FIVE REVELATIONS

1 MOLESTED AS A CHILD

The singer’s memoir Boys in Trees arrives in stores on Tuesday, and it’s a shocker. For example: Billy was 16 and visiting from out of town. He told young Carly about a Swedish movie he’d seen featuring nudity. He urged her to go skinny dipping and then, in the pool house shower, told her she’d be “more comfortable on her knees.” Carly eventually told her mother. The result? Bill was sent away — for a month. “The biggest secret and vanity of the Simon family was to insist that nothing was wrong when, in fact, so much was wrong, and neither one of my parents owned up to it,” she writes.

2 A DISTANT FATHER

Richard L. Simon, the co-founder of Simon & Schuster, was a dark, lonely figure who channelled his depression into his intense renditions of Rachmaninoff. Marginalized at work, cheated on by his wife, Simon died before his daughter’s 16th birthday. But not before saddling her with the feelings of inadequacy. “After two daughters he’d been counting on a son, a male successor to be named Carl. When I was born, he and Mommy simply added a y to the word, like an accusing chromosome: Carly.”

3 STUTTERING BEFORE SINGING

As a girl, Simon was getting ready to perform in a family production of Little Women when, suddenly, a stammer emerged. It worsened until, finally, at the dinner table she

struggled to say “pass the butter.” Her mother made a suggestion. “Carly, darling — try singing it.” Her German speech therapist also had her sing through the stammer.

4 JAMES TAYLOR, ANYTHING BUT SWEET

James Taylor has documented his own youthful struggles (See: Fire & Rain) but Simon’s account of their marriage presents an even darker alternative. She watches him tie off and shoot up early in their relationship, confronts his flophouse mistress near the end. Taylor grows cold, distant and unapproachable — echoes of her late father.

5 WRITING ANTICIPATION FOR CAT STEVENS

So this isn’t tragic, but it is a revelation. While Warren Beatty inspired the second verse of You’re So Vain, Cat Stevens motivated her to write her 1971 smash Anticipation. She had invited him over for dinner (chicken with cherries in a cream sauce) and he was late. By the time he

had arrived, she had written the song.