Hello Big Man |
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| You Know What To Do Menemsha Damn You Get To Me Is This Love? Orpheus It Happens Everyday Such A Good Boy Hello Big Man You Don't Feel The Same Floundering |
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Concept music video filmed at Carly Simon's home on Martha's Vineyard, MA
This video played in movie theaters during "coming attractions".
Carly Simon performs live at a tribute concert for famed guitarist Les Paul.
Features photos and film footage of Carly's parents: Richard L. Simon (co-founder of Simon & Schuster) and his wife Andrea Simon. The video also includes the actor Al Corley.
Lyrics by: Carly Simon & Jacob Brackman
Music by: Carly Simon, Peter Wood & Mike Manieri
The night is filled with pretty girls
Dancing shoes and flying hair
Not one of them would refuse
To follow you up the stairs
You could have your pick of them
Why decide to pick on me
You promised me you'd stay away
You promised me you'd set me free
Pounding of my heart
Trembling of my hands
Somethings I'll just never understand
You know what to do to me
You know what it does to me
You know what to do to me
You know what it does to me
You know what to do
The night is filled with shooting stars
I watch them fall 'cause I can't sleep
I pray that you won't call at all
I'm still awake at ten to three
I hear your motorcycle roar
You pull up short outside my door
I don't know how I got outside
I don't know why I'm on this ride
We make love like a house on fire
We make love like dogs gone mad
Somethings I'll just never understand
You know what to do to me
You know what it does to me
You know what to do to me
You know what it does to me
You know what to do
Pounding of my heart
Trembling of my hands
Somethings I'll just never understand
You know what to do to me
You know what it does to me
You know what to do to me
You know what it does to me
You know what to do
Don Grolnick: Piano
Hugh McCracken: Acoustic guitar
Andy Summers: Electric guitar
Tony Levin: Bass
Rick Marotta: Drums
Larry Williams: Synthesizer flutes
Mike Mainieri: Synthesizer
Peter Wood: Memory Moog
Elliot Randall: Electric guitar solo
Jimmy Bralower: Linn drums
© 1983 C’est Music/Maya Productions, Ltd. / Redeye Music ASCAP / Hythefield Music BMI
Lyrics by: Carly Simon
Music by: Carly Simon & Peter Wood
Peter's on the loose
I'd like to see him again
I remember when
We made love
On the jetty in the rain
When the fishing boats would
Come back in
At the end of the day
He'd run up the hill to my cabin
With a swordfish and he'd say:
"Girl I want you all over again"'
All over again
In Menemsha, Menemsha
Menemsha, Menemsha
The sunset on the sound
Was almost too much to take
We would dance on the hill
With our friends
'Til the morning would break
Everybody drank too much beer
In those days
Thank God it wasn't whisky
Or we'd all be dead
And Peter and me we'd pull the shades
Everyone was interested
In Peter and me
In Menemsha, Menemsha
Menemsha, Menemsha
Peter Wood: Piano
Don Grolnick: Steel drum synthesizer
Mike Mainieri: Marimba and chimes
Hugh McCracken: Electric guitar
Tony Levin: Bass
Rick Marotta: Drums
Rob Mounsey: Fairlite and background vocal arrangement
Background vocals:
Kids: Ben Taylor, Sally Taylor, Julie Levine, Elizabeth Witham, Rachel Zabar
Adults: Carly Simon, Lucy Simon, Rob Mounsey, Kate Taylor, Hugh Taylor, Lynn Goldsmith
© 1983 C’est Music ASCAP / Hythefield Music BMI
Lyrics & Music by Carly Simon
Hey, when I say things that bother you
Don't be a stubborn man
Don't leave me in the cold
Remember who I am
Damn, you get to me
When I can't get to you
No fair, you're silent and you're hurt
And all I want to do
Is know what I've done wrong
All I want to know is what to do
Damn, you get to me
When I can't get to you
There's too much long distance
In our love
And tonight I need you
Don't run away, please let me know
How I've hurt you
Hey, it's me, see I'm the lucky one
You've opened up my heart
You led me by the hand
You took me slow so I would understand
Damn, you got to me
Let me get to you
Carly Simon: Background vocals and acoustic guitar
Hugh McCracken: Electric guitar
Hugh Taylor: Background vocals
Kate Taylor: Background vocals
Don Grolnick: Piano
Tony Levin: Bass
Rick Marotta: Drums
Marty Paich: String arrangement
© 1983 C’est Music ASCAP
Lyrics & Music by: Bob Marley
I wanna love you
And treat you right
I wanna love you
Every day and every night
We'll be together with a roof
Right over our head
We'll share the shelter of my single bed
We'll share the same room
God will provide the bread
Is this love, is this love, is this love, is this love
That I'm feeling
Is this love, is this love, is this love, is this love
That I'm feeling
I'm willing and able
So I throw my cards on the table
I wanna love you
And treat you right
I wanna love you
Everyday and every night
We'll be together with a roof
Right over our heads
We'll share the shelter of my single bed
We'll share the same room
God will provide the bread
Is this love, is this love, is this love, is this love
That I'm feeling
Is this love, is this love, is this love, is this love
That I'm feeling I wanna know, wanna know, wanna know now
Is this love, is this love, is this love, is this love
That I'm feeling
Is this love, is this love, is this love, is this love
That I'm feeling
I'm willing and able
So I throw my cards on the table
I wanna love you
I wanna treat you right
I wanna love you
Everyday and every night
We'll be together with a roof right over our heads
We'll share the shelter, yeah, of my single bed
We'll share the same room
God will provide the bread
Don Grolnick: Organ
Eric Gale: Electric Guitar
Robbie Shakespeare: Bass
Sly Dunbar: Drums
Crusher Bennett: Percussion
Leon Pendarvis: Horn arrangement
Jon Faddis: Trumpet
Alan Rubin: Trumpet
Lou Marini: Alto saxophone
Mike Brecker: Tenor saxophone
Ronnie Cuber: Baritone saxophone
Background vocals: Carly Simon, Fonzie Thornton, Marcus Miller, Tawatha Agee
© 1977 Bob Marley Music, Ltd. ASCAP Adm. by Elmo Music Ltd. except the Caribbean
Lyrics & Music by: Carly Simon
Orpheus, it could have been
You could have held me again
You said your songs had all gone
And that the road back up was too long
But it was there for us
It was there for us
I loved you all along
Orpheus
The part of me that died
Was ready to be reborn
And you called of the hounds
Of hell with your songs
Orpheus, Orpheus
I loved you all along, Orpheus
Orpheus, It could have been
You could have held me again
But you couldn't wait
Somewhere along the road
You lost your faith
Out of despair and believing
I was gone
You gave up on my love
you gave up on us
But it was there for us
It was there for us
I loved you all along
Orpheus
Jimmy Ryan: Acoustic guitar
Mike Mainieri: Bass, piano and synthesizer
Jimmy Bralower: Linn drums
Rick Marotta: Cymbals and toms
© 1983 by C’est Music ASCAP
Lyrics & Music by: Carly Simon
It happens everyday
Two lovers with the best intentions to stay
Together they the decide to separate
Just how it happens
Neither is certain
But it happens everyday
It happens everyday
After you break up
You say these words to your friends:
"How could I have loved that boy?
He was so bad to me in the end"
Well, you make him a liar
Turn him into a robber
Well, it happens everyday
But I don't regret that I loved you
How I loved you I will never forget
And in time I'll look back and remember
The boy that I knew when we first met
Still it happens everyday
Two lovers turn and twist their love into hate
But am I so different
From those young girls you used to date?
You used to adore me
You used to adore me
Still it happens everyday
Carly Simon: Acoustic guitar
Tony Levin: Bass
Don Grolnick: Piano
Hugh McCracken: Acoustic guitar
Rick Marotta: Drums
Dean Parks: Electric guitar
Peter Wood: Memory Moog
Marty Paich: String arrangement
© 1983 C’est Music ASCAP
Lyrics by: Carly Simon
Music by: Carly Simon, Robbie Shakespeare and Mike Mainieri
He asks her for permission
To take the car
Light his cigar
Play his guitar
Burn down the barn
He asks her for permission
To tie his shoes
To take a snooze
To read the news
To sing the blues
He's such a good boy
A real mama's boy
She treats him like a toy
He's such a good boy
He asks her for permission
To get a tan
To play his hand
To blow a grand
To be a man
He asks her for permission
To say goodnight
To see Snow White
To watch the fight
'Cause she's always right
He's such a good boy
A real mama's boy
She treats him like a toy
He's such a good boy
She points her finger
And waves her hand
And acts just like a Queen bee
But he's foolin' her
'Cause he doesn't ask
Her for permission
When he comes to see me
Comes to see me
He's such a good boy
A real mama's boy
She treats him like a toy
He's such a good boy
Carly Simon: Background vocals
Robbie Shakespeare: Background vocals and bass
Sly Dunbar: Drums
Eric Gale: Electric guitar
Sid McGinnis: Electric guitar
Crusher Bennett: Percussion
© 1983 C’est Music / Redeye Music ASCAP/Island Music, Inc./ Ixat Music, Inc. BMI
Lyrics by: Carly Simon
Music by: Carly Simon & Peter Wood
He started a company
When he was a young man
Handsome, and like a reed so tall
With a face like an old photograph
She would fall for him
Fall for him
She would fall
She wore her mother's cocktail dress
With saddle shoes
She was pretty and she was small
She worked the switchboard
Down the hall from him
Down the hall
He said: "Hello little woman"
She said: "Hello big man"
And that was how the wooing
And the winning began
He said: "Hello little woman"
She said: "Hello big man"
Of course New York in those days
Was carriage rides and matinees
He took her to a ball
At the Waldorf Astoria
He would fall for her
Fall for her, he would fall
He said: "Hello little woman"
She said: "Hello big man"
And that was how the wooing
And the winning began
He said: "Hello little woman"
She said: "Hello big man"
You could hear them laugh
As they danced in their room
And the shadows on the avenue
Rose into a jealous moon
Which swung low in the dawn light
To see what was going on with those two
You keep on expecting
Something to go wrong
And nothing does
They still live in the house
Where we were born
Pictures of us kids
Hanging up all over the walls
And some say he built his empire
For wealth and fame
But if you ask him why
He'll say he did it all for her
All for her
All for her
He said: "Hello little woman"
She said: "Hello big man"
And that was how the wooing
And the winning began
He said: "Hello little woman"
She said: "Hello big man"
Carly Simon: Background vocals
Peter Wood: Memory Moog and acoustic piano
Hugh McCrackern: Acoustic and electric guitars
Marcus Miller: Bass
Rick Marotta: Drums
David Sanborn: Alto saxophone
Mike Mainieri: Additional synthesizers
© 1983 Best Music ASCAP / Hythefield Music BMI
Lyrics & Music by: Carly Simon
Honey, I don't want you to see me this way
So out of control
So carried away
'Cause you don't feel the same
And I remember times when I was your storm
I blew hot and cold
And you were so warm
But, now you don't feel the same
I remember when you were looking up at me
Like I was the only one
That you'd ever wanna see
Honey, how can I ask you to stay
When you've already gone
There's no one to blame
It's just that you don't feel the same
I touch you
And your eyes look away
Your hands are cold
The balance has changed
And darling, you don't feel
Honey, you don't feel
No, you don't feel the same
Carly Simon: Background vocals and electric guitar
Tony Levin: Bass
Jimmy Bralower: Linn drums
© 1983 C’est Music ASCAP
Lyrics & Music by: Carly Simon
First she sees her hypnotist
When she rushes to her psychiatrist
She sees her acupuncturist
She's got to got to get fixed
Then she sees her scientologist
Gets fed by her nutritionist
She can not seem to resist
Seeking cosmic consciousness
Looks like she's floundering again
Seems to be floundering again
Looks like she's floundering again
Seems to be floundering again
She swears by Jack LaLanne
Then she throws the I Ching again
She searches in the Himalayas
For someone to ease the pain
Looks like she's floundering again
Seems to be floundering again
Looks like she's floundering again
Seems to be floundering again
She's looking for a cure
She does not know exactly what for
Looks like she's floundering again
Seems to be floundering again
Looks like she's floundering again
Seems to be floundering again
She's into political activism
Reading up on Tibetan Buddism
Anna Freud's analyzed her dreams
And she's hoarse from primal screams
Looks like she's floundering again
Seems to be floundering again
Looks like she's floundering again
Seems to be floundering again
Don Grolnick: Organ
Peter Wood: Memory Moog
Hugh McCracken: Electric guitar
Tony Levin: Bass
Rick Marotta: Drums
Crusher Bennett: Percussion
© 1983 C’est Music ASCAP
Hello Big Man album LP cover
Photo:Lynn Kohlman
Hello Big Man album LP back cover
Carly's parents Andrea Simon & Richard L. Simon
Photo: Peter Simon
Photo session outtake
Photo: Lynn Kohlman
the people who thrilled me with their support (and vice versa) throughout the making of this album: Al Corley, John Wright, Peter Wood, Peter Simon and Frank Filipetti. Aesthetic appreciation to Pierre La Roche.
Recorded at Power Station, New York, by Scott Litt, Neil Dorfsman
Additional recording: James Farber, Jeff Hendrickson, John Wright
Assistant engineer: John Wright
Additional recording in Los Angeles at Village Recorders by Gary Starr and Ocean Way Studios
Mixed at Right track Studios by: Frank Filipetti
Assistant engineers: Moira Marquis and Bill Miranda
Technical support: Bob Schwall
Production coordination: Christine Martin
Front cover photography: Lynn Kohlman
Inside sleeve photography: Peter Simon
Art direction: Paula Greif
Management: Arlyne Rothberg
Tony Levin appears courtesy of E.G. Records, Ltd.
Andy Summers appears courtesy of A&M; Records, Inc.
Album Review ~ by Don Shewey Read
"Hello Big Man is Carly Simon's best album in years; returning to the sort of beautiful, folk-based singing and songwriting that originally made the world fall in love with her."
Carly Simon: Anxiety & Essence ~ by Joyce Wadler - 10/30/83
Rooms tumble into open-doored rooms in Carly Simon's house, and the chairs are covered with flowered prints and wine velvet. It is really an apartment but it feels like a country house, an extremely prosperous country house where all about is informality and abundance. The dog is unclipped like a country dog. A guitar lies on the sofa. A boyfriend with blond curls lingers at the door.
The essence of the house, if we were to play the Simon family's favorite game (more about that later), would be a summer breeze; the essence of the lady of the house a wild rose bush, pink to go with her high color. She is tall (5 feet 10) and gorgeous. Her hair is a long mass of sun-streaked curls, her eyes are a pale blue, heightened by pale blue shadow. Her dress, which she wears with boots, is a casual loose-fitting designer dress, deep-pocketed.
So why is she talking about aggravation?
Almost as if it were a Carly Simon song: Aaa-aaagravation. The aggravation of stage fright. The aggravation of modern life.
The aggravation inherent in Simon's new song, just the title of the new song, Floundering, which, with a cheerful reggae beat, makes tender fun of a middle-class lady who goes from cure to cure because she’s "got to, got to get fixed".
What's broken that it's gotta be fixed, she is asked; what on earth could she have to be anxious about?
"You don't know from anxiety," she says.
She laughs. But she says it. But she laughs.
FIRST SHE SEES HER HYPNOTIST.
THEN SHE RUSHES TO HER PSYCHIATRIST.
SEES HER ACUPUNCTURIST.
SHE’S GOT TO, GOT TO GET FIXED.
Carly Simon had her first hit 13 years ago, with a bittersweet little-girl-singer number called That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be, and has been, ever since, a pop/rock somebody. She calls it "a sort of low-profile career", but that is really only half true, and as much a reflection of Simon's habit of casual self-depreciation as anything else.
Her album Boys in the Trees 5 years ago sold more than 3.5 million copies, and if recent albums have done nowhere near as well, there are folks still willing to release them. Hello Big Man, out this month, is her 12th LP and the notices are respectful, the critics still noting that glissando soprano rising and gliding, slipping and sliding.
But there was something else, besides the music, that fascinated the audience: her life.
Her marriage in 1972 to James Taylor was regarded in its generation with the same satisfaction as the coming together of Rainier and Grace. The problems and dissolution of the marriage, chronicled in People and Rolling Stone, were said to include Taylor's 9-year addiction to heroin and wandering ways; and the apparent carrying, on the part of Simon, of a tiny torch. There were tantalizing hints in Simon's songs, songs that, she says, always have been "personal--or at least started out as personal".
So it seems normal, when things have settled down, to find what was going on in her life to prompt Floundering.
First, though, the dog--deeply in love with Simon--has to be removed from her lap, for Simon cannot bear being photographed that way: "It's not of this century." Then, and only then, it is down into a discussion of urban female Weltschmerz. A schmerz, it should be cautioned, that is common to a type of bright New York lady. A schmerz that is not so much a great blackness of the soul as a shower during the rainy season, during which you stop shopping for shoes and break for coffee.
"I've been in analysis since I was 11--not straight, that's when I went to see my first shrink," she begins. "I've seen a number of different gurus. TM, of course. I've seen a nutritionist. I've gone to an astrologist. I've seen psychics. I've also done carpentry workshops under this particular heading of self-help. I mean, it's not self-help but if you look in the self-help department of a bookstore, you'll see carpentry and I think it's probably more worthwhile than most things--than, say, telling the truth about yourself to a room of 300 people with a full bladder. I've done biofeedback, I've done hypnosis.
"It becomes habitual," she says. "It's like what it says in the song: She's looking for a cure, she doesn't know exactly what it's for ...
SHE SWEARS BY JACK LALANNE.
THEN SHE THROWS THE I CHING AGAIN.
SHE SEARCHES IN THE HIMALAYAS
FOR SOMEBODY TO EASE THE PAIN.
She was born the third daughter of Richard Simon, the founder of the Simon & Schuster publishing house. It was not, she has said, the best place to be in the family hierarchy.
"I think that my father was very excited by Joey (Joanna), the first child," Carly once said, "and he was very charmed by Lucy, who was very demure, beguiling, a princess. She was his favorite. By the time I came along, he wanted a boy. He wasn't pleased with my sex from the beginning."
A man who had given up a dream of being a concert pianist because of his own domineering father, Richard Simon died of a heart attack when Carly was 16. She was, she says, a pretty neurotic kid: stuttering for the first time at 6, when she had to perform in the school play; her first anxiety attack at 8, staring into a bowl of Cheerios.
"I had a dream the other night that I was bawling somebody out and that I could do it without stuttering," Simon says, "because it always comes back when I want to tell somebody how I really feel and I can't do it, because I'm stammering again."
At 20, after 2 years at Sarah Lawrence, the school for a particular type of New York City girl, she got into music professionally, performing with her older sister Lucy as The Simon Sisters. She didn't especially want a career on stage, she has said. Lucy dragged her into it. She was signed by Albert Grossman, who handled Bob Dylan. She had her first hit in 1971, with Elektra. In 1972 she became involved with James Taylor.
"We fell in love. My career was just starting to be recognized. There was, um, the sort of feeling that I was just the toast of the town. And that the whole world was open to me with James, who was so much the combination of all my fantasies about men."
She'd been aware of Taylor from the time they were both very small, both in families that summered on Martha's Vineyard.
"There's a certain kind of Vineyard man," she says, clearly into a subject she enjoys. "Talk to any kind of Vineyard girl about any Vineyard boy and they would know what I mean. Kind of rugged looking. Wearing jeans. A plaid shirt. Big work boots. Their hair always streaked with one or two blond streaks from the sun. They often sport some facial hair--as long as it's not in their ears it can be very pleasant. They drive around in a pickup truck. And if they're truly great, they sing. And that was my ideal.
"It was as if we had known each other all our lives after the Vineyard connection," she says of the night she went backstage after a James Taylor concert at Carnegie Hall. "We just went out together that night and never spent a night apart."
They married when she was 28, she had her daughter when she was 29, later there was a son. There was a lot of happy and a lot of sad; she doesn't like "the image around James of being a druggie", but she doesn't deny that it was true.
She didn't try to perform. "The kids would have had 2 parents who were on the road. And since James did it so easily and wonderfully, I figured why not let him do it."
Occasionally, she'd give a concert, perform in small clubs. In 1980, with the release of Come Upstairs, she went on the road again. Looking back, she says, it was not the best time. Her son Ben had just had a serious operation, her marriage was breaking up, she had lost 25 pounds from stress.
Those old performance anxieties: She had never liked to tour. She had trouble with the anonymity of large halls.
The first time it happened?
The gorgeous Carly-laugh again, followed by the satirical voice, this time doing a Freudian shrink: "So vhere vere you when it happened you first felt that tremor in your arm? Did you become completely paralyzed or partly paralyzed?" She switches back.
"The first time was at an outdoor pavilion in Maryland, around the time of That's the Way I Always Thought It Should Be. I had a terrible anxiety attack. I was the opening act for Kris Kristofferson. I used to come back after his act and do a closing song with him. And then a short time after that he met and married Rita Coolidge and he used to do the same thing with her. And she slipped into my shoes so easily and I thought: Oh, God, we're completely interchangeable here."
In Pittsburgh in 1980, in the middle of a concert, the stress caught up with her.
"I just started hemorrhaging, you know. My nerves just collapsed. I had invited all these people on stage. And they were being very nice, very supportive. It was like an encounter session. But my nerves were overshot. I had had the ridiculous idea that going on the road would get my mind off everything. After the concert my sister, who was with me, said: 'Why do this to yourself?'"
She stopped the tour.
Is she thinking about a tour for the new album?
"I'm thinking about it only because I like to perform so much," she says dryly.
You hate to perform, she's told.
"Oh, that's right," she says.
She does like to perform?
"You must listen to me more carefully," she says. "I didn't say I liked to perform in front of an audience. I said I like to perform."
SHE'S LOOKING FOR A CURE.
SHE DOESN'T KNOW EXACTLY WHAT FOR.
LOOKS LIKE SHE'S ...
Talking about men, now. Talking about a song, about Carly and a man, that has been an open question now for years. She knows the question. She interrupts.
"Who was You're So Vain about?" she says.
Mick Jagger?
"No."
Warren Beatty?
"It certainly sounds like it was about Warren Beatty. He certainly thought it was about him. He called me and said thanks for the song."
She had gone out with him?
"Hasn't everybody?"
No.
"That only means you haven't met him," says Carly. "Though at the time I met him he was still relatively undiscovered as a Don Juan. I felt I was one among thousands at that point. It hadn't reached, you know, the populations of small countries."
This new curly-haired man in her life, this actor, this Al Corley, who has long since slipped out the door?
"Met him about a year and a half ago," says Simon, sipping some tea, eating some toast. It was while she was shooting an album cover.
So all he was, at the beginning, was a prop?
Carly does her fine deadpan, joking: "That's all he is now."
The attraction?
"He's from the Midwest. There's something very fresh about him after all these New York intellectuals who know it all. Something very green and very unsophisticated and very un-jaded about him. It's not as if he's a dolt. He's, um, genuine. He's very understanding about my relationship with James."
James, she says, "still comes over here to sleep, as a matter of fact. Every night. Because we can't spend a night apart. Even though we're divorced. So Al leaves at 7:30 or 8, and James comes over to spend the night. That's what I meant when I said Al is so sympathetic."
Malleable. Sort of like one of those cushions across the room.
"Yes," says Carly. "He is."
She adds, in that deadpan joking mode again: "Frankly, James is much more interesting."
Talking about aggravation again. Carly wants to make a point.
"I don't want to come across as a neurotic artist," she says. "Because I'm not that way. I'm happy about most things in my life. I really am.
"Benjamin--he's my son, he's 6--he and I were playing Essences the other night," she says. "Do you know what that game is? One person describes somebody without mentioning their name. And the other person tries to find out who that person is: 'What kind of flower is this person?' 'What kind of architecture is this person?' I was thrilled, because he took me--I didn't know it was me--and I said: 'What kind of a food would this person be?' And he said: 'Well, this person is very tall and skinny and happy. I would say a carrot. A big tall carrot.' I said: 'What kind of animal?' He said: 'A very, very happy vegetarian pig.' That he didn't think this person would eat anything that was bad for them. That was why "vegetarian". And that their cheeks were round and rosy like a pig. Anyway, all his answers were like that. About somebody who really radiates joy."
Happy: What times in her life has she felt the happiest?
"I think there have been more recently. But I used to say there were 2 points. In 1965, when I was living in London. I was just starting to sing. I was 20 years old. I was away from my family for the first time. I was madly in love," she says. "And in 1972, when I met James."
Chez Carly ~ by Steven X. Rea - November 1983
Equal parts apple pie, motherhood, and high-class sleaze, Ms. Simon is back, on her twelfth album, to what she does best: songwriting.
She is looking for something--for answers, meanings, reasons for being. Her hits (You're So Vain, Anticipation, That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be, Jesse) and her misses (everything on Another Passenger) are like little musical search parties sent out from the soul.
"That's been my particular journey in this lifetime", says Carly Simon. "To find out as much as I can about myself and about why I do things and why other people do things. I'm definitely a seeker."
And so, she writes songs. Songs about relationships. Songs culled from her experiences. Songs about transactional analysis and cocktail parties. Fame and wealth (she acquired the former, was born into the latter). Marriage and children. Infidelity and reincarnation.
Since her debut was released in 1971, Simon's image has been a strange, provocative, and successful mix: a sensitive female singer-songwriter who came to songwriting by way of private schools and Sarah Lawrence; a sexually independent woman looking for the ideal of a traditional marriage; a closet folkie with pop-song inclinations; a reluctant performer whose frequent social appearances at Studio 54, celebrity bashes, and star-studded dinner parties landed her in the pages of People, W, and a ream of gossip columns.
And then there are those album covers: Carly in black lingerie and high-heeled boots; Carly in diaphanous, high-chic hippie garb; Carly in low-cut evening gown. The soft-core jackets haven't hurt her sales figures any, and she readily acknowledges it.
Nowadays, Simon, 38, divides her time between her Central Park West apartment in New York and a secluded, gray-shingled house she built with James Taylor on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. After a lengthy separation (documented in People and Rolling Stone) from the star singer-songwriter, the divorce papers have finally gone through. And Simon, for the most part, lives alone. Alone, that is, with her 2 children, Sally, 9, and Ben, 6, and a housekeeper. There are also visits from friends, like songwriter Libby Titus and actor Al Corley, best-known for his role in TV's Dynasty.
The following interview was conducted one late-summer day at her home on Martha’s Vineyard. It began with Simon's enthusiastic self-appraisal of Hello Big Man, her new album. If you count her Best Of record and Hotcakes (virtually a duet LP with then-husband Taylor), this is her twelfth solo album. Her third for Warner Brothers. (She also made 2 folk records with sister Lucy in the mid-1960s.) It is also, says Carly, the best of her 3 collaborations with producer Mike Mainieri.
STEVEN: Are you always this enthusiastic when you've just completed a project?
CARLY: Yes. I've never done an album from which I haven't come away thinking: "This is my best album." And then a week later: "This is my worst." I do skip around a lot in the self-esteem area.
STEVEN: How did Hello Big Man come together?
CARLY: Well, I was trying to find a new producer. Because Warner thought Mike couldn't make a really commercial album. I disagreed with them. But I went along because they were so nice about Torch. Even though they didn't think it was commercial, they really did get behind it. And it actually sold more copies than some of my "commercial" albums.
So I looked for another producer. And I settled on Glyn Johns. We started work at Compass Point in Bermuda. And it simply didn't work out. I wasn't happy. So I went back to Mike. Most of the recording was done in New York at the Power Station. Except for the strings, which were done in LA. Then it was all mixed at Right Track. The actual recording took about 5 months.
STEVEN: Did you bring in the songs in fairly complete form or were a lot of them written in the studio?
CARLY: We wrote some in the studio. Like Such a Good Boy, which came together very quickly. I wanted to get Sly Dunbar & Robbie Shakespeare for my version of Bob Marley's Is This Love? I tracked them down in the Bahamas. And Robbie said he'd love to come to New York and play on it. We got the tune down very fast. In about 2 hours. And we had some time left over. So we decided to write a song in the studio. And that was Such a Good Boy.
STEVEN: There was a small article in Newsweek that mentioned the new LP's reggae influence and showed a picture of you playing drums.
CARLY: I did. But not on that tune. I played them on Orpheus. But we cut out my drum tracks. Thankfully.
STEVEN: No offense, but it wouldn't make sense to play drums with Sly Dunbar in the room.
CARLY: That's right. It wouldn't.
STEVEN: Did you record any songs that didn't make it to the album?
CARLY: Yes. About 6 or 7. Some really good songs didn't make it because we felt they would throw the balance too far to the ballad or slow side. I wanted to keep the album fairly up.
STEVEN: Let's go thru the tracks on the record. Stop if there's anything you'd like to say about them.
CARLY: Okay.
STEVEN: You Know What to Do sounds like the obvious choice for the single.
CARLY: It is. I'm doing a video of it too. Andy Summers played guitar on that track. And Elliott Randall ended up playing the guitar solo.
That song was the most difficult one on the album to bring together. It went thru a lot of different stages. It was like a swing song when I first wrote it with Peter Woods and Jacob Brackman. It sounded a little like Robert Goulet could sing it. The lyric was completely different: "When native waiters flashing smiles save the drinks for after lunch."
We got together one day and I said: "Let's put a kind of Police beat to it." That's when the offbeat thing started to happen on the piano. And it rearranged itself. Then Jake & I rewrote the lyric. Saving just a couple of lines. It became almost a completely different song.
STEVEN: What about Menemsha?
CARLY: That's a beautiful fishing village down at the other end of the island where I spent most of the summers as a child. The song is a little memoir about how the place used to be and about a boy I used to know. I had wanted to write a chant. And I happened to show Peter Woods--who is not the Peter in the song--a book that my brother did called On the Vineyard. We came across a picture of Menemsha and it just clicked.
STEVEN: The acoustic guitar on Damn, You Get to Me sounds very much like James Taylor's. Was that intentional?
CARLY: Maybe because I lived with him for more than 10 years, I picked up some of his style. I'm terribly flattered that you say that. It'd be so nice to sound like James.
STEVEN: The Bob Marley song, Is This Love?
CARLY: My brother Peter was instrumental in that. He always wanted me to do a Marley tune. A couple of years ago, he gave me the backing track of that one and asked me to put my voice on it. I did. And when I listened, I thought it was sort of an innocuous song. It just didn't strike me the way it strikes me now.
When we were getting the material together for this album, I asked my brother for a tape of reggae songs. He gave me one with about 25 songs on it. And the one I ended up loving the most was Is This Love?
STEVEN: Where did Orpheus come from?
CARLY: On the surface of things, it came from my kids. Sally was studying Greek mythology. And Ben became very interested in it. So every night I would read them one of the legends. I always loved the Orpheus legend. And I loved the movie Black Orpheus. After reading it to them, I realized I wanted to write a song from Eurydice's point of view. To say: "Orpheus, goddam you! Why did you blow it? Why did you look back? Why did you lose faith?" I wanted to be her voice and to tell Orpheus how mad I was. I remember after reading it, I was so inspired that I just went into the other room and wrote the whole thing--words and music--in about half an hour. I either take months to write a song or it happens in 10 minutes.
STEVEN: Do you have any kind of routine? Do you try to write something every day at a certain time in a certain place?
CARLY: I wish I did. I'm the most undisciplined person imaginable. I have no schedule for anything. If I didn't have children, I don't know what I'd be like. Because they keep me on some sort of schedule. I get up in the morning and just kind of see where the day takes me. Very often it doesn't take me anywhere.
But I don't take my writing as seriously as I should. I've never had an office. I've never had a set time for working. I can't seem to ever say to the children: "You have to stay out of here for 2 hours while I work." I think, though, that next year I'm going to get an office or a little studio to write in.
STEVEN: Has having children changed your viewpoint or affected the way you write songs?
CARLY: Sometimes I see things from their point of view. So perhaps there's more naiveté in my songs. I think my approach has become more simple. Pared down a little bit. My songs used to be a little too detailed and non-universal. They'd get a little precious. Or I'd write about experiences that other people couldn't share because the references were too obscure. I think I've become more direct and more accessible because I've assimilated the children's need to understand things in a direct way.
STEVEN: It Happens Every Day is a pretty universal theme: marriages breaking apart. I imagine that was inspired by your relationship with James.
CARLY: Oh yeah. A lot of things are inspired by my relationship with James and with other people. That song came about when my dear friend Al sat me down and made me write. He said: "I'm going to put you in a room and close the door. And I'll bring you some tea. And I don't want you to come out until you've written a song." And so I wrote It Happens Every Day. I guess I need that external discipline sometimes.
STEVEN: The vocals on that song are very 1950s-ish. Almost Everly Brothers. I remember your recording with James of Devoted to You. I take it they've been a big influence.
CARLY: I love The Everly Brothers. Who doesn't? I had a major fight with the record company about that song. Michael put strings on it. And I wanted it spartan so the vocals would come thru. Everyone at the record company loved the strings and thought that could really be the single. I think it's a very commercial song anyway. But with the strings it sounded almost like a country record.
STEVEN: Who do you deal with primarily at the record company?
CARLY: Lenny Waronker, who's a great man and a very good friend. I respect him a lot. He used to be James Taylor's producer. I genuinely like all the people that I deal with at Warner Brothers. Teddy Templeton is one of the vice presidents. And he used to be my producer. So I have a great relationship with him too. And Russ Titelman is one of my closest friends. I'm so fortunate with Warner Brothers.
STEVEN: You went there about 3 years ago. Were you unhappy at Elektra? Or was it just a matter of money?
CARLY: I was very happy at Elektra at first. Because Jac Holzman was great. I had the kind of relationship with him that I have with Lenny or Teddy or Russ. But then when Jac left, David Geffen came in with his whole entourage of artists that he had set up on Asylum: Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, The Eagles, Linda Ronstadt. I was like the ugly stepdaughter. He was sort of stuck with me. And I felt like he was putting me in the ugly closet. That I was no longer important to the label.
And then Joe Smith took over. I don't know. I didn't do very well under Joe. It may have been that my records fell down. That they weren't as good or something. But whatever happened, I didn't feel as good about being on that label as I had. As soon as I switched to Warner Brothers, I had a great feeling of being in the right place again. Lenny's such a music person. He's a musician and a producer. We have so much more of a rapport and understanding. Even though we disagreed violently over It Happens Every Day, he understood my point of view. Almost everyone disagrees with me.
STEVEN: And who usually wins?
CARLY: It is my decision. That's what being an artist means. You have artistic choices to make. They can say you're really being a fool. That the strings are wonderful and add a lot of commercial potential to the record. But I still have the right to say no. And I did as far as the album version. They might be entirely right. But I just didn't want them on an album that is a representation of me. There have been too many instances where I've let people convince me to go against my instincts and I've been sorry later.
STEVEN: Any specifics?
CARLY: Attitude Dancing. I just hated my vocal on it. To this day, I can't stand to listen to it. But everybody was saying: "Oh, it's a big smash hit." So I just let it go. It wasn't a big smash hit. It did okay. And then there was my version of James's Night Owl. I hated the way I sang it. And I let myself be convinced that it was great. I said: "Okay, okay, you must be right."
I'm the one that it's most important to. Nobody really cares whether Attitude Dancing sits just right or whether the vocal on Night Owl is any good. But I care. I care a lot. There are tracks on just about every one of my albums that I'm not happy with. I wasn't happy with No Secrets until it became a big hit. Then you can face that.
STEVEN: Hello Big Man is about your parents and how they first met. Was that something you've wanted to write about for a long time?
CARLY: I've written a lot of songs over the years about my mother & father. And I've always scrapped them. It always seemed to be too difficult a subject to get into. I don't know if I approached this one differently. But a song is not necessarily an autobiography. You have the license to say whatever you want.
The beginning of Hello Big Man is in fact the way they met. I don't know exactly what she was wearing her first day of work. I imagine that she might be wearing saddle shoes and her mother's cocktail dress. But it is the way they met. She was the switchboard operator at Simon & Schuster. And his first words to her were: "Hello, little woman." And her first words were: "Hello, big man." I was telling that story to somebody one day and I thought: gee, that would be a nice song.
I do that a lot. I say things or hear things that somebody else says. And they sound musical. So I make a melody for them and see whether they sound nice. Whether the syllables fit into a rhythm. Or whether the vowel sounds can be sung well. I'm very concerned with open-vowel sounds. I like open-vowel sounds. I don't like the high ees. I like the oohs and the ahhs. All the open ones are good.
Getting back to Hello Big Man. I had a tough time with the last verse. Because my father has been dead for 20 years. And I have him still living in the house where I was born. So I thought: God, everybody wants that to be true of their parents. So why can't I make that a fantasy? That's the way I wanted their lives to go out. I wanted them to go out in romantic splendor. To live happily ever after.
Carly,
I love your song "Hello Big Man" and recently managed to acquire a copy of that album. My own parents still celebrate annually the day they first met in 1948 so it means a lot. I just wondered, as an English fan of some 30 years, if there were any interesting stories you could share with us, about the writing of "Hello Big Man". By the way, the sax solo is out of this world!
With love and all good wishes. Karen Keenan - Huddersfield,UK
Hey Carly,
Thanks for great music over the years. One of the many stand out tracks is the reggae influenced "Floundering". Please share any memories of that song.
Thanks! Bill - Maryland
Hi Carly,
It's been said (at least by me) that sometimes those things I create are like my children -- I often see things in them that make them extraordinary and special to me that maybe others just haven't had the opportunity to see. Do you have any songs that you consider "under-appreciated"; and what do you think others don't see in them that you see very clearly?
Jeffrey Arndt - Spring,TX
Recently I've been listening to a lot of your older CDs that I haven't heard in awhile and enjoying them all over again. Today I was listening to the song "Hello Big Man." It's so lovely! I wondered what your mother thought of this song. Did she ever tell you how she felt about it?
Betsy - Albany, NY
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