Boys in the Trees: A Memoir

by Carly Simon

  It was the dirtiest possible sisterly trick. Pure and utter treachery. “No more duets,” I wrote later on in my diary. No more ‘Blowin’ in the Wind,’ sung in French. Goodbye to ‘Winkin’, Blinkin’ and Nod.’ No more Simon Sisters,” I wrote. “I’m through for now!!”

  Lucy didn’t get back to our cabin until 5:15 a.m., just as the ship was pulling into the Hudson. As we passed the Statue of Liberty, I knew that I had officially graduated from the world of Henry Orient into the world of probable sisterly treason and lies. I couldn’t let it in; this was too dangerous an area. On one hand, my sister had every right to do whatever she wanted with Sean. She wasn’t the Simon Sister who would be returning to London soon with a hi-fi system and a wedding dress in tow. Matter of fact, I should have handed Sean over to her from the beginning. I’d re-created, inevitably, a familiar triangle: Lucy, me, a man standing in for our father. But where was my grace? If only need didn’t always grip me so tightly all the time. The next day, I remember daydreaming about someday singing a song for a James Bond movie, a recurrent fantasy that would culminate in 1977 when I recorded “Nobody Does It Better” for The Spy Who Loved Me. Roger Moore was an exceptional James Bond, but every time I sang “Nobody Does It Better,” I pictured Sean Connery in my head, hoping he would hear it wherever he was and think back to 1965, and the two surprisingly prim Simon Sisters. But that night the Beast had me in its grip.

  In retrospect, I was probably looking for a reason, a hook, a justification, to separate from my older sister. Willie had told me over and over again that I could have a very good performing career in the UK by myself, and the prospect of singing and dancing alone, mixed with the fantasy of becoming Mrs. William Donaldson, was tantalizing. I spent less time worrying about how much I would miss Lucy than I did contemplating the possibility of a break, a movement, a shift in the direction of my life. It was almost as though Lucy leaving me that night on the boat to walk the decks with Sean gave me tacit permission to break free from my lifelong identity as the younger sister toted around the world by her older sister. It was, I realized later, when I felt it was all right to break away. As much as the concept frightened me, it was time. Maybe. Though Lucy was like no other. Ever.

  Lucy and me back home in Riverdale. We both felt it was all right to break away.

  One minute a star on the English stage—the next, a guitar teacher and senior girls’ counselor at Indian Hill.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  jake was the hub

  For the first few weeks, there was a letter from Willie almost daily. Endless phone calls and quirky promises. Then, around the beginning of October, the correspondence stopped. I received nothing from him—not a letter, not a call. Finally, on October 24, just as I was calling around to all of his friends to find out if they’d seen him, I received one of the most elegant Dear John letters anyone could have ever concocted. It was erudite, honest, painful, and deeply compassionate. The gist was the news that, indeed, he had gotten back with Sarah.

  I called my friend Jonathan Schwartz and told him. He’d been following my relationship with Willie, as he knew him from his days in London. I took a taxi right uptown to Jonno’s apartment and he let me cry for a little bit, but we ended up playing piano and singing. Jonno was soon to become a D.J. and had an important role in starting the airplay of “That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be,” my first single.

  I was completely shell-shocked. Drained. Despondent. I’d been planning on returning to London in two or three months—assemble all my belongings, tie things up with Nick, and say good-bye to my friends and family. I had already packed up my KLH stereo in a carton, in preparation for returning to London and Willie’s apartment on Wilton Place, and was imagining our future residence, a modest duplex in Kensington Gardens, that would overlook an alley with a charming pub at one end. The idea of not returning to London, and to Willie, affected me physically, as if my whole being had been carved out. It was as though I’d had the fleeting opportunity to fall passionately in love with my boyfriend version of Uncle Peter, and now it wasn’t going to happen. I didn’t call anyone for weeks, and felt emptier, more confused, and less desirable than I’d ever felt in my life. By now having memorized its most tender targets, the Beast pulled in for an extended stay, knowing precisely where best to pry me open, leaving me vulnerable to all sorts of attacks, from within and without. You are a shameful person. You stutter. You can’t even open your mouth without embarrassing yourself.

  How much had I loved Willie, anyway? Had I loved him, or only parts of him, or maybe just the idea of him? He and I had spent such a ridiculously abbreviated time together. How was it even possible that I could be in love with someone I had known for only six weeks? In London, away from home, out from under various family thumbs, I had become my best self, and apart from the moon itself, London in the mid-1960s had to have been one of the most thrilling destinations in the cosmos. But had my own rose-colored glasses altered and possibly distorted who Willie really was? At the same time, Willie had altered my thinking, my desires, my core belief in myself. Without knowing it, he had changed my voice, pushing me toward saying the things I wanted and needed to say, a transformation that would stay with me forever. Not every moment was sweet, but the moment of the precipice—those golden, beautiful seconds before the liftoff—was just as good as any culmination. Subtly, through Willie, I was beginning to belong, finally, to myself.

  Coming back to Manhattan meant that my sister Joey and I were once again roommates, with Lucy living right next door. A perfect sorority of sisters. Joey, as ever, was the boss of everything. I had never really “fit” inside her apartment at Fifty-fifth Street and First Avenue, and my presence there now made the fact more obvious than ever. I didn’t fit literally, either. Joey had taken, and reupholstered in blue, almost every single piece of Victorian furniture from Stamford, and as someone in the habit of slouching, how was I possibly expected to maneuver my long body into those prim blue chairs perched on those parquet floors? How could I live in a place that had a window cleaner who came regularly, in a neighborhood notable for supermarkets and dry cleaners and postwar skyscrapers? Let’s face facts: Joey was a woman, I was still a messy girl.

  By now Joey was traveling fast in the corridors of sophistication. She had always been a prima donna, but now it was official: she was a bona fide member of the New York City Opera company, flying off to Vienna and San Francisco, savoring the success she’d worked so hard to achieve. She was working alongside great conductors, including Leonard Bernstein, Zubin Mehta, Herbert von Karajan, Eugene Ormandy, and Charles Munch, great men who occasionally stopped by our apartment, and whose hair I could now and then find in my bathroom sink (which doubled as a guest bathroom). It was like watching a movie called Joey!, which added to the majestic theater of it all. As for Lucy and me, we were back together, working with a choreographer to reconceive our musical set.

  In my despondency over Willie, I began decorating my bedroom with cheap Mexican furniture I’d picked up on Astor Place. My friend Annie Felshin had a store called the Mexican Art Annex. I spent hours there and always came home with a flowerpot or a scary Mexican spirit statue. The room, with its double bed left behind by Joey’s former roommate, was definitely the “second” bedroom, and overlooked a courtyard where flocks of dirty pigeons gathered to defecate on the window ledge. As part of her sales pitch, Joey had said, “Look at all those glorious birds outside, Carly! They love you so much they want to come inside!” At least Joey could laugh at herself. The hall bathroom became my sanctuary, a place where I first heard a lot of great songs on my little mono radio, like Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billie Joe” and Procol Harum’s “Whiter Shade of Pale.” I would light a candle, sink into the tub, and sing along to the Stones’ “Satisfaction,” Herman’s Hermits’ “Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter,” and Peter and Gordon’s “World Without Love.” That music, and other songs from that era, began influencing and even honing my own writing and chord
changes. I started playing around not just with changes of tempo midsong, but with ideas.

  As for the fate of the Simon Sisters, Lucy and I might have stayed together, but our lives were rivers parting, diverging, and going in tender new directions. Soon she would be moving in with her boyfriend David Levine; they would be married by the spring. Having Lucy gone from our little three-sister housing project obviously changed the dynamic. I became more independent, though; in that vacuum I also formed another trusted and close alliance with the comic David Steinberg and the photographer Mary Ellen Mark, whom I’d met in London through Willie. David was a member of Second City, which was having a run in New York. They had moved into Lucy’s just-vacated apartment, and they became part of a dazzling crowd of comedians, actors, and opera singers who mingled with my college friends Annie and Ellen in that exciting way that can happen when everyone is under twenty-five. Each night there was a featured guest and someone else would cook something new. The “hang,” as we now called it, was superior.

  David, Mary Ellen, Annie, Ellen, and I graced the town, often with a few more in tow. David was always fixing me up with his friends. He also tried to get Willie to come back to me with a not-too-urgent telephone call, but Willie didn’t want to be in touch. He was already feeling guilty, having set the “cad phenomenon” in motion, i.e., not wanting to think about the person you’ve hurt and therefore completely dismissing him or her. I think I was a bit in admiration/love with David. He was so there for me and loved to make me laugh. When Second City opened in the Village, I became a groupie of the every-night variety. Many nights David and I stayed up late in one or the other of our living rooms and played the guitar, making up hilarious free-association songs: “I love you and the cows go moo.” Decades later, he would go on to direct episodes of Seinfeld and many other TV shows. Mary Ellen would indulge me, listening to my woes on the subject of Willie long into the night. She was becoming one of the world’s greatest photographers.

  * * *

  Before Lucy joined me in England, she and I had landed our first music manager and producer since Harold Leventhal and Charlie Close. John Court was partners with Albert Grossman, and they had started Grosscourt, a management company whose client roster included Bob Dylan; Peter, Paul and Mary; and others. John had been telling me the same thing Willie had: that if Lucy was going the marriage route, I should consider going out on my own as a performer, without my sidekick, the older, more spectacular Simon sister. John also believed I could benefit from other, rougher-edged, more Greenwich Village-y influences, that I was a posh uptown girl who, if she had any sense about her, would be acting more “downtown” like Nico.

  A day before my twenty-first birthday, in 1966, I was in the living room of our apartment when the telephone rang. It was Bob Dylan on the other line. I was completely frozen. Dylan, after all, was a prophet, a modern-day link to Woody Guthrie, and though I didn’t like all his songs, I was already in awe. John Court had choreographed the call, and a minute later, I’d accepted Dylan’s invitation to pay a visit to Grosscourt’s offices.

  When I got there, John introduced me all around. “Go talk to Bob,” he said. “He’ll tell you some things.”

  If talking to Bob Dylan on the phone had paralyzed me, being in the same room made me, if possible, even more awestruck. There was, after all, no one else like him. But I did as John said. Bob and I ended up sequestered in a mostly airless office, and Bob began talking. Thank God, he was stoned, which meant I didn’t have to worry too much about making a good impression or our conversation going down in history. Bob had just come back from touring in Australia and the U.S., and though he wouldn’t record Nashville Skyline until 1969, he had just recorded his new album, Blonde on Blonde, in Nashville. Bob went on and on about the glory, the sheer magic, that was Nashville, and told me that if and when I recorded an album, Nashville was the place to be. He also told me about the music producer he was working with, and the sounds he was able to produce by pressing new buttons that effected echo, reverb, and EQ. Then he recommended a song that he said would be perfect for me: “Baby, Let Me Follow You Down,” adapted by Eric von Schmidt from an older blues song, adding that he, Bob, would be willing to reshape or rewrite some of the lyrics to accommodate my voice and style.

  As we talked, I couldn’t help but think of Willie, who had claimed numerous times to have served as Bob’s agent in London, but when I asked Dylan if he knew Willie Donaldson, he looked at me, faintly dazed, as if to say Maybe you’re thinking of someone else? Briefly losing focus, Bob recovered, and for the next ten minutes went into another serenade about Nashville so incantatory it should have been reprinted on highway signs as you entered the city limits. Bob’s energy was soaring, until finally, his eyes closed, his arms spread out evangelistically, he growled, emphatically, “Believe me! Believe me!” That’s one of my hallmark memories.

  Later, John told me that working with Bob was the chance of a lifetime, and that recording “Baby, Let Me Follow You Down” would change my life. From now on, he said, I would be known as “Carly and the Deacon,” the Deacon in this case being Richie Havens, who I would do something with. What, I did not know. In the meantime, though, Robbie Robertson would come over to my apartment and rehearse the arrangement so the song would better fit my voice.

  There was a lot of holy shit!–ness. Still, my very first thought was that I had to keep what was happening to me from Lucy. I didn’t think it was even possible to succeed without her. I slowly started to tell a few close friends, and even my brother, Peter, who was crazy about Dylan, but the reality of it all only became clear when Robbie Robertson showed up at my apartment a week later, only days after Dylan had his now-famous motorcycle accident in Woodstock, New York.

  As Robbie and I began discussing the song, it became clear that “Baby, Let Me Follow You Down” was nothing at all like the folk songs I was accustomed to singing with Lucy. Nor was it like the songs I’d been writing recently on my own, songs that felt, to my own crooked ear, like standards, jazzy, artsy. Listening to the popular vocal trio Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross, I’d become dependent on hearing jazz intervals. I imitated Annie Ross, and tried to scat-sing the way Jon Hendricks did. I was attracted to so many different styles of music, it was difficult to know which one to follow.

  There was another problem. Even though Lucy and I had both taken our turns soloing during our performances, I wasn’t used to being a solo performer. My whole life I’d always had Lucy to lean on. Being told that it was now me alone set my nerves on edge, and I had no choice but to place all my faith in Robbie Robertson. Robbie was fawnlike in his looks, as well as innately modest, and gave off a schoolboy vibe with unsettled hormones. When our first rehearsal ended, Robbie invited me out for a drink, and we eventually ended up in the Chelsea Hotel, the plan being to meet the Rolling Stones’ Brian Jones for a drink, even though Brian never appeared. The idea of having a drink with Robbie and Brian made me feel I was inhabiting my own version of Rock ’n’ Roll Heaven. It was like being allowed a sneak glimpse into the permanent collection of a great museum. There have been few times in my life where I’ve felt genuinely agog, and that was one of those nights. Brian may not have made an appearance, but that night his seat was filled by Mike Bloomfield, Richard Manuel, and other acquaintances who stopped by our table to make heavy, but easy, conversation about electric music. When the evening ended, Robbie and I eventually ended up in Robbie’s room, where I spent the night at a tempting distance. Robbie and I were shy with each other. Too shy to get into a rock ’n’ roll groove.

  * * *

  A few days before the recording, I took the subway to the Columbia building, where I met the Producer, to find the most flattering key for my voice. Right then and there I picked up something unsavory in his eyes. First, he asked me to sing a verse a cappella, and overpraised me too soon. Fantastic, darlin’, you got some voice! After I’d sung four or five lines of lyrics, he offered me a drink. When I declined, the Producer removed a whiskey b
ottle from the well-stocked bar behind his desk and helped himself to a tumbler. His puffy pink eyes narrowed to a squint. “Honey, if you’re nice to me”—he pronounced it nasss, in his thick, purring, polluted voice—“I’ll make you a nasss record.”

  It couldn’t have been the first time he’d used that line on a woman. Willie, I knew, would be in heaven over this, and would have come up with the perfect riposte. But I wasn’t Willie. As the Producer came closer to me, I stared him down from my seat on the couch. Did he think I was some Okie from Muskogee? Did he think I was an “easy chick”? As he got closer, I noticed the mottled drink-splotches on his nose, at which point I stood, shook my head, and came up with what I thought was the perfect retort: “I’m sorry, I’m greener than that!”

  What I meant to say was “I’m sorry, but I’m not that hungry,” or “I’m sorry, but I’m not that green,” but put on the spot, it came out wrong. I straightened my dress and assumed my finest “audacious” look, as if to say, If you’re the kind of person who takes inordinate pleasure from insulting women, well, distance yourself, asshole. I would have stormed out of the room right then and there, but I couldn’t. Unfortunately, I’d taken off my pink Capezio flats, and one was missing. I had to retrieve it from under the couch, kneeling before the Producer like a supplicant, while doing my best to maintain my dignity and my blazing eye contact. He looked at me as though he had some deep inner knowledge that he would screw me. It didn’t matter how or when, but he’d get it done. I didn’t look back at him as I sauntered out of the room.