leon and and that kind of killed
Speaker 1: him all further. And then he drank too much, too much,
Speaker 1: he ate too much ice cream and smoked too many cigarettes,
Speaker 1: and that made him ill. And so it was a
Speaker 1: perfect storm and he got and he died at the
Speaker 1: age of sixty. Now signed for people who don't know
Speaker 1: the Simon and Simon and Schuster was your father and company. Yes,
Speaker 1: at the met Max Schuster, his old college friend from Columbia.
Speaker 1: They met they were both selling pianos at Steinway, I
Speaker 1: guess at Steinwan soon and they said, let's let's go
Speaker 1: out to lunch and let's let's go into business together.
Speaker 1: Oh what shall we do? What about books? And so
Speaker 1: they made a little sign which they put on the
Speaker 1: office at the office space that they had rented, saying
Speaker 1: Simon and Schuster publisher what book? And the first book
Speaker 1: that they published was the Crossword Puzzle Book, which made
Speaker 1: them a fortune and which started them off with great footing,
Speaker 1: with good footing, great speed, opportunities to galore, and they
Speaker 1: were the very center of the publishing world. And yes, yes,
Speaker 1: and your mother where My mother was from Germantown, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: Her mother, she by, was Cuban and came to the
Speaker 1: United States on a banana boat. She was Cuban, but
Speaker 1: she was from Africa, but her grandmother had spent some
Speaker 1: time in Cuba. I have the whole lineup. Are your
Speaker 1: part black or you part of Cuban or both? I'm black. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's an African Africa. Yes, your maternal grandmother. Yes, and
Speaker 1: she was African and went to Cuba. That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1: And then she was schooled in England, and so she
Speaker 1: spoke with an English accent and she was shamed of
Speaker 1: what she probably didn't even know she was, but she
Speaker 1: bleached her skin her whole life, and so she passed
Speaker 1: as white. But she spoke with an English accent. And
Speaker 1: we used to always ask her about what her background was,
Speaker 1: and she would say, when I die, you will find
Speaker 1: nothing but nothing. And I never talked about the past.
Speaker 1: So we weren't able to get very much out of mother. Yes,
Speaker 1: we weren't able to get anything out of her, but
Speaker 1: she was such a character. Did your mother have a career?
Speaker 1: My mother did not have an official career. Now, she
Speaker 1: was a singer, but she and she was a wonderful singer,
Speaker 1: but she her career was raising her four kids. In
Speaker 1: your home and your father from a young age becomes
Speaker 1: a very successful uh publisher in the name, is really
Speaker 1: a pianist. In fact, when he when he had a
Speaker 1: bunch of heart attacks and strokes towards the end of
Speaker 1: his life and he didn't have his mind and he
Speaker 1: didn't have the capacity of the full fullness of his mind,
Speaker 1: he always thought he was going to Carnie Hall, when
Speaker 1: in fact he was just going downtown to dinner with
Speaker 1: my mother. And you'd say, Sis, you forgot to get
Speaker 1: off at fifty seven Street. I'm gonna be late. Because
Speaker 1: he always thought he was going to be playing it.
Speaker 1: He didn't always think, but once in a while he
Speaker 1: had the fantasy that he was going to be playing
Speaker 1: at Carney Hall. He was a great pianist. Yes, so
Speaker 1: music in your home is classical music on the part
Speaker 1: of my father and a circle of people coming in
Speaker 1: and out of your home who were celebrities. And I
Speaker 1: have two uncles, one on my father's side and one
Speaker 1: on my mother's side, started jazz magazines, one downbeat and
Speaker 1: the other metronome. So they were very good friends and
Speaker 1: they and they had all the drummers and the jazz
Speaker 1: players in this house that we lived on the eleventh Street,
Speaker 1: so there was music from from the jazz era. And
Speaker 1: then my mother always sang the show tunes because this
Speaker 1: was the great era of of Oklahoma. And Carouse and
Speaker 1: Porgy and Bess was actually for formed for my mother
Speaker 1: and father first by George and Ira Gersh when they
Speaker 1: came over to our house and my mother was asked
Speaker 1: to sing summertime since she had a beautiful soprano voice,
Speaker 1: for them to see how it would sound in the
Speaker 1: soprano voice, or to see what it's it's. I don't
Speaker 1: know exactly what they went over there for, but my
Speaker 1: mother ended up singing soprano and on summertime, and my
Speaker 1: father ended up ended up correcting a couple of her notes,
Speaker 1: and that embarrassed her tremendously, and she always used that
Speaker 1: as the excuse as to why she had an affair
Speaker 1: and cuckold at him one of them. Yes, yes, now,
Speaker 1: now your brother, you've got two sisters. What did your
Speaker 1: brother end up doing for a little my brother is
Speaker 1: a photographer, very well known photographer in his field. He's
Speaker 1: got a bunch of books out. And he started by
Speaker 1: touring with Bob Marley, and he toured with a grateful Dad,
Speaker 1: taking all of their their pictures. And then then he's
Speaker 1: um oh, and then here he was the Mets. He
Speaker 1: was the official Mets photographer. And he's he's done a
Speaker 1: wide varieties. Is an excellent photographer. And your sisters, My
Speaker 1: sisters are both musicians, Myers. My eldest sister, Joanna was
Speaker 1: was an opera singer of some merit and quite a
Speaker 1: lot of class and finesse and stature, those four things.
Speaker 1: And she was very good. Besides, and she she was
Speaker 1: a soloist with a lot of different conductors, Eugene Ormandy
Speaker 1: and and and she was in New Yorker, or she
Speaker 1: was with Ormandy in Philadelphia. She well, she sang with
Speaker 1: orchestras all over the world. Yes, she sang with subin
Speaker 1: Mayta and shared of time. So you and your sister
Speaker 1: played together. Correct. My sister Lucy, now she hasn't been
Speaker 1: mentioned yet. She is the middle sister, and she um
Speaker 1: she is a composer of music for the Broadway Theater
Speaker 1: she wrote The Secret Garden. So you and Lucy used
Speaker 1: to perform to Lucy and I were saying, as the
Speaker 1: Simon and sisters, Yes, where you and what do you wish?
Speaker 1: They asked the three when we're going up fishing for
Speaker 1: her and fish they live in the beautiful sea that's
Speaker 1: of silber, and go that we said we can? And
Speaker 1: Lincoln and and was that around the time that you
Speaker 1: were in your mid twenties, when we were about to
Speaker 1: break out with your It was? It was when earlier?
Speaker 1: It was when I was in college. Where'd you go?
Speaker 1: I went to Sarah Lawrence? Of course you know why
Speaker 1: there's a joke and the and the and and you
Speaker 1: were singing with her in what clubs in Manhattan? We
Speaker 1: decided one summer she she had learned some chords on
Speaker 1: the guitar, and um, we only had one guitar. But
Speaker 1: we wanted to spend the summer. We wanted to go
Speaker 1: up to the Cape for the summer. So we hitched
Speaker 1: up to the cape. Was the Cape always a part
Speaker 1: of your childhood? Was that the Simon family, Yes, it
Speaker 1: was a part of your child martha S vineyard was,
Speaker 1: and so we we basically hitchhike up to the cape
Speaker 1: with one guitar, and and and went to Provincetown and
Speaker 1: we got a job there and we had to learn
Speaker 1: immediately some more chords on the guitar. But we kept
Speaker 1: on switching around guitars and we played things like the
Speaker 1: Banana Boat song, which we didn't know that my grandmother
Speaker 1: had any any any part of being a part of
Speaker 1: at that point. But we sang other Harry Belafonde songs too,
Speaker 1: and we sang folk songs. We sang some Joan Bayaz,
Speaker 1: but we expanded our repertoire that oh yes, yes, definitely,
Speaker 1: and we built the ship Titanic. When does it change?
Speaker 1: And when? Because when I think of you, just not
Speaker 1: only in your work, the quality of your work, the
Speaker 1: beauty of your work, the range of your work, the
Speaker 1: songs in terms of them, some being fun and playful
Speaker 1: and something really sad. All of a sudden you go
Speaker 1: from being this child of privilege in Manhattan and you're
Speaker 1: in this famous family and everything, then all of a
Speaker 1: sudden you become a big star. Was that difficult for you?
Speaker 1: It was? It was difficult on many levels. It was
Speaker 1: difficult because, um, it was actually the summer that Lucy
Speaker 1: and I played in London. It was and it was
Speaker 1: the summer of the Beatles, and it was the summer
Speaker 1: of the King's Road, and it was such a great time.
Speaker 1: And I fell in love with an englishman who was
Speaker 1: sort of a manager and a mentor, and Lucy fell
Speaker 1: in love with with a man that she was seeing,
Speaker 1: a doctor who she was seeing back here. And when
Speaker 1: we we we had a kind of a falling out
Speaker 1: over Sean Connery, actually, which is in my book. We
Speaker 1: imagined ourselves to be sort of vying for his attention
Speaker 1: in some quirky way. It went around to that. And
Speaker 1: when we got back to the United States after that
Speaker 1: summer of sixty five, we stopped singing together. Whether it
Speaker 1: was because of that rift over Sean Conner over Sean,
Speaker 1: or whether double a seven, or whether it was the
Speaker 1: fact that Lucy was was in love with her husband
Speaker 1: who's still her husband, David, we kind of went our
Speaker 1: own separate ways, and and I got courted by Albert
Speaker 1: Grossman and John Court, who who were Dylan's managers, and
Speaker 1: they called me over to gross Court. Was that period
Speaker 1: the day before Bob Dylan's motorcycle accident. I met with
Speaker 1: him with Bob Dylan, and he rewrote a song for
Speaker 1: me that was uh An Eric von Schmidt's song called
Speaker 1: Baby let Me Follow You Down, and he rewrote it
Speaker 1: for me, and as he was rewriting the words, he
Speaker 1: just he was very high. This was the cause of
Speaker 1: his accident. I don't think it's any secret is that
Speaker 1: he was really going nuts with drugs at that point.
Speaker 1: But he stretched out his arms like this, like that
Speaker 1: and say, just believe me, believe me, you gotta go
Speaker 1: to Nashville, go to Nashville and do your record there.
Speaker 1: And then the next day he was in then even
Speaker 1: back then, Yeah, this was just I guess after was
Speaker 1: that after Nashville Skyline. No, it couldn't have been. No, no,
Speaker 1: but he had just done some some recording in Nashville,
Speaker 1: and he thought that is the place that I should
Speaker 1: record my record. But because he was just getting together
Speaker 1: with the band at that point, so and I and
Speaker 1: I was getting together with Robbie Robertson to go into
Speaker 1: the studio and do some work with that song that
Speaker 1: Bob Dylan had written for me, as well as um
Speaker 1: a song called just Because I asked a friend about her.
Speaker 1: George Jones song, is it he she thinks I still
Speaker 1: care or he thinks I still care in that in
Speaker 1: the case of me and so Um, I worked. I
Speaker 1: worked with Robbie for for for that week, went into
Speaker 1: the studio, had a bad couch experience with the with
Speaker 1: the engineer who put the song in the wrong key
Speaker 1: for me. I sang it and what was supposed to
Speaker 1: come out as what does bad couch experience? It means
Speaker 1: you know the Hollywood couch experience to couch you, Well, yes,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't. I wouldn't be used be couched. I refused
Speaker 1: to be couched, and so they kind of sabotaged. I
Speaker 1: felt that record in response to your anti couching policy
Speaker 1: because I got up from the couch and I said,
Speaker 1: I am not that green, not knowing what I amanned
Speaker 1: at all, but I thought green was a good color
Speaker 1: to say. I wasn't. So you feel that he might
Speaker 1: have been some malicious tinkering with the song, Well, yes,
Speaker 1: And I was shelved at Columbia because that was the
Speaker 1: label I was going to be on. This was six,
Speaker 1: So I was shelved for three years, at which point
Speaker 1: I became a fat secretary. What does that mean? I
Speaker 1: worked for a television production company and where it was
Speaker 1: called Canean Productions in New York, where was their offices
Speaker 1: on Street near CBS West Way West. And and you
Speaker 1: you did that for how long? A year? Not three years?
Speaker 1: A year? Yes, but I was fat for three years.
Speaker 1: Now for you, what's fat? You're like ten pounds overweight? No,
Speaker 1: I don't. I would think. I waited about hundred sixty.
Speaker 1: And you got there was a result of what There
Speaker 1: was this thing that was advertised as milkshakes, and they
Speaker 1: were to be bought at this place on forty fifth Street,
Speaker 1: and they were advertised and they were the most delicious
Speaker 1: things you'd ever tasted. But it promised that there were
Speaker 1: only forty seven calories, but and that they were all
Speaker 1: really ice, that what you were eating was ice. I
Speaker 1: don't remember. I don't remember, but but the lines were
Speaker 1: around the block. It was it was a sham at
Speaker 1: any rate, and were eating this beverage thinking that I
Speaker 1: was gonna I was losing weight. I was eating them.
Speaker 1: Were stashed them in the freezer and eat them for
Speaker 1: weeks and gain weight and more weight and more weight. Well,
Speaker 1: I met Jake around that time too. At the end
Speaker 1: of that the end of that period. During that period
Speaker 1: of working for Cane and Productions is when I I
Speaker 1: started working for their TV show called from the Bitter End.
Speaker 1: And I was the talent, yes, but it was a
Speaker 1: TV show that was based on the Bitter End, and
Speaker 1: so they had performers such as Marvin Gay and and
Speaker 1: they had come they had the same type of performers
Speaker 1: that would be at the actual Bitter End, and and
Speaker 1: I was I was the person who would take them
Speaker 1: tea and would see that they were they were happy
Speaker 1: and happily ensconced in their dressing room. When when the
Speaker 1: song with Jake, That's the way I always heard it
Speaker 1: to be came out was what year and what happens?
Speaker 1: You become famous, you become successful? Well, all right, So
Speaker 1: then I made my first album, which which I thought
Speaker 1: was going to be a collection of demos, and that's
Speaker 1: the way I've always heard it should be. Was on
Speaker 1: that record. Jack Holsman thought it could be you know,
Speaker 1: it could if I promoted this record, it could possibly
Speaker 1: be something, and he asked me to perform. And I
Speaker 1: was asked actually on the basis of the album to
Speaker 1: open up for Cats Evens at the Troubadour. This was
Speaker 1: just after the record had come out, which was the
Speaker 1: end of seventy and so I said, oh, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't do that kind of thing. I
Speaker 1: just um, I I was this, this album is just
Speaker 1: for other other singers to hear and hopefully pick out
Speaker 1: a song for them. But Jack Holsman and Steve Harris,
Speaker 1: the A and R man at Electra were persistent and
Speaker 1: they said, well, what would it take to get you
Speaker 1: to perform with Cat Stevens to open for Cat Stevens?
Speaker 1: Who's who who has asked for you to open his act?
Speaker 1: And and I was thinking on my feet and I
Speaker 1: and I've been reading Rolling Stone, and I followed James
Speaker 1: Taylor's career. I didn't know him, but I was following
Speaker 1: his career because I thought he was absolutely totally great,
Speaker 1: and I knew that he was on the road, and
Speaker 1: so I also knew his whole band. And I said, okay,
Speaker 1: get me Russ Kunkle as a drummer, because I knew
Speaker 1: Russ was on the road with James. And so the
Speaker 1: next day, It's amazing how how things work. Stars are aligned.
Speaker 1: The next day I got a call from Jack Holsman saying, okay, well,
Speaker 1: Kuncle's available when to rehearsal start? And I said, what
Speaker 1: do you mean Uncle's available? I said, well, James was
Speaker 1: just in an accident, in a motorcycle accident yesterday. All
Speaker 1: these motorcycle accidents changing in my life, and so be careful.
Speaker 1: What you wish for goes on its way. So so
Speaker 1: I started rehearsals the next week. But Jimmy Ryan, who
Speaker 1: became my guitarist for many, many years, and Paul Glance,
Speaker 1: a friend of Jimmy's, and the three of us rehearsed
Speaker 1: in New York for three days, and then we went
Speaker 1: out to l A rehearsed with Russ for one day.
Speaker 1: And by that time I hopen open for Cats seven,
Speaker 1: six April six. Yes, and that changed things for you.
Speaker 1: That was that. That was a convincing night. We played
Speaker 1: two shows every night and four shows on the weekend.
Speaker 1: I met all all kinds of people. It was like
Speaker 1: the lights were shining on me. I couldn't I couldn't
Speaker 1: say no at that point. And I and even though
Speaker 1: I was suffering tremendous stage fright, I had various things
Speaker 1: that tricked me out of being afraid did you move
Speaker 1: to l A? No? No, No, you never lived in
Speaker 1: l A? No? Why well? I lived in l A
Speaker 1: for various when when James and I got married, we
Speaker 1: lived in l A to make certain records there. But
Speaker 1: you visited or did you visited? We rented houses. In fact,
Speaker 1: the house that bought after him we lived in. Yes.
Speaker 1: Did he like l A? Did James like? I think
Speaker 1: we both found it agreeable and and it was convenient
Speaker 1: while we were recording. Studios were right there l A too.
Speaker 1: Sally was actually both the kids were just brand new
Speaker 1: and were able to be with. We could take them
Speaker 1: to the studio and there was no school to be involved.
Speaker 1: You know, it was it was, It was great. It
Speaker 1: was really great the years that Where did he like
Speaker 1: to live? What was home to him? Martha's Vineyard? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's home to him. He was mostly comfortable there, it was, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but he's most comfortable there, not in New Yorker either. No, No,
Speaker 1: I don't think either of us were really And we
Speaker 1: kept on trying to figure out what to do all
Speaker 1: the time in New York. We neither of us really
Speaker 1: knew what to do. How did poaching Kunkle for your
Speaker 1: recordings in l A lead you to and you don't
Speaker 1: have to talk about this if you don't want to.
Speaker 1: Your first marriage, well, I met James the first night
Speaker 1: that I was performing at at the Troubador. He came
Speaker 1: backstage into the dressing room too, I don't know, see
Speaker 1: Russ or see me or whatever, and he was just
Speaker 1: kind of sitting sitting there in the corner until Joni
Speaker 1: Mitchell came in and said, come on, James, we have
Speaker 1: to leave now. So that's the first time I actually
Speaker 1: met James. Even though we passed and met a couple
Speaker 1: of times on the vineyard in a peripheral kind of
Speaker 1: way as youngsters, as as very young kids, we've met
Speaker 1: his family had been up. And then how soon after
Speaker 1: that did you get married? Well, then we we met.
Speaker 1: After that, we met the following Thanksgiving. Well, the Thanksgiving
Speaker 1: I went to his show at Carnegie Hall and I
Speaker 1: went backstage in between acts and I said to him,
Speaker 1: you know, we we said hi again and how are
Speaker 1: you and it was just, you know, it was in
Speaker 1: between the show and everybody was drinking beer and James's
Speaker 1: band was hanging out and James said, and I said
Speaker 1: to James, you know, if you're ever in New York
Speaker 1: and you want a home cooked meal, please please give
Speaker 1: me a call, and he said, how about tonight, And
Speaker 1: so that was That was the first of many home
Speaker 1: cooked meals. There's one big home cooked and one large
Speaker 1: home cooked meal. I'm sure with someone who is as
Speaker 1: talented as you, and it made so much music as
Speaker 1: you have so much great music, someone who's as gifted
Speaker 1: as you, there must be countless moments like that. But
Speaker 1: share one with us when you were doing it, when
Speaker 1: you're in a studio or you're performing, or you're doing
Speaker 1: a duet with somebody, something in your life as a
Speaker 1: musician that it just sticks with you was like, this
Speaker 1: is it, this is what it's all about. There's so
Speaker 1: I'm very lucky that so much comes to my mind.
Speaker 1: That it's very hard to pick up one because there
Speaker 1: there are many many. Um which one do you want?
Speaker 1: You choose? Give me one from give me a hint.
Speaker 1: We'll give me one from when you did the songbook,
Speaker 1: when you did the Sanders album. Stephen came to the
Speaker 1: studio to the recording studio while I was recording it,
Speaker 1: which was live with an orchestra, Not a Day goes By,
Speaker 1: and I was pretty tense. That Stephen Sondheim, the Great
Speaker 1: Stephen Snheim, who had written the song that I was singing,
Speaker 1: was in the studio very proprietary, but his material, yes.
Speaker 1: And so I was in the in the vocal booth,
Speaker 1: and there's a little window in a vocal booth, and
Speaker 1: so I wanted to avoid the window because he could
Speaker 1: see me through the window. So I hunched down on
Speaker 1: my knees. I got down on my knees and did
Speaker 1: the vocal sitting on my knees in a in a
Speaker 1: in a slightly compromising position because I just had to
Speaker 1: hunch down. And then I got up at and it
Speaker 1: was a fairly I thought it was, under the circumstances,
Speaker 1: a pretty pretty good vocal. And I got up afterward,
Speaker 1: and I walked back into the control room and his
Speaker 1: head was in his hands and he was weeping with
Speaker 1: with tears of gladness. I'm happy to say, what a
Speaker 1: wonderful thing. Oh God, that's that's pretty heraldic. Not a
Speaker 1: day goes by, not a thing, but coming up. Carly
Speaker 1: Simon talks about the roots of her stage fright. I
Speaker 1: talked to another musician from New York, this one from
Speaker 1: Queen's who also defined his generation people who weren't prepared
Speaker 1: for for what it is that I was in the
Speaker 1: world that I came from. Nobody nobody said, well, will
Speaker 1: you make your living as an artist? But that wasn't
Speaker 1: it possibility? Certainly, you can make your living as a
Speaker 1: rock and roll artist. And I mean forget about like
Speaker 1: the greatest songwriters or something like that, just even a songwriter.
Speaker 1: Take a listen to my entire conversation with Paul Simon
Speaker 1: at Here's the Thing dot Org. This is Alec Baldwin
Speaker 1: and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Carly Simon has
Speaker 1: earned every bit of fame she's achieved, but one could
Speaker 1: argue she was destined for stardom. Her childhood was peppered
Speaker 1: with remarkable characters. Albert Einstein at the dinner table, Jackie
Speaker 1: Robinson playing second bass in her backyard. As a grow up,
Speaker 1: she amassed her own exceptional circle of friends. One spontaneous
Speaker 1: evening that I will never forget I was lucky enough
Speaker 1: to count myself among them. I get the call from Jim,
Speaker 1: your ex husband, Jim Hart, and Jim calls me and says, now, Carly,
Speaker 1: and I I would love you to come to the
Speaker 1: house and we're gonna have a quick El Fresco meal.
Speaker 1: Don't be late. It'll be you and Carly and I
Speaker 1: and a mystery guest. And I get to the house
Speaker 1: and you know who shows up. And I'm apoplectic, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, I was beside myself. I don't know what
Speaker 1: to say because she turned me Jacqueline Kennedy, and she said,
Speaker 1: to me, so tell me about acting. She said, I
Speaker 1: want you to talk to me about acting. Was my
Speaker 1: son John is very interested in acting? And literally I
Speaker 1: remember looking at going you want me to talk to
Speaker 1: you about acting? I said, you're kidding, right? And now then,
Speaker 1: how could this be possible? But did you feel you're
Speaker 1: friends with the former First Lady of United States, one
Speaker 1: of the most famous women that ever lived, and other
Speaker 1: friendships of yours that I've known, Mike and Diane, you
Speaker 1: were very friend with Nichols and his wife? And uh
Speaker 1: is that easier for you? Did you find in your
Speaker 1: life that is your life progressed for you? Was it
Speaker 1: easier to be friends with people who had the same
Speaker 1: kind of issue, have fame and so farther as you did?
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I don't think that really had
Speaker 1: very much to do with it. I mean, I met
Speaker 1: Jackie originally because of the book idea that she had
Speaker 1: and because she was working in that business, she was
Speaker 1: working at Double Day. But I also met her on
Speaker 1: the vineyard before, at a party at the Styrons and
Speaker 1: Bill and Rose Stein's, who see, the vineyard has a
Speaker 1: population that includes a lot of great sort of literary figures,
Speaker 1: Bill Styron and Art buck Wall, John Hersey and Mike Wallace.
Speaker 1: Lilian Hellman was actually the first of those people, and
Speaker 1: she she probably attracted the Styron's up there, and it
Speaker 1: just became an enclave that particular area of the vineyard.
Speaker 1: And so when James and I got married, we were
Speaker 1: we were half in that scene and half in the carpenters,
Speaker 1: just the people who were who were building our house,
Speaker 1: and we played volleyball without on the lawn and went
Speaker 1: clamming with and but there was a kind of a
Speaker 1: nice melange of of those two groups, and James and
Speaker 1: I weren't were not the only people who straddled both sides.
Speaker 1: Because because I don't necessarily think it's easier to be
Speaker 1: with celebrities. I think if you have friends, I mean,
Speaker 1: in the first place, I think it's very hard to
Speaker 1: make friends past the age of thirty. That's um. I
Speaker 1: find that that a lot of the celebrity friends that
Speaker 1: that I've made because the attraction of the similar, similar
Speaker 1: celebrities attract or something don't don't you, or they're they're
Speaker 1: they're they're not they're not wholesome in a certain way.
Speaker 1: And it's a little bit like being with the record company.
Speaker 1: When you don't have a successful record, and the first
Speaker 1: record that you've had that's that's really successful, you get
Speaker 1: a first throw for your bed, you know, and then
Speaker 1: the next one you haven't done that well, and you
Speaker 1: get a Cartier pen and then then finally you you've
Speaker 1: really dropped off the charts, and you get like a
Speaker 1: little basket that's filled with with shredded paper and a
Speaker 1: shampoo from Keels, And so in that way, it's a
Speaker 1: little bit when you're sort of courting the friendship of
Speaker 1: somebody that you're a new friend with and you're so
Speaker 1: excited that you've made this friend who you've admired from
Speaker 1: afar for so long, and you sort of you court
Speaker 1: them with attention and things that don't don't continue as
Speaker 1: you get to know them, or they or they offend
Speaker 1: you once, or there's a falling out, or there's a
Speaker 1: there's a disruption, or there's a jealousy, or there's something,
Speaker 1: and then then there's a you know, the first year
Speaker 1: of courting, there's there's there's a great gift. Now I'm
Speaker 1: talking about the metaphor of a gift because it can
Speaker 1: come in all different ways. And then and then it
Speaker 1: decreases down to, you know, the Santa Claus slippers, and
Speaker 1: there's not there's there's there's a kind of a feeling
Speaker 1: that you're only as good as your last present from
Speaker 1: them is, and and you're so easily you're so easily
Speaker 1: wounded by things that they do, or if they don't
Speaker 1: write you as long an email back as you've written
Speaker 1: to them, you know, you count the number of lines
Speaker 1: that you've written here, I wrote this whole long letter
Speaker 1: about what you meant to me and all the things
Speaker 1: we did together. And then they answer you back saying
Speaker 1: I'll file that away. Love. You know, I find that
Speaker 1: for me. I'm remarried, and I've got little kids, and
Speaker 1: I've got a three year old or one and a
Speaker 1: half year old and a five month old. I've got
Speaker 1: three You've had three kids in three and a half years.
Speaker 1: I have exactly what I wanted. But my friends fall
Speaker 1: off because I've had this choice and these I've got
Speaker 1: my kids. My wife is my dear friend. What about
Speaker 1: friends from high school? I'm in touch with one guy
Speaker 1: from high school and he lives in Norman, Oklahoma. But
Speaker 1: I'm not in high school. Like I said in my book,
Speaker 1: high school was a skin that I shed. All I
Speaker 1: care about is now, can you discipline yourself to that degree?
Speaker 1: It just happened to me automatically. Don't they refer to
Speaker 1: the best? Um? I just don't want those things to
Speaker 1: intrude sometimes like I cancel. I mean this, the smells,
Speaker 1: the things that you eat, the the sensory, those beautiful
Speaker 1: things and good things, you know. I mean. I walked
Speaker 1: around after a very corrosive custody battle, and even when
Speaker 1: I thought I it had subsided, I'd be having dinner
Speaker 1: with somebody who they'd mentioned themselves, or someone close to
Speaker 1: them whose circumstances mirrored mind, and it would come right
Speaker 1: back to me. If you could see the sparks coming
Speaker 1: off my fingertips. I was so charged. What about all
Speaker 1: the good things too. I mean that's different, but so
Speaker 1: but how can you how can how can you segregate
Speaker 1: them to that degree? It's just it's just how do
Speaker 1: you write a song? Well, that's how do you sing
Speaker 1: the way you do? It's a talent. I have to
Speaker 1: take my feelings. I can't. I can't. I can't explagate
Speaker 1: in the same way that you seem to be able to.
Speaker 1: I mean, I I write about things that I feel,
Speaker 1: and the past and the present and the possibly the
Speaker 1: future merge. And I can't possibly tell you that that
Speaker 1: my past isn't just as much a part of my
Speaker 1: present as my present. I mean, it is your your
Speaker 1: your combination, your wholeness becomes it's parts of like your
Speaker 1: building blocks of your years. So for the person who
Speaker 1: was preternaturally shy, it seems you don't really enjoy performing.
Speaker 1: You've always are quoted as saying, what do you do?
Speaker 1: I mean, as you have a preparation before you fly
Speaker 1: on an airplane, was there a preparation before you performed live? Well,
Speaker 1: you want to get back to the origins of why
Speaker 1: I'm so afraid to be in the in the spotlight?
Speaker 1: Or is that I mean because I had a terrible
Speaker 1: stammer for for ever since I could talk. Your mother
Speaker 1: told you to sing, so she told me yes. But
Speaker 1: that didn't always work in school. I couldn't do that.
Speaker 1: They didn't have butter at school, and so I I
Speaker 1: um every time I was called upon in class, even
Speaker 1: if I knew an answer, I couldn't say it. But
Speaker 1: I didn't want to admit that I couldn't say it.
Speaker 1: So the choice was to just pretend that I didn't
Speaker 1: know it, or pretend or just go? Which would you do?
Speaker 1: So I pretended that I didn't know the answer, and
Speaker 1: then I I never wanted to be called upon, and
Speaker 1: that and that just that just graduated to the same
Speaker 1: thing in college. I mean, the same situation in class
Speaker 1: in college, and the same situation. I am afraid to talk.
Speaker 1: I am doing so now by the very skin of
Speaker 1: my chinny, chin chin. Where is that? I'm mixed? I
Speaker 1: miss mixed a metaphors. What was the preparation before you
Speaker 1: would perform? Well, at least my band members would all
Speaker 1: have to hit me, spank me. That's that was on
Speaker 1: the couch again. No, that wasn't on the couch. That
Speaker 1: was definitely and just before I go on stage, so
Speaker 1: that the physical pain would would override the emotional struggle. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's interesting, Yeah, just as when I mean, I was
Speaker 1: once sitting with Stephen Sondheim on on a piano bench.
Speaker 1: He was working on that show called Merrily, and I
Speaker 1: was starting to have an anxiety attack and just getting
Speaker 1: more and more um thinking that my heart was going
Speaker 1: to beat out of my chest. I was so scared.
Speaker 1: It wasn't there was no reason to be. I was
Speaker 1: just having an anxiety attack, and so I pinched my
Speaker 1: ear lobe, thinking that that the physical pain again would
Speaker 1: distract me from the emotional fear. And the blood started
Speaker 1: pouring out of my ear onto my white unto my
Speaker 1: white shirt. So I mean, yeah, but I'll do anything
Speaker 1: to avoid that mental pain that I remember. Johnny Ray
Speaker 1: was a singer from this from the fifties who would
Speaker 1: cry when he would sing, and I'm the same way.
Speaker 1: There's some songs I can't get through, like what um, well,
Speaker 1: just recently that's the way I've always heard it should be.
Speaker 1: I was singing that for a group of people who
Speaker 1: were trying to learn it because we were going to
Speaker 1: do it for a concert on Martha's Vineyard, and I
Speaker 1: got to the verse about you say, we'll soar like
Speaker 1: two birds through the clouds, but soon you'll cage me
Speaker 1: on your shelf. I'll never learn to be just me
Speaker 1: first by myself, and I just it just all came
Speaker 1: flooding back, all the feelings of being possessed and wanting
Speaker 1: to possess and wanting to wanting to combine. You just
Speaker 1: we're just sitting here as human being so much wanting
Speaker 1: to merge, and yet we can't. And it's so frustrating
Speaker 1: we can't. So we're sitting here. You mean you can't
Speaker 1: and your you and that partner, or we meaning all
Speaker 1: of us can't. All of us can't. Isn't amazing? Oh God,
Speaker 1: there is such an authority on love. There are times
Speaker 1: that there are times so sorry I asked you to
Speaker 1: come here. And now. One of the things that that
Speaker 1: that does make you blend more easily, that acts as
Speaker 1: a as a lubricant to being able to pass yourself
Speaker 1: to another person is music. And it is the thing
Speaker 1: that is the common denominator. Is something that you listen
Speaker 1: to at the same time you feel at the same
Speaker 1: time you It goes through your body at the same time,
Speaker 1: the vibrations the actual vibrations you are felt in your body,
Speaker 1: and and that's a way to emerge. That's certainly was
Speaker 1: my way of merging, because that's something that I could do.
Speaker 1: But merging together when when James and I used to
Speaker 1: sing together, that was about as great as it got.
Speaker 1: You thought that way? Or yes, absolutely, he felt that way.
Speaker 1: Do you think he dug doing them with you too?
Speaker 1: I don't tell you. I don't know what. Do you
Speaker 1: how he felt with you? He's pretty reticent. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: wouldn't say that, but my my my kids would and do,
Speaker 1: and I sing with them and we are as one
Speaker 1: when we sing. My uncle he would always end everything
Speaker 1: that he did with this song called look at the
Speaker 1: blue Birds and the blackbirds. Do you know that song?
Speaker 1: I don't know why I thought of it, but but
Speaker 1: I'm gonna sing it if I remember it. Look at
Speaker 1: my doorstep, look at my doorstep, Look at the blue birds,
Speaker 1: look at the blackbirds, look at the good luck, look
Speaker 1: at the bad luck, look at the good duck and
Speaker 1: the bad luck. There we never knew bluebirds, knew any blackbirds,
Speaker 1: never knew blackbirds knew any bluebirds, never good luck ever
Speaker 1: to perch out there. I overheard boom boom boom, those
Speaker 1: birdies talking boom boom, boom boom, And this is what
Speaker 1: they had to say. Now, first the bluebirds saying, you
Speaker 1: gotta have Sonny, you wearther. So the bluebirds and the
Speaker 1: blackbirds got to getther. And then the blackbirds said, we're
Speaker 1: birds of a different fairther. So the bluebirds and the
Speaker 1: blackbirds got to getther. Well, when they talked it over,
Speaker 1: they let the blackbirds bring the rain, and then the
Speaker 1: bluebirds all agreed to bring the sunshine again. But you
Speaker 1: can't have rain of sunshine that lasts forever. You can
Speaker 1: take those bluebirds, you take those blackbirds, you put them together,
Speaker 1: you get fair weather. And that's the reason the bluebirds
Speaker 1: and the blackbirds got to getther. I did in his key,
Speaker 1: not in mind, but what the hell live Jesus Martha's
Speaker 1: vineyard zone Carly's son that thank you, thank you. After
Speaker 1: our interview, I realized I still had a couple more
Speaker 1: questions for Carly Simon, so I called her up. Hey, Alec,
Speaker 1: who were the people who are your contemporaries, who you
Speaker 1: worked with, who made the deepest impression on you? Um, well,
Speaker 1: it would have to be certainly James Taylor. I mean why, Well,
Speaker 1: before I met him, I listened to his music and
Speaker 1: it stirred something very immediate and heartfelt and specific. I mean,
Speaker 1: there was an arrow that was directly from him to me.
Speaker 1: You know. One one of the things that the incredible
Speaker 1: pain that I feel from not having that returned, you know,
Speaker 1: from from not from not having that accepted in the
Speaker 1: words that James will not talk to me. That that's
Speaker 1: not that, that's not a mutual thing, and I don't
Speaker 1: know why. And it's one of those things where you
Speaker 1: have to you have to go on and live the
Speaker 1: destiny of your life by yourself. His music had a
Speaker 1: tremendous effect on me. Cat Stevens did too, because I
Speaker 1: was listening to a lot of of his music around
Speaker 1: that time. But then there was there were um all
Speaker 1: all of the great musicals of the of the forties
Speaker 1: and fifties, especially Guys and Dolls and Kiss Me Kate
Speaker 1: at Brigadoon, South Pacific, um uh, you know I And
Speaker 1: then there was the the operas like a Mall and
Speaker 1: the night visitors like like the Manati operas. And because
Speaker 1: there was so much music of different of different um
Speaker 1: types going around, my house. Joey was the person who
Speaker 1: brought in the classical music, but so in my father
Speaker 1: because he played the you know, he he played such
Speaker 1: a variety of classical music on the piano. And then
Speaker 1: and then Joey was the opera singer, and she brought
Speaker 1: that into the house and in that form. And and
Speaker 1: then my mother was the one who primarily listened to
Speaker 1: the to the theater music. But my uncle's were both
Speaker 1: the founders of jazz magazines and and they they were,
Speaker 1: you know, they were the ones that listened to Dave
Speaker 1: Brubeck and and Lamberts, Hendricks and Ross and brought those people.
Speaker 1: So there were there was a whole huge variety of
Speaker 1: of visitors in my head of of all kinds of music.
Speaker 1: I would say that that other than Polka's, I didn't
Speaker 1: listen to a lot of Folcus And I didn't I
Speaker 1: wasn't very much in the country music at that time either.
Speaker 1: I mean, it wasn't it had hadn't made itself into mainstream.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, I didn't. I didn't love the twang.
Speaker 1: You see all these songs about love, thoughts about love,
Speaker 1: or in so many of your songs, who's the love
Speaker 1: of your life. Well, I guess my kids. But that
Speaker 1: with that question, I think he probably understand that it's just, um,
Speaker 1: it's it's breathtaking, how how much, how on a different,
Speaker 1: on different level it exists, and but it teaches you
Speaker 1: about it teaches you about a brand new level. And
Speaker 1: and as far as romantic love, I don't I don't
Speaker 1: necessarily want to go there because that doesn't necessarily last
Speaker 1: as long as as as the as the other kind
Speaker 1: of soul of I mean, I suppose there must be
Speaker 1: some people who favor one child over another, and that
Speaker 1: must be very hard for them to say, well that
Speaker 1: it's both of my kids, with three of my kids,
Speaker 1: when it's really only one. I don't know. I don't
Speaker 1: have I haven't had that experience because because I love
Speaker 1: my children equally and so much. In this this is
Speaker 1: a lot left over. This is Alec Baldwin and you're
Speaker 1: listening to. Here's the thing