Inside Singer Carly Simon's Private World: Cancer, Parkinson's Disease

Carly Simon Shares “Unpredictable” Parkinson’s Disease and Cancer DiagnosesWhen it comes to keeping secrets, nobody does it better than Carly Simon. Take the much-dissected lyrics of her 1972 hit "You're So Vain." The legendary singer has since confirmed that the second verse, referencing a time when she was still "quite naive," was about her 1970s dalliance with Warren Beatty. But the actor is so vain, she joked to People in 2015, he really does think "the whole thing is about him!" The truth is the rest of the track refers to two other former lovers—a list that includes Mick Jagger, Kris Kristofferson, Jack Nicholson and ex-husband James Taylor—and she has no intention of spilling. As she put it during a 1994 NBC interview, "If I actually tell, it will lose the whole mystique." Though, she's certainly not afraid of letting people in. More than a decade after her 2015 memoir Boys in the Trees detailed a turbulent marriage to Taylor and difficult childhood including a severe stammer that had her mom advising her to try singing difficult phrases, the two-time Grammy winner dropped a new revelation: She had been quietly progressive brain disorder Parkinson's disease and a bout with skin cancer. But with her 23rd album Comes in Waves set for an Aug. 14 relase, now was the time to let the river run. In the years since Simon—the daughter of Simon & Schuster co-founder Richard L. Simon and civil rights activist and singer Andrea Heinemann Simon—retreated from the spotlight in 2019, "So many people have written to me, kindly wondering about my relative silence, asking how I am and what I have been doing," the 83-year-old explained in a July 27 statement obtained by E! News. "The truth is, I’ve been learning how to live with Parkinson's disease." Her education dates back several years, when she was dealing with a broken hip and arthritis in both knees. "I eventually had all three joints replaced, out with the old and in with delicate bouquets of metal and plastic," she explained. "After three replacement surgeries, I assumed my difficulty walking was simply an unfortunate and rather ironic part of the recovery process." But as her mobility worsened, continued Simon, who shares daughter Sally, 52, and son Ben, 49, both musicians, with Taylor, "Eventually, there were periods when I could not walk without considerable help." An "extensive evaluation" at the Mayo Clinic led to her Parkinson's diagnosis. Jonathan Leibson/WireImageAs she worked to "understand the diagnosis, to adjust to it, and to decide how much I wanted to say about it publicly," Simon noted, she also discovered a basal cell carcinoma on her face. The skin cancer was removed "but the surgery affected my appearance and made me more self-conscious about being seen in public." Because, yes, she noted, while she gets the irony considering her most famous song, "I have always been more critical of my appearance than anyone else could possibly imagine." As a result, it became that much more difficult to walk into the party like she was walking onto a yacht. "Between my mobility issues, the Parkinson's diagnosis, the surgery, and the emotional effects of it all," the musician reasoned, "withdrawing from public view was the most palatable reaction." However, stressed the New York City native, she "has not stopped living." There's her forthcoming album, of course, her first new material in nearly two decades. "Music has always known when to arrive," noted Simon, who spent years writing jingles for the likes of Noxzema before she wrote 1971's "That's The Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be" despite no formal piano or guitar training. "It has rescued me more times that I can count." And then there's just the simple pleasures of her life on Martha's Vineyard in the same 25 wooded acres she and Taylor shared during their intense decade-long marriage. "I just love it here," she explained in a 2017 chat with New England Living. "Part of it is because it's where I came as a child and part of it is serendipity. When I met James, he had just bought this tract of land and started building on it, so I moved in with him." Now, "he never comes here," Simon confessed to Dan Rather in a 2017 interview, noting he won't even visit their son Ben who lives on the property. "He recently said to somebody, 'It's her island. It's not my island anymore.'" Indeed, for Simon, the cabin is an idyllic spot where she can record music, garden, take photographs, tend to a menagerie of animals and spend time with grandson Bodhi and boyfriend Richard Koehler, a surgeon she's described as "such a romantic," crediting his mother's work as a romance novelist.Sally TaylorAnd, of course, Koehler is part of the support system whose "love and patience have carried me through days when my own reserves were not enough," Simon shared in her statement. While she takes medication to deal with the stiffness, the cumulative effect of the disease is more than just seeing overstuffed furniture as the enemy. "It can bring anxiety, depression, exhaustion, and apathy," Simon noted. "You can find yourself lying there like a starfish drying in the sun, arms pointing in all directions, while nothing inside is telling you to get up, read, watch, write, sing, call someone, or do much of anything at all." It's not sadness or laziness that she's experiencing, Simon shared, rather, "It is as though the part of the brain that sends out invitations to participate in life has temporarily misplaced the guest list." While some days she's "so tired, I can't get the day moving," during others, noted Simon, "I am still writing, singing, imagining, laughing, worrying, remembering, and occasionally getting trapped in an overstuffed chair."