More Room in a Broken Heart: The True Adventures of Carly Simon (44 page)

Two songs produced by Andy Goldmark round out
Spoiled Girl
. “Make Me Feel Something” describes romantic numbness after the fading of love’s first freshness. And “Can’t Give Up” is Carly’s final affirmation and celebration of love’s inexorable hold over her, and her inability to stand up to the tyranny of constant desire. A third Goldmark track, “Black Honeymoon”—more jealousy and deception—didn’t make it onto the album. Carly had written it with Jake and Libby on the Vineyard in the seventies. Goldmark put a new chorus on it, but the somber, marvelously jaded song wasn’t released until
Spoiled Girl
was released on compact disc late in the twentieth century.

Summer 1984. Carly recorded “Someone Waits for You” by Peter
Allen and Wilbur Jennings, for the movie
Swing Shift
. She was also making videos. The clip for “My New Boyfriend,” directed by Jeff Stein and Kathy Dougherty, was shot with a crew of locals and Taylor family as extras on what was supposed to be Cleopatra’s barge, temporarily moored in Menemsha Pond. Carly shimmied all night for the camera like an Egyptian queen, while Alex Taylor was boiled alive in a cannibal stewpot. And then, fatefully, Carly hired Jeremy Irons to direct the video for “Tired of Being Blonde.”

She had a longtime crush on the handsome English actor, dating from his role as Charles Ryder in the 1981 British TV miniseries
Brideshead Revisited
. Irons was now a full-fledged movie star, tall and ultracool, with a voice that made everyday conversation sound like poetry. His most recent role had been the adulterous friend and lover in the harrowing film of Harold Pinter’s,
Betrayal
. He came to the Vineyard that summer with his wife, actress Sinéad Cusak, and their young son, Max. They stayed with Carly for weeks, enjoying the island’s windblown beaches and being treated like royalty by Carly and her staff. Carly and Irons worked on the video’s treatment, the idea being that they would make the film when Irons returned to the Vineyard later on.

Carly later wrote, “I was so close to him that summer we made a video together. I found him to be a sweet and funny man. Jeremy and I did have a ‘special’ and dramatically fun time when he came back in September. He stayed in the Menemsha house. I think it was the first time I really ‘did’ cocaine. Jeremy was a fiercely caring person. I won’t deny that he got me pregnant.”

When Carly returned to New York as Sally and Ben started school, Irons followed her. Peter Simon: “My wife Ronni and I were living in New York then, and so we hung around a lot with Carly and Jeremy. They were a great couple, very loving with each other while we were around them. He was a good man, obviously very charming, and obviously reminded her of Willie Donaldson. I think
he said his marriage was pretty much over. Carly told us she was very fond of him.”

After Jeremy Irons returned to London, Carly discovered she was pregnant. Whether or not she told Jeremy Irons is unknown, but she did consider having his child. Her doctors and everyone else didn’t think it was a good idea, and she underwent an abortion. Eventually Irons broke up with his wife, and everyone moved on in their brilliant careers. Carly: “And however many other children he went on to sire and spend Father’s Day with, I am not surprised and I wish them well. It [the abortion] is still a terrible source of pain and guilt for me.”

W
ith nine credited producers, it took a long time for Epic to roll out
Spoiled Girl,
but Carly’s fourteenth album finally emerged in September 1985. For the cover, Carly posed for New York photographer Duane Michals as the blasé spoiled girl in fashionably basic black. As a mid-career rethink, the album was a disaster. The first single, “Tired of Being Blonde,” stalled at number seventy, but Jeremy Irons’s video, with its cross cutting and parallel storylines, got into MTV’s rotation and proved more popular than either the song or the album, which reached only number eighty-eight. Carly later wrote, “I had had records that didn’t perform in the past, but
Spoiled Girl
really
didn’t perform. It was my first ‘bona fide’ flop—because not only did it not do well, but also because I didn’t like it. If you make a record that’s true to yourself, and you love the work, it can’t be a flop. It can only sell poorly.”

Around this time, Carly became romantically involved with Russ Kunkel. It happened one evening when her phone rang on Central Park West. Al Corley was calling from the nearby restaurant he had
opened with some partners. Carly: “He said I’d never guess who just came in. It was James and Kathryn, and they were with Russ Kunkel. I told Al not to say anything and that I would shortly make an appearance, just to see what might happen.” This situation was also intriguing to Carly because James and his star drummer had parted ways after James admitted to Russ that he’d had an affair with Russ’s wife, Leah, when they were recording “Handy Man,” which Leah sang on. Russ was angry at this betrayal and stopped playing with James, his place often taken by Rick Marotta.

Carly swanned into the restaurant, pretended to be surprised, and was pointedly not invited to join the diners, even though the fourth chair was empty. So she stood there and chatted up Russ. Kathryn was glaring daggers at her. James looked down at his supper, smoke pouring out of his ears. (He had recently asked, through management channels, that Carly stop talking about their marriage in interviews.) Just as Kunkel worried that the scene was getting too uncomfortable, Carly gave him her phone number and invited him to call her if he was in town for a while. As she began to walk away, Kathryn reached over to comfort an upset James, but her angora sweater accidentally brushed the table candle and caught fire. There was a flurry, and water was sprayed. Carly dined out on this for months.

Russ Kunkel called Carly, and she invited him to lunch. He told her she looked great, and she was attracted to him: a tall, balding, talented, and relaxed guy. He went back to L. A., rented out his house, flew to New York, and moved in with Carly and the children. By the end of 1985, Carly and Russ had announced their engagement. And that December, James married Kathryn Walker.

The problem was that the dinner Carly had crashed was about Russ rejoining James’s band. Now there was major awkwardness, because James didn’t want Carly at his concerts, either out front or backstage. Carly told an interviewer: “I fell in love with Russ and he with me. But he was working with James and I wasn’t allowed to go
to the shows. I didn’t get involved with Russ to get closer to James, as some accused me of doing—talking behind my back of course. For me it was very difficult.”

After some time had passed, Carly and Russ decided to see what would happen if Carly came to a show. One night they walked through the stage door hand in hand. When James found out she was there, he freaked. No one could recall seeing James Taylor that angry before. After the show, Peter Asher had to take the drummer aside for a quiet word. Maybe, James’s longtime manager advised, being engaged to his boss’s ex-wife was not the greatest idea in the world. “It made my boss feel uncomfortable,” Kunkel recalled, long after Carly canceled their engagement the following year. (Another night, Kathryn Walker had Carly thrown out of Radio City Music Hall, where James had announced his marriage to Carly in 1972.)

But in the period she was with Russ, Carly was relatively happy and also wrote and performed some of her best music in years. Russ may have been an uncomplicated guy, but he was kind to her, always available, extremely encouraging, and not competitive at all. “He was loving and very guiding, which is something I really needed at the time, especially in my work. I can honestly say that he was more important than anyone else in my musical education. He taught me to be self-taught. He was an enthusiastic and knowledgeable audience, and he was definitely not in competition with me at all.”

Russ would also prove an invaluable helper when, in mid-1985, Mike Nichols asked Carly to write the music for
Heartburn,
a new film he was directing starring Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep.

Carly had known Nichols since the days of the Simon Sisters. The comedy duo of Nichols and (Elaine) May was one of the funniest acts in cabaret, and then Nichols had branched out into making big-budget movies for Hollywood producers. He and his wife, television personality Diane Sawyer, were Carly’s neighbors both in New York and Martha’s Vineyard, which gave Carly an extra comfort zone with this commission. Nichols wanted a great theme from Carly, as he
privately thought the script was a little weak.
Heartburn
was originally a roman à clef by Nora Ephron—another Upper West Side neighbor—loosely based on her failed marriage to Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein. Nichols told Carly the script was a little depressing, and didn’t end happily. The music had to offer some hope, an idea of redemption, and the chance that love could be reborn. Carly was thrilled by the challenge from one of the best theatrical minds in America and was determined to succeed.

Carly: “‘Coming Around Again’ was the fulfillment of what the spider began. I had a nice piano part; it was rhythmic and unusual for spiders. I began singing ‘Itsy Bitsy Spider,’ which was the song I wanted to use over the end credits of
Heartburn
. It sounded catchy enough for me to see what else would fit over the chord progression. I thought a bookend like that would be nice for this particular movie and of course less work for me! I quizzed Nora Ephron about what Meryl’s character was feeling at different points in the plot. She gave me lots of images, some of which I used or adapted, such as ‘burn the soufflé.’

“Then Mike Nichols and I had a huddle over what the chorus should emotionally impart. I said, ‘How do you hear the chorus as speaking? What message? What’s the “thing,”—what word?’

“‘Again,’ he said, ‘
Again
.’ Then Mike said: ‘Around, Around… you know,
Around
.’ And I said, ‘You mean,
around again
?’ And he said ‘Yes, that’s it.’ Then somewhere the word ‘coming’ was put in front of the phrase and the song started to become whole.

“Meanwhile, the spider has never been lost. Both songs [“Coming Around Again” and “Itsy Bitsy Spider”]—if you want to disconnect them—are from the myth of Sisyphus. The little chap spider is climbing up the water spout, only to be dunked down again by the rain, while the poor wife in the movie is trying and trying and trying to push this big rock called ‘Marriage’ up the hill, and they are constantly faltering and the rock is slipping back. But: it’s
only
if you’re willing to play the game, that it will be coming around again.”

“Coming Around Again” and “Itsy Bitsy Spider” were recorded by Carly in New York in late 1985. Russ Kunkel was crucial in musical supervision and all aspects of production. Carly: “Russ helped me so much. He set up machines in my living room and made me play bass parts I didn’t know how to play. He was a major force, someone who helped me develop some measure of self-confidence. He never got enough credit as far as I was concerned.”

In all, four producers were credited. The sessions were held at Right Track and the Power Station. (Russ and Bill Payne also contributed to the film’s score.) “Coming Around Again” emerged as a majestic restatement of the hope and belief in the power of love. When Clive Davis, the president of Arista Records, who once had thrown a Carly Simon demo tape across his office, heard “Coming Around Again,” he signed Carly to a record deal that resulted in a decade-long creative flowering that completely revitalized her career.

When Meryl Streep and Nora Ephron heard “Coming Around Again” for the first time, they both wept. Carly’s song was more than perfect. Every woman knew that there was more room in a broken heart for memories, dreams, reflections.

Heartburn
was shot in New York and Washington that winter. Jack Nicholson was caddish and cool. Libby Titus had a part. So did Kevin Spacey, Milos Forman, and chanteuse Karen Akers (and John Lennon’s old girlfriend May Pang). Released late in 1986,
Heartburn
was a commercial success but a critical bomb, a film too angry and distraught to be a comedy. Carly Simon’s anthemic songs, evangelizing for the sake of love, were the only rays of hope in a bleak tale of adultery, betrayal, and gamely trying to move on.