Carly Simon’s Most Famous Lovers Include James Taylor, Cat Stevens, John Travolta & More

Lori Acken 2 minutes ago

American musician Carly Simon, New York, New York, 1985. — Brownie Harris/Corbis via Getty Images

Nobody was doing it better than Carly Simon in 1971. A scion of the Simon family that made up half of the famed Simon & Schuster publishing house, Carly was in her mid-20s, exotically beautiful, worldly and so uniquely musically talented that she didn’t even need to wield her family name to make it onto the pop charts.

And it seemed she could catch the attention of just about any man she wanted, from James Taylor to John Travolta.

From trauma to troubadour

Simon began singing as a child as a way of coping with childhood sexual assault and the severe stuttering that followed. But her rich, rare contralto voice, unusual phrasing, and utter commitment to telling it as she saw it in her songwriting helped make her a star. Her first solo album, the self-titled Carly Simon, reached No. 30 on the Billboard 200. Its sole radio smash, “That’s the Way I Always Heard It Should Be,” climbed to No. 10 on the Billboard Pop Singles Chart and earned Simon a Grammy for Best New Artist.

As she racked up more hits and found herself increasingly in the spotlight, Simon became, in a fashion, a sort of precursor to Taylor Swift. Music fans had just as much fun listening to her songs as they did pondering which man in her life might have inspired them.

There were plenty of possibilities. Simon admitted she enjoyed the idea of a “pie cooling on the windowsill, children on a backyard swing” kind of love, along with the irresistible appeal of knowing she had what it took to step inside the lives — and bedrooms — of some of entertainment’s most fascinating men. And to come away with a musical record of the good times, or the fallout.

Here are a few of our favorite Carly Simon loves — and the songs they may (or may not) have inspired.

Cat Stevens

Everett Collection

Before Simon embarked on her most famous romance (more on that in a bit), she was making her way around the troubadour circuit. One of her earliest gigs involved opening for “Peace Train” singer Cat Stevens (who has also been known as Yusuf Islam and, later, simply Yusuf) at West Hollywood’s Troubadour nightclub.

According to her 2015 autobiography, Boys in the Trees, the pair enjoyed the gig, so when Simon was back in New York, she invited Stevens — five years her junior — to come by. Stevens agreed, but when he failed to show up on time, Simon grabbed her guitar and began documenting her worries.

The result was “Anticipation,” which would become both the title track of Simon’s second album and one of her most enduring hits. Stevens eventually did show up, and while the timeline of their relationship remains a little murky, the passages devoted to him in Simon’s book are anything but.

“It feels too private to speak of our two bodies together, and too tender and spiritual to actually refer to it as sex,” Simon rhapsodized. “I loved to watch him as he slept, as he looked at the sky, or a piece of art. He rarely asked questions. When he did, it was in a wonderfully scratchy bass voice that sounded like an old man of the woods telling a tale of those who had passed by his tree hundreds of years ago.”

Though “Anticipation” would eventually become better known as the jingle for Heinz ketchup, the 1971 album earned Simon a Grammy nomination for Best Pop Female Vocalist. Not bad for a song reportedly written in 15 minutes while waiting for an unpunctual — but highly memorable — date.

Warren Beatty

Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Before Simon got serious with rising singer-songwriter James Taylor, she met movie star Warren Beatty backstage at the Troubadour.

By way of introduction, Beatty peered down at the braless Simon’s shirt, looked back up again and asked, “Can I see you?”

He could. In her autobiography Boys in the Trees, Simon labeled him a “glorious specimen of a man,” noting that he was not only a masterful technician of a lover but also someone who always called her after their dates. Beatty also seemed to share her enthusiasm for flowery descriptions of lovers and lovemaking, declaring Simon’s thighs to be the stuff of “poems.”

Simon was so taken with Beatty’s attentiveness and their “movie-like” bedroom activities — and so certain her beau felt the same about the pretty pair they made — that she regaled her therapist with a few tales, only to be brought resoundingly back down to earth. “You are not the first patient of the day who spent the night with Warren Beatty last night,” the doc responded.

It would take a little while, but Simon eventually wrote one of her most iconic hits, 1972’s “You’re So Vain,” partly about the legendary Lothario.

James Taylor

CBS via Getty Images

Despite the merry-go-round of men circling her, Simon writes that she and rising singer-songwriter James Taylor were inseparable from the moment they met (again, at the Troubadour) in the spring of 1971. By the autumn of 1972, the pair were married.

The sexy duo seemed an ideal match, with their laid-back musical styles, similar lifestyles and shared knack for a well-turned phrase. They welcomed daughter Sally in 1974 and son Ben three years later, all while making hit music together and as solo artists.

For a long while, however, they kept the truth of their mercurial union under wraps, offering only occasional hints in songs such as Simon’s 1979 “We’re So Close” and Taylor’s “Hard Times,” from the 1981 album tellingly titled Dad Loves His Work.

Calling themselves “both troubled people trying our best to pass as normal,” the pair eventually succumbed to Taylor’s drug use, Simon’s desperation to heal him, and affairs on both sides. Simon and Taylor separated in 1981 and made it official in 1983.

But Simon told People it wasn’t all for naught. “My incredible loyalty to him, in spite of the fact that he has treated me without any regard, has been so painful to me for so long,” she admitted. “But, through the course of writing the book, I really started to understand that I could love and not be loved. That was the big realization for me — that it doesn’t have to be a two-way street.”

Mick Jagger

Peter Stone/Mirrorpix via Getty Images

Simon was engaged to Taylor when she met Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger at an Atlantic Records soiree. Like just about every other woman of the era, Simon found Jagger impossibly magnetic.

“If a woman didn’t flirt with Mick, it could only mean she had a cold sore or she’d been brushed off by him already,” Simon quipped of the encounter to People.

Though Simon says she remained faithful to Taylor, a few months later Jagger offered to sing uncredited backup vocals on her newest work, the spiky kiss-off tune “You’re So Vain,” widely thought to be directed at Beatty.

Simon finally put decades of speculation to rest in 2015, revealing that the song’s second verse was indeed about Beatty — but that two other men had factored into its creation. And Jagger did, in fact, own a cream-and-apricot-colored scarf.

Simon shared that a long-ago dalliance with an author had inspired the first verse, while Jagger never left her with anything but lusty memories.

“I wanted to touch his neck, and he was looking at my lips,” she wrote in her book of the recording session. “The electricity was raw and hardly disguising its power. Having sex would have actually cooled things off.”

The chemistry was apparently strong enough that Jagger’s then-wife, Bianca, called Taylor to tattle. He brushed off the accusations, while Jagger continued sending Simon flowers and trinkets for years to come.

James Hart

Sonia Moskowitz/IMAGES/Getty Images

Four years after her marriage to Taylor ended, Simon met the man who would become her next husband: writer and businessman James Hart. The two crossed paths at a New York train station, where Hart followed her onto the train. Six months later, they were married.

For a time, the union had all the passion and theater Simon seemed to love. But her past experiences had also left her insecure enough to hire a private investigator and occasionally tail her husband herself.

Hart would eventually acknowledge that Simon’s suspicions about the marriage’s multiple bumps in the road were well-founded. Among them were his sexual confusion, his eventual realization that he was gay, rampant infidelity and serious drug abuse. After 20 years, the pair called it quits but managed to remain good friends.

And a few fiery flings …

Jack Nicholson

Simon invited the Easy Rider actor for a sleepover and was both amused and impressed when, the following morning, he made a series of jovial celebrity business calls while still in her bed. She initially thought Nicholson was trying to impress her, but soon discovered he was more invested in another affair.

“The end of my brief fling with Jack was akin to a promising summer rental that gets canceled at the last minute,” Simon wrote.

Kris Kristofferson

Don Paulsen/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Simon described her tryst with the late Kristofferson as a “slam-dunk deranged month or so.”

Like Cat Stevens, Kristofferson was another bohemian with the heart and vocabulary of a poet — and he brought out the poet in Simon, too. After hearing his “I’ve Got to Have You,” she gushed, “Kris, the man of soft lips and marble eyes sunken in snow? The simplest textures, the songs of a night bird? Every time I sing it, I think of him and what a wonder he is. I think he is magic, the bad boy who only shaves when he doesn’t have to go to church.”

She said the romance ended unceremoniously when he became insensitive and embarrassed by her fear of flying.

John Travolta

Sonia Moskowitz/Getty Images

Apparently, somewhere between James Taylor and James Hart, Simon enjoyed a six-month relationship with the Staying Alive actor, who was a decade younger than she was. She told People, “He was more wonderful to me than any of them.”

The duo teamed up to sing the Hoagy Carmichael classic “Two Sleepy People” for Simon’s 1997 album Film Noir, enjoyed their time together privately and eventually went their separate ways.