Once upon a time, when there used to be a ballpark here, there lived a lanky lefty with incredible stuff. This southpaw, who bled Brooklyn Dodger Blue down to the tiniest capillary, had a blazing heater and a curve that made San Francisco’s Lombard Street look like a straightaway. One hot 1955 summer day in mid-season, Dodger scouts enthusiastically boarded the subway and made the journey north, getting off at 242nd Street, the last stop, finally trudging up the hill in the scorching heat to the regal Georgian mansion on Grosvenor Avenue. Once there, they marveled as a young hurler destroyed a makeshift backstop from an improvised mound. The army of scouts rubbed their hands with glee, until they discovered that the 10-year-old “phenom” was a little girl. Disappointed, Dodger scouts took the subway back to Brooklyn to continue searching for the Holy Grail. Ultimately, they signed a southpaw out of Brooklyn’s Lafayette High School then better known as a basketball player. That’s how Sandy Koufax became a legendary pitcher, and Carly Simon, an immortal rock star.
While the above tale is apocryphal, Carly Simon’s path to stardom, as detailed in her beautifully written and incredibly literate memoir, “Boys in the Trees,” didn’t exactly straighten those curves and flatten those hills. “Overnight sensations” typically spend years driving a truck for the Crown Electric Company, playing in seedy joints on the Reeperbahn in Hamburg, Germany, or performing to an automotive audience in a garage. Carly, despite (or because of) her privileged background, is no exception.
Our story begins in 1948, when Carly, an adorably precocious 3-year-old, introduces herself to her new nanny, Helen Gaspard, by getting down on one knee, raising her arms in the air, and presenting Gaspard with an Al Jolson-style “Hi!”, and ends in 1983 with the breakup of her marriage to fellow superstar rocker James Taylor. (Gaspard would go on to pen the best-selling children’s classic “Dr. Dan, the Bandage Man” which starred a small boy named Dan, his little sister, Carly, and Spotty the Dog, possibly the weirdest-looking canine in the history of children’s literature.) But shortly after that auspicious and audacious entrée, Carly developed insecurities (which she nicknamed “The Beast”) that would plague her, on and off, her entire life.
The causes of those anxieties are well known to Carly’s legion of fans: Carly’s father, Richard Leo Simon, the brilliant, urbane and vibrant co-founder of Simon & Schuster, developed serious health issues during the 1950’s, when Carly was a child, and additionally, watched helplessly as the company he built was stolen from under his nose by co-partners Max Schuster and Leon Shimkin. At the same time he was cuckolded by his wife, who was carrying on an affair with a hunky college student hired to ensure that Carly’s younger brother Peter wouldn’t become “gay.” A particularly poignant chapter in “Boys in the Trees,” entitled “The 29th Floor,” described when Carly, age 15, visited her father at the S & S headquarters, then located at 630 Fifth Avenue, and was directed to Simon’s office, not the baronial suite he had occupied on the 28th floor for many years, but to one much smaller the next floor up. (This may be literally how the expression “kicked upstairs” was derived.) Even more heartrending was when Carly and her father descended in the elevator at day’s end; the former associates who previously called him “boss” and trembled at this giant of a man’s approaching footsteps averted their eyes on the way down. This was probably the last time Carly visited her father at work; he died of a massive heart attack a month later. Carly, who was crazy about her father and had a sense of foreboding about his demise from when she was little, never got a chance to know him well, and to win his approval. Had Richard Simon lived 15 or 20 years longer, I suspect Carly would have written quite a different book.
Richard Simon’s death affected Carly more than her two older sisters, who did have a chance to know their father when he was at the top of his game. Her schoolwork suffered, and according to Carly, did poorly on her SATs, something difficult to comprehend given Carly’s exceptionally rich vocabulary and mastery of the English language, which is evident on every page (as well as in her songwriting). Nevertheless, Carly got into prestigious Sarah Lawrence College, and spent 2 ½ years there as a Russian Lit major, before taking a leave of absence to live in the south of France with her fiancé, Nicholas Delbanco, a recent Harvard grad, and who now is a well-known professor of English at the University of Michigan, and the author of many books, at least four of which are, in whole or in part, about Carly. Like all the locals, Carly and Nick partook of the local Chateauneuf de Pape, a red wine famed for its robustness (and in those days, its inexpensiveness). It turned out, unfortunately, Carly was severely allergic to that particular grape (how she self-diagnosed it as an allergy is a story out of Modern Medical Mysteries), and had to return home. (She also had a budding career as a folksinger with her older sister Lucy as one of the Simon Sisters, which also conflicted with what could have been an idyllic life married to a college professor, in which case the world may never have heard of (or heard) her.)
For the next five years, Carly held a variety of “college girl” jobs while trying to break into the music business. A few months of that time was spent in London with a charming huckster named Willie Donaldson, who arranged a bunch of gigs for the Simon Sisters in Britain, while also becoming her paramour (Willie was already married, to actress Sarah Miles). Donaldson is responsible for the phrase “Well done, Simon Sister.” One of my favorite parts of the book was Carly’s return home (with Lucy) on the USS United States (Carly doesn’t like flying; she took the Queen Mary out). The two sisters shared a cramped inside cabin onboard ship, but, as Providence would have it, Sean Connery was a fellow passenger, staying in the ship’s Presidential Suite, 007 decks above theirs. Carly mustered up the courage to send Connery a note saying that the two girls weren’t “ordinary” fans, and could they meet for a preprandial cocktail (shaken, not stirred)? No sooner than one could say, “The name’s Bond. James Bond,” Connery showed up. The three had what apparently was a platonic, but highly enjoyable, shipboard romance, until the last night of the voyage, when sly Lucy left the girls’ cabin for parts unknown, to return about 5:15 AM the next morning, which may be why there isn’t a tall, stunning Bond Girl named Lycra Moins holding her place in movie history alongside Honey Ryder, Holly Goodhead, and, uh, “Kitty” Galore.
Another Simon suitor—the one who Carly disclosed is the subject of the second verse of “You’re So Vain”—doesn’t come off quite as well. Simon uses her Russian Lit background to compare him to a “Potemkin Village”—a hastily constructed, movable façade of apparently elegant buildings behind which there is nothing but steppe. This wicked comparison leads up to the funniest anecdote in the book: Carly discussed with her shrink her previous night’s visit from this “most handsome and charming and sweet and funny and politically correct (that latter isn’t necessarily a compliment, but this reviewer is that proverbial politically incorrect Big Dumb Guy) and extremely talented man,” only to learn from the therapist that she (Carly) wasn’t the first patient of the day who had been blessed by a visit from Mr. B. From Carly’s writing, one can deduce Bond trumps Bugsy.
The last third of the book is devoted to ex-husband James Taylor, of whom one can say was (and is) the love of Carly’s life, although a certain Little Red Rooster, now an alter kocker, also gets several pages of passionate ink. The gradual downward spiral of their relationship is reflected in one of Carly’s saddest (and most touching) songs, “We’re So Close”: From having a secret language, to having a silent language, to not communicating. (This reviewer pays very careful attention to its words lest his own stable marriage slide down a similar path.) Eventually, by approximately 1980, their marriage was irreparable. However, Carly vowed not to act like her father under analogous circumstances, who simply resigned himself to his wife’s cheating, “as polite as a lake,” as Carly writes, and subsequently died of a broken heart, regardless of what it might read on the death certificate. What she did was remarkable, and beautifully told: Carly was determined to confront her husband’s lover, but to do so in a nice but firm manner. With The Pretenders’ “Brass in Pocket” (a quintessential Carly Simon song although she didn’t write it) on the radio, she left her apartment on 73rd Street and Central Park West at 2:00 AM, and walked through the Upper West Side’s deserted streets to 70th Street near Columbus Avenue, where JT’s mistress lived.
The confrontation, penned with a combination of wit and sarcasm, between wife and mistress is a must-read. Carly was indeed as gracious as a lake during the altercation. Evey (the mistress) was too: As well-mannered as Lake Superior on the night the Edmund Fitzgerald went down. She accused Carly of being a “JAP driving around Hollywood in a Mercedes convertible,” a clothes horse, of primping for “her rich lovers who send planes for you all over the world” (as previously mentioned, Carly doesn’t like to fly), and horrors! Being addicted to manicures and pedicures.
Often, the half-truth hurts more than a pants-on-fire whopper. Was there any credibility to what Evey spewed? But the line about pedicures destroyed any credibility Evey might have had; Carly had little use for hand and foot grooming, and James had complimented her on it. It was as if Evey accused Carly of having grown up a Yankee fan; utter balderdash. Score one against The Beast. While that was a temporary victory, her writing of her memoirs, and confronting the bugbears within, might well annihilate The Beast forever.
In conclusion, if you are a writer, read this magnificent book, and more than once. You will become a better one. And as Willie Donaldson, from his perch in Heaven would say, “Well done, Simon Sister.” Simultaneously, from not far away--as the angels fly--a colossus of a man would echo, “Well done, Simon Daughter.”
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Not a fan but a good read anyways
I'm not a Carly Simon fan, but like millions of others I've enjoyed her hits through the years. "Boys in the Trees" was a surprise for her lyrical writing style and amazing recall for detail. She writes as if song lyrics were prose, and includes many. She was indeed writing about her life at that time. The restrictions of growing up in the 50s and 60s (I'm 2 years older than Carly) were as I remembered, as well as the innocent fun. I started reading expecting to put it down but happily read through to the finish.One bone to pick may possibly color my opinion. She writes about performing at the Moors in Provincetown in the summer of 1964. I actually worked at the Moors that summer. It was not a "gay and lesbian bar" as she writes, but a very nice restaurant at the tip of Provincetown. She was right about hitching a ride because it was a mile or so out of town. The Moors was where you went for your fancy dinner while visiting P'town. It catered mostly to straight tourists. Norman Mailer was a regular, however. He arrived late, left late and always left a $10 tip whether there were 2 or 10 in his party. FYI $10 adjusted for inflation is $75 today.Carly talks about the "geeky, hillbilly, cross-dressing owner" when in fact the owner was an elegant gentleman, Maline Costa, who lived with his equally elegant wife in quarters upstairs. The Moors did host a Sunday afternoon event with music (the restaurant itself was otherwise closed till dinner service), which mostly catered to the gay working population of waiters, waitresses and bartenders. I had heard Barbra Streisand appeared a few years previously before she hit the big time. I was never given those shifts to work as I think the Costas realized their own gay staff would enjoy them.She also talks about a "tiny, funky restroom off the greasy, french-fry-smelling kitchen". There might have been a small restroom for staff to use, and no doubt it was tiny. But I remember personally cleaning the restaurant guests' bathrooms, and they had to be spotless. The Moors barely served French fries; they specialized in delicious, spicy Portuguese cuisine. She says that "the Moors had the distinct feeling of being smudged" . It was done up in pirate-ship-meets-quai-side-tavern style, true, (see pix) but it was hardly a dive. Oh for a bowl of that Potuguese cabbage soup right now...All this, unfortunately, make me doubt and believe some of Carly's more "factual" recollections.
