USATODAY has an article that brings back the topic of who is so vain they probably think that this blog is about them.
Vain was a No. 1 hit in January 1973, six months after the Watergate break-in that led to President Nixon’s downfall.
But unlike the Watergate principals, Simon says she’ll never reveal the answer, not even when she or the song’s subject dies. “I don’t see why I ever would. What would it advance?
“I wrote that song in the days when people kept confidences to themselves, whereas now, people expose them so easily and readily for the benefit of their next movie sale.â€
Officially, only three people know: Simon, the ex-lover and NBC Sports president Dick Ebersol, who paid $50,000 for the answer at a charity auction. (He was sworn to secrecy.)”
I also thought it was about Mick Jagger, but you’re right — it’s still a secret.
Carly Simon writes about the song and all the questions about it on her website:
http://www.carlysimon.com/vain/vain.htm
Actually, this is very interesting, the topic you bring up, because people were saying after the Deep Throat confession in Vanity Fear that there were no more secrets out there, other than where is Jimmy Hoffa buried and who really was behind the JFK shooting, but you are right, Carly Simon’s secret is a good one. Someday it will come out.
I once worked at a foot messenger in NYC for Empire Messenger Service, and one of my packages to deliver one day was for Carly Simon. It was a fulltime $1.85 per hour kind of messenger job, when I was living in the Village and working odd jobs to make ends meet (they didn’t)…. and Carly had just released one of her new albums and her label was sending her some stuff and my job was go to her apartment, 5F as I remember, around 39th Street somewhere, and knock on her door and ask her to sign the receipt. She did and I left. I should have asked her who that song was about, but I think she had not even written or recorded it yet.
Ebersol knows the secret? Surely he must have told his wife, or someone, maybe Sally Quinn.
Isn’t the song about Mick Jagger? Or Warren Beatty?