on the brink; Right before she released a best-selling album, met James Taylor, and became a singing sensation, Carly Simon did her first magazine shoot-for Vogue.

Byline: Carly Simon

This picture was taken when I was about 25, just after my first album came out-which had been a surprise to me. I was supposed to be a songwriter, not a singer, which appealed to my sensibilities of being shy and retiring onstage. I used to write songs for other people to sing, but as it turned out, the songs that I wrote were quite challenging-even for myself-so God knows nobody else wanted to sing them.

Even though I didn't like performing for an audience, I was a ham in front of the camera. I was very easy with it, which I think comes from my father taking pictures of me from a very early age. He was a photographer as well as a publisher, as well as a musician. He wrote a book called 35mm Photography, from One Amateur to Another before I was born, with a picture of my mother on the cover, and he always took pictures of us growing up.

This was my first magazine shoot, and it was definitely a novelty to see myself in Vogue. I'd done a photo session for my album, and I would go on to do many more, but this was a new experience. Later when I was photographed for the music press or for women's magazines, I would pick out my own clothes, but for this, Vogue suggested the clothes, even though the sandals were mine-when I look at the picture now, I remember how uncomfortable they were and how they made big dents in my legs.

The photographer, Jack Robinson, shot some pictures inside a boutique, with me dressed in a sort of Roman-toga style, with bracelets. Then we shot some more on the New York street, and I like the way I was running outside. I still had some baby fat in my face, and my hair was at its most refulgent. The high-necked outfit, a little prim-looking, wasn't at all my style, although I like the way it looks now. I was a real hippie, still am. I wore long Indian skirts or jeans, Indian tops, long earrings, open-toe high heels. I still have clothes from those days, and still wear them.

I started writing songs very young. My father was a classical pianist who also knew a lot of Broadway tunes, and my mother was a fantastic singer. When my two sisters and brother and I were children, we all would wash the dishes together with my mother and sing along with the radio-rock and Elvis and the Beatles, and then Dylan and the Weavers. My sisters Lucy, Joey, and I have perfect ranges to sing with one another because Lucy's a pretty high soprano, Joey's a mezzo, and I'm a baritone.

At Sarah Lawrence College, I sang with Lucy, doing the folk circuit and the coffeehouse circuit. Of the two of us, Lucy definitely wanted to be a performer more than I. But then she met her husband, had babies, and got distracted by that. My boyfriend at the time was a Rhodes scholar who had gotten a grant and was writing a novel. We found a ...