A friend calls me pathologically empathetic.” In analyzing herself, she added, “I don’t have enough of a barrier between me and what could happen.
She says she is “hyper-vigilant” and, with a trace of a laugh and affection and respect for her son Ben (who, along with daughter Sally, is one of two children from her marriage to James Taylor), said, “Ben says I wear my nervous system on the outside of my body like a plume.” She then remembered, “Teachers at school called me overly sensitive. There are all types of ways that you can interpret things if you have too much of a peripheral vision,” she stated. Simon explained this cognition as a songwriter as a “peripheral vision” She elaborated, “I see too much of what might happen. I want to be able to see things as they are and be honest in my emotional interpretation of them.” I don’t want to waste any gift of cognition.
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I’m in the past.” She now sees the song very differently and says, “The glass is more full than it is empty. Oddly enough, of the song “Anticipation,” Simon says, “Of all the songs, that’s the one that I see most differently now.” She said with a hearty laugh that when she wrote the song she was “excited, aglow, aglimmer and trying to tell myself to calm down.” The song took on a time shift when she wrote it. This sense of anxiousness and, of, yes, anticipation, is a characteristic of Simon’s songs that give them so much vivid drama. I’ve got new melodies that need words and words that need melodies. I’ve got so many in me and they’re dying to get out.
She began the interview by saying, “I’m so anxious to write new songs. Her new album, Never Been Gone (Iris), is a mostly acoustic collection of some of her best-loved songs and a new lease on recording life since she is now on her son Ben’s label. Instead, the Carly Simon I encountered on a cool Autumn day, during a wide-ranging, honest interview, that was really more of a conversation, is the same one I encountered some years ago-gregarious, friendly, curious, articulate, intelligent, truly interested in anyone she encounters and, above all, level-headed with her feet planted firmly on the ground.Įven after her former record label Starbucks didn’t properly support This Is Love, her album from last year, which resulted in her suing the label, Simon was bursting with fevered anxiousness to begin recording new songs. Her wildly enthusiastic energy, statuesque countenance and toothy, wide smile that could light the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, have not only made her a transforming figure among musicians, singers and songwriters, but a beacon for the women of her generation who redefined the female role since the 60s.īoth her personal challenges and rarified place in music history might normally produce a person who moves from mercurial bitterness to aloof divahood. There have also been the early folk recordings (with her sister Lucy), a classical recording, holiday albums, her magnificent title song for the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me, and the soundtrack for the Mike Nichols film Working Girl, richly varied and mature recent works, and a string of American songbook recordings that showcased what has to be considered one of the greatest, most recognizable voices of the rock era.įor all her ups and downs, highs and lows, battles and roadblocks, Simon today remains an indefatigable, ambitious, cheery force of nature. There have been Grammy, Oscar and Golden Globe awards, along with her induction into the exalted Songwriters Hall Of Fame timeless, era-defining hit songs and near-perfect albums that buttressed the singer-songwriter movement.
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Yet, Simon has bravely thrived and become one of the most beloved figures in the world of popular arts since she burst on the scene in the 60s when she was starting her course of countless studio albums, soundtracks, children’s books, movie roles and other projects. There’s the storybook, yet ill-fated marriage to James Taylor, of whom she said, “There are some things that are so deep in my psyche about James and about our relationship and some of them come out.” There are also her childhood disability, wherein she suffered from stuttering until she was fifteen, her paralyzing stage fright, that for years kept her from performing live and her bout with breast cancer in 1997. There’s the part of her story about how she is one of the children of Richard Simon, cofounder of the book publishing company Simon & Schuster. But all too often, stories about her place too much emphasis on her personal biography than on her extraordinary musical career. Sure, her song “You’re So Vain” has encountered speculation about who it’s about more than perhaps any song ever written. The above quote is often a fact that most journalists, when writing about Carly Simon, don’t understand about her. “In every one of my songs there is my biography”