CARLY SIMON's first three albums are treasures of the singer- songwriter era, their songs inextricably entwined with her life and her loves, with James Taylor, Bob Dylan, Cat Stevens and Mick Jagger. It was a long time ago, but as she tells SYLVIE SIMMONS in an ultra-rare interview, "my memory is good, and I've got my diaries, about 2,000 pages...

Portrait by ED CARAEFF

CARLY SIMON IS QUESTIONING MOJO about The Crown. Will there be a new series taking it to Charles’s coronation? What do people think of Camilla? How does the media treat her? What would the royal family have been like had Margaret been queen? It figures that the TV drama would appeal to a senior member of folk rock royalty, someone who knows what it’s like to be hounded by paparazzi and gossip columnists. Besides, it’s easier to ask questions than answer them. “I haven’t done an inter view in a very long time,” she says.

It’s been eight years since her last album, the two-disc retrospective Songs From The Trees (2015), compiled as a musical accompaniment to her first memoir, Boys In The Trees. Her new release is a retrospective double too: These Are The Good Old Days: The Carly Simon And Jac Holzman Story (2023). But these songs are just from the first three solo albums she made after Holzman signed her to Elektra – Carly Simon (1971), Anticipation (1971) and No Secrets (1972).

All three were hits, each bigger than the one before. Though Simon continued to make albums on Elektra before moving to Warners in 1980, these were the only albums that had Holzman at the helm – and that, Simon says, was important. Holzman signed Simon as a solo artist after the other music label patriarchs had scorned her.

“Jac,” says Simon, “saw something the others didn’t.” There was something intriguing in Simon’s voice that stood her apart from Carole King and Joni Mitchell – the stars of 1970 – or ’60s singers such as Joan Baez, whom Holzman wanted to sign to Elektra, and Judy Collins, whom he did. Simon didn’t have a pure soprano like Mitchell or a long, successful history as a songwriter like King. Her voice was a sensual, sometimes husky, sometimes vulnerable contralto, sometimes all of these in the same song. She had Collins’s sense of experimentation when it came to material. As Holzman said, it was the way she delivered the songs. Her originals ranged in style from her sophisticated, Sondheim-esque debut hit single That’s The Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be, to the swaggering blockbuster hit on her third album, You’re So Vain.

That was over 50 years ago. Simon is 80 now and Holzman 92. “But my memory is good,” says Simon, “and I’ve got my diaries, about 2,000 pages.” She leafs through some of them for MOJO, stopping now and then to read aloud: “Friday, June 24, 1966. Bob Dylan called this afternoon as a birthday present…”

IT’S AN EARLY AUTUMN AFTERNOON ON Martha’s Vineyard. The island off the southern end of Cape Cod, Massachusetts has long been a favourite summer destination for East Coast elites, from the Kennedys to the Obamas. But Simon lives here year-round in a bohemian, rambling farmhouse, a rustic Camelot. There are woods and animals, barns and a beehive – the bees she ordered from Canada and Maine have just arrived. James Taylor – whose well-to-do family often summered on the island – bought a large swathe of land here with a record deal advance and started designing and building a house. Simon moved in with him in 1971. They married in 1972, raising their two children there. He left after their divorce in 1983.