“I could be neurotic, bohemian and all over the place; she always had to be so correct,” the “You’re So Vain” singer, 74, says of Jackie in an exclusive interview in this week’s issue of PEOPLE. “I was who she wasn’t. I think she got a big kick out of that.”
Jackie’s sonJohn F. Kennedy Jr.introduced his mother to the singer on Martha’s Vineyard in 1983, and the two women were drawn to each other. They remained friends untilJackie’s death in 1994at 64 years old.
It took years for Simon to decide to write a book about her bond with the revered presidential widow.
“Why am I writing about someone so private who disliked attention?” she asks, anticipating the question. “If someone affects your life as Jackie did mine, you can’tnotwrite about her.” (Also, she adds, “I withheld a great deal.”)
• For more on Carly Simon’s surprising, enduring bond with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and the memories they made together,subscribe now to PEOPLEor pick up this week’s issue, on newsstands Friday.
Carly Simon.Liz Linder
As the women got to know each other, Jackie, who was 16 years older and intensely private, began to share confidences.
Jackie talked to Simon about President Kennedy’s adultery. She “understood that he made some stupid mistakes,” Simon says, but Jackie brushed off the affairs because “she knew he loved her more, much more.”
She also spoke about her second husband, Onassis, whom she married in 1968, five years after the president’s assassination.
“She said he was very sexy — he would sing to her on his yacht and take her great places to make love,” Simon recalls. “She knew marrying him was the bad-girl move. In a way I never knew whether she was sticking up for her own decision or whether she really loved him.”
Always protective of her two children, John Jr. andCaroline, Jackie also shared her concerns about her son.
RELATED VIDEO: JFK’s Daughter Caroline Gave a Reading at Family Wake & Mass for Saoirse Kennedy Hill
John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe/Getty
While the friends shared some very serious moments, Simon explains that Jackie was also “incredibly funny.”
In 1990, they attended a recording session with opera singerPlácido Domingo. The next day, Simon says she got a gushing letter and photograph from him. But when Simon called Jackie to tell her the news, the older woman wasn’t surprised.
“She paused for a long time, and then she said, ‘Carly, did you really think it was from Plácido?’ ” Simon says. “She’d written it herself and disguised her handwriting! The practical joker in her was nonstop.”
source: people.com
