TOUCHED BY THE SUN by CARLY SIMON: MISTRESS MANIFESTO BOOK REVIEW

"The Glint isn't necessarily sexual - but it's not unsexual either. The Glint has something more to do with some crazy charismata, weirdly acknowledged power."   page 131

TOUCHED BY THE SUN : My Friendship With Jackie

This book was short and glorious. Simon is known as a singer-songwriter but, with her books, she proves to also be a wonderful and descriptive writer, not just of scenes but of an array of fine emotions.

Will this book reveal Jackie Bouvier, who became First Lady of the United States widowed in a tragic assassination, then the wife of a controversial Greek millionaire, and then the long term companion of a man in the diamond business who never quite divorced his wife? SImon, a famous woman, struggles to be sensitive to another woman who is even more famous, and the Jackie she portrays is difficult to know, but yes you will have a glimpse of a woman who is ever aware that she is on the world stage, even in more intimate settings.

The quotation above I found most intriguing. Simon is talking about something I've experienced too, people - rare, who have the Glint, who you meet and feel some kind of energy emanating from, as if it comes from their eyes. As for their fame, Simon says she doesn't know who entered into whose "magnetic field" first.

That she was one of two close women friends allowed to come to Jackie's death bed says so much. The other friend was Bunny Mellon.

If you're interested in Carly Simon, Jackie Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, or Bunny Mellon, you will find lots to read in my archives here at Mistress Manifesto..

Bunny figures in the story of politician John Edwards and his mistress Rielle Hunter featured here in June 2012. as well as the Dorcas Hardin and Paul Mellon story May 2018 since Paul was her husband.

Carly herself is very much the story in June 2017 when I featured her then husband James Taylor's mistress called "Evey."

Jackie herself was HONORARY Mistress in December 2014.

Her cousin Edie Bouvier "Little Edie":had August 2014 to herself.

And Jackie's husband had mistresses too.  And so a few of the best known ones were featured here in July 2020 - Judith Campbell, in August 2020 - Mimi Alford, and in September 2020 - Mary Pinchot Meyer.

You can go to the month, or you can use the search feature to bring up posts with these names!

Missy

June 22 - I just edited this slightly.  Rereading it I saw some editing done previously had not been saved.

JUDY COLLINGS MEMOIR FRANK ABOUT FAMILIAL ALCOHOLISM and DEPRESSION

SWEET JUDY BLUE EYES
MY LIFE IN MUSIC - Judy Collins

I listened to Judy Collin's e-book because she reads it herself: I love hearing the author read their own words and in this case, as in Carly Simon's e-book, previously reviewed here at Mistress Manifesto when I featured James Taylor's Mistress Evie as Mistress of the Month, also sing some songs. In Judy's book she reveals her relationships with Stephen Stills, who wrote the song Sweet Judy Blue Eyes for her during their relationship.  He was several years younger and eventually that was a problem.  More so, she hated LA and went to live in New York City.  They managed to stay friends for four decades and in 2007 a tape of unreleased music from their 1968 affair was discovered and released as "Just Roll Tape."  She's still confused about why Joni Mitchell rebuffed her friendship but is thankful to her for the international hit she had with Joni's song Both Sides Now. She was the first person in popular music to include the song of whales (1962).  As she says she was considered an "overnight success" after many years of showing up.

Judy Collin's life also intersected with Joan and Mimi Baez, Bob Dylan, Lucy and Carly Simon, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Phil Ochs, Janis Joplin, and Stacey Keach - who she had a long relationship with, and many others in the music business. A youthful pregnancy resulted in a beloved son who followed in the footsteps of his mother and mother's father into alcoholism and depression and suicidal thoughts.  In his case he did suicide.  The marriage didn't last.  Years later after finally coming to terms with her alcoholism, Judy Collins did marry again and that marriage has lasted.  She says she had an attraction for the "dangerous ones" who "slipped in and out of other women's lives.

As she came to adulthood and the folk music scene in the 1960's, and to folk music she has been true though she considers her song choices and writing to be eclectic, and was once a member of a group in favor of open relationships and partner sharing as well as a Yippie (like the Chicago Seven), it should perhaps come as no surprise that Collins was a sexual explorer. She had some one night stands when married and touring and fell in love repeatedly.  Her story of driving 16 hours alone in a borrowed car to have an illegal abortion and then breaking down on a moonlit road reminds us that abortion must remain legal.  Another time she was in the car and began confessing to her husband that she was having an affair with another man after they hit a rabbit on the road.

I found her frankness refreshing.  Though no intimate details are given, Collins was no stranger to the Story of O, group sex, sex with women, and a "sexually hip" lifestyle.  (All of which makes me feel downright conservative these days.)  She was ill at times; TB, hepatitis, and voice endangering alcoholism.

So if you love her voice, are a fan of music memoirs, or are battling some demons yourself, you may find this memoir well worth the read.


Missy

C 2018 All Rights Reserved Book Review

CARLY SIMON : IT HAPPENS EVERY DAY

SWEET DREAMS and FLYING MACHINES by MARK RIBOWSKY ; MISTRESS MANIFESTO BOOK REVIEW

I read the entire book though there are only two references to our Mistress of the Month, Evey, who is called Evelyne in Mark Ribowsky's book.  She's identified as a Japanese dancer here, and just has to be the same woman.  The book mostly dwells on Taylor's music career, long time drug addiction, and psychology. 

 
I found what the author had to say about Evelyne as well as Taylor's being "highly skilled at the art of deception," as he managed his public personae and reputation, and hid his long history of using drugs and alcohol from the public, though it was only too well known to his friends, family, and the mother of his children, Carly Simon.  It's always quite interesting to me how many co-dependents such a person has, but it sounds like Carly had gone to many psychiatrists seeking help for him and them.  You can say that she has been a devout mother and did for a long time attempt to stay married.
Chapter 19, called Never Mind Feeling Sorry For Yourself, is where we find mention of Evelyne.  The scene;Taylor and Simon have a baby son who is sickly and has to have "delicate and risky" surgery. "During the unbearably tense and frightening hours he was in surgery his father (JT) wasn't there because he was driving his latest plaything, a Japanese dancer named EVELYNE to the airport." (Carly was furious and when he did show up at the hospital. Her manager Arlyne Rothberg saw him and started to scream at him to get upstairs at the hospital.  He did eventually arrive and was bedside as the child awoke from surgery.  Prior to this he sat alone outside the hospital alone and "zoning out."

..."Before going back on the road," JT "thought nothing of trading in the dancer for an actress, Kathryn Walker, with whom he now began spending most of his time." (He would marry Walker.)* 

She, Carly, and his first serious girlfriend of note, called Maggie, were all slightly older women and you could say sophisticated and accomplished women.

The author, though he has spent many chapters explaining that Carly Simon was being driven crazy by her husband, seems not to favor her in the end because he doesn't see her as forgiving enough. Would I?  No way. I think this author gave us plenty of reason why Taylor was so difficult. I know from other reading that he and Walker did divorce, he met and remarried and had twin sons with another woman, his third wife, and now in his senior years seems to have learned to live authentically and soberly, and may have come to terms with his past.  However, in my experience and opinion, some people do leave others with lasting, life-altering pain, even when they themselves reach the point of being sorry they lived that way.  Maybe forgiveness is then over-rated!  Missy


*I read this one on e-book, and on Overdrive.  I found these passages on Evey at approx. pages 1681-1686

THE SHOWDOWN BETWEEN MISTRESS EVEY and CARLY SIMON (part two)

From CARLY SIMON'S memoir BOYS IN THE TREES. 


NOTES: Carly Simon decided it was time to meet the woman that her husband was keeping in an apartment she had never been to, one that he used for rehearsals. After walking the streets of New York City in the dark, stopping at 2 am at a Cuban restaurant, where the waiter tells her that JAMES TAYLOR and his Mistress also come in there.  He advises her to Love her husband. She arrives at the building in the middle of the night.  When she lets herself in with the key she secretly had copied, she hears a woman wailing and one of James' favorite pieces of music being played on a stereo from the 4th floor apartment.  Before she can use the key again, the apartment door opens. 

There stands Evey, who at first mesmerizes Carly with her beauty but also physical difference.  Carly can't help put compare her hands and feet.  The woman invites her inside.  No doubt tipped off that his wife is on the way, this encounter which Carly is determined will be civilized, not a cat fight, proves that her husband has betrayed her beyond the physical.  Evey is angry with her for James and ready to tell her off.

Seeing a razor blade, the notion of suicide passes through Carly's mind for a moment until she remembers she has the responsibility of her children.  It is clear, after hearing all the lies that James has told against Carly, lies that Evey wholeheartedly believes, that the Mistress is not the problem.  As I read this excerpt, I had to feel so sad for both women.  Read by e-book in Overdrive, I've referenced the pages.

EXCERPT: 
"She stood there, hair in her eyes, which were wide with what I interpreted as terror and angst.  The woman before me, Evey, was tiny and muscular.  She wore a black leotard, dance pants, and small "dance slippers - size four, I guessed.  Her torso was beautifully molded and her hands were white, perfect, not a single mark on them, only a band on the fourth finger.... 1719-1720 e-book (Missy here: What hand? Is this a wedding type band from Jamie?)

EXCERPTS from 1721-1722-1723-1724 e-book :
"I'm trying hard here," I said.... "I want us to be the best we can both be."

"No you're not," she replied in her broken English.  "Jamie doesn't love you.  Don't you know that?  He calls you a JAP - and he told me you buy big Mercedes Convertible, and drive around California trying to be a movie star, but you're not pretty enough." She continued in this vein, "Jamie had told her that I built a swimming pool because I couldn't bear to step on any seaweed or any rocks beneath my feet, where real people go swimming.
Jamie had also told her I disliked the feeling of sand and that if any got in the house, I would take a bottle of spray cleaner out from under the sink and spray out all the sand as if it was some dangerous fungus.  Hmm... not a bad idea. ...

EXCERPTS 1725-1726 e-book
"He says you spend all day shopping and buying fur coats and that you are dressing up your children just like you.  He tells me you nurse your little boy still and that he will grow up to be a fairy." Evey's voice rose, "And don't thick I don't know the difference between "fairy tale" and "Fairy."

EXCERPTS 1727-1728
"He says you don't really sing well and that you spend all day getting bikini waxes so you look good for all your rich boyfriends who spend planes for you all over the world...He says you won't even notice when he is out of the house because you're so in love with your diamonds and fancy shoes and you try them on in front of your mirror.  You are a party girl.  You are a bitch.  A city girl, a lazy playgirl.  What did he call you?  Yes - a swashbuckler - that's it."

THE SHOWDOWN BETWEEN MISTRESS EVEY and CARLY SIMON (part one)

Boys in the Trees is a Memoir by Carly Simon that focuses on her early years and marriage to James Taylor, a fellow singer-songwriter, who became famous as she did in the 1970's.  The Chapter of the book that deals with Carly's encounter with James' Mistress, whom she calls "Evey," is Twenty Two, titled The Showdown.  Background: Carly Simon and James Taylor have been married for several years and have two children and she has almost become a single mother to them, as he keeps touring, while she breast feeds a sickly son past the age of 2 1/2, which she was advised to do to help him thrive, and deals with his mystery fevers. By 1980 the marriage which has long been challenged by his absence, womanizing, and drug use, and Carly think's it's her preoccupation with mothering her sickly son that may also turn him off her.

In the summer of 1979, James Taylor had a "dalliance with one of his back up singers and claimed (1629-1630 of the e-book) "It's not about you."  Carly then had her first extramarital liaison too.  Then Taylor admitted he was seeing other women including "Evey" a dancer who was living in his 4th floor walk up on West Seventieth Street, New York City.  Carly realized Evey, unlike other women that passed through his life, "wasn't going anywhere." (1635)  She still wanted to be married to James and wondered if "exclusivity" in marriage really existed.  She also found that an old girlfriend from the 1960's was sending him love letters. Again he told her this had nothing to do with her. (1637-1639)

(Of course it does!)

EXCERPT: "As for Evey, I would rather James lived with her and pined for me than the reverse." (1647-1648 e-book)

Carly then found a love note to James written by Evey.  (This is what I mean about wanting to be caught.) It irked Carly that his Mistress was calling him "Jamie," his childhood moniker.

Carly and James were fighting.  She even suggested he move out and never see the children again. He even promised he would not see Evey again.  Then Carly told him that if he and Evey were very happy together then he should pursue her. They were baiting each other and confused.  She wanted him to "swear his undying love," for her and their family.
(1663-1664, 1667-1668)

Finally Carly came up with a plan, first to get her own key made for the apartment where Evey was Kept which she had never seen.

EXCERPT: "Yes it was sneaky, but it wasn't nefarious, corrupt, or dangerous." (1668-1669)

EXCERPT: "What would happen if and when I took the plunge of interfering with Jamie's extracurricular love affair?"  (1677-1678)

 I'm excerpting here from an e-book reading on Overdrive.

"EVEY" - JAMES TAYLOR'S JAPANESE NEW YORK MISTRESS and HIS WIFE CARLY SIMON

EVEY, a Mistress of one of America's best known and loved singer-songwriter's
 JAMES TAYLOR, 

remains a mystery to us, though Carly Simon, Taylor's wife at the time, has called her out.
She's called EVELYNE in "Sweet Dreams and Flying Machines," a biography
of James Taylor by Mark Ribowsky.

*********************************************************

*******************************************

BOYS IN THE TREES - A MEMOIR by singer-songwriter CARLY SIMON.

 

CARLY SIMON is famous for her glorious almost-opera alto voice, for her wonderfully autobiographical song writing, especially hits like, "You're So Vain," and now long over marriage to singer-songwriter JAMES TAYLOR, with whom she had a son and daughter, who are not surprisingly also musical. 

Apparently though singer-songwriter fans loved that Carly and James were married rock stars, whose voices complimented each other when they made appearances on each other's albums and in concerts, their marriage wasn't what most of the couple's fans imagined. Carly Simon says, though she loved James - and I think this woman's love for her husband and the father of her children was outstanding - they were not the perfect couple that they had been promoted as.  Not at all. She acted as though she had found her soul mate and forgot her view of her parents marriage that she wrote about in her song, "The Way I Always Heard It Should Be."  During her youth her father had Kept his own Nanny as a Mistress and her mother had installed a Boy Toy under their roof and right under her ailing husband's nose.  Had Carly learned to tolerate cheating? She did hold to the belief that no musicians were faithful and she did tolerate her husband's groupies, an affair with a back-up singer, and his confession to her of having gotten gonorrhea.  What made Evey different was that she was a real challenge to her marriage.

Taylor was absent, not only because he continued to tour while she more or less stayed home to raise their two children as if she were a single mother, but because he was a drug addict - pot - coke - whiskey - heroin - and not really there even when he was in the room. You could say he was married to his addictions.

But then Carly discovered that he was also not at home because he had a Mistress stored away in his apartment there in New York City, an apartment she had never seen that he used for rehearsing. Called "Evey" by Carly in her memoir, "Boys In The Trees," Simon had a duplicate key made, and went over there in the middle of the night, a valium and Sangria to help her courage, and faced Evey.  She wanted this other woman to know she was "not a monster."

What Evey had to say to Carly, what James had told his mistress about his wife, was shocking and exaggerated. A sensitive artist, deeply emotional, and profoundly hurt, trying to keep her family together, one child sickly, Carly was perhaps facing reality too. Evey told Carly in so many words that she was considered to be a privileged, materialistic, selfish, and demanding woman. Maybe Evey was just flouting her ability to live in a small, barely furnished pad awaiting her man,"Jamie." A  tiny Japanese (or Japanese-American) woman who spoke English with an accent, she was a dancer with a good body, physically unlike Carly.  Evey was proud of her man and unexpectedly competitive.  Perhaps Jamie really was the biggest deal in her life. She amused herself when he wasn't there playing some of his favorite music. He certainly wasn't Keeping her in luxury.

It's ironic really. Usually when a wife calls out a Mistress, it's her belief that her husband is being too generous (any amount of money can be "too" generous when a wife believes that half of that money should be hers) with the Other Woman.  It's almost as if Evey is proud of her lack of demands and needs, but when I excerpt the showdown between these two later this month, I think you'll gasp like I did at the things Evey had to say to Carly, a woman who had inherited much less than imagined, used most of her inheritance early to pay for therapy, and who had success in her own right. Evey even said James Taylor told her Carly Simon was a "JAP" (Jewish American Princess)! Carly's father was Jewish and a well to do publisher (Simon and Schuster), her mom wasn't, and the family was fairly non religious.

*****Beyond this acknowledgement, later in her life, of her husband's Mistress by Carly, little else is publically known about Evey.  She may have been a musical muse, kind of like Ruth Tryangiel, the Mistress of Bob Dylan. Though in 1980, about a year after the showdown with Evey, their marriage was still intact, Taylor would soon divorce and remarry but not to Evey.  We don't know how she and Tayor met, how long they were together, if she earned enough money to support herself besides the probably free living in the apartment, or if he continued to Keep her when he remarried. After Carly, James went on to marry two more times and seems settled into and happy in his current marriage.  Carly also remarried four years after their divorce from him and is currently divorced from James Hart after almost 20 years of marriage. Evey wasn't why the Simon-Taylor marriage didn't last. 

I usually read books, but I've also started listening to some audio books, and I'm especially interested in doing so if the author is reading their own words to us.  I want to hear their voice and emotional expressions as they read their work. I heard that Carly Simon's memoir about growing up in a well-to-do publishing-related family also contained snippets of her music. What a great idea!  And so I got BOYS IN THE TREES on audio. I must say I loved it and was even brought to tears at times. (I've posted a couple Carly Simon YouTube videos in the past so you know I'm a fan.)

Carly was frank about her early sexual experiences and growing up in a household with a secret which involved her parent's infidelities.  Her mother, still married to an ailing retired husband, with their youngest child a boy, hired a college student to sort of care-give this son, while having an ongoing affair with him. The affair required a secret passageway in their house which one of her sisters figured out first. You could say Andrea Simon, Carly's mom, had herself a Boy Toy for a while. Carly's father, Richard Simon Kept his own nanny, who helped raise him as a child, as his Mistress for years, including after his marriage to Andrea. All this had a profoundly upsetting effect on Carly who may have started stuttering  as a result.

Online you can possibly link to an old article I cut out of Vanity Fair Magazine, titled "I Never Sang For My Mother," by Marie Brenner from August of 1995. At the time it was published it was quite shocking in the revelations about Carly's parents and their extramarital set ups but also that her mother could diminish her daughter so in a moment of her success.

Carly Simon, back in the day when she was a singer-songwriter (a little like the Taylor Swift of her generation) was promoted as a sexy young woman singer-songwriter - and she posed for photos that were considered daring at the time, though a typical selfie by a Kardashian sister is usually showing more nipple or rear end.)  In her memoir she admits to a whirl of affairs with musical men, prior to her marriage, as well as not being the first such woman to be passed around among them.  It was the 1970's, a wave of feminism had hit the shore, and a lot of women had decided they were not going to wait until married to have some adventures with men, but as she was talent and among peers, she was not a groupie.

VANITY FAIR 2016 - CARLY SIMON THE PHOTO THAT CHANGED MY LIFE

 A secondary reference for this month's subject, I'll excerpt from this bio by Mark Ribowsky later in the month.  In this book "Evey" is called EVELYNE

Evey gives us a moment to pause.  She, sadly, falls into the category of Mistresses who are with men who lie terrifically to them about their wives, who have their Mistresses on their side against their wife, and who are in place quite deluded. Having known women and men who've had affairs and behaved in ways in which you can't help but think they are acting out for attention and want to get caught, I can't help but think about James Taylor at this point in his marriage with Carly Simon.

If interested in the Mistresses of musical men, their Mistresses, or their groupies, read archived posts about Bob Dylan, Pamela Des Barres, or Jim Morrison (although that one has an outstanding number of hits and I'm about to take that whole month down!)

 

C 2017  Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot - All Rights Reserved including International and Internet Rights

CARLY SIMON - THE RIGHT THING TO DO

She was a gawky kid who turned out beautiful.

CARLY SIMON : YOU BELONG TO ME

>You don't have to prove to me that you're beautiful to strangers!