Carly Simon explains ‘Anticipation’ was about Cat Stevens
31 October 2016
Newsdesk
Carly Simon says her classic ‘Anticipation’ was inspired and written about Cat Stevens while she was waiting for him to come to her house for dinner.
Carly Simon’s very first gig was as support to Cat Stevens at The Troubadour in West Hollywood. Carly says she learned to harmonise to the songs.
In a new interview with Dan Rather, Simon said “I invited him to come to my apartment when we were going to play Carnegie Hall together. It was about 7 o’clock when he supposed to arrive and he hadn’t arrived yet. I was so nervous that the chicken wasn’t cooked and the cherries would have melted. I picked up the guitar. I had to fill my brain with something. I pretended I was Cat Stevens. I started out with very Cat Stevensy chords, very abrupt. I was so stuck in the moment of being fearful so as a lesson to myself I said: “but we can never know about the days to come”. I didn’t know when the door-bell was going to ring. I liked that. It was all of a sudden a quarter to eight and I had written the whole song.
Dan Rather will interview Carly Simon for The Big Interview on ASX TV in the USA 1 November.
