James Taylor and Carly Simon: The Rolling Stone Interview

Performers usually relate sensually to the audience, and both of you have that quality of being attractive and being attracted to the audience. Can you relate to the audience and be attractive and yet at the same time not let it turn into burlesque?
James: I think perhaps my act is the most unburlesque imaginable. I sit in a chair and don’t move for two hours.

Carly: But you have a very strong sexual appeal. Do you mean you relate to an audience in a completely asexual level?

James: Yes.

It probably relates to Carly more…
James: She’s a piece of ass. It bothers me. If she looks at another man, I’ll kill her.

Carly’s appeal in the beginning was to a female audience, and now there’s a large male audience.
James: Mae West in the flesh.

Do you feel that’s something desirable to your act?
Carly: I don’t necessarily underplay my sexual appeal or attractiveness, whatever it may be. I think it’s an asset to a performer to be sexually attractive. And I think James is a nice piece of ass.

You wear long dresses instead of hot pants?
James: She wears short dresses onstage sometimes. Sure. Why not? As long as you’re asking that, it carries over farther than that. If two people are married and take vows to be true to each other, how far does that carry over? Obviously I don’t want Carly to sleep in another man’s bed, or another man sleeping in my bed, for that matter. Not on this couch either. And forget about the back seat of the car. It’s obviously important that between two people man and woman, there’d be a certain amount of sexual overtones in the conversation. In other words, if she’s at a party and she meets someone she likes, she likes to feel as though they’re attracted to her sexually and when I meet a woman I like to feel as though there’s a certain amount of rapport. I guess marriage vows sort of pertain to a certain amount of closeness. It really depends on what she would consider my betraying her.

Carly: What’s safe.

James: Or, what I would consider her betraying me. And I think, interestingly enough, or boringly enough, depending upon how drunk you are, what it really comes down to is that when I feel threatened or when I feel somebody else is taking my place, that’s when she shouldn’t do it.

A lot of Joni Mitchell’s new album seems directed towards her feelings about James. What are your reactions?
James: I think I heard a track of it on the radio, I haven’t picked it up. I’d be very interested to hear it, because I really love Joni’s music.

There are references to a man in suspenders — I guess you’d have to hear it.
James: Joni’s music is much more specifically autobiographical than a lot of other people. Everyone who writes songs writes autobiographical songs, and hers are sometimes really disarmingly specific.

This is her most disarmingly specific album.

Carly, how did you wind up in Taking Off?
Carly: That came about because I had dated Milos Forman a couple of years ago.

James: She’s older than 18 — dating means fucking.

Carly: No, I had no carnal knowledge of him.

James, how did you get involved with Two-Lane Blacktop?
James: Well, some people got in touch with Peter and they said, “We have a movie and we want James to act in it.” Peter read the script and liked it a lot.

It was a fantastic script. Rudi Wurlitzer wrote it. I decided that it might be a good idea to try to act in a film and I went out to the West Coast and talked to people about it and then agreed to start to look in it a little further.

Career-wise it was a good idea. It was a really good script, with a director who is as good a director as Monte Hellman was reputed to be — was a good move and Peter was right from a career point of view, so I ended up being in the movie. By the time it started, I must confess that I didn’t want to do it. I think I realized there were some heavy things going on between Monte and his wife at that point. We weren’t allowed to see the movie. Monte really wanted to control us without really letting us be creative in ourselves. He wanted to use us. I think rather like John Ford used John Wayne. Ford did the best stuff with Wayne.

But Hellman was into using us. So that by the time the movie was started, with no acting experience I was totally dependent on Hellman for any sort of training or any sort of suggestions that he might give me. I needed him so totally but he never, ever, talked to me on a personal basis. He’s the most incommunicative cat I’ve ever met in my life. It was excruciating.