More Room in a Broken Heart: The True Adventures of Carly Simon (30 page)

Meanwhile, Joni Mitchell had just released
For the Roses,
an entire album about her relationship with James.
For the Roses
was immediately recognized as a pinnacle of the singer-songwriter era, an important and beautiful work of art that would prove to be one of the great albums of the century. The songs dealt frankly with James’s heroin addiction and the difficulties and heartbreak of living with it. Some of the lyrics bitterly described James’s underdeveloped personality, annoying personal habits, and his continual and often desperate search for drugs. Other songs remembered the beautiful and tender side of him—“while the song that he sang to soothe her to sleep / runs all through her circuits like a heartbeat.” If listening to this utterly thrilling new music, explicitly about her troubled young husband, gave Carly Simon any pause, she never mentioned it to anyone.

Andrea Simon, at home in Riverdale, had been expecting the call from Carly saying that there was to be a wedding, but she wasn’t expecting to be told the wedding was the next day. On November 3 she arrived at Carly’s apartment with as many autumnal chrysanthemums as she could round up for a proper floral display. She asked Carly what she wanted for a wedding present. Carly said that there
was a piece of furniture in Riverdale she’d always loved. Andrea was a bit taken aback by this. “But, Carly, darling,” she said, “don’t you know—that’s a
real antique
.” The subject was dropped for the time being.

The wedding was in the late afternoon. That evening James was playing a sold-out midnight concert at Radio City Music Hall, in Rockefeller Center. Afterward, Warner Communications, which had both bride and groom under contract, would throw a post-midnight party for James in the Time-Life Building, just across Sixth Avenue.

The guest list was small: Andrea Simon and Carly’s sisters, James’s mother and siblings, Jake Brackman (semicatatonic, unable to speak for reasons unknown), and the judge. Peter Simon documented the wedding with his camera: his sister barefoot, with flowers in her hair; the groom exceedingly calm in a loose-fitting suit, his long hair recently trimmed. The atmosphere in the apartment was crowded and tense, almost like something was happening under pressure. There weren’t many smiles. Afterward the judge who married them told Trudy Taylor, “This was a ceremony of hope.”

Halfway through his concert that night at Radio City, James stopped the show. A girl shouted, “We love you, James!”

He said, “Well, I got married this afternoon.” There were loud screams and applause. The adoring girls seated down front started yelling, “
Who?
Who did you marry?” James looked down at his shoes and softly answered, “Carly Simon.” More screams, more applause. James played his new song “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight.”

The party started at three in the morning, in the Time-Life Tower Suite. Guests were delighted that the corporate event had turned into a wedding celebration. James asked Joe Smith, the affable president of Warner Bros. Records, to give the toast. As he raised his glass, Smith later wrote, he noted the contrast between the two families: “with the aristocratic German-Jewish Simon family on one side, and the [hairy-hippie] Taylors from North Carolina, complete with
everything but livestock, on the other. I was touched by being asked to give the toast, because James was very vulnerable, and you always wanted to repay that trust with sensitivity.”

James Taylor, when asked later about the day he married Carly, played a concert, and partied all night, replied, “Well, it was a… full day.” Andrea Simon’s wedding present to Carly and James was a vintage set of the
Encyclopedia Britannica.
A few days later, Richard Nixon buried George McGovern in the landslide 1972 presidential election. (The only state McGovern carried was James’s native Massachusetts.) James was bummed. “I really loved George McGovern,” he told an interviewer.

A few days later, Carly and James drove up to Martha’s Vineyard, where James stayed on methadone maintenance and continued to saw boards and drive nails in his rustic cabin, which the locals were now calling Woodhenge, or Shingle Mountain, since it looked like a cottage somewhere in Middle Earth. Their real honeymoon would take place later in Hawaii, when Carly accompanied James on his first tour of Japan in early 1973.

I
n November 1972, Elektra Records executives held a listening session for
No Secrets
at their swaying skyscraper offices in New York. “The Right Thing” started the album, with Carly’s piano figure and a swaying rock song supported by congas, strings, and luscious backing vocals—the florid template of Carly’s “sound” for almost her entire career. Sung with total conviction about choosing a man, the lyrics acknowledge that “the river”—Carly’s image for female sexuality—had been running too close to her door, making her “a little too free” with herself. Those days, the song says, are now over. Next came “The Carter Family,” a little waltz with verses about missing old friends and lovers, and especially Grandma, whose criticisms were usually wise.

The third track was “You’re So Vain.” Those in the know smiled at the sales and promotional staff’s reaction when Mick Jagger’s vocal—mixed way up for maximum effect—blasted out of the speakers. Carly’s final yell—“Yeah!”—at the end of the last chorus got an ovation. Steve Harris shouted, “Take that to the bank! You can bet
the house!” The album’s first side finished with the romantic ballad “His Friends Are More Than Fond of Robin,” and then the title track, “No Secrets,” another lush rock ballad and a great song about too much information from a lover. Bright shiny strings, swooning cones of sound, and Jim Gordon’s subtle drumming added an atmosphere that would make “No Secrets” a staple of Carly’s music for years.

The album’s second side began with “Embrace Me, You Child,” the song about her confusion following her father’s early death. “Waited So Long” was a country rocker that Linda Ronstadt could have sung, if she’d wanted to tell her daddy that she was no longer a virgin anymore. (Members of the band Little Feat and its guitarist Lowell George had played on the track in Los Angeles.) The sentimental “It Was So Easy” (cowritten with Jake Brackman) was followed by the full-bore action of “Night Owl” with its sticky, Stones-y energy and
Exile
-style chorus. The album closed quietly with “When You Close Your Eyes” (lyrics written with Billy Mernit), a lullaby for insomniacs, cushioned by Carly’s piano and Paul Buckmaster’s moonlit orchestral sheen.

High above Columbus Circle: handshakes and backslaps all around. The Doors might be dead, but Elektra was still on fire. Christmas bonuses were safe. It was generally agreed that Mick Jagger—with his participation on “You’re So Vain” and “Night Owl”—had bestowed the Rolling Stones’ sacred imprimatur on Carly Simon. This could now translate into serious credibility with radio, the press, the retail music industry, and fandom.
No Secrets
was a huge step up from
Anticipation,
and would lead to new worlds for Carly, and then worlds beyond.

Elektra released
No Secrets
in late November 1972, and radio stations started playing “You’re So Vain.” The cover photograph (by Ed Caraeff) was provocative, starring Carly’s braless nipples, a floppy hat, and a fashionable pastel tote bag. Carly’s suggestive hands could have been painted by Thomas Lawrence. The album jacket projected
“New Liberated Woman”—in your face. The inner sleeve featured a leg-spread, come-hither bedroom image taken by Peter Simon.

Three weeks later, her manager’s secretary phoned Carly at her New York apartment to say the album had earned a gold record for half a million units sold. Two weeks after that, in early January, both
No Secrets
and the single “You’re So Vain” were number one on the
Cashbox
and
Billboard
charts, outselling Joni and Linda and Carole and Barbra—and Carly’s husband. By early 1973, Carly Simon was the top female singer in America.
No Secrets
remained at number one for five more weeks.

Carly was in Hawaii then, on her honeymoon. Her brother photographed her—bare-breasted, lei-bedecked—with James, on the balcony of their hotel overlooking palm trees and surf riders. This photo appeared on the cover of
Rolling Stone
in January, when the magazine published Stuart Werbin’s long interview with the couple, done in New York the previous Thanksgiving and in two subsequent sessions. Werbin had been one of the writers given a private preview of “You’re So Vain” in Riverdale the month before. This was also the first interview James had given since the controversial 1971
Time
cover story, which had embarrassed the Taylor family and turned him firmly against further “revealing” publicity.

Nevertheless, the long published text (headlined “The Honeymooners”) was unusually revealing about the newly married couple’s passion for each other. James described his feelings for Carly as “religious.” Carly described her attachment to James as “addicted.” James delivered thoughtful soliloquies on his drug use and his current life on methadone, while Carly reported her general anxiety about married life with a junkie. They discussed their hypothetical children, their difference in ages, and bickered about James’s complete (and unapologetic) lack of interest in Carly’s music. “But
honey
,” James pleaded, “I don’t even listen to
my own
music.”

James was adamant that he had been damaged by the pressure of corporate deadlines in his musical life, which had once been an
escape but was now a job: “Carly and I agree that the best thing for us to do, would be to really get into our
own
selves, in terms of writing music—for ourselves. And trying to
screen out
the point of view that we’ve been more or less indoctrinated with—doing things for an audience, for record sales. Thinking in terms of singles—that sort of thing.”

The interview closed with James’s pithy observation about his feelings for his wife: “She’s a piece of ass. It bothers me. If she looks at another man, I’ll kill her.”

Before the couple would sign off on the interview, all references to Martha’s Vineyard had to be changed to “Cape Cod.” This was because some of the millions who had bought James’s albums were getting on the ferry from Woods Hole and then asking the locals where James Taylor lived. Some of them made it down his long country road. The last thing James Taylor needed to be was a tourist attraction.

In a taped interview with her brother later in January, after their return from Japan, Carly confessed that she didn’t feel driven to work, even though her record label was already talking about her next record. “
No Secrets
was a new direction for me, an expansion. I still need the approval, the confirmation, but right now, married to James, sometimes I think I’m in the state of grace I’ve been looking for. So, I’m not as ambitious as I once was.”

Would it be harder to write love songs now?

“I hope not. But my marriage has replaced ambition somewhat. It’s a different source of satisfaction. I’ll write different kinds of love songs now, more for myself than for the public.”

James came in the room and watered the plants. Carly asked if he was hungry and said she would make him something delicious.

“I didn’t think I would marry until I met James,” she continued when he wandered off. “And yes, it’s really interesting. We both needed the security of the other person making the commitment, in
order to be ourselves…. It’s been such a relief for me. We were both surprised to find ourselves actually feeling better.”

Peter noted that a radio station in Los Angeles had started a contest to guess who “You’re So Vain” was about.

“It’s my first bitter song,” Carly said, “and I really liked writing it. I was thinking about three or four people when I wrote it, so there’s an element of vengeance. I love singing it.”

What about Mick?

“Mick called the studio. I said come over and sing backup with me and Harry. He got into it, and Harry graciously decided to bow out. Mick’s presence added a certain tension to the track that just wasn’t quite there before.”

Asked if she was thinking about new songs, Carly reiterated that she was exhausted for now.
No Secrets,
she said, was wrenching and incredibly difficult to make. Right then, she added, she and James were just lying low, playing possum, and working mostly at making their marriage work.