Carly Simon |
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Mon. April 26.2004 12:00 AM EDT |
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Carly Simon: Nobody Does It BetterShe's still not telling about "You're So Vain," but she does explain that ultra sexy album cover. by Brian Ives and C. Bottomley |
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(Courtesy of BMG Heritage) |
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Carly Simon doesn't understand what all the fuss is about. When she wrote, "You're So Vain" in 1972, she was only doing what every singer/songwriter did: mining emotions and putting them to music. But since the tune went to No. 1, all anyone wants
Simon is doing the smart thing - she's keeping those fulsome lips of hers sealed. The only other person who knows the secret is someone who paid for the privilege. But "Vain" aside, there are plenty more confessional treasures in her catalog. Since arriving with her wry look at marriage, 1971's "That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be," Simon has established herself as one of the premiere chroniclers of her generation's concerns. "The Right Thing to Do" and "Nobody Does It Better" helped define the '70s. Then she became a fine interpreter of pop standards on albums like Torch and Film Noir. Like her recent concert DVD, Live From Martha's Vineyard, Simon's new Reflections gathers the highlights of a career that's had its share of heartbreak and stumbles - she's famously battled stage fright and writer's block. But, she told VH1, music is still the best place to deal with life's ups and downs. The singer discussed what shaped her favorite songs, how the sexy cover of her 1975 Playing Possum album was an accident, and - of course - who that famous song of hers is really about. VH1: What goes through your mind when you listen to these songs that you recorded so long ago? Carly Simon: So many different things. I remember when I recorded them, the musicians that I played with on each of the records, the arrangers and producers I worked with. It's kind of a visual thing that happens when I listen to the songs. VH1: Do you have a favorite song out of all these? CS: The song that I feel most attached to is "Like a River." It's a song I wrote about my mother four days after she died. I got so much out of just getting my emotions out there. Then I could see them secondhand and I could cry. I had a lot of trouble crying at first. That's very often been one of the motivations for me: to express my emotions and look at them secondhand or third-hand. "Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of" was an important song to me because it made me realize that marriages weren't supposed to be the fireworks lasting forever in the same way. They meander, they go all over the place, they defy description. They're very much what you make of it for yourself. [Watch Clip] VH1: Your first hit "That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be" also turned a cold eye to marriage. Did you get a lot of flak for it in 1971? CS: I didn't get a lot of flak because most people thought it was pro-marriage. Those people are still using it for their wedding songs. It interests me how many people don't listen that closely to the lyric. They pick up on the [line] "That's the way I've always heard it should be, you want to marry me, we'll marry." The song is about my friends from college that are all married now. They have their silence at noon and their angry dawns. It's a complicated statement about marriage. It's a kind of, "Maybe we can make this work, even though our parents' marriages didn't work." [Watch Clip] VH1: Last year, you auctioned off the long-secret identity of the person who inspired "You're So Vain." Are you surprised by the mystique that surrounds the song? CS: Yes. "You're So Vain" was a combination of a lot of different times and places. I write songs from my life experience. I take a certain amount of poetic [license] and add characters and ideas. But it was definitely inspired by a certain person. That, of course, became the mystery. I wasn't comfortable talking about who that person was, so it built this mystique. I didn't know that then. VH1: So now only you and one other person in the world who knows. CS: [NBC sports boss] Dick Ebersol won the right to know who it was about [during a charity auction]. He brought nine or ten of his friends over to my house. I played the song for them on the piano and told them who it was about. VH1: So now if you hear from anyone else, you'll know someone blabbed. Cs: I don't really care. [Laughs] It's a guarded secret; but don't forget, I'm always able to say, "That's what I told them [but it might not be true]." VH1: Will Ebersol want his money back if you deny it's who you said it was? CS: I told them at the time, that if I was ever questioned, I would probably say, "Well that's what I told them at the time, but that's not necessarily what it was about." That was a part of the revealing: that if I ever heard it coming back to me, I would deny, deny, deny! VH1: How did you get down to your underwear for the Playing Possum album cover? CS: Well, I went into the studio with Norman Seeff to do a photo shoot. We had all the clothes picked out, the makeup and the hair and everything. It took probably three or four hours. Wine used to loosen me up when I was able to drink it before the world changed and you couldn't have any fun. So I was drinking wine and I kind of got loose. I was wearing a teddy under one of the dresses and took off the clothes that were over it before getting into my clothes to go home. I still had my stockings and my boots on and there was some great [music] playing. God, what was it? "Shaft"! So I went out and I just had to dance to it. I went out in my teddy and I got down. Norman took his camera out and shot me getting down on my knees. I was in a profile shot and you could see the edge of the paper. It was sort of after the session was over. [Watch Clip] VH1: Were you surprised at the reaction it got? CS: Well, I remember my husband was pretty horrified! I thought it was pretty hot, actually. Looking at myself, I thought, "My God, I had a baby four months ago. That doesn't go along exactly with the image of new motherhood." But I liked it! VH1: Just because you're a mother doesn't mean you can't be sexy. CS: When I first started out in the music business and sent my demo tape out, a lot of record companies thought, "Well, I can't quite place her. Is she a country singer? A folk singer? A rock 'n' roll singer? A blues singer? Is she a theatre singer or a jazz singer?" In my head, I was just me. I had taken so much in as a child, when I found my own voice, I was putting it all out there.[Watch Clip] VH1: With so many great songs to your credit, is it intimidating to write the next one? CS: As my friend songwriter Livingston Taylor just said to me, "We're circus people. We can't not do it." I don't try to compete with the song that came before. I have to write what I'm writing now. I'm always interested to discover a new facet to my personality as a songwriter. I'm always influenced by the new artists who I hear or the old artists that I rehear, or my children that are always teaching me things. So no, I'm not really trying to follow myself. I'm trying to get the best out of myself as I am now. |
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