Carly Simon: No Secrets Classic Albums

In 1972, American singer songwriter Carly Simon

recorded her most famous album in London.

Well, about the No Secrets album,

as a piece of work that I've done in this lifetime, it's pretty good.

No Secrets was to become a platinum-selling global hit.

It is a classic album. There's a sheen, there's a kind of glossiness.

The players are fantastic.

# You're so vain... #

Its chart-topping single, You're So Vain,

is celebrated by stars to this day like Taylor Swift.

# You're so vain... #

That is the most direct way anyone has ever addressed a break-up.

It's amazing.

# I bet you think this song is about you, don't you, don't you?

# Don't you...? #

The album defined the era it was written in.

Carly Simon becomes a voice for the feminist movement and it's that

voice that comes through crystal clear in songs like You're So Vain.

# And that you would never leave... #

Her songs are intimate and autobiographical,

drawing on relationships with her parents, friends and lovers.

It's a holistic experience, writing, living, breathing and singing.

# Some of those secrets of yours... #

Some songs were inspired by her then partner,

the legendary singer-songwriter, James Taylor.

I mean Carly Simon and James Taylor? You couldn't get better than that.

# We had no secrets... #

We'll explore this classic album through

a revealing interview with Carly Simon herself...

I was being pushed off a diving board because I was doing

things that I didn't want to do.

# Some of those secrets of yours... #

..and with her collaborators on No Secrets.

This entire process was absolute magic.

Every song that she brought to the party was a really good song.

And we'll hear exclusive extracts from the album's master tapes.

Of course, as soon as I started mixing it,

I heard this wonderful sound of Mick Jagger...

# You're so vain

# You probably think this song is about you... #

I got back to New York and I heard You're So Vain in

a cab and it sounded so bloody good over the radio.

# Don't you, don't you, don't you now... #

APPLAUSE

# My father sits at night with no lights on

# His cigarette blows in the dark... #

My father was a classical pianist,

so I had all these influences and I was open to all of them.

I thought music was music.

But then there was also Peggy Lee and Joan Baez and Judy Collins

and folk singers.

# I tiptoe past the master bedroom where

# My mother reads her magazines... #

You had to write your own material to figure out who you were.

The songs that I owned were the ones that really came from

me and came from my writing.

That's the way I've always heard it should be.

# Well that's the way I've always heard it to be

# You want to marry me... #

I just said to her, "Where did this come from?"

She said, "I don't know. I just found my muse."

# I'll never learn to be just me first by myself... #

People told me that they stopped their cars when they heard

that song because it was so different.

It was the song that got me on the radio.

You know, there's a lot of love and tenderness and warmth and

vulnerability in Carly's music and, you know,

that's what music should really be about.

And then I was in love with the Anticipation. It was a group album.

I mean, there was so much love between everybody and

Cat Stevens was around during that time, too,

and he sang backups on a lot of the songs.

Carly Simon helps to recreate sexuality and romance in

the 1970s by singing about and modelling an alternative

which is a relationship, serial monogamy.

To me, I fell in love every time I slept with a man.

I thought, well, this is it, this is absolutely it.

Her many loves are all over the popular culture,

so that everyone can recite, "Oh, well, there was Cat Stevens,

"there was Warren Beatty and now there's James Taylor."

So James' first album, Sweet Baby James,

had made him a big star.

Carly and he were soon the most famous couple in rock and roll

and on the cover of Rolling Stone together.

And they were together for a whole decade and had two children together.

But for now, James stayed in America while Carly recorded her new

album in London.

When I was in England making the No Secrets record, sometime

during the summer, he decided that maybe marriage was a good idea.

Carly Simon, she's in London now recording her third album

with Richard Perry and it really is the greatest pleasure to be

-able to say, welcome to Carly Simon.

-Thank you.

How long are you in London, Carly?

Until the record is finished, which will probably be another two weeks.

I've been into it now for two, almost three weeks.

We got very close during the making of the record and have

remained extremely close to this day, 45 years later.

What's the difference between working in London and working in

studios in America? There must be a difference in field, presumably.

I just like London as a city better than New York as a city.

And I like...

I just like to live here better.

I don't know about the studios, so I thought I'd try and although

it wasn't totally my decision, Richard Perry wanted to work there.

Richard pretty much got his way because he's very dominating

and very good.

Perry's sensibility was far more commercial than Carly's.

After all, he produced Barbra Streisand,

he produced Diana Ross and Art Garfunkel.

I like his sound, I like the slickness of his sound.

He was one of the key early '70s producers.

He just hears something and he lives...

It's almost as if inside his mind is a radio playing,

and he knows what a hit sounds like.

I was there because I was in Carly's band, and she said,

"I want to bring my band to London,"

and Richard consented,

so he tolerated me, and said,

"OK, we'll give you guys a shot, but no guarantees.

"I need to make the record I need to make with my guys,

"and are you cool with that?"

And he brought very good people in to work with me

and I was influenced by them.

Klaus Voormann on bass for most of the cuts.

Yes, I mean, the best example is You're So Vain.

What happened was, when we started the song,

David played it on the piano and I heard the lyrics.

# You walked into the party

# Like you were walking onto a yacht. #

And I saw the lyrics on a sheet,

and I was definite that it was about a guy who was very flashy,

so I thought, "I should be playing something flashy," you know?

So I...

PLAYS RIFF

And then Richard Perry came in - "Oh, yeah, that's great.

"Let's start the song with that!"

I said, "Klaus, what did you just play?"

He says, "What are you talking about?

"I was just warming up my fingers."

I said, "Do me a favour and play exactly what you just played."

Lots of bass players asked me how I was doing this.

You only can do it if you know how to play a classic guitar,

and I learned classic guitar, and then it's really easy.

And then as soon as Carly heard it,

she spontaneously came in with this "son of a gun."

# Son of a gun. #

And then when I started mixing it, and had all the tracks open,

as I do now,

I found out that there were actually quite

a few other little fun things that they decided not to use.

Ah.

Prrrrr!

Pssssst!

Ccch! Psssst!

Tt-tt!

The history of the song is I had a clever little saying in the

back of my notebook saying, that said, "You're so vain, you probably

"think this song is about you," and I don't know where that came from.

I was at a party and a man walked into my apartment

and he looked at himself in the mirror, his hat was, like,

tiered over one eye, and he had an apricot scarf, so...

I wrote "You walked into the party like you were walking onto a yacht."

# You walked into the party

# Like you were walking onto a yacht

# Your hat strategically dipped below one eye

# Your scarf, it was apricot. #

So, I got that far and then I had...

# And all the girls dreamed that they'd be your partner

# They'd be your partner and

# You're so vain

# You probably think this song is about you

# You're so vain

# I'll bet you... #

I think by about this time in the mix, by the first chorus,

I knew this was going to be a huge smash.

I feel it was close to a perfect record.

You're looking for a different feel on this album from Anticipation.

-Is that why now you're working with Richard Perry?

-Er...

Not really a different feel as much as an expansion, perhaps,

of the feel it was on the Anticipation album.

I didn't really like the direction of the record.

Richard was rock and roll, and I was still being kind of a folk singer.

Timing, the way I felt it, timing was just like a bird.

A bird'll stop sometimes and slow down

or a wave - something natural,

and to be forced to go with bom bom bom bom bom was new to me

and so I fought it all the way.

Richard, he could keep his focus for four or five hours

on a song and keep manipulating the players

till he got what he wanted.

It's, er, an emotional thing. You just know when it's right.

So, whatever I was doing, it wasn't doing it for Richard Perry,

and he then said,

"Carly, I'm going to bring Jim Gordon in,"

and I just was huddled up in the corner of the drum room,

about this far away, six feet away from him,

and watched him do his thing.

I mean, and Jim really got inside the tune.

He's in like this, playing on the snare drum in the verses.

But then there's a bit coming up where it drops down quiet,

and he very sneakily just goes down from...

He goes to...

Something where Carly drops down and it goes quiet,

he found the places to come down and go up and where to drop out.

It is a classic drum part.

# Bet you think this song is about you

# Don't you?

# Don't you? #

The only thing that changed was the upbeatness of it,

the Richard Perry-ness of it, and so the lyrics didn't really get

any less intrinsic to what I was feeling.

# You had me several years ago

# When I was still quite naive

# Well you said that we made such a pretty pair

# And that you would never leave

# But you gave away the things you loved... #

I had endless numbers of people asking me who it was about.

I think they were just asking me or Carly,

and we never talked about it at all and we wouldn't reveal it.

The answer wasn't as important as the game.

# I had some dreams

# They were clouds in my coffee

# Clouds in my coffee and

# You're so vain... #

We know Beatty had something to do with it, and there were

at least two others, and we can't say for sure who those were.

It was my publisher who called up and said,

"People magazine will put you on the cover if you tell

"who You're So Vain is about, or just give one verse up."

# Don't you?

# Don't you...? #

And so...so I therefore decided to give a little bit away.

Now, that doesn't mean the other two verses aren't also about Warren.

Just means that the second one is.

And also the subject about who it was about loved the fact,

couldn't have been more pleased with the fact.

# I bet you think this song is about you

# Don't you?

# Don't you? #

If you were sitting in the guitar chair, it was a piece of cake.

Richard and I synchronised very, very well about what should be done.

This guitar was the one that I used. It's a 1961, I guess, Gibson ES3 35.

I said, "All right - I've got an idea.

You guys can give me some feedback, see if this works."

# I had some dreams

# They were clouds in my coffee

# Clouds in my coffee and... #

So, I played the solo and Richard said, "That's great. Perfect."

I said, "OK. Let's do another and we'll clean it up and perfect it."

He says, "No. No. No, you're done. That was it - one take."

That's my recollection. Now, Richard may tell you,

"Oh, no, it was awful - we had him to do it 17 times."

The wonders of memory!

My memory of is we spent most of the weekend on that song.

It was hardly one take.

I did play with the reverb on it.

SONG PLAYS

# I had some dreams

# They were clouds in my coffee... #

Great solo, just a great solo.

Richard really believed in the record so completely

and he made me do the vocal 100 times.

I was only 27 at the time, so I had a lot more energy then.

For some reason!

It was Mick Jagger who said to me, you know,

"You're really a rock and roll singer! Forget this folk stuff."

That wasn't my best Mick Jagger - I can do a really good one.

I had met Mick Jagger at a party.

No, the song is not about him.

So he came by the studio, and Mick and I went on to make history.

And of course, as soon as I started mixing it,

I heard this wonderful sound of Mick Jagger.

# You're so vain. #

TWO DISTINCT VOICES

# I bet you think this song is about you

# Don't you?

# Don't you? #

At one point, I remember we were leaning over and looking into

the shine of the black Yamaha piano,

and it was Narcissus and Goldmund looking into the pond together

at themselves and seeing themselves in the other,

and it was very...it was very sexy.

She was so turned on after they finished putting

the backgrounds on that she asked me if she could go out and do

a new lead vocal track, to which I certainly said yes.

She did it in one take, and that was the take that we used on the record.

So this is a verse which I haven't ever sung,

and I'm going to try to sing it for the first time.

I wrote it on a pad a while ago but it never made it into the song,

so...

# A friend of yours

# Revealed to me

# That you loved me all the time

# Kept it secret from your wives

# You believed it was no crime

# You called me once...

# You called me once to ask me things

# I couldn't quite divine

# Maybe that's why I have tried to dismiss you

# Tried to dismiss you and

# You're so vain. #

# Well I hear you went to Saratoga

# And your horse naturally won. #

When I got back to New York and I heard You're So Vain

in a cab the first day that I was back,

and it sounded so bloody good over the radio, and I thought,

"No matter what the other songs sound like,

"I don't mind cos this one turned out so well."

# And when you're not you're with... #

I can remember when I was in college,

that everybody was singing that song.

# You're so vain. #

So much of music until that point

from a woman's point of view was about, this man left me,

I'm so unhappy, I'm so miserable, I'm a victim.

It's a defining song of that moment

in pop music, the early '70s.

For Carly, too,

she said that it seemed like her whole musical life had led to

that vocal performance,

including her early love of the great folk singer Odetta.

I always loved Odetta. I wanted to be like her.

# The songs that show no pain

# I can't hear the echo of my footsteps. #

I just knew that she had this wonderful, low, sexy,

raunchy, husky range.

And I used to go around and sing, # I don't want no bald-headed woman

# Oh she too mean, Lord

# Lordy, she too mean. #

A lot of white woman singers talk about how they would study Odetta's voice.

It's not just an attempt to mimic her sound as performers, but also

the soul of her sound.

She could resonate with black freedom fighters such as

Martin Luther King, who named her the queen of American folk music.

You're So Vain has the strong tones of female empowerment.

And it's those tones that I think come closer to approximating

the spirit of Odetta's music.

And I felt my womanhood in a way that I hadn't felt it before,

sort of as if I was, you know,

I was kind of coming out into...into a time that I was respected.

I wasn't just being told what to do.

Carly Simon becomes a voice that is inspiring young women activists.

I put on my boots and became part of the feminist movement.

This was the really early '70s... when, first of all,

the female artists were not at all treated like the male artists.

Carly was a trendsetter.

Her songs, everything she did brought more attention to women in

the right way.

I think it is. It is a classic album.

And just the blend of moods, the mix, it's an eclectic record.

# At night in bed I heard God whisper lullabies

# While Daddy next door whistled whisky tunes... #

This represented a shift for me in the mixing of the album,

when this one came up. Because I wasn't expecting anything like this,

and it's such an explosive song. It's amazing.

-Here we are.

-# Embrace me

# Child, you're a child of mine

# And I'm leaving everything I am to you... #

There was a period of time for about two months that I talked

myself into a writer's block.

And I said to my friend Jimmy Ryan, I said, "Help me sign a document

"that promises you that I will turn out a song by the end of this week.

"No matter what it is, no matter if it makes sense."

And so I signed the document, he wrote it out, I signed it.

I leaned on him. For emotional support, for musical support.

I would do my absolute best to, you know,

to be her rock and say, "It's going to be OK, I'm going to be

"standing right there with you, don't worry about a thing.

"Everybody here loves you." And it was that kind of thing.

We were just really, really good friends.

So, I played my 12-string guitar and just played the harmonics high.

And I came out with the first words I thought of,

which are, "At night in bed I heard God whisper lullabies."

# At night in bed I heard God whisper lullabies... #

And, "Daddy next door whispered whisky tunes."

And then it just kind of started from there.

The melody followed really easily.

"And sometimes when I wanted, they would harmonise,

"there was nothing that those two couldn't do."

And then the chorus, "Embrace me, you child, you're a child of mine.

"And I'm leaving everything I am to you.

"Go chase the wild and night-time streets, sang Daddy.

"And God said, 'Pray the devil doesn't get to you.' "

# The devil doesn't get to you... #

And the span of that song, the explosion of it,

the, "Embrace me, you child!"

And it was exciting to do.

# And I'm leaving everything I am to you... #

The whole kind of phrasing,

the changes are not something you'd every hear on

a record by Carole King

or Joni or Judy Collins or Judee Sill or anybody else.

# For the magic that they made

# When they played wasn't... #

Absolutely gorgeous string arrangement.

# Embrace me, you child

# You're a child of mine

# And I'm leaving everything I am to you... #

She said, "Here it is, do your thing."

I think that's the kind of attitude she had.

I haven't heard this since the day it was released. Let's go.

MUSIC STARTS

MUSIC STOPS

The string section is probably 21 or 22, with two double basses.

MUSIC RESUMES

I think Carly doubled the top line of the violins with the vocal.

AFTER I'd done the strings. I think.

Harmonics...

Wonderful. Wow.

-MUSIC STOPS

-Wow. It's very impressive.

After all this time, it sounds great.

One of the things I noticed is the incredible jump in the chorus

that she has vocally. Quite something.

# Lost between their heaven and their hell

# Embrace me, you child

# You're a child of mine

# And I'm leaving everything I am to you... #

SHE HUMS

Is that...? Dum-ba! Is that an octave?

# Embrace me, you CHILD. #

So I can do a three and a half octave range,

as long as I don't have to go through that BREAK period.

Because between G, A, B, C, there's a real break.

# Embrace me, you CHILD! Child!

-HIGH-PITCHED:

-# You're a child of mine. #

SHE LAUGHS

Sorry, terribly sorry.

# Go chase the wild

# And night-time streets, sang Daddy

# And God sang... #

Yeah, so, it must have been an octave plus a sixth.

And I did it just because I could.

There was no Auto-Tune then, there was nothing digital, it was all,

you had to be really honest and do it, be good, you had to be good.

# Embrace me, you child... #

I'm not sure I ever really understood what it meant,

because it came from my subconscious, but it makes

enough sense for me to understand it consciously too.

# Go chase the wild... #

A scream.

A scream of anguish, a scream of

pleading, of pleading with my father to be with me.

I don't want to feel sorry for myself,

but I didn't have my father's love.

And I got to do without it, but I didn't know how much I needed it.

And so sometimes it would come out in songs.

# Then one night Daddy died

# And went to heaven... #

I realised that the attention that I needed from men was really

about the attention I needed from my father.

# I pretended not to know I'd been abandoned... #

I've always had a paradoxical nature.

I am at once very shy

and also, at the same time, very outgoing. And very forthright.

And I'm so attracted to talent, the looks don't even matter.

-The talent and the smell are what matters.

-SHE LAUGHS

And the humour.

And so as long as a man has talent, smell and humour, I'm a goner.

Carly had...

..had affairs with the producers of her first two albums.

Well, everybody wanted to have an affair with Carly.

So, Arlyne made,

made Carly sign a blood oath that we would never have an affair.

And I'm not one to mix business and pleasure,

but I feel that if she were to have an affair with any of her producers,

I would have been the best candidate.

When I was in an England making the No Secrets record,

the most pressure I felt was in leaving James.

I just wanted to get done with it and get back to James.

I remember we were travelling back to the Vineyard from

New York, or New York from the Vineyard, and he was asleep.

And I just looked at him and I just looked at his face,

the way the sun was hitting it, and I thought,

"God, there's nothing he could do to turn me away."

And then it just went on from there.

I finished writing the words by the time we landed.

And then I wrote the melody as soon as I sat down at the piano.

# There's nothing you can do to turn me away

# Nothing anyone can say

# You're with me now and as long as you stay

-# Loving you's the right thing to do

-Loving you's the right thing

# Loving you's the right thing... #

Carly's telling me, here's how relationships are going to happen.

Maybe the guy will cheat,

maybe I will feel some ambivalence

about what I'm about to do.

# I know you've had some bad luck with ladies before

# You drove them, or they drove you crazy

# But more important is I know you're the one and I'm sure

-# Loving you's the right thing to do

-Loving you's the right thing

# Loving you's the right thing... #

Yeah, The Right Thing To Do is a beautiful statement of love

for this guy who she already knew was a troubled soul.

And, you know, "I've seen you shoot up.

"I've seen you shake with withdrawal, but I'm going to,

"I'm going to find the sensitive soul within you,

"I'm going to bring that out and it's going to be OK, you and me."

# And it used to be for a while

# That the river flowed right to my door

# Making me just a little too free

# But now the river doesn't seem to stop here any more... #

It's just a bit of a metaphor, isn't it?

It used to be for a while that the river, the river of life,

the river of men, of opportunity, of...

of young girlship flowed

through my door, making me just a little too free.

But now the river doesn't seem to stop here any more because

there's one place that I wanted to get to, and I got to.

# Hold me in your hands like a bunch of flowers... #

Carly played piano on this one and a good bit of the vocal was

her live vocal with the piano.

-# Loving you's the right thing to do

-Loving you's the right thing

# Loving you's the right thing

# Loving you's the right thing to do... #

Such a great record,

and I remember thinking this has to be the second single.

And I believe it was.

Loving You's The Right Thing To Do was another song that was one

of the many songs that started out much slower.

And Richard said, "Speed up the tempo a little bit."

So it started out...

-SLOW TEMPO:

-# There's nothing you can do to turn me away... #

It started about like that. And by the end it was...

-FASTER TEMPO:

-# There's nothing you can do to turn me away... #

So it sped up that much. And the key probably got higher too.

I'm very happy with that track.

# Loving you's the right thing

# Loving you's the... #

This is an interesting song because it's

a basic track of Carly's piano, acoustic guitar, bass and drums.

Not any big, dramatic stuff like in You're So Vain.

Just a supportive role, keeping the rhythm.

Basically, all the listener is really hearing is this...

Listener's just hearing...

HE PLAYS BEAT

Because all the other instruments are going on.

-There is that.

-HE PLAYS BEAT

But it's down in the mix.

Some of the depth comes from the brass and strings.

And that great conga part.

MUSIC STARTS

And yet it sounds... There's a lot more going on than meets the eye.

A lot more going on in the ear than meets the eye.

Carly does melodic shifts in a really unusual way, I think.

In a really interesting way.

# Loving you's the right thing

# Loving you's the right thing to do

# Is the right thing to do... #

You're sort of vaulted into something completely different.

I think she's very underrated as a writer.

# Nothing you can ever do will turn me away from you

# I love you now and I love you now... #

I start with words...

that are usually emotionally brought on,

they're brought on by having to figure out something,

by having to move through an emotion and get outside of myself.

So I put it on paper and I look at it from the third person.

And then I add the melody. "If I find you somewhere, I'll know it's you."

Just to pick a line. And then I go, I think about the rhythm.

# If I find you somewhere, I'll know it's you. #

Or it could be...

-SLOWER TEMPO:

-# If I find you somewhere, I'll know it's you. #

So it can go in lots of different directions.

You can make up a line, for instance, and tell me what it is and I can phone

you my instant melody to it.

And that's just something I was born with, that's a little asset,

I suppose you could call it.

Are you able to express yourself more freely on record than...?

-I mean, do you feel pressure, from live performances?

-Yes, I do.

In fact, the more well-known I've become,

I find it more and more difficult to do live concerts.

Even though it's a very... It's a great experience in one way,

but I think anything that's that exciting is also partly terrifying.

At least it is to me, I don't know whether it is to everybody.

'I was having a lot of anxiety attacks.'

We'd go into the studio and even a cup of tea could put

me into an anxiety attack.

And my heart would start beating really fast.

Well, Richard is enough to make anybody a little bit blarmy.

But he's also so much fun that he intensified my energy,

and whatever... Wherever my energy was that day was going to be

intensified, and if it was in a very moody kind of,

His Friends Are More Than Fond Of Robin-esque things,

it was very mellow.

His Friends Are More Than Fond Of Robin,

which is not an easy title to remember.

It feels like something that might be out of a Sondheim piece.

# His friends are more than fond of Robin

# He doesn't need to compliment them

# And always as he leaves

# He leaves them feeling proud just to know him... #

Richard was notoriously late for sessions.

He was sometimes four and five hours late.

We would tell Richard the session would be 10 o'clock,

and we'd all show up at 11 or a little bit after.

And inevitably, we'd still beat him there.

But we wouldn't waste an hour of studio time.

I'm not sure we ever let him in on the joke.

And so I decided this time just to go downstairs and just began

to write it, and it just came to me really, really fast.

And I said, "Richard, if you're going to be late,

"I'm going to be doing what I want to do."

He loved the song, and it was very, it was a very simple song.

# When Robin goes on holiday

# There's no-one living in our lane

# Oh, yes, folks still live in our lane

# But they're not like Robin... #

Such a lovely little track that really

has nothing but a guitar, acoustic guitar and piano,

with the voices. And then this little choir of synth sounds.

MUSIC STARTS

This is in the very early days of synthesisers, when they were

monophonic, meaning you could only play one note at a time.

And they created these wonderful little melodies.

HE PLAYS NOTE

The thing with Carly was always, "Never get in the way of what

"she's doing, because what she's doing really is perfect,

"and we're embellishing it rather than changing it."

She was just playing those softer arpeggios on the piano, and there

was no space. Every space was completely filled.

So, instead, what I did,

was I added an additional voice to what she was already doing.

Just the pingingness of a guitar, which a piano doesn't have that sound.

And a little bit of... A little bit of vibrato to it.

I played almost exactly what she played, which is...

MUSIC PLAYS

On this song, Jimmy complements her quite nicely,

not just playing around her, but actually playing with her.

MUSIC PLAYS

Well, there's a very personal part of that song, which is the chorus.

"Robin, I've never told you, but I'll be here until we're old.

"Please learn to call me in your dreams.

"The way I'm looking at you is just as it seems."

Which has a forever quality to it.

I think it's a homage to Jake Brackman. In her autobiography,

she writes about the impact that Brackman had on her when she

first met him, when they were working at the summer camp together.

Carly was the guitar teacher, led the sing-alongs around the campfire.

She heard a lot about me before I arrived and was kind of set

up by other people that we were going to become friends.

He was writing for The New Yorker. He was a bigwig.

I mean, he was such an important guy at the age of 21. We became friends.

And there's a real understanding between the two of us.

And it will go on and on and on.

It won't be thrown off its course by having a romantic relationship.

This one will just stay pristine.

# Robin, I've never told you

# But I'll be yours until we're old

# Please learn to call me

# In your dreams... #

You remove all the complexities and all the ambivalences

and you make it just more heartfelt that way.

It's sweet, what can I say, it's sweet.

By the time we got around to making the No Secrets album,

he was already very much there as a strong collaborator.

When I didn't write all by myself, I wrote with Jake.

So there was another melody that I had for a song called

It Was So Easy. And I gave him just a little guitar demo... Dun, dun, dun...

A little kind of a simple folk thing, like...

It was... # Duh, ba-da, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh

# Duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh

# Duh, duh, duh, duh, ba-da, duh, duh...#

She'd just given me "La-las" on a cassette machine.

I just gave him just the little bit of the guitar part.

And he came up with the lyrics. And they're such good lyrics.

# I remember a time romping through the woods

# Sun against our skin instead of clothes

# When we felt hungry, we would eat

# When we felt glad, we'd dance

# And whenever we felt drowsy, we would doze... #

It's a song you could almost imagine being sung around a, you know,

a campfire on the beach, on the Vineyard.

# Easy then... #

Ah.

# Never making any plans, it was so easy then

# Holding hands

# And there was a time when our fears could be named

# A courage meant not refusing dares... #

As opposed to what we experience when we grow up,

that's more like free-floating anxiety.

# I remember when we took such cares to step never on the cracks,

# No, only in the squares

# Or else we'd be abducted by the bears... #

Carly grew up with Winnie the Pooh.

It was so easy, it's kind of like a Christopher Robin thing.

It's not sort of "earth mama", sort of, you know,

pounding, Laurel Canyon piano rock.

You feel very much that it comes from New York,

it comes from the East Coast, it comes from Martha's Vineyard.

# It was so easy then

# Never making any plans

# It was so easy then... #

I heard the song for the first time and immediately it reminded me

of Teach Your Children Well from Crosby, Stills & Nash.

And there was a pedal steel solo on that song that I absolutely loved.

And I thought it should really be that kind of solo, but I don't think

Carly and Richard were in agreement, or they hadn't thought about it.

So what I decided to do was take a little initiative and do what

I thought would be a solo every single take.

On the live session, rather than do it as an overdub.

So I just stopped playing whatever chords I was doing,

just jumped into the solo and it ended up on the record.

Making the No Secrets record,

we had no idea it was going to be the name of the album.

Until we were in the art department,

because we were going to call it all kinds of other things. Like...

..The Ballad Of A Vain Man. We didn't know what to call it.

So, No Secrets came up,

it was so obvious once we had the album artwork.

It's this powerful woman, you know, kind of walking out of the

Portobello Hotel, going about her business.

We shot and we shot and we shot.

And then I had to get to the studio, and I said,

"Just let me run in and put on my clothes."

So I went in and I put on my red jeans and my blue top and my

red hat that matched the jeans and my boots.

And I went outside and I was just about to get into the cab door

and I put out my finger like that, and he shot, and that was the cover.

My photograph captures a casual...

dynamic posture of an artist caught in their natural setting.

I certainly didn't tell her to put her hand on her hip and hold

her hand that way.

I loved it, it was the most, you know,

unposed for picture you could have asked for.

And it seemed just exactly like what my summer was like in London.

Just as natural and unpretentious as can be.

And then there was questions about whether we should airbrush

the nipples, because I was braless.

And the nipples were a focal point of the picture.

There was an argument about whether those should go.

I had not noticed that until the first time someone mentioned it.

I grew up in Hollywood, went to love-ins, the beach.

I just never noticed it.

I was used to them.

I was used to my nipples.

So therefore to see them gleaming there through my

blue shirt looked right.

Number 19.

Take 19, Rich.

I guess there were 19 takes

but I'd been known to do a lot of takes.

# We have no secrets

# We tell each other everything

# About the lovers in our past

# And why they didn't last. #

And I think that song I wrote,

I wrote just before I left LA to go to London for the summer

and James and I were leaving each other.

There was some harrowing things that happened just before I left

and he felt as if he had to tell me.

He had to tell me because

he needed to come clean.

I don't know many other songs that actually talk about that.

They're really open with each other

but I sort of, in some ways, wish we didn't have to be completely

open. I wish I didn't know who you'd been out with.

I wish I didn't know about Joni.

And I wish you didn't know about, you know,

Warren and Jack and

Chris and all the others.

And so it was the pain of, it was the happiness that

he was answering my questions but so often they don't answer my prayers.

# And though we know each other

# Better when we explore

# Sometimes I wish

# Often I wish

# That I never knew... #

On the first mix, there's this nice sweeping guitar

and Carly came to call it the sea monster.

# The water was cold

# The beach was empty but for one... #

There was a reference to a beach in this song.

By coincidence, prior to doing this, we were in England but back

in New York I had gone on a whale watching boat ride

and I just thought, wouldn't it be interesting to have a whale solo.

And it was simply...

Using the volume pedal, rather than hit the note like that,

I go.

WHALE SONG

Just a kind of mystical sound like that and the whole

solo was nothing but the whale, just...

WHALE SONG

Like that.

You faded in with the pedal and you put tonnes and tonnes of echo

on it so it just kind of sounds like underwater.

That was the genesis of this guitar part.

Here's the sea monster.

# ..a pint of your rum

# And later when you told me

# You said she was a bore

# Sometimes I wish... #

GUITAR WHALE SONG

# Often times I wish... #

GUITAR WHALE SONG

# That I never, never knew

# Some of those secrets of yours. #

BASS GUITAR LICK

That's a typical sort of thing where you feel the song is lagging then

suddenly something comes in that makes it lift up again, you know.

That's why I picked that particular lick for that moment.

Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

PLAYS BASS GUITAR LICK

That was there already.

I think Carly had that idea, or whatever. I can't remember.

-But this other one.

-PLAYS BASS GUITAR LICK

That was one of mine.

# Sometimes I wish

# Often times I wish

# That I never, never knew

# Some of those secrets of yours. #

It's very seductive.

It's very, you know, um...

It repays listening.

There's a sort of web of sound.

There's a sheen, there's a kind of glossiness.

The players are fantastic.

You can feel the perfectionism.

We should also mention the magnificent string

arrangement by Kirby Johnson.

# You always answer my questions... #

STRINGS INTRODUCED

# But they don't always answer my prayers. #

I prefer the arrangement that I do now

which is a bossa nova version.

# In the name of honesty

# In the name of what is fair

# You always answer my questions

# But they don't always answer my prayers. #

I like singing it more softly and more sort of sinewy now.

# Some of those secrets of yours... #

-DEEPER:

-# Some of those secrets of yours. #

When I got the record home and listened to it,

I remember saying to James, "I hate this record."

With the exception of You're So Vain and Loving Is The Right Thing To Do

and His Friends Are More Than Fond Of Robin.

Then, when my album zoomed to Number One,

it was on New Year's Eve.

And I remember just feeling very embarrassed.

Very embarrassed that...

You know, I didn't want to be Number One

if James wasn't going to be Number One.

The records were released at the same time

and I felt very uncomfortable about it.

If they were both about to release albums at the same time,

she wanted to hold back.

She was always more concerned about James than herself.

He was the best writer, the best singer, the best man, everything.

So I didn't... I never felt happy.

I never felt really happy because I was always thinking,

"I want to hide. I want to hide from it."

I don't know how many women would do that now, or would be required to.

I suppose it took the long way around to really double back

on me and make me realise how proud I am of it

and how significantly, as a life's work.

As a piece of work that I have done in this lifetime, it's pretty good.

There's a goodness there. There's a vulnerability.

She has sort of got it all, really.

You warm to the person on this record.

And decades later the songs still have so much to say.

Recently Carly did,

at some big stadium with Taylor Swift.

I think tonight is one of the most special nights of the tour

because I'm sitting here with Carly Simon and we are going to

sing You're So Vain tonight and I'm so excited.

-BOTH:

-# ..clouds in my coffee

# You're so vain

# You probably think this song is about you... #

Taylor called me. She wrote me first and asked me whether I would do it

with her at the Foxborough, which is near here.

And I said I would love to.

When I heard You're So Vain I just thought that is the best song

that has ever been written.

That is the most direct way anyone has ever addressed a break-up.

It's amazing.

-BOTH:

-You're so vain

-You're so vain

# I bet you think this song is about you.

# Don't you? Don't you? #

We sang the whole thing, it was great. It was great.

Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for one of your own, Carly Simon!

# You're so vain

# You probably think this song is about you

# You're so vain

# You probably think this song is about you... #