WEBVTT - Carly Simon Was Afraid of the Spotlight - and Still Is 0:00:01.280 --> 0:00:04.600 This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing. 0:00:05.400 --> 0:00:15.159 We can never know about the days to come, but 0:00:16.760 --> 0:00:27.240 let me think about them anyway. I don't wonder if 0:00:27.360 --> 0:00:36.120 I'm really with you now or just chase after song. 0:00:36.440 --> 0:00:53.760 Fine day and it's Abasia and it's Abasaition is Megan. 0:00:55.280 --> 0:00:59.880 It's hard, if not impossible, to imagine the nineteen seventies 0:01:00.040 --> 0:01:05.040 without musician Carly Simon. She gained near instant fame after 0:01:05.120 --> 0:01:08.319 opening for Cat Stevens at l A's Troubadour in nine. 0:01:10.240 --> 0:01:12.920 Within a year, she would make a chart topping album, 0:01:13.319 --> 0:01:17.480 win a Grammy, and marry singer James Taylor. Her music 0:01:17.680 --> 0:01:21.040 spoke to the openness of her generation and earned her 0:01:21.080 --> 0:01:26.440 critical acclaim worldwide. In hits like Yours Sylvain, Carly Simon 0:01:26.520 --> 0:01:31.720 exuded fearlessness poise, but backstage she was grasping for both. 0:01:32.440 --> 0:01:35.800 She disliked the spotlight and had to will herself out 0:01:35.800 --> 0:01:39.360 of a case of stage fright to continue performing. When 0:01:39.400 --> 0:01:43.840 Carly Simon started out, she never planned on performing. When 0:01:43.880 --> 0:01:46.640 I started recording, that was all I was going to do. 0:01:46.840 --> 0:01:49.040 I wasn't going to get out on stage and do 0:01:49.120 --> 0:01:52.680 anything on stage. I wanted to make demos for other 0:01:52.720 --> 0:01:57.520 people to record my songs. So I recorded, hoping that 0:01:57.800 --> 0:02:01.160 Dion Warwick would record one, hoping that Judie Collins would record. 0:02:01.200 --> 0:02:05.520 So just I just made a glorified demo. Turned out 0:02:05.560 --> 0:02:08.160 to be so glorified that that we had string players 0:02:08.840 --> 0:02:11.840 and we had arrangements, and things got more and more 0:02:12.560 --> 0:02:17.160 became something that a record company wanted. So Electric Records 0:02:17.200 --> 0:02:19.360 signed me, and that was Jack Holsman, who was the 0:02:19.360 --> 0:02:26.200 head of Electra at that time. Well, yes, and what 0:02:26.280 --> 0:02:28.240 was the song you were trying to demo that Jack 0:02:28.240 --> 0:02:30.480 Holdsman said, let's put this out with you singing. What 0:02:30.520 --> 0:02:32.440 was that song? Well, the first demo I made in 0:02:32.600 --> 0:02:36.760 a studio had five songs, which was just me and 0:02:36.800 --> 0:02:41.239 guitar and another cat named Dave Bromberg on on a guitar. 0:02:41.919 --> 0:02:44.240 Five songs, two of which I think made it to 0:02:44.400 --> 0:02:46.839 the next demo. There was a song called a Loan 0:02:47.080 --> 0:02:49.440 which I wrote on the beach and Martha's Vineyard about 0:02:49.480 --> 0:02:53.639 being alone and romantic and happy, and and there was 0:02:53.680 --> 0:02:56.919 another song called I'm all it takes to make You happy. 0:02:57.000 --> 0:02:59.919 There's happy songs. Then there was a song that I 0:03:00.040 --> 0:03:02.200 wrote with Jake Brackman called, that's the way I've always 0:03:02.200 --> 0:03:05.040 heard it should be, and that song I played on piano, 0:03:06.080 --> 0:03:08.760 and that that got to the next demo, and Jack 0:03:08.800 --> 0:03:12.280 Holsman heard that. Clive Davis heard it first, and as 0:03:12.320 --> 0:03:14.320 did a bunch of other people. And they heard my 0:03:14.360 --> 0:03:16.040 first demo, and they didn't know what to make of me. 0:03:16.080 --> 0:03:18.360 They didn't know if I was a jazz singer, a 0:03:18.400 --> 0:03:22.760 blues singer, a rock and roll singer, a theater singer, 0:03:23.520 --> 0:03:26.120 a cabaret singer. They didn't They didn't know what to 0:03:25.880 --> 0:03:31.280 how how to apply me to the merchandizing scheme. Did 0:03:31.280 --> 0:03:33.200 you try to suggest to them what kind of singer 0:03:33.280 --> 0:03:36.040 you were? No, because I didn't. I didn't fit my 0:03:36.080 --> 0:03:39.440 own self into a category. I had imitated a whole 0:03:39.480 --> 0:03:43.120 lot of people, and I had developed my own voice, 0:03:43.160 --> 0:03:46.080 but with so many influences that I hadn't I hadn't 0:03:46.360 --> 0:03:50.080 cut myself off from my influences and made a whole me. 0:03:50.880 --> 0:03:54.680 The umbilical cord was still attached to Odetta, was still 0:03:54.680 --> 0:03:57.960 attached to Annie Ross of Memberson Wis, and Ross still 0:03:58.000 --> 0:04:02.760 attached to Pete Seeger. To the various influences I mean, 0:04:02.840 --> 0:04:05.720 I still have trouble with that. People say that the 0:04:05.760 --> 0:04:08.640 reason that I haven't been inducted into the Rock and 0:04:08.720 --> 0:04:11.560 Roll Hall of Fame is that they don't is that 0:04:11.600 --> 0:04:13.640 I'm not really a rock and roll singer or that, 0:04:14.520 --> 0:04:16.880 or that I sort of go in a lot of 0:04:16.880 --> 0:04:20.800 different directions. I've made four albums of standards for example, 0:04:20.839 --> 0:04:22.800 which I didn't you know, which I didn't write, which 0:04:22.800 --> 0:04:25.760 were written by Cole Porter and George Hirshwin and Rogerson 0:04:25.800 --> 0:04:28.480 Hard and the great, the great people who could write 0:04:28.520 --> 0:04:31.640 great songs for singers because they weren't one and the 0:04:31.680 --> 0:04:34.800 same in that period. But what's interesting to me is 0:04:34.839 --> 0:04:39.280 that when you are years old, that's the way it 0:04:39.360 --> 0:04:45.040 always should be. Is your first song that's a hit song? Yes, 0:04:45.600 --> 0:04:47.640 and you wrote that with Jake. And I want to 0:04:47.640 --> 0:04:50.240 explain to people because everybody, I mean many people know 0:04:50.520 --> 0:04:54.760 Jake Brackman as a famous songwriter and partner reviewers. Where 0:04:54.760 --> 0:04:58.240 did you meet him? I met Jake at summer camp. 0:04:58.800 --> 0:05:02.680 We were both counselors at Indian Hill Camp in the Berkshires, 0:05:03.279 --> 0:05:07.080 and Jake was the um, the swimming counselor, and he 0:05:07.160 --> 0:05:10.520 also taught literature. These were very lardy kids, and I 0:05:10.600 --> 0:05:13.000 was the guitar teacher, all all the kids met me 0:05:13.040 --> 0:05:14.840 for the first time. They had known each other from 0:05:14.839 --> 0:05:17.440 the summer before. Jake wasn't there yet because he had 0:05:17.480 --> 0:05:20.080 hepatitis and was in the hospital. But they said, oh 0:05:20.160 --> 0:05:23.520 wait till you meet Jake, you'll be you'll just fall 0:05:23.520 --> 0:05:25.039 in love with each other or be friends for the 0:05:25.080 --> 0:05:28.080 rest of your life. I don't think anybody had ever 0:05:28.160 --> 0:05:31.760 ever quite introduced me to somebody before I actually met 0:05:31.800 --> 0:05:34.880 them with those terms that they would be lifelong friends. 0:05:35.200 --> 0:05:37.200 And the day that he got there, they prepared to 0:05:37.200 --> 0:05:39.800 cook out, the campers did, and they said, now we 0:05:39.839 --> 0:05:42.360 want you to come down to the cookout, and Jake 0:05:42.360 --> 0:05:44.560 will come down to the cookout, and you'll stand opposite 0:05:44.560 --> 0:05:47.000 each other, but with with your backs to each other, 0:05:47.560 --> 0:05:51.120 and at the count of three, you'll turn toward each 0:05:51.120 --> 0:05:55.400 other and you'll see what we mean about that, your 0:05:55.400 --> 0:05:59.400 two halves of one person. And so it was one 0:05:59.600 --> 0:06:03.400 too three. We turned across this fire which was raging 0:06:03.440 --> 0:06:07.520 between us, and we both smiled and we recognized each 0:06:07.560 --> 0:06:10.520 other in ourselves and vice versa, and it was quite amazing. 0:06:10.560 --> 0:06:13.560 And Jake just dropped me off here today. What was 0:06:13.600 --> 0:06:17.200 it about him? Was he writing? Songs and was he 0:06:17.200 --> 0:06:19.960 he was a musician and into songwriting, and no Jake 0:06:20.080 --> 0:06:23.359 was at that point he had just graduated from Harvard. 0:06:23.400 --> 0:06:26.320 He was the editor of The Crimson and he went 0:06:26.360 --> 0:06:28.880 in he was writing for Newsweek magazine. He was writing 0:06:29.120 --> 0:06:32.440 for Talk of the Town, and he was he was 0:06:32.560 --> 0:06:34.480 the young writer on the scene. He was the young 0:06:34.960 --> 0:06:38.520 prose writer on the scene when we started writing songs together. 0:06:38.560 --> 0:06:41.480 He then also got into to working with Terence Malock 0:06:42.440 --> 0:06:46.040 and he worked on Days of Heaven and on bad Lands, 0:06:46.920 --> 0:06:50.760 and he wrote King of Marvin Gardens with Jack with 0:06:50.839 --> 0:06:53.960 Jack Nicholson in that, and so he's he's a man 0:06:54.080 --> 0:06:58.240 of all words, most of them quite quite funny. He's 0:06:58.240 --> 0:07:01.880 an unusual beyond journalism in screenwriting. He was a lyrict 0:07:01.880 --> 0:07:04.480 as he was writing lyrics. He had never written lyrics before. 0:07:04.520 --> 0:07:07.240 But I had this melody Da da Da Da Da 0:07:07.360 --> 0:07:11.520 Da Da Da da da and the whole song because 0:07:11.520 --> 0:07:14.680 I've written that for for an NBC special called Who 0:07:14.760 --> 0:07:18.080 Killed Lake Erie. That was the background music for that. 0:07:18.600 --> 0:07:21.640 So when I was going to make this demo, I 0:07:21.680 --> 0:07:23.640 couldn't get lyrics for it because if I write a 0:07:23.640 --> 0:07:26.520 melody first, I can't seem to find lyrics to it. 0:07:26.520 --> 0:07:28.040 It's got to be the other way around. I write 0:07:28.120 --> 0:07:32.200 lyrics first, and so I had this melody and Jake 0:07:32.320 --> 0:07:35.240 was by then my best friend, and I said, do 0:07:35.240 --> 0:07:37.600 you want to try to write a lyric? So I 0:07:37.680 --> 0:07:40.520 gave him on a little cassette. I gave him that melody, 0:07:40.880 --> 0:07:43.360 and he came back a day or two later with 0:07:43.360 --> 0:07:45.680 with a full lyric except for one verse, which we 0:07:45.840 --> 0:07:54.000 edited out. My friends from college. There all they have 0:07:54.360 --> 0:08:05.280 their houses, and there they have their silent news, tears, 0:08:05.520 --> 0:08:18.800 angry their children hate them for the things they're not. 0:08:21.240 --> 0:08:29.920 They hate themselves, Oh what they and yet they drink, 0:08:30.000 --> 0:08:40.040 they laugh, Close the wound, hide the sky the lyrics 0:08:40.320 --> 0:08:43.520 because they're very pungent lyrics in that song. They hate 0:08:43.559 --> 0:08:47.800 themselves for what they are. Who is he talking about? Well, 0:08:48.120 --> 0:08:50.760 his girlfriend was just about to move in with him. 0:08:50.920 --> 0:08:53.440 Jake and I lived apart, will live one block away 0:08:53.440 --> 0:08:56.480 from each other, but we shared each other's lives and 0:08:56.520 --> 0:08:59.480 our friends were each other's friends, and I met most 0:08:59.520 --> 0:09:01.800 of the people that I know today through through Jake 0:09:01.920 --> 0:09:05.400 or vice versa. So his girlfriend, Rickie was just about 0:09:05.440 --> 0:09:07.719 to move in with him, and he realized that she 0:09:07.800 --> 0:09:12.199 was going to be moving into his rooms. And that's 0:09:12.240 --> 0:09:15.839 an invasion of territory for certain people. And it, I mean, 0:09:15.880 --> 0:09:18.120 it means a whole lot. It means not only are 0:09:18.120 --> 0:09:19.959 you going to be in my rooms, but you're I'm 0:09:20.000 --> 0:09:21.440 not going to be able to get you out of 0:09:21.480 --> 0:09:25.240 my rooms if you're living with me. So from Jake's 0:09:25.280 --> 0:09:29.680 point of view, that that song was, you know, are 0:09:29.679 --> 0:09:32.080 we going to marry? Are we not going to marry? 0:09:32.400 --> 0:09:34.680 And we had talked a lot about marriage and a 0:09:34.720 --> 0:09:37.920 lot about the fact that being in love with somebody, 0:09:37.960 --> 0:09:41.640 living with somebody didn't necessarily indicate that you had to 0:09:41.640 --> 0:09:45.800 get married, as it had a situation for our years. 0:09:46.880 --> 0:09:50.600 We're different, Um what what? What? What? What situation of yours? 0:09:50.600 --> 0:09:54.520 Were you referring the men in your life? Every man 0:09:54.640 --> 0:09:57.880 that I was, that I was with, I felt I 0:09:57.880 --> 0:10:00.280 had to marry if I was going to sleep at them, 0:10:00.360 --> 0:10:01.679 or if I was going to have sex with him 0:10:01.679 --> 0:10:03.360 in any way, I felt as if I as if 0:10:03.400 --> 0:10:08.800 I had to marry them and have children. And so 0:10:09.240 --> 0:10:12.080 times were changing, and this was this was a very 0:10:12.080 --> 0:10:15.800 different era that Kennedy years were upon us and the 0:10:15.880 --> 0:10:21.320 hippie dom, the Woodstock era. The times were hugely changing. 0:10:21.360 --> 0:10:23.880 I mean, I didn't didn't necessarily have to marry the 0:10:23.920 --> 0:10:27.280 person that you were living with and raise a family 0:10:27.520 --> 0:10:30.800 of our own, you and me. Um, that's the way 0:10:30.640 --> 0:10:33.120 they I've always heard it should be you want to 0:10:33.160 --> 0:10:38.160 marry me, and then oh, will marry you, but resignation 0:10:38.559 --> 0:10:42.680 with resignation exactly. And so that's how the song really 0:10:42.679 --> 0:10:46.679 came to life. Was about the disillusionment of my parents marriage, 0:10:47.280 --> 0:10:51.959 which was about walking home at night and tiptoeing by 0:10:52.040 --> 0:10:55.840 my mother's bedroom and she she calls out, sweet dreams, 0:10:55.880 --> 0:10:59.240 but I forget how to dream. And my father sitting 0:10:59.559 --> 0:11:02.240 in the the room with his cigarette, cigarette glows in 0:11:02.240 --> 0:11:06.720 the dark. And so it's it's it's all about the 0:11:06.840 --> 0:11:10.240 separation of the people who are supposed to be married 0:11:10.320 --> 0:11:13.839 or supposed to live in one happy house together, really 0:11:13.880 --> 0:11:16.760 not happy in living in that house. Now that affects 0:11:16.760 --> 0:11:19.120 you when you see them. You wrote a book, and 0:11:19.160 --> 0:11:21.520 a lot of it includes some of your childhood and 0:11:21.559 --> 0:11:24.800 your marriage and everything. You know, you're both your marriages 0:11:24.840 --> 0:11:26.880 and you I think your book only goes up through 0:11:26.920 --> 0:11:29.560 your first marriage. But the idea being that you know, 0:11:29.600 --> 0:11:32.120 what do you leave in and what do you leave out? Well, 0:11:32.160 --> 0:11:35.600 you know this was very important. When I first got 0:11:35.640 --> 0:11:40.600 asked to write my memoir was six and I was 0:11:40.679 --> 0:11:43.440 and I was called on the phone by Jacqueline Onassis 0:11:44.000 --> 0:11:49.160 and she said, Carle Carling, you would make a wonderful 0:11:49.240 --> 0:11:52.440 writer of a memoir. And so that's how I started, 0:11:52.720 --> 0:11:55.480 and I wrote about sixty pages at that point, and 0:11:55.800 --> 0:11:58.760 realizing that I was leaving out the very nucleus of 0:11:58.800 --> 0:12:01.439 the story, which was about my parents and their marriage 0:12:01.600 --> 0:12:05.640 and the the thing that happened to their marriage, which 0:12:05.679 --> 0:12:08.280 was that which was the great divide of having my 0:12:08.360 --> 0:12:12.120 brother's tutor come to live with us, and he and 0:12:12.160 --> 0:12:14.240 my mother fell in love, and that was a separate 0:12:14.280 --> 0:12:17.680 relationship which existed in the same house that she lived 0:12:17.679 --> 0:12:19.920 in with my father and us and and all and 0:12:20.000 --> 0:12:23.240 all of the kids. So trying to leave that out 0:12:23.840 --> 0:12:27.040 was almost impossible when that formed the very essence of 0:12:27.080 --> 0:12:30.040 me that I was trying to write about in the 0:12:30.080 --> 0:12:33.720 first place. Everything was a lie. Everything that I saw 0:12:33.840 --> 0:12:39.160 as the truth I was denied the veracity of. And 0:12:39.200 --> 0:12:41.600 so when I said, well, Mom and Dad are still 0:12:41.600 --> 0:12:44.000 in love, aren't they, to my older sisters that say, yes, 0:12:44.040 --> 0:12:45.679 they are. They're very much in love. And then I 0:12:45.720 --> 0:12:48.840 would ask my mother and father. You know, you don't 0:12:48.840 --> 0:12:52.040 ever kiss? Can I see you kiss? And my father 0:12:52.080 --> 0:12:56.760 would bend my mother down in a theatrical kind of 0:12:55.760 --> 0:13:01.600 bogus kiss and looked strange to me. There was something 0:13:01.720 --> 0:13:04.440 very awful about it. But I was supposed to believe 0:13:04.480 --> 0:13:06.720 that they were in love. They would perform for you, 0:13:07.800 --> 0:13:11.360 tend to mollify you well once and then she was 0:13:11.440 --> 0:13:15.800 off with what was what was his name, Ronnie? Where 0:13:15.840 --> 0:13:20.040 was Ronnie from? Ronnie was a teacher or he was 0:13:20.080 --> 0:13:23.480 going to teaching school at Columbia at the time. He 0:13:23.559 --> 0:13:25.920 was nineteen and she was forty two. And where was 0:13:25.920 --> 0:13:29.760 he from? Ronnie? He was from Pittsburgh, Ronnie from Pittsburgh, 0:13:30.000 --> 0:13:33.040 and they were they were in love for many years. 0:13:33.160 --> 0:13:37.720 It killed my father a combination of that relationship that 0:13:37.800 --> 0:13:41.920 she had with Ronnie and the fact of his relationship 0:13:42.440 --> 0:13:46.079 at Simon and Schuster, where he he started to do 0:13:46.200 --> 0:13:49.439 things in a in a way that the accountant who 0:13:49.559 --> 0:13:51.679 they had brought on board in the company, this guy 0:13:51.760 --> 0:13:54.480 named Leon Schuster, didn't want him to do. And so 0:13:54.640 --> 0:13:57.680 therefore my father, at the same time as as he 0:13:57.760 --> 0:14:00.840 became sort of sick with grief over or his relationship 0:14:00.880 --> 0:14:03.400 with my mother. He got more and more out of 0:14:03.400 --> 0:14:05.400 the loop at Simon and Schuster, and they sort of 0:14:05.440 --> 0:14:09.240 tried to move him up or out of the mainstream 0:14:09.280 --> 0:14:12.880 with Max and Leon and and that kind of killed 0:14:12.960 --> 0:14:16.400 him all further. And then he drank too much, too much, 0:14:16.440 --> 0:14:19.280 he ate too much ice cream and smoked too many cigarettes, 0:14:19.320 --> 0:14:21.400 and that made him ill. And so it was a 0:14:21.400 --> 0:14:23.080 perfect storm and he got and he died at the 0:14:23.120 --> 0:14:27.320 age of sixty. Now signed for people who don't know 0:14:27.880 --> 0:14:32.000 the Simon and Simon and Schuster was your father and company. Yes, 0:14:32.000 --> 0:14:37.280 at the met Max Schuster, his old college friend from Columbia. 0:14:37.760 --> 0:14:41.520 They met they were both selling pianos at Steinway, I 0:14:41.520 --> 0:14:44.240 guess at Steinwan soon and they said, let's let's go 0:14:44.280 --> 0:14:47.200 out to lunch and let's let's go into business together. 0:14:47.600 --> 0:14:51.320 Oh what shall we do? What about books? And so 0:14:51.440 --> 0:14:54.160 they made a little sign which they put on the 0:14:54.280 --> 0:14:56.600 office at the office space that they had rented, saying 0:14:56.880 --> 0:15:01.440 Simon and Schuster publisher what book? And the first book 0:15:01.480 --> 0:15:04.520 that they published was the Crossword Puzzle Book, which made 0:15:04.560 --> 0:15:08.120 them a fortune and which started them off with great footing, 0:15:08.240 --> 0:15:13.080 with good footing, great speed, opportunities to galore, and they 0:15:13.120 --> 0:15:19.360 were the very center of the publishing world. And yes, yes, 0:15:19.360 --> 0:15:24.000 and your mother where My mother was from Germantown, Pennsylvania. 0:15:24.400 --> 0:15:28.800 Her mother, she by, was Cuban and came to the 0:15:28.880 --> 0:15:32.600 United States on a banana boat. She was Cuban, but 0:15:33.000 --> 0:15:36.480 she was from Africa, but her grandmother had spent some 0:15:36.520 --> 0:15:39.040 time in Cuba. I have the whole lineup. Are your 0:15:39.040 --> 0:15:44.520 part black or you part of Cuban or both? I'm black. Yeah, 0:15:45.640 --> 0:15:51.600 she's an African Africa. Yes, your maternal grandmother. Yes, and 0:15:51.680 --> 0:15:55.400 she was African and went to Cuba. That's right, that's right. 0:15:55.840 --> 0:15:58.040 And then she was schooled in England, and so she 0:15:58.080 --> 0:16:00.800 spoke with an English accent and she was shamed of 0:16:01.080 --> 0:16:03.680 what she probably didn't even know she was, but she 0:16:03.800 --> 0:16:06.840 bleached her skin her whole life, and so she passed 0:16:06.880 --> 0:16:09.840 as white. But she spoke with an English accent. And 0:16:09.960 --> 0:16:12.840 we used to always ask her about what her background was, 0:16:12.880 --> 0:16:15.640 and she would say, when I die, you will find 0:16:15.800 --> 0:16:19.360 nothing but nothing. And I never talked about the past. 0:16:19.840 --> 0:16:23.000 So we weren't able to get very much out of mother. Yes, 0:16:23.080 --> 0:16:24.880 we weren't able to get anything out of her, but 0:16:24.960 --> 0:16:27.200 she was such a character. Did your mother have a career? 0:16:28.200 --> 0:16:31.440 My mother did not have an official career. Now, she 0:16:31.520 --> 0:16:33.640 was a singer, but she and she was a wonderful singer, 0:16:33.640 --> 0:16:38.240 but she her career was raising her four kids. In 0:16:38.360 --> 0:16:40.520 your home and your father from a young age becomes 0:16:40.520 --> 0:16:45.080 a very successful uh publisher in the name, is really 0:16:45.120 --> 0:16:48.880 a pianist. In fact, when he when he had a 0:16:48.920 --> 0:16:51.040 bunch of heart attacks and strokes towards the end of 0:16:51.080 --> 0:16:53.480 his life and he didn't have his mind and he 0:16:53.520 --> 0:16:56.360 didn't have the capacity of the full fullness of his mind, 0:16:56.800 --> 0:16:59.040 he always thought he was going to Carnie Hall, when 0:16:59.080 --> 0:17:01.720 in fact he was just going downtown to dinner with 0:17:01.760 --> 0:17:04.560 my mother. And you'd say, Sis, you forgot to get 0:17:04.560 --> 0:17:07.520 off at fifty seven Street. I'm gonna be late. Because 0:17:07.520 --> 0:17:09.159 he always thought he was going to be playing it. 0:17:09.240 --> 0:17:11.240 He didn't always think, but once in a while he 0:17:11.280 --> 0:17:13.320 had the fantasy that he was going to be playing 0:17:13.320 --> 0:17:17.280 at Carney Hall. He was a great pianist. Yes, so 0:17:17.440 --> 0:17:22.440 music in your home is classical music on the part 0:17:22.480 --> 0:17:24.560 of my father and a circle of people coming in 0:17:24.600 --> 0:17:27.240 and out of your home who were celebrities. And I 0:17:27.280 --> 0:17:30.119 have two uncles, one on my father's side and one 0:17:30.280 --> 0:17:34.560 on my mother's side, started jazz magazines, one downbeat and 0:17:34.600 --> 0:17:38.359 the other metronome. So they were very good friends and 0:17:38.400 --> 0:17:41.280 they and they had all the drummers and the jazz 0:17:41.280 --> 0:17:44.639 players in this house that we lived on the eleventh Street, 0:17:45.720 --> 0:17:49.800 so there was music from from the jazz era. And 0:17:49.840 --> 0:17:53.280 then my mother always sang the show tunes because this 0:17:53.359 --> 0:17:56.680 was the great era of of Oklahoma. And Carouse and 0:17:58.560 --> 0:18:01.160 Porgy and Bess was actually for formed for my mother 0:18:01.200 --> 0:18:04.879 and father first by George and Ira Gersh when they 0:18:04.920 --> 0:18:06.840 came over to our house and my mother was asked 0:18:06.840 --> 0:18:09.440 to sing summertime since she had a beautiful soprano voice, 0:18:09.480 --> 0:18:12.080 for them to see how it would sound in the 0:18:12.359 --> 0:18:14.520 soprano voice, or to see what it's it's. I don't 0:18:14.520 --> 0:18:16.399 know exactly what they went over there for, but my 0:18:16.440 --> 0:18:19.879 mother ended up singing soprano and on summertime, and my 0:18:19.960 --> 0:18:23.000 father ended up ended up correcting a couple of her notes, 0:18:23.440 --> 0:18:26.320 and that embarrassed her tremendously, and she always used that 0:18:26.359 --> 0:18:28.280 as the excuse as to why she had an affair 0:18:28.480 --> 0:18:33.600 and cuckold at him one of them. Yes, yes, now, 0:18:33.720 --> 0:18:36.919 now your brother, you've got two sisters. What did your 0:18:36.960 --> 0:18:38.840 brother end up doing for a little my brother is 0:18:38.840 --> 0:18:42.320 a photographer, very well known photographer in his field. He's 0:18:42.480 --> 0:18:45.240 got a bunch of books out. And he started by 0:18:45.280 --> 0:18:48.600 touring with Bob Marley, and he toured with a grateful Dad, 0:18:48.920 --> 0:18:52.400 taking all of their their pictures. And then then he's 0:18:52.600 --> 0:18:55.679 um oh, and then here he was the Mets. He 0:18:55.760 --> 0:19:00.119 was the official Mets photographer. And he's he's done a 0:19:00.160 --> 0:19:03.600 wide varieties. Is an excellent photographer. And your sisters, My 0:19:03.640 --> 0:19:10.240 sisters are both musicians, Myers. My eldest sister, Joanna was 0:19:10.240 --> 0:19:13.520 was an opera singer of some merit and quite a 0:19:13.520 --> 0:19:18.640 lot of class and finesse and stature, those four things. 0:19:19.160 --> 0:19:22.560 And she was very good. Besides, and she she was 0:19:22.600 --> 0:19:26.440 a soloist with a lot of different conductors, Eugene Ormandy 0:19:26.560 --> 0:19:30.760 and and and she was in New Yorker, or she 0:19:30.840 --> 0:19:33.639 was with Ormandy in Philadelphia. She well, she sang with 0:19:33.840 --> 0:19:36.600 orchestras all over the world. Yes, she sang with subin 0:19:36.680 --> 0:19:38.560 Mayta and shared of time. So you and your sister 0:19:38.600 --> 0:19:41.919 played together. Correct. My sister Lucy, now she hasn't been 0:19:41.960 --> 0:19:45.879 mentioned yet. She is the middle sister, and she um 0:19:46.000 --> 0:19:50.640 she is a composer of music for the Broadway Theater 0:19:50.800 --> 0:19:54.600 she wrote The Secret Garden. So you and Lucy used 0:19:54.640 --> 0:19:56.639 to perform to Lucy and I were saying, as the 0:19:56.680 --> 0:20:01.439 Simon and sisters, Yes, where you and what do you wish? 0:20:01.760 --> 0:20:05.600 They asked the three when we're going up fishing for 0:20:05.880 --> 0:20:09.440 her and fish they live in the beautiful sea that's 0:20:09.480 --> 0:20:12.800 of silber, and go that we said we can? And 0:20:12.920 --> 0:20:16.520 Lincoln and and was that around the time that you 0:20:16.560 --> 0:20:18.199 were in your mid twenties, when we were about to 0:20:18.240 --> 0:20:21.160 break out with your It was? It was when earlier? 0:20:21.200 --> 0:20:23.600 It was when I was in college. Where'd you go? 0:20:23.720 --> 0:20:26.680 I went to Sarah Lawrence? Of course you know why 0:20:27.560 --> 0:20:29.480 there's a joke and the and the and and you 0:20:29.520 --> 0:20:32.000 were singing with her in what clubs in Manhattan? We 0:20:32.160 --> 0:20:35.399 decided one summer she she had learned some chords on 0:20:35.440 --> 0:20:39.960 the guitar, and um, we only had one guitar. But 0:20:40.040 --> 0:20:41.800 we wanted to spend the summer. We wanted to go 0:20:41.880 --> 0:20:44.280 up to the Cape for the summer. So we hitched 0:20:44.760 --> 0:20:46.440 up to the cape. Was the Cape always a part 0:20:46.440 --> 0:20:48.760 of your childhood? Was that the Simon family, Yes, it 0:20:48.840 --> 0:20:50.560 was a part of your child martha S vineyard was, 0:20:51.160 --> 0:20:54.760 and so we we basically hitchhike up to the cape 0:20:54.840 --> 0:20:59.479 with one guitar, and and and went to Provincetown and 0:20:59.560 --> 0:21:01.160 we got a job there and we had to learn 0:21:01.200 --> 0:21:04.600 immediately some more chords on the guitar. But we kept 0:21:04.640 --> 0:21:07.480 on switching around guitars and we played things like the 0:21:07.520 --> 0:21:09.880 Banana Boat song, which we didn't know that my grandmother 0:21:09.920 --> 0:21:12.159 had any any any part of being a part of 0:21:12.520 --> 0:21:16.120 at that point. But we sang other Harry Belafonde songs too, 0:21:16.160 --> 0:21:20.200 and we sang folk songs. We sang some Joan Bayaz, 0:21:20.720 --> 0:21:25.760 but we expanded our repertoire that oh yes, yes, definitely, 0:21:25.960 --> 0:21:29.600 and we built the ship Titanic. When does it change? 0:21:29.600 --> 0:21:31.679 And when? Because when I think of you, just not 0:21:31.720 --> 0:21:34.560 only in your work, the quality of your work, the 0:21:35.040 --> 0:21:38.000 beauty of your work, the range of your work, the 0:21:38.080 --> 0:21:40.560 songs in terms of them, some being fun and playful 0:21:40.560 --> 0:21:43.240 and something really sad. All of a sudden you go 0:21:43.359 --> 0:21:47.240 from being this child of privilege in Manhattan and you're 0:21:47.240 --> 0:21:49.320 in this famous family and everything, then all of a 0:21:49.359 --> 0:21:53.480 sudden you become a big star. Was that difficult for you? 0:21:54.000 --> 0:21:56.879 It was? It was difficult on many levels. It was 0:21:56.920 --> 0:22:01.679 difficult because, um, it was actually the summer that Lucy 0:22:01.720 --> 0:22:05.199 and I played in London. It was and it was 0:22:05.400 --> 0:22:07.320 the summer of the Beatles, and it was the summer 0:22:07.400 --> 0:22:11.720 of the King's Road, and it was such a great time. 0:22:12.280 --> 0:22:15.000 And I fell in love with an englishman who was 0:22:15.359 --> 0:22:18.480 sort of a manager and a mentor, and Lucy fell 0:22:18.520 --> 0:22:20.920 in love with with a man that she was seeing, 0:22:21.520 --> 0:22:23.800 a doctor who she was seeing back here. And when 0:22:24.280 --> 0:22:26.800 we we we had a kind of a falling out 0:22:27.480 --> 0:22:30.880 over Sean Connery, actually, which is in my book. We 0:22:31.000 --> 0:22:34.320 imagined ourselves to be sort of vying for his attention 0:22:34.359 --> 0:22:37.200 in some quirky way. It went around to that. And 0:22:37.240 --> 0:22:39.639 when we got back to the United States after that 0:22:40.200 --> 0:22:44.040 summer of sixty five, we stopped singing together. Whether it 0:22:44.119 --> 0:22:48.639 was because of that rift over Sean Conner over Sean, 0:22:48.840 --> 0:22:51.840 or whether double a seven, or whether it was the 0:22:51.880 --> 0:22:55.840 fact that Lucy was was in love with her husband 0:22:56.040 --> 0:22:58.920 who's still her husband, David, we kind of went our 0:22:58.920 --> 0:23:02.119 own separate ways, and and I got courted by Albert 0:23:02.119 --> 0:23:07.240 Grossman and John Court, who who were Dylan's managers, and 0:23:07.640 --> 0:23:10.480 they called me over to gross Court. Was that period 0:23:10.560 --> 0:23:15.320 the day before Bob Dylan's motorcycle accident. I met with 0:23:15.440 --> 0:23:19.000 him with Bob Dylan, and he rewrote a song for 0:23:19.119 --> 0:23:22.800 me that was uh An Eric von Schmidt's song called 0:23:22.840 --> 0:23:26.199 Baby let Me Follow You Down, and he rewrote it 0:23:26.240 --> 0:23:28.600 for me, and as he was rewriting the words, he 0:23:28.760 --> 0:23:31.399 just he was very high. This was the cause of 0:23:31.400 --> 0:23:33.679 his accident. I don't think it's any secret is that 0:23:33.760 --> 0:23:36.600 he was really going nuts with drugs at that point. 0:23:37.040 --> 0:23:40.040 But he stretched out his arms like this, like that 0:23:40.080 --> 0:23:43.520 and say, just believe me, believe me, you gotta go 0:23:43.600 --> 0:23:46.240