Torch (1981)

It is difficult to recall now how defiantly uncool it was in 1981 for a rock star to release an album of pre-rock 'standards'. People did not speak so freely or reverently about the 'Great American Songbook' back then, and all of the singers who would later leap on the bandwagon - including Linda Ronstadt, Natalie Cole, Joni Mitchell, and the seemingly unstoppable Rod Stewart - were still pursuing contemporary rock music. Rock was meant to be a break with the past, even a rebellion against it, which meant a rejection of music associated with a previous generation. In the 1970s few people under the age of 30 listened to Frank Sinatra or Julie London - not by choice anyway - and fewer still knew who Duke Ellington or Hoagy Carmichael was. "It's not your fan base. It's going to ruin your career", Carly was told by her record company when she insisted on making a standards album. But Torch was a cri de coeur rather than a career move, and its cover, like its music, is an unfettered expression of passion and heartache.

The album was originally conceived as a more broadly defined standards album, encompassing songs from the films and Broadway musicals of the 1940s and 1950s, but it was planned at a time when Carly and James Taylor had just separated and were heading towards divorce. As she searched for material, she found that the 'torch songs' - of unrequited or lost love - resonated most strongly with her.  The result was an album as autobiographical as any of the albums featuring her own material.

The vocals and arrangements constituted bold re-imaginings of classic songs such as "I'll Be Around", "I Got It Bad and That Ain't Good", "I Get Along Without You Very Well", "Body and Soul" and "Spring Is Here".  The common theme is not only heartbreak, but the strength of her voice. One of her fine interpretive flourishes is to hold the last note of a song, and let it grow and intensify rather than fade away - a sign that her passion persists, that her feelings cannot be assuaged. Perhaps the boldest arrangement is also the simplest: on "I Get Along Without You Very Well", the quietly insistent piano is underscored by a darkly reverberating synthesizer, and the tension between the two instruments forms a perfect backdrop to her smooth vocal. The song's irony is all the more poignant for being conveyed in this calm, understated manner.  

There are more recent songs on the album, including the moody, scene-setting opener, "The Blue of Blue", which is effectively a duet between her voice and David Sanborn's wailing saxophone. The tender "What Shall We Do With the Child", the bittersweet "From the Heart", and Steven Sondheim's soaringly dramatic "Not a Day Goes By" also match the older songs tear for tear. Her reading of Sondheim's song is especially powerful, building from quiet intimations to strident declarations about the inability to forget a long departed lover. It is a breathtaking performance, at once proving the contemporary viability of this musical genre and her mastery of it.

Finding a suitably attractive package for this unusual, unfashionable album represented a considerable challenge. It could hardly assume the contemporary vibe of her past two album covers, and yet a large chunk of the record-buying public would probably be lost if it looked like a period piece. Photographer Lynn Goldsmith and art director Simon Levy clearly understood this, and they arrived at a stunningly dramatic cover; one that captures the romantic fervour of the music as well as the erotic charge of her previous album covers. Goldsmith later recalled that photographs from their first session (for example, on the top right) had to be discarded. Carly "just looked too sad...she couldn't help showing the pain she was going through" in the wake of her separation from Taylor. Goldsmith asked for a second session. This one would be held on the roof of the singer's New York apartment building as the sun set, where the bluesy mood of the album would be conveyed by the darkening tones of the sky. To encourage Carly, she brought along two props. One was a 1940s-style microphone for her to sing into (as the second photo on the right shows). The other was an actor - to play the man who got away, or was about to get away - and in several shots (for example, the third and fourth on the right) she can be seen tugging on his arm, begging him to stay, and responding rapturously when he nuzzles her neck. Indeed, in some of the photographs it looks as though she may be trying to hold him by force, or, as she herself once described it, "to keep his arm as a souvenir."

A similar, arm-tugging shot was used for the cover, but the actor is less visible. His blonde hair is darkened so that the viewer has to look closely to see a figure at all. In this light, he might be a figment of her imagination, and the focus remains fixed on the emotions so vividly expressed on her face.  This, together with the sensuous curves of her stance, is the perfect visual realisation of the songs, which are not so much about the qualities of the person loved as they are about the feelings that accompany the loss of love. The album's lettering conveys the most difficult of these feelings: an inability to let go. The title is situated as a figurative torch and, more importantly, the letters appear to have been written in blood. Together with the red fingernail that digs into the man's arm, the lettering indicates what is at stake here - not mere romance but intense and desperate longing. The drama on the cover is all hers, in other words, and it entices the viewer to hear the spellbindingly sad story that must have inspired this scenario.

The actor was no mere prop, nor even an 'extra', but the TV star Al Corley, whom Goldsmith had photographed earlier that week. Corley was then starring in Dynasty, and playing Steven Carrington, the most sympathetic character in that phenomenally popular and absurdly melodramatic soap opera. He was widely regarded as the most handsome man on the planet, and he was also a Carly Simon fan, eager to take on the role of a prop in order to meet her. The two immediately hit it off. As Goldsmith described their meeting at the photo session, "I suggested she hold his arm and plead with him not to leave. She must have been very convincing because he stayed for two years."  

For all the sadness of Torch, it is nevertheless a tale with a happy ending. A few months later, Interview magazine published a feature on the couple, and it pictured them happily entwined with one another (see the photo below). Indeed, she is still holding his arm in the photograph, but it is clear that he is no longer departing and he has become more than a figment of her imagination.

Torch received excellent reviews and sold well, albeit as a slow and steady fire rather than a chart-topping blaze. It set the stage for the upcoming boom in standards albums, and also for Carly's own further explorations in this field. Unlike so many other contemporary forays into the 'Great American Songbook', her standards albums have never been motivated by nostalgia, nor contained within its narrow confines. They have always been infused with a distinctive creative vision, and by a depth of feeling that is beautifully demonstrated on this album's cover.