October 2008 Archives

I just finished reading GIRLS LIKE US, Sheila Weller's very fun biography of the 70's singer-songrwriter Triple Godhead: Carole King, Joni Mitchell and Carly Simon.  (Longtime readers of this blog will know that Carly Simon is not so much a subject of fascination to me as a spiritual Forrest Gump figure who is constantly popping up in my psychic space.)

To summarize the book, these ladies are all really interesting and different degrees of genius and batshit crazy with Carly seeming weirdly the most sane.  Besides the usual pop bio stuff, the book dwells memorably on the shockingly comprehensive list of all the dudes these ladies slept with-- a 70's rogue's gallery comprising basically everyone under the sun except Tiny Tim.  Moms across America will probably be interested to know that Warren Beatty propositioned Carole King when she was totally pregs and was straight-up DENIED by the Natural Woman herself.  True!  I know it's shocking to think that anyone ever turned (young) Warren Beatty down but I guess being 9 months pregnant will make a person do crazy things.

Among other stuff, the book got me thinking about who would be the Triple Goddess of lady singer-songwriters from the 90's.  I guess you'd probably have to narrow the field a little bit to really figure it out.  Liz Phair = Carly of course, but after that it's hard to say who would be on the list.  Kim Deal?  PJ Harvey?  Kathleen Hannah?  Courtney?  All brilliant and indisputably SIGNIFICANT, but none of them really fit the Joni/Carole mold.  (It's also strange to think of any of them as "singer-songwriters" although they all sing and write songs.)  I'm probably forgetting someone totally obvious, but please don't say Alanis to me because although I admit that she IS Canadian, her good songs were mostly written by the genius who also wrote the entire Wilson Phillips songbook.  Personally I find it a toss-up as to whether HOLD ON or YOU OUGHTA KNOW  is the better composition.  I mean, right?  Right?  Consider it!

So although Girls Like Us had me considering all of these important questions, really it mostly just had me thinking about James Taylor.  Because he is of course the bad penny of the book, showing up in chapter after chapter, in each of the women's lives.  Carole, Joni, and Carly all lusted after James, and he managed to break both Joni and Carly's hearts.  ("Earthy" Carole was immediately consigned to the Just Friends dustbin and therefore spared the trouble.  Lucky her.) 

The thing is that James Taylor was considered the complete shit thirty or so years ago.  And apparently not even in a jokey "he's hot because he's so pathetic" way!  Truly, people were truly flipping their lids for a this whiny rich-boy from Martha's Vineyard who actually referred to himself as Sweet Baby James and went on to write some of the most toothless songs of a generation.  I think it says something about the culture of the 70's that the man who singlehandedly invented the genre of Dad Music-- the man whose gentle tunes have provided many a Duane Reade with an inoffensive, low-key soundtrack-- was considered a dark and brooding bad-boy lothario rockstar heartbreaker sex symbol.  Let's be real: his modern-day equivalent is probably Michael Buble.  Maybe John Mayer if I'm being generous.  But despite his heroin addiction and sensitive mystique, James Taylor is surely no Kurt Cobain.  As far as strung-out sad sexy geniuses who you want to take home and worship/cook for, he doesn't even rise to the level of Evan Dando.  (I may be biased though because I do have a weakness for His Blond Sadness.)

Don't get me wrong.  I love FIRE AND RAIN as much as any person who went on long car trips with his parents in the 80's (or anyone who watched a totally HOT River Phoenix belt out the song with the eternally fabulous Martha Plimpton in RUNNING ON EMPTY).  And I do realize that Mr. Taylor had a certain (fine, a DEVASTATING) Jordan Catalano-ish appeal at his peak.  But really now.  I MEAN REALLY.  Let's remind ourselves of who we are talking about:

Well how perfect that this man who has made so much great dentist's office music should now resemble someone's dentist!  (No offense to my own dentist who is of course quite handsome.)  Yes, yes, I know JT used to be totally hot, but the complete obsession over him is a little hard to take seriously with the benefit of historical perspective.

Carole, Joni and yes, even poor, perennially underestimated Carly are clearly ten times more talented than James Taylor, all of them having produced bodies of work that consist of way more than his one or two good elevator ditties.  And yet in the seventies, at least according to this book, all three of women seemed to defer to Taylor at every turn, treating him like some golden god Hendrix-cum-Brando to be coddled and stroked and endlessly awestruck over.  Carly of course married him, had children with him, and for years soft-pedaled her own career to avoid bruising his ego.  Then he dumped her like a complete chump and she never got over it.

The moral of the story is no matter how hot and mumbly and endearingly heroin-addled your crush is, don't sell yourself out for him because someday you may come to discover that he is as lame as James Taylor.

See?  Here at the Bennett Madison Extravaganza, we offer up valuable life lessons every day.

* (For the record, Carly Simon, one double mastectomy later, is still just as hot as ever.  I know it's not quite a fair comparison because ladies are allowed to wear makeup, wigs, and all kinds of slimming undergarments, but even so.)