More Room in a Broken Heart: The True Adventures of Carly Simon

by Stephen Davis

  Carly was, as Donaldson later wrote, “the answer to any sane man’s prayers: funny, quick, erotic, extravagantly talented.” He was as besotted with her perfume as she was with his.

  The affair, for Carly, was naked and sexual. Donaldson had been the lover of innumerable actresses, starlets, and harlots, and was very experienced. Carly has described him as being very tender with her, and adorable in every sense. “It’s pretty amazing that an affair can be so intense as to… halt me—in that way,” she told Willie’s British biographer many years later. “We had a wonderful sex life, although, like me, he was shy about the way he looked, and didn’t want to be seen in the light.” Willie took Carly on a nostalgic visit to Cambridge, where they viewed his old rooms at the university. “He was very sentimental about this,” Carly recalled.

  Willie wanted to launch the Simon Sisters in England, so Carly called Lucy in New York and told her about him, saying that he would pay her airfare to London; but Carly actually paid Lucy’s way, just to get her to London so her older sister could see what was going on between her and Willie. He took the two sisters to tea at Fortnum & Mason, and Carly was startled to realize she became almost insanely jealous every time Willie even looked at Lucy. The girls moved into lodgings in Cadogan Square, a grand old house Willie dubbed Toad Hall, as in (when putting the girls into a taxi): “Take the Simon Sisters to Toad Hall!” He then arranged London auditions for them at Take One, and at the Rehearsal Room, above the Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square.

  Lucy indeed saw that Carly was really in love with this suave, swinging Englishman. Lucy: “Willie was charming, elegant, intelligent, and best of all he was able to make Carly relax. He really brought out her humor. They were talking very seriously about marriage, which surprised me quite a bit at the time. I wasn’t sure what to make of it.”

  At the end of August 1965, Lucy heard there was work for the Simon Sisters at home, and the girls booked passage for New York on the ocean liner S. S. United States. After a river of tears, Carly left England under the firm impression that she was going to wind up her life in America, return to London, and be married as the second Mrs. William Donaldson. Once aboard the ship, she opened a telegram that read, “LITTLE FROG FOOTMAN COME BACK SOON.”

  Sailing from Southampton, the girls noticed actor Sean Connery boarding the ship on his way to another film role as James Bond, agent 007. After they checked into their stateroom, Carly sent a note to Connery, who read it on the massage table. Ten minutes later he knocked on their door, his hair still unctuous from massage oil. For the next few days, Carly says, James Bond gently pestered the sisters for sex. “He tried to persuade Lucy and me to do things we’d never even heard of.” But on their last night at sea, Carly decided that if Sean called, she would visit him in his deluxe penthouse suite, putting aside her troth to Willie for one memorable night. But she was in the bathroom when the phone rang, and Lucy answered it instead.

  Asked what happened next, Lucy allowed only that she’d had a “fascinating” supper with Mr. Connery that evening.

  Carly arrived at her mother’s house in Riverdale on September 8, 1965, and announced her marriage plans. Andrea Simon was taken aback. Other family members were worried for her. Then Willie’s letters started arriving, and Carly read aloud his amusing declarations of love for her, and her family began to understand why she found this older man so dazzling. Carly wrote to him every day, expressing her thrilled anticipation of their forthcoming marriage. She wrote a couple of new songs inspired by Willie: “You’re the One” and “The Best Thing.”

  Then Willie’s letters stopped. Carly was shocked at first. She tried phoning him, but he was never in, never returned her calls. She became frantic, then devastated as she realized the truth. On October 24 a letter arrived from Willie. Sarah Miles had taken him back; with deep regret, he informed Carly, the marriage was off.

  Carly was crushed. “It was terrible,” Peter Simon remembers. “My sister couldn’t stop crying, really blubbering, almost deranged. Then she started to stammer again and we knew she was seriously bereft.”

  Carly has admitted that she never really got over her affair with Willie Donaldson. She said much later that it still made her sad that she could never seem to get back to that sense of herself that Willie fell for, and found so attractive. Carly Simon would love other men, but perhaps none with the ferocity of what she felt for Willie.

  As for Willie, he went on the skids soon after dumping Carly. Sarah Miles left him, in turn, for the screenwriter Robert Bolt, whom she later married. Homeless, Willie found work as a pimp and moved into a brothel. Then he spent a decade addicted to cocaine. He turned his hand to writing, churning out comic novels, essays, and newspaper columns. When he died in 2005, the London Daily Telegraph hailed him as “a pimp, crack fiend, sex addict, and a comic genius.”

  In his memoirs, Willie Donaldson wrote about his affair with Carly in the summer of 1965:

  [One evening] Carly quite embarrassed me. She took a bath and then stretched out on the bed with nothing on. “What do you think?” she said. She looked magnificent, in fact, but I felt more uncomfortable. She’d slipped embarrassingly out of character…. This was a woman I loved and respected, a woman I was going to marry. No doubt I climbed into bed and turned away, thought about tall silent women prowling the stage with nothing on. Carly had confused herself for a moment with a Helmut Newton woman, a woman whose business it was to do this sort of thing, to pose and mock you at a distance, to wear thigh boots and stand in the corner if I told her to.

  Carly Simon says that this and most of the other details concerning her in Willie Donaldson’s various writings are fiction, because they never happened.

  THE FEMALE BOB DYLAN

  Meanwhile, in Woodstock, Bob Dylan was burned out.

  This was 1966, late winter, early spring. The previous year, flying on speed, Dylan released the two albums that signified his radical turn to electric rock and roll. Bringing It All Back Home had “Gates of Eden,” “Maggie’s Farm,” and “Mr. Tambourine Man,” which basically invented the new genre of folk-rock. A few months later came Highway 61 Revisited, which had “Like a Rolling Stone” and “Desolation Row.” In 1966, Dylan went to Nashville and cut the fourteen songs about to be released on his epochal double album Blonde on Blonde. He toured constantly with his band, the Hawks, telling his managers to keep them on the road; he needed the money.

  But Dylan’s management team was worried. To Albert Grossman and John Court, the principals of Grosscourt Productions, it was obvious that their star client was burning out and had to crash, sooner or later. If Dylan stopped touring, a big money flow would dry up. It was John Court, apparently, who had the notion that they had to find a female Bob Dylan. If Dylan crapped out, or retired awhile, the female Bob Dylan could go out on the road with the Hawks, singing Dylan’s songs, and maybe it could be a blast and at least there would be a revenue stream. Court said that he’d heard about a girl who might just fill the bill.

  It took Carly Simon a long time—well into 1966—to get over being jilted by Willie Donaldson. She told friends that it had been a fantastic romance; she had been ready to marry this man. “I got a terrible Dear John letter from him,” she told an interviewer much later. “That was my first hard lesson in love, and… the first cut is the deepest.”

  Yet once she regained some form of psychic normalcy, with the help of her therapist, Carly picked up her guitar and began to write again. Carly: “It wasn’t until my first real—I mean, real—heartbreak, that I began writing the kind of songs that, to this day, I find the most gratifying. The ones that… allowed me to see things in the third person, almost like reportage. That insight about writing was the only beneficial effect that heartbreak ever had on me.”

  Then Lucy closed down the Simon Sisters. She’d started dating her psychiatrist, David Levine. Lucy: “I saw that, as the Simon Sisters, our moment was past. We weren’t selling records or making much money. I wanted to have children and be ma
rried. I thought: this is all I’ve wanted to do all my life, and I want no interference. Carly, anyway, was the more talented performer, and it was clear that she would go on in the business, and be successful.”

  Carly: “My sister was tired of my nerves, and got married.”

  So now Carly was on her own. She needed a place to live, and moved into the rear bedroom of her sister Joey’s apartment at 400 East Fifty-fifth Street in Manhattan. Joey was still bossy toward her youngest sister, and Carly was often prohibited use of the flat when Joey was entertaining menfriends such as TV panelist Henry Morgan, musician Zubin Mehta, or ballet star Edward Villella. Carly suffered, mostly in silence.

  Then she got a call from John Court, who had (maybe) heard of her from Willie Donaldson. Court invited her to meet his partner, Albert Grossman—Bob Dylan’s manager!—to discuss her career. Carly was incredibly excited and felt her first break as a solo singer might be imminent.

  At the time, Albert Grossman was the most important talent manager in the music business. He was forty-ish, corpulent, rumpled, with long gray hair falling below his shoulders and wire-rimmed granny glasses that made him look like Ben Franklin. Grossman was a tough guy, having emerged from the Chicago folk club scene, and had immediate entrée to all the important record companies. Carly met with him at the Grosscourt offices on Twenty-third Street. Carly later wrote about this period:

  “Once Lucy was married, I got involved with Albert Grossman. Without my dear sister’s protection, I was a sitting duck. He offered me his body in exchange for worldly success [which Carly found strange, because Grossman was famously married to glamorous Sally Grossman, who lounged in a red trouser suit on the iconic cover of Bringing It All Back Home]. Sadly, his body was not the kind you would easily sell yourself for.”

  Grossman sized Carly up, listened to her demo tapes, and told her she was a hard sell, that he wasn’t sure what to do with her. She told him about her stage fright and said that her ambition was to write songs and record them, but not to perform in public. He told her flat out that she was a spoiled rich girl with an entitled attitude.

  Then he told her about the female Bob Dylan idea. “Albert said, ‘You should get Bob to write a song for you.’ I said that would be great. He said, ‘I’ll get Bob to come over here and meet with you, and you’ll go into the studio with his guys. Let me make some calls and see if I can get Columbia [Dylan’s record label] to pay for the sessions.’”

  Carly said okay to this, but felt uneasy. “I thought I was being exploited with this female Dylan thing. These people hadn’t even heard me sing, it was mostly on the basis of my looks. They thought if I sang Dylan songs I would make it as a female Dylan. In my mind, it didn’t really follow, but I went along at first.”

  Carly met with Bob Dylan a few days later, on July 28, 1966. This was almost beyond belief for her. Blonde on Blonde was the hottest album in America. The radio blasted out the album’s first single, “Rainy Day Women #12 and 35,” and its clarion call to anarchy “Everybody must get stoned.” It was like taking a meeting with Jesus.

  It didn’t go that well. Dylan hid behind his sunglasses and didn’t make eye contact. He was disheveled, and his hands shook. Carly: “We went into a little cubicle in Albert’s office, and Bob took out an old song and added some new lyrics. I tried to question him, but he was really out of it—very, very wasted… talking incoherently, saying a lot about God and Jesus, and how I had to go down to Nashville.”

  Dylan went on: “Hey… you know,… oh… you… Nashville!… the players, man… are just… you gotta… just… just believe me… believe me!” Dylan stretched out his arms, crucified, repeating “Believe me” over and over. Carly: “It was an odd experience.”

  But Bob Dylan, prodded by management, had indeed written some new lyrics, tailored to Carly, for a female version of “Baby, Let Me Follow You Down,” which he had performed on his debut album, saying that it had been taught to him by singer Eric Von Schmidt “in the green pastures of Harvard University.” Dylan handed Carly the lyric sheet and left without a farewell. He was driven back to Woodstock, the upstate New York village where he’d found refuge near Grossman’s country home, and a few days later broke some bones in his neck when he crashed his motorcycle into a tree.

  Just as Grossman had feared, Bob Dylan retired to recover from his accident and his speedy life since 1963. Dylan would not be touring that autumn (and Dylan wouldn’t tour for another eight years, when he again went out with the Hawks, who had rebranded themselves in 1968 as the Band). Now Grosscourt Productions needed their female Bob Dylan more than ever.

  “So Bob disappeared for a while,” Carly said, “freeing up Robbie Robertson and all the people in his band. So I went up to Woodstock and started working with Robbie on a daily basis”—hammering out an arrangement for the new “Baby, Let Me Follow You Down.” Carly Simon was about to record a song with America’s hottest working band, Bob Dylan’s band, the Hawks. The producer supervising the session was Bob Johnston, a portly middle-aged Nashville veteran who had worked on Blonde on Blonde. Almost at the last minute Carly was teamed with singer Richie Havens, another Grosscourt client, and this ensemble lit into a full-throated version of “Baby” that chimed much like the Byrds’ hit single version of “Mr. Tambourine Man.” The Carly/ Havens pairing also echoed the sound of Sonny and Cher, another huge folk-rock act that covered Mr. Dylan’s songs.

  The session was stressful. Carly was “singing out,” giving the lyric a lusty, full-throated delivery. Carly: “But Albert kept coming into the studio and directing me. I felt like just a piece of meat, actually.” Grossman wanted Carly to slavishly imitate Dylan’s distinctive, breathy/ nasal intonation of the song’s lyrics. Carly gently told Grossman that impressions weren’t really her thing. “It was really meat city, because they made me feel like a sex object, not like a musician at all.”

  They also recorded a forgettable song, cowritten by Bob Johnston and Wes Farrell, called “Goodbye Lovin’ Man”—“a song they’d never heard me sing until I got into the studio. It was, ‘Let’s make a B-side quick.’ But the musicians were incredible, super-studded; star-studded: Paul Butterfield, Mike Bloomfield, Levon Helm. I think Al Kooper was there. And I had a major crush on Robbie Robertson.” Richie Havens sang backup.

  But later, after the musicians had packed their instruments and gone home, Bob Johnston told Carly where it was at. She expressed hope that the sessions had gone well, and Johnston told her that if she were real nice to him—and to Carly the implication was unmistakably sexual—he’d make damn sure she got a hit record out of it. He was blatant about it, asking, “What time you want me to come over?”

  Carly was shocked. “I’m just not…”—she stammered—“… not that desperate.” Badly shaken, she walked out. Carly: “It was such a typical Hollywood-type casting couch routine that I was amazed to hear it actually come out of someone’s mouth.”

  “I went home and sobbed,” she later said, and resolved to quit the music business. “If I’d been a hungry girl from Spanish Harlem, I would have had the same sense of shame, but if I didn’t have my family to fall back on [financially], desperation might have actually led me to sleep with him. I don’t know.” It was a terrible letdown for her.

  Carly told Grossman the female Dylan thing wasn’t for her, and her record was shelved, Columbia having passed on releasing it. Then Grossman thought he could sell an act called Carly and the Deacon, the “Deacon” being Richie Havens. Carly liked the idea, and thought it could work with the right songs. Havens had real energy and talent, but Carly and the Deacon never got into the studio.

  “Albert said to me, ‘On a one-to-ten scale, as a woman, you’re a nine… But you’ve had it too easy, you haven’t suffered enough, you don’t know what working for a living is like.” Carly thought this was stupid, but didn’t bother arguing with him, “as if you’d had to have ridden freight trains, or sold your body, to have soul.” There was no arguing with Albert Grossman anyway.
<
br />   Meanwhile, Carly was having a major flirtation with incipient rock star Robbie Robertson (who was actually about to marry his beautiful Canadian girlfriend). Robertson was tall, dark, charismatic, extremely hip, and played guitar with Bob Dylan. For a time, Carly thought Robbie might be her rebound from Willie. They had some furtive lunches together in the Village—Robbie was very cynical about the music business and told Carly point-blank that it wasn’t for pussies—but the dates never came to anything serious.

  The Woodstock adventure had been a hassle for Carly, a bummer. “I was terribly disappointed,” she said a few years later. “I let myself get brought down a lot, thinking that they didn’t like me, that I wasn’t worth much. Al Grossman had led me to believe I was hot shit, but they thought they could just… mold me into whatever they wanted. I tried it, out of desperation, because I so wanted to be wanted by these people. But I was not ready to be molded by anyone else.”

  INDIAN HILL

  So now Carly Simon retired. She gained weight. Peter Simon, her brother: “We were quite close in this era, the late sixties. She had tried to go solo, and project herself, alone, in order to gain attention from the record companies and the public, and it wasn’t working. Carly became very down on herself, and very negative about her chances of making it. These were some difficult years—between 1967 and 1970—when she was bouncing around New York, on the fringes of the music business, mainly writing and recording commercials and jingles, and just in general feeling very depressed about her career.”

  “During that time,” Carly has said, “I worked as an overweight secretary for a production company. I pretended to type while extending my lunch hours to drown my sense of failure in puff pastry and pudding.” An executive, Len Friedlander, whose wife was a childhood friend of Carly’s, assigned her to one of his company’s TV programs, From the Bitter End. She was in charge of the green room, taking care of the talent. She made tea for Peter, Paul and Mary. She looked after Richie Havens, who was breaking through with a brilliant album, Mixed Bag. She met sixteen-year-old Janis Ian, whose interracial love song, “Society’s Child,” was a national hit record. “I took care of the Chad Mitchell Trio, the Staple Singers, many others, and didn’t try to sell them my songs. I was happy to be around this incredible group of performers, getting them cough drops.” One day, Motown star Marvin Gaye came in to lip-sync his latest record.