Carly Simon Yields New Song From Old Cassette

Lots of artists dust off unfinished recordings and tack them onto reissues, but when Carly Simon found a drawer full of old cassettes from her early years, she turned them into something new. Her song 'Songbird,' the last track on her new album 'Never Been Gone,' comes from a tape Simon discovered that had the beginnings of two different songs on it -- one about being alone in New York on the fourth of July and the other about a songbird.

"I played these two songs that weren't intended to be together and it felt as if they did belong together," Simon tells Spinner. "So I added a third verse, it being more about the songbird and how it still carries me into the future." Essentially, 'Songbird' was started about 40 years ago and was finally finished this past year. "The last verse was the last bit of recording done on the album," she says. "[My son] Ben really held my hand through it. I thought my voice wasn't nearly as good now. It was nearly as rich as it was."

Lying next to the 'Songbird' tape was another one involving a few folks that were already legends of their time. "I had a cassette that was made on a night in 1970 when I was in my apartment," Simon recalls. "The walkman was going and I was hosting Kris Kristofferson, John Prine and Steve Goodman. We were all passing the guitar around and passing the bottle around and ended up with some fantastic memories on that, including Prine teaching 'Angels of Montgomery' to me."

Sounds like a decent way to pass the time.