Singer Carly Simon comes around again

Award-winning singer/songwriter Carly Simon recently made headlines when she announced that she would be suing her former record label, Hear Music. Briefly owned and operated by Starbucks, Hear Music was unceremoniously dumped in an effort to cut costs, and Simon was a casualty. But with the help of her musician son Ben and several of their musician acquaintances, Carly is back and ready to make music. On Never Been Gone (Iris Records), Simon recorded new versions of 10 of her best-known songs, including "That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be," "The Right Thing To Do," "You're So Vain," "Coming Around Again," "Let the River Run" and the title track, as well as a couple of previously unavailable tracks. I had the pleasure of speaking with Carly about her new project.

Gregg Shapiro: A few years ago, Joni Mitchell re-recorded her songs in orchestral settings, and Cyndi Lauper released an album on which she revisited some of her best-loved songs in acoustic settings.

Carly Simon: How dare they copy me! Actually, I was privileged to hear Joni's record in her car. We had lunch together in Los Angeles at The Ivy. Afterwards she said, "Would you like to hear my new album?" I said, "I would love to!" We sat in her car and listened over these fantastic speakers in some sort of amazing car, a Porsche or something very beautiful and very grand and very Joni. I thought it was a tremendously beautiful orchestral album. It was a continuation of that great creative process that she has, and a handful of other musicians have.

Did that idea of revisiting songs play any role in inspiring Never Been Gone?

No, it wasn't the inspiration. That's not to say that it didn't inspire me, because it did. When I decided to redo my songs, it was thrust upon me! There wasn't anything else I could do. I was under contract to Starbucks. They had reduced my [2008] album [This Kind of Love ] to a mere nothing by withdrawing their participation in the music business days before it came out. There was no distribution for it. I still had to wait a period of time, because I was under contract. With so many musicians living in my house, the idea was to sit down and think of new ways to do my old songs. It was really fun!

At first I thought it wasn't going to be any fun. I was very resistant to it. Ben, my son, and his friend David Saw said, "Mom, this is totally great. Let's do it acoustically." The idea was to do acoustic versions of these songs that had been pretty big hits on the radio. To see where I started out with them, where I was when I was writing them.

It happened really naturally. There are about seven guitars out at any one point in our living room and kitchen. David and Ben were always playing things. One morning I came down with an idea for a recasting of "Anticipation," and immediately David picked up a guitar and started playing it, and Ben started playing, and I started singing, "We can never, we can never know."

Ben got you back on your feet?

He said, "Forget any record companies. Do it with us on an independent label." Ben owns Iris Record with Larry Ciancia, the percussion player on the album. They've put out a couple of Ben's albums and one of David Saw's. And I'm an investor in the company. So I decided to do it independent-label style, to get away from Goliaths that I've been with all my life.

What do you think the Carly of 2009 brings to a song recorded, dare I say, nearly 40 years ago?

In my head, I would listen to "That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be," and I would play with this [synthesizer] machine called a Motif by Yamaha. I would use it to cast a mood. I was in my little studio up here on the Vineyard one night, and I had the Motif on and I got this moody sound, and I started playing the chords of "That's the Way" on it, and it sounded very mysterious, like I'm still not sure what the answer is to this question. Shall we marry? Shall we not marry? Everybody thought the original version was this wonderful song about marriage, and wanted me to sing it at their weddings.

It's really not!

Of course it's not! It's a completely ironic song, but most people don't understand irony. The other version had this huge drum fill going into, "but you say it's time we moved in together," which was the power behind it, going after making it radio-friendly. This version, there are no tricks. It's the song as it's really meant. The great irony is that I still don't know the answer.

There were songs that I couldn't figure out how to do differently, such as "Jesse" and "Haven't Got Time for the Pain." When it came to programming the album, it was really hard. I never thought it was going to come together, never in a million years.

Another song that feels really reinvented is "You Belong to Me," which sounds like it went through a wonderful, vintage 70s, Stevie Wonder soul-style revision.

Oh, that's such a compliment! Thank you!

You can really hear the spirit of fun that went into making Never Been Gone. On "It Happens Everyday," you can be heard laughing, and there's the "gotta have more cowbell" coda on "You're So Vain."

I don't know if you can say this and sound like a grandmother the way that I am now, but there was definitely a certain amount of good weed that went into the fun.

You live in Massachusetts, where same-sex couples can get married. If someone came to you and said that they wanted to use one of your songs for their same-sex wedding ceremony, what would you suggest?

The first song that comes to my mind is "You're the Love of My Life," because it spans the love of so many different things. But I'm trying to think of one that I would particularly think of for a gay couple as opposed to a straight - and none of us is really straight, but that's beside the point. I think it would really depend upon who the two people are. And they might have a special request. It could be "Nobody Does it Better." Or if one of them is a dentist, it could be "Haven't Got Time for the Pain!"