Chapter 1
A Melody of Memories: Finding Voice in a World of Shadows
Carly Simon's memoir "Boys in the Trees" isn't just another celebrity autobiography-it's a cultural touchstone that has resonated with generations. Named one of Rolling Stone's top 50 music memoirs of all time, this intimate portrait of an artist's journey has been praised by everyone from Oprah Winfrey to Taylor Swift. The book's unflinching honesty about family secrets, creative passion, and tumultuous relationships has made it required reading for anyone interested in the golden age of singer-songwriters. What makes Simon's story so compelling isn't just her famous romances or chart-topping hits, but her remarkable ability to transform personal pain into universal art. As we step into her world of Greenwich Village townhouses, Martha's Vineyard summers, and backstage encounters with rock royalty, we discover the vulnerable heart behind some of the most iconic songs of the 20th century.
Chapter 2
The Birth of an Identity: A Young Girl's Awakening
At age three, Carly Simon discovered her desire to be seen. During an interview for a potential nurse for her baby brother Peter, she suddenly leapt onto the coffee table, dropped to one knee with arms outstretched like Al Jolson, and belted out a single, brassy "HI!" This moment marked the birth of her performing identity, a counterpoint to her natural shyness and insecurity.
Growing up in a six-story Greenwich Village townhouse populated by her father's eclectic collection of family and friends, young Carly was surrounded by music. Her father Richard Simon (co-founder of Simon & Schuster publishing) was a gifted amateur pianist who played with more emotion than technical precision, practicing Liszt, Brahms, and Chopin for hours each night. The extended Simon family was thoroughly musical-Uncle George founded Downbeat magazine, Uncle Alfie directed music for WQXR, and Uncle Henry hosted classical music rehearsals that Carly and her sisters deliberately disrupted by singing out of tune.
Despite this musical environment, Carly's relationship with her father was complicated. As the youngest Simon daughter, she remembers his frequent punishments and lack of affection. "Darling, remember to kiss Carly, too," her mother would remind him at bedtime. This emotional distance from her father would shape her relationships with men throughout her life.
The family dynamics took a darker turn when Carly's mother began a relationship with a much younger man named Ronny, ostensibly hired as a companion for Carly's brother. Though only nineteen to her mother's forty-two, Ronny quickly became a fixture in their home, creating an atmosphere of secrets and unspoken tensions. When Ronny was drafted into the army and stationed in Germany, Carly's mother made a suspicious solo trip to Europe, leaving behind her husband who subsequently suffered a heart attack and series of mini-strokes.
This early exposure to adult deception and complicated love taught Carly that appearances often mask deeper, more painful truths-a theme that would later emerge in her songwriting. Her childhood world was filled with contradictions: musical brilliance alongside emotional neglect, family togetherness alongside hidden affairs, and her own emerging voice alongside a devastating stutter that would shape her relationship with language and performance.
Chapter 3
Finding Voice Through Music: The Stuttering Girl Who Sang
The summer of 1951 marked a pivotal moment in Carly's life when she developed a stammer that would define much of her childhood and adolescence. During rehearsals for a family production of "Little Women," her throat went into spasm while delivering her first line. This disability followed no patterns-some days vowel words flowed easily while consonants blocked her; other days it reversed. She developed tricks like answering the phone breathlessly to avoid saying "hello" or adopting a formal "Simon residence" when feeling confident.
The stammer became a source of profound shame and isolation. Carly kept a coded diary, inventing the word "famul" to describe her stuttering, hiding it from discovery. She avoided speaking in class, her grades suffering as a result. Her mother arranged for her to see Dr. Frunzhoffa, a German speech therapist with an experimental approach involving "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" as a therapeutic tool.
Salvation came unexpectedly one night at dinner. Struggling to say "Pass the butter," Carly's mother offered life-changing advice: "Carly, darling-try singing it." Though initially strange, with her mother's encouragement to tap her foot and treat words as musical notes, she discovered she could speak without stuttering when using melody. The entire family joined in, turning "Pass the Butter" into an impromptu jam session with tableware percussion. This technique became her salvation against her stammer, planting the seed of her future as a singer.
Swimming also became a refuge during this difficult period-the fluid, boundary-free movement in water representing what she hoped her speech might someday become. Years later, her boyfriend Nick Delbanco transformed her perception when he told her he loved her stammer, finding it "sexy" and "charming"-an alien concept after years of shame.
This struggle with verbal expression existed alongside another childhood trauma. From ages seven to thirteen, Carly experienced a series of inappropriate encounters with Billy, the teenage son of family friends. These secret incidents, which she kept hidden even from her therapist, involved Billy exposing himself to her in various hidden locations while she remained clothed. When she finally told her sisters, they accused her of making it up, yet told her mother who banned Billy for just one month-a strangely mild response reflecting the Simon family's biggest secret: insisting nothing was wrong when so much was.
These early experiences-finding her voice through music while navigating childhood trauma and family secrets-formed the emotional foundation for Carly's later artistic expression. Her songs would often explore themes of hidden truths, complicated love, and the power of finally speaking one's truth.
Chapter 4
Martha's Vineyard: The Island of Beginnings
Martha's Vineyard became Carly's spiritual home and creative wellspring. During the late 1940s and 1950s, the Simon family spent summers on the North Shore, a short walk from Menemsha village and beach. The island was still in "the olden days"-dune buggies, woodies, Jeeps, and water buckets filled at the local well. It hosted an impressive collection of intellectuals and artists living "below the radar"-Lillian Hellman, Dashiell Hammett, Bill and Rose Styron, James Cagney, and Thomas Hart Benton.
The Vineyard's landscape was "famously lovely," often compared to Scotland and Ireland, with stone walls casually separating plots of land, sagging barns overlooking marshland, and fishing vessels nearly disappearing under coils of rope. This setting provided both escape from family tensions and the beginning of musical connections that would shape Carly's future.
It was on the Vineyard that Carly first encountered James Taylor, though neither could have predicted their future together. Outside Seward's market, she spotted "a cute boy" sitting with Davy Gude, whose parents were friends with hers. Davy introduced his friend as "Jamie" while demonstrating guitar chords. Carly, attempting to catch their attention, swung her hips entering the store-"a brand-new trick"-but "no such luck." When she sat beside Jamie with her vanilla Popsicle, he casually took a bite without even looking at her, then another, before returning to singing "Roll On, Columbia" with Davy.
The following summer, Davy taught Carly and her sister Lucy a new strumming technique for "Winkin', Blinkin' and Nod," a song Lucy had written based on a Eugene Field poem. They began performing it at their parents' parties and eventually recorded it-their "starting point," their "break" into music.
During these formative summers, Carly also discovered the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice in a book at their rental house. Despite her father's reassurance that "it's not real, it's a myth," she felt deeply connected to this story of everlasting love and musical devotion. She came to see Orpheus as "a boy who could quiet the wind, charm the rocks," who played guitar "with such delicacy it made every girl swoon and every boy want to be him." This mythological figure became her template for the ideal man-a musical savior who could lead her from darkness-foreshadowing her later attraction to James Taylor.
Music became Carly's salvation-it "brought me closer to the idea of God" and gave her "the energy to revise, revive myself; renew, rebirth myself." Music had "bandaged Daddy, bypassed my stammer, brought my families together" and would continue to rescue her throughout her life. The Vineyard, with its natural beauty and artistic community, provided the perfect backdrop for this musical awakening.
Chapter 5
London Calling: First Tastes of Fame and Heartbreak
By the mid-1960s, Carly and her sister Lucy had formed a musical duo. Their trip to London during the height of the British Invasion proved transformative for Carly's personal and professional life. In London, she met Willie Donaldson, a theatrical producer who would become her first great love. Their courtship began with a magical night locked in Kensington Park, Willie carefully avoiding any physical contact beyond draping his jacket over her shoulders. When questioned by a bobby, Willie smoothly claimed they were "friends of the Queen" and distant relatives of Prince Philip's "previous wife"-a complete fabrication that worked perfectly.
The Rehearsal Room performances by the Simon Sisters were a hit, fueled by the enthusiastic applause of a mysterious figure known only as "the King of Wales." When rumors spread that the Beatles might attend, Carly and Lucy bought matching tiger-motif dresses. Though the Beatles rumor proved a publicity hoax, afterward, Willie finally kissed Carly in Hyde Park, beginning their passionate love affair.
He introduced her as "the next Mrs. Donaldson" and they spent their remaining weeks in passionate urgency, even discussing marriage. But Willie began withdrawing slightly, lying about his whereabouts. At the train station before Carly's departure, he disappeared before properly saying goodbye, leaving her with a crossword puzzle commemorating her eventual return and a cassette of her singing.
The journey home brought another memorable encounter when Carly and Lucy found themselves on the same ship as Sean Connery. After watching him in "The Hill" during the ship's entertainment program, Carly impulsively wrote him a fan letter, inviting him for tea or a "preprandial cocktail." To her surprise, he accepted, and they spent the next days together as a threesome-eating Presidential Suite-quality food, attending movies and lectures, visiting the casino. On their final night, Sean called late, and Lucy answered, telling him Carly was already in her nightgown while she was about to take a stroll on deck. Lucy didn't return until 5:15 a.m. as they approached New York harbor, creating a painful moment of betrayal that nonetheless gave Carly tacit permission to break free from her lifelong identity as the younger sister always in Lucy's shadow.
Back in New York, Carly received a devastating letter from Willie informing her he'd reunited with his former girlfriend Sarah. This heartbreak left her "physically hollowed out," questioning how deeply she'd truly loved Willie after only six weeks together. Despite the brevity of their relationship, Willie had transformed her thinking, desires, and self-belief, pushing her toward expressing what she truly wanted and needed-a change that would remain with her forever.
Chapter 6
Breaking Through: The Path to "That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be"
By 1970, Carly had moved into a Stanford White-designed apartment in Murray Hill, one block from her close friend Jake Brackman. Their relationship was intellectually intense but platonic-Jake was tall, lean, handsome, and brilliantly intelligent, with a way of waiting for the perfect moment before delivering a savage insight. Despite a fleeting hint of romance, they never acted on it, knowing it would ruin their special connection.
Jake's apartment became the setting for musical gatherings where Carly would perform songs. At one such gathering, they first discussed collaborating. Carly played him the melody she'd written for a TV special called "Who Killed Lake Erie?" and Jake, who had never written lyrics before, created a perfect set of words for what would become "That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be." The song addressed the pressure women felt to marry despite witnessing their parents' unhappy marriages.
When Carly performed it at Jake's apartment with director Bob Rafelson and his wife Toby present, the response was electrifying-the beginning of a beat to a bigger life. This performance led to a connection with music manager Jerry Brandt, who arranged to visit Carly's apartment the next day. After sharing an unusual Swiss cheese, chutney, and red onion sandwich, they "threw the I Ching" to determine if they should work together professionally. The answer was yes.
Jerry assembled musicians to record demos of Carly's songs, though she believed they were making demos for other artists to record rather than launching her own career. After being rejected by several record companies, Elektra Records president Jac Holzman exercised his veto power against his staff's unanimous rejection, saying "There's something about her I just feel."
Recording at Electric Lady Studios in Greenwich Village (where she occasionally glimpsed Jimi Hendrix in the hallways), Carly worked with producer Eddie Kramer. Complications arose when Eddie and Carly began dating, culminating in a drunken fight that led to their professional separation. Despite her inexperience, Carly ended up producing much of the album herself-pushing knobs, adjusting reverb and compression-with support from Elektra executives Jac Holzman and his brother Keith.
The result was her debut album, simply titled "Carly Simon." For the cover art, she posed uncomfortably on a studio floor for a photo that was cropped to a head shot. Interestingly, the back cover photo made her look remarkably like Mick Jagger-a resemblance even Mick himself would later notice.
Once the album was complete, Carly had little interest in promotion, tours, or television appearances due to stage fright and her fear of facing her phobias. She wanted the album to serve only as a demo for her songs, hoping other singers might record them. Despite her reluctance to perform, her career was launched, and she soon found herself opening for artists like Harry Chapin, Don McLean, and Kris Kristofferson at prestigious venues including Carnegie Hall.
Chapter 7
You're So Vain: The Making of an Anthem
While in New York for a Carnegie Hall concert, Carly invited Cat Stevens to dinner at her apartment. Waiting for his late arrival, she closed her eyes to relax but found herself gripped by anxiety. In that moment of anticipation, she wrote the song "Anticipation" on her guitar, channeling Stevens' gravelly vocal style and dynamic energy. This pattern of transforming emotional turmoil into creative output would become her signature approach.
In London recording her "Anticipation" album with producer Paul Samwell-Smith (Cat Stevens' producer), Carly began developing what would become her most famous song. During this time, she was working on a composition that started as "Ballad of a Vain Man" and evolved through many iterations. The line "clouds in my coffee" came from her friend Billy Mernit during a flight to Palm Springs. Another friend, Kim, had observed someone "walking onto a yacht" at a party.
Contrary to decades of speculation, the song wasn't about just one person-Warren Beatty was only "second base in this particular infield." The mystery of the song's subject would become one of pop music's most enduring questions, helping to cement the song's place in cultural history.
As they were finishing the album at AIR Studios, Paul and Linda McCartney were recording down the hall with George Martin. Producer Richard Perry invited them to hear Carly's tracks, along with Harry Nilsson and Bonnie Bramlett. Then something extraordinary happened-Mick Jagger called and showed up at the studio. He joined Harry and Carly to record background vocals on "You're So Vain." After Harry left, Mick and Carly were alone in the vocal booth, and the chemistry was electric. They were the same height, with similar coloring and lips. The attraction was intense-"The farther away we stood, the closer we got."
This period of Carly's life was filled with brief but intense connections with famous men. Warren Beatty visited her dressing room while she was opening for Cat Stevens at the Troubadour, feigning shyness with an "aw shucks" attitude before simply asking: "Can I see you?" What made Warren effective was his authenticity-he could convince himself he was vulnerable, making his performance genuine. He carried a list of "the main loves of his life" on a piece of paper in his pocket, which he showed Carly after adding her name at the top-placing her above Catherine the Great, Marie Curie, and Lillian Hellman.
These relationships, while sometimes painful, provided rich material for Carly's songwriting. She transformed personal experiences into universal expressions of desire, betrayal, and self-discovery, creating a body of work that would resonate with millions of listeners.
Chapter 8
Sweet Baby James: The Beginning of a Musical Marriage
In 1971, after a performance at Carnegie Hall, James Taylor suggested they have dinner at Carly's apartment. That night, they smoked and ate Sara Lee banana cake-their first meal together. Carly played him songs from her new album "Anticipation," but he soon suggested they lie down. In bed, their connection was profound-"flesh to bone," moving with their blood. Their bodies fit perfectly together, and they curled up without making love, deciding to just sleep. While James slept, Carly remained awake, his songs circling in her head, feeling their music merging.
Soon after, they drove to Martha's Vineyard in James's green truck to see his "cabin in the woods"-the "shack" as he called it. The cabin was rustic-two tall rooms with a Franklin stove, bare floors with throw rugs, and a mountain of unopened fan mail in one corner. They explored James's 175 acres of rolling hills, deep crevasses, and forests of pine and scrub oak. One night, full of love, James predicted that if they married, they would have two children-first a girl named Sarah, then a boy named Ben.
From the beginning, James and Carly were linked by more than love and music-they were both troubled people trying to pass as normal. His history of depression and addiction complemented her own feelings of alienation. When she was with him, she felt she belonged. If he was suffering, caring for him diverted attention from her own pain.
Their relationship had its dark moments. During a stay at the Chateau Marmont, James revealed his heroin addiction to Carly, tying off his arm and injecting himself before flushing everything down the toilet and disposing of the rubber tubing. They clung to each other "like apes" until her limo arrived to take her to the airport. In her diary, she wrote: "James, James, James... His showing me was the big thing, the coveted madness he didn't want to relinquish. I was angry and terribly depressed... Mainly I didn't want him to die. I was so scared that he would, just like my father."
Despite these challenges, their creative connection was profound. They split their time between New York and the Vineyard, preferring solitude to socializing. In their apartment, they cooked, got stoned, and avoided the public scrutiny they faced elsewhere. Their careers were both taking off. In March 1972, while driving down the California coast, they received a telegram from Jac Holzman at Elektra congratulating them both on winning Grammys-Carly's for Best New Artist and James's for Best Pop Vocal Performance.
The weekend before their wedding, they drafted an informal prenuptial agreement on a single sheet of lined paper. Written in James's childish yet passionate handwriting, it stated that all material possessions would be considered common property, and in case of "dissolution," items would revert to their original owners. For "divorse" (his misspelling), grievances would be "applied for in writing" with a three-month waiting period.
Chapter 9
The Harmony and Discord of a Musical Marriage
Marriage involves two people needing shelter and sustenance, but James's and Carly's marriage was more turbulent than most, perhaps because they were both performers, private people in the public eye. Their love became bipolar, switching between euphoria and unbearable pain, sometimes within a day.
Their daughter Sarah Maria was born on January 7, 1974, three weeks late despite Dustin Hoffman's determined efforts to induce labor through laughter. When Carly's water finally broke, James called their housekeeper Lydia in panic, then hailed a cab. After seven hours of pushing, with James playing the role of a seagull guiding her through contractions ("Carly, the wave is coming in gently"), she needed a C-section. That night, while Carly dozed with their beautiful new baby, James took a taxi to Trax nightclub and performed "Sarah Maria," the song he'd written for their daughter.
From the beginning, James and Carly gave each other tacit permission to write about fantasy loves or even real ones, with no questions asked. Physical monogamy was their ideal, but their creative work required muses and private realities they wouldn't necessarily share. They established an unspoken barometer that permitted enough private life to serve as food for their music, even singing backup on each other's songs about other intrigues.
Their home was filled with music. James would sit by the fireplace with his guitar and their Sony cassette recorder, composing what would become "Secret o' Life" while baby Sally made noises in the background. He was fluid and unselfconscious about creating in front of Carly. Their creative synchronicity was evident when James recognized how naturally Carly's shruti box song flowed into his composition "Terra Nova." They recorded it together in the studio, with Carly singing her lyrics over the drone chord while James harmonized. When their voices hit that perfect-fourth harmony, she experienced literal goose bumps.
Despite these moments of harmony, parenthood complicated their already volatile domestic life. In spring 1976, their marriage faced a crisis when James confessed to an infidelity. Ironically, Carly had been about to tell him she was pregnant with their second child. Ben was born January 22, 1977. During labor, James chanted "Carly, Carly, Carly" for hours, recording it all.
By spring 1980, their marriage was unbuckling in slow motion. After discovering another of James's infidelities, Carly demanded he move out, surprised by how easily he agreed to leave. Their separation was complicated by Carly's own affair and her deteriorating emotional state. During a performance in Pittsburgh, she experienced a catastrophic anxiety attack combined with physical hemorrhaging, leading to the cancellation of her tour and a month-long hospital stay.
About a year after their official separation, James came to Carly's Central Park West apartment to drop off the children. Though their relationship had been volatile, this evening they reconnected physically in a moment of silent intimacy. But like Orpheus leading Eurydice from the underworld, James still disappeared from her life.
Chapter 10
The Legacy of Love: Finding Peace in the Trees
Years later, Carly still lives in the same house on Martha's Vineyard where she and James once lived together. His fishing rod remains above the sliding doors in the living room, and the Plexiglas he nailed into window frames still keeps out the cold but makes summer too warm. Their home-described by others as a Russian cathedral or fairy tale castle-was actually a folly built from their romantic brainstorming, with impractical features like a tiny bathroom "for the criminally insane" and a kitchen where you couldn't open the refrigerator if the dishwasher door was open.
The commonly accepted belief that once you begin a new life, you must stop loving someone, has nothing to do with your private heart. How can you not love a person whose genes are in the two people, your children, you love most in the world? Carly has made peace with her mistakes, just as she forgives James for anything he may have done. She replaces unhappy memories with those of music and joy.
The Vineyard will always be home for her. She especially loves the trees in the middle of the forest where thousands of birds nestle in high branches, singing songs she tries to learn. The Vineyard and Hidden Star Hill are part of her family's history-from fainting at the fair as a baby, to meeting Davy Gude, to Jamie Taylor eating half her vanilla pop, to writing perhaps a hundred songs in this house.
Through all the pain and joy, music remained Carly's salvation. The stutter that once silenced her became the catalyst for finding her voice. The family secrets that shaped her childhood became the emotional truth behind her most powerful songs. The loves that burned brightly and faded-Willie, Warren, James-all contributed to her understanding of herself and her art.
Orpheus, that lifelong boy, comes and goes, darting from star to twig to beam, his hands absorbed in melodies forged from skin and bone and strings. But Carly doesn't wait for him anymore. Wait long enough for anyone to show up and you forget that all those impossible gods were inside you the whole time. In the end, Carly Simon found her greatest strength not in the boys in the trees, but in her own remarkable ability to transform life's discord into lasting harmony.
