James Taylor and Carly Simon: The Rolling Stone Interview

It began in the plush bedroom of a fashionable Riverdale home, one week before James Taylor and Carly Simon became Mr. and Ms. Simon-Taylor. Mrs. Andrea Simon was hosting a party for her son Peter whose book of photographs, Moving on/Holding Still, had just been released. Up in the bathroom, Carly and Peter were diligently trying to synchronize two battery-operated cassette recorders so that a few guests could enjoy a closed-door preview of “You’re So Vain,” in a reasonable facsimile of stereo.

The song lodged itself in my cerebral cortex and had me twitching and humming for the next few days. By midweek, the twitch turned to an itch, which could only be soothed by getting a copy. Carly said there was nothing she could do until Elektra sent her a copy, but in the meantime she wanted me to come to a party at 3 AM on Friday in the Time Magazine Building (then known as the Time-Life Building) following James’ midnight concert at Radio City Music Hall.

James’ last tour had not been an artistic success. He had become sluggish and more distant from his audience. Rumor had it that this was due to mounting heroin addiction. His live appearances over the previous six months had been limited to stints for George McGovern. I figured this concert and the subsequent tour would serve as a gauge for how much we could expect from him in the future.

The concert disarmed me of any vestiges of critical judgment. I was drawn smoothly into the pleasure of the music and James’ performance. And, to a great concert, he added his announcement that earlier in the evening he and Carly had married.

After that evening, a Rolling Stone Interview with the Simon-Taylors seemed like a natural, and well worth the delicate approach it inevitably entailed. James and Carly both had reservations about doing one, stemming from past experiences with the press. James had not done an interview for two years, and what he had done before that had been basically lip-service. After Howard Hughes, one would be hard-pressed to find anyone who said less to Time and still got his picture on the cover. Carly had always been as open as possible, only to find sensationalized stories of rock & roll romances, once reserved for Screen Secrets, thrown back in her face.

After speaking to Carly on the phone, I was invited over to dinner (Carly is an excellent, provocative cook, James is fair on the dishes) and in a light group-therapy session we worked out the process for the interview. James remarked that his good friend John McLaughlin had once said that he does as many interviews as he can, because they’re a way to clean out the soul: “So what the hell. Let’s see.”

The first session was conducted on Thanksgiving Eve, in the living room of the East Side Manhattan apartment in which they were wed and are still honeymooning. Carly’s brother Peter engineered and co-conducted.

The second session was held a week later minus Peter. Once we got started they took it as seriously as they would a concert or album. Even though James would later say, “Dammit, interviews are not what I do,” it was what they were doing, and they were going to do it right. When the deadline that they greatly resented finally approached, they switched into high gear and what amounted to a third session was conducted by phone from a Maryland Holiday Inn to my New York apartment, following one of James’ concerts — and running until 5 AM.

Jon Landau stayed up with me for 30 straight hours turning 200 manuscript pages into cohesive form. Robert Flaherty couldn’t have put more effort into editing his documentaries. The result is a collective effort: James and Carly Simon-Taylor present themselves. —S.W.

Do you want to talk about why you decided to get married?
James: That’s the way we always heard it should be.

Carly: I mentioned one morning to James in London that I thought we should get married, and James was kind of hesitant in his response. He said, “Oh well, there’s really no reason to get married. We love each other and we’ve been living together.”

And then later on in the afternoon, James said, “You know I’ve been thinking about it and maybe we should get married.” I said, “Well, what’s happened between this morning and this afternoon?” He said, “This afternoon it was my idea.”

When did you first meet?
Carly: It was my first opening night ever.

James: It was the fall of ’71.

Carly: No, no, the first time we met was April 6, 1971.

James: We passed once in the parking lot of my house — it’s not really like a Kinney System parking lot, it holds about three cars — out in front of my mother’s house were Peter Simon and Carly going to talk to my brother, Livingston, about a job that she and Livingston were going to do together. I passed Peter and Carly and said, “Hi” and Peter said, “Hi, this is my sister Carly” and then I left. I guess I had one album out by then.

So when was the first time you were really introduced?
Carly: When we were officially introduced it seemed as though we’d known each other for a long time as we knew about each other from the summer place [Cape Cod, Mass.] James came up and embraced me upon first meeting, and then we went in the bathroom and fucked.

James: Actually we never made love until we were married. [Laughter] I saw Carly on the street shortly after I met her, and I followed her, thinking she was another woman. I was thinking, “what a fine looking woman that is.” Then I discovered it was Carly. It makes you very happy when you do that. The same thing with this picture from Carly’s first album. I saw it on the wall — “Hey, that’s a fine looking woman,” said I, and someone said, “That’s your girl.” I said, “What?” They said, “It’s Carly.” I said, “Oh, so it is.”

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