![]() ![]() Around 5 they led us into the bookstore and downstairs into a large room where they had a sort of roped off maze of lanes which led up to the front of the room where there was a desk. The final estimate was between 250-300 people. I tend to get anxious sometimes and this was absolutely one of those times. I was so relieved to be near the front, and my daughter could relax knowing she had delivered me bright and early to the event. ![]() There were already maybe 7 people in line outside, we went into the book store to purchase our reserved copies of the book which were our tickets into the event, got a refreshment and then got in line which had swelled to about 12 people by then. We got to Bookends in Ridgewood, NJ around 4. My daughter got off from work early and we left around 3 for the 6 o’clock signing. How did this come to be after all these years? Carly has done signings of CD’s and books over the years in NYC but I’ve never been able to make them, but when it was announced she was going to be on this side of the Hudson River in New Jersey and not far from where I live, and an early evening appearance… we knew it had to be now or possibly never. When they married, in 1972, he was twenty-four and riding high with the commercial and critical triumph of the album Mudslide Slim and the Blue Horizon and its single, “You’ve Got a Friend.” Carly, then twenty-seven, was soon to rival her spouse’s successes with “You’re So Vain,” the monumental hit off her third album, No Secrets.After a lifetime of both of us having a connection to Martha’s Vineyard and never ever meeting each other it finally happened on Oct 24th here in NJ at Carly’s book signing for her new book ‘Touched By The Sun’ about her long time friend ship with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. “If you ever want a home-cooked meal….” she said. She was attracted to Taylor and let him know it. She was performing at the Troubadour in Los Angeles when “Jamie” Taylor came backstage to say hello. Carly remembers the exact date that she first spoke to her future husband: April 6th, 1971. But it was not until some six years later that they had so much as a casual conversation. Taylor first glimpsed his future wife on the Vineyard in the mid-Sixties, as she and her sister, Lucy, performed at the legendary Mooncusser folk club. “Hey, that’s a fine-looking woman,” he said to a friend. He was already living with her when he first saw the cover of her inaugural Carly Simon album (Elektra, 1971). Almost ten years later, after all her albums (with their notoriously erotic covers) and all her hits (some of which James sang on), she still seems doubtful that she was successful in getting his attention. When they first met, it hurt Carly to learn that James was unfamiliar with her music. Underneath it all there’s a tremendous feeling of….” She searches for the right word. What you have here are two people who have made up their minds that they can’t stay together, but who are dedicated to raising their children together. “Sometimes we get along very well and sometimes we don’t get along at all. “I feel as though I have to get on with the rest of my life and that if I start thinking, ‘Well, I’ll wait for James to get it together and wait for us to get back together again,’ then I’m not going to approach my life the same way as I would if I were thinking, ‘Well, that phase of my life is over and now I’m entering a new phase.’ I really demand that of a partner.” She bursts into what is apparently much-needed laughter and then grows serious again, smoothing out her corduroy jeans and pulling her long legs up under her. “Basically, he just wasn’t willing to dress up like Louis XIV before we went to bed every night. She smiles weakly, her full lips somehow appearing thin. ![]() She is now facing a formal separation and likely divorce from her husband of almost ten years. According to Carly– - sitting outside the house, heavily sweatered against the chill– - these are not the happiest of times in the Taylor-Simon household. Even on the bleakest day, to approach it from the winding gravel road below would surely make anyone smile. A maze of porches, quasi turrets and windows with frames painted in luminous pinks and yellows, the large, shingled retreat is a cross between some cockeyed farm boy’s idea of the perfect honeymoon cottage and a rustic castle worthy of a C.S. A STIFF WIND cuts through the dense, copper-colored stands of trees that shelter the clearing where James Taylor built a home in the early Seventies for his wife, Carly Simon, and their children. “I Get Along without You Very Well,” Hoagy Carmichael, 1938*ĪUTUMN HAS COME TO MARTHA’S VINEYARD. The thrill of being sheltered in your armsīut I get along without you very well…. ![]()
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