The Song Used For Heinz Ketchup

Anticipation is a feeling of excitement about something that is going to happen and this can often be associated with expecting something pleasant that you are looking forward to.  The beautiful Carly Simon song ‘Anticipation’ is filled with hope about waiting for the right person to enter to your life and how as that person that you desire does enter, you anticipate that everything will work out for you as a couple, so it will feel absolutely perfect.  This song is about living in the moment, especially if you are not sure a new relationship is going to last.  Anticipation examines the tensions involved in a escalating romance before you know what is going on or what is going to happen.  It is about not knowing what the future holds for you, but whatever it brings your way, you will be able to deal with it, because “these are the good old days”. ‘Anticipation’ came out as the lead single on Carly Simon’s 1971 album of the same name.  The song peaked at number 13 on the Billboard pop singles chart and at number 3 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart.  The song ranked number 72 on Billboard‘s Year-End Hot 100 singles of 1972, and garnered Simon a Grammy Award nomination for Best Pop Female Vocalist.

Carly Simon had nine songs that made it into the top twenty of the Hot 100, including her song ‘You’re So Vain’, which peaked at #1 in January of 1973. ‘Nobody Does It Better’ got to #2 in October of 1977, “Mockingbird’ performed with James Taylor peaked at #5 in March of 1974, ‘You Belong To Me’ reached at #6 in June of 1978, ‘That’s The Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be’ peaked at #10 in July of 1971 and ‘Anticipation’ got #13 in February of 1972.  ‘Haven’t Got Time For The Pain’ reached #14 in June of 1974, ‘The Right Thing To Do’ peaked at #17 in May of 1973 and ‘Coming Around Again’ reached #18 in January of 1987.

Singer and songwriter Carly Elisabeth Simon was born on June 25, 1945 in New York City, and she was raised in Riverdale (an affluent residential neighborhood in the northwest portion of the Bronx) along with her two older sisters and her younger brother.  Her German Jewish father, Richard L. Simon, was wealthy and he co-founded the Simon and Schuster publishing company.  He also played piano and her mom Andrea Louise (Heinemann) was a singer (and civil rights activist) with a Swiss German-Jewish and Spanish-Catholic background.  Her oldest sister Joanna was an opera singer and Carly formed a group with her other sister Lucy and they were known as the Simon Sisters.  Her brother Peter became a photographer.

Carly attended a lot of Brooklyn Dodgers games with her father before they moved to Los Angeles.  Baseball legend Jackie Robinson was a family friend and at one point he lived with the Simon family in Connecticut, while his own house was being built nearby.  Carly spent so much time in Ebbets Field a Flatbush section of Brooklyn sitting on the lap of shortstop Pee Wee Reese in the Dodgers’ dugout that the team made her a special Dodgers jacket for her role as unofficial mascot.

The Simon family summered on Martha’s Vineyard and the children were exposed to their wealthy parents diverse friends and New York City luminaries like lyricist Oscar Hammerstein and composer Richard Rodgers, writer and poet Max Eastman, journalist James Thurber, to name a few.  The family split their time between a New York townhouse and a Connecticut estate. Carly and her three siblings were often surrounded by their parents’ houseguests, who included some of the most prominent people of the day, like Eleanor Roosevelt and Albert Einstein when her father was publishing his book.

Carly’s mother conducted an affair with a much younger man in the family’s home.  Ronny was a 19-year-old who she employed to work as a male nanny for Simon’s younger brother Peter.  Andrea and Ronny ended up living together in the third floor of the family’s house for some time.  Carly Simon turned to songwriting and singing to overcome her stutter, and had to attend speech therapy sessions from the time she was 6.  At age seven, Carly embarked on an abusive relationship with a 16-year-old boy, which continued for six years.  Carly started having anxiety attacks when she was 12, perhaps brought on by worrying about her father’s deteriorating health, and possibly because she learned that her parents didn’t love each other.  Her remote father was forced out of the publishing company that he founded and died of a heart attack, when Carly was 15, after losing most of his fortune.

After her father died (July 1960), 15 year old Carly Simon fell in love with 18 year old budding novelist and Harvard student Nick Delbanco.  They dated for several years and lived together during the summers when they were not in school.  Carly found solace in music and her stutter cleared up at age 16.  In 1963 when she was 18, Carly Simon met Livingston Taylor a talented and eclectic singer and songwriter and younger brother of the soft rock superstar James Taylor, whose family also summered on Martha’s Vineyard.  Their father Isaac M. Taylor worked as a resident physician in Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.  Livingston Taylor was 6 years younger than Carly, but they formed a singing duo.  Carly Simon didn’t meet James Taylor until almost 8 years later.

Carly formed a duo with her sister Lucy, the Simon Sisters, and they put out three albums, performed on the Hootenanny TV series as well as the Dick Cavett Show and they eventually had a minor hit with the 1964 folk album Wynken, Blynken and Nod.  In 1965, Carly and her sister Lucy met Sean Connery who was a fellow passenger aboard an ocean liner bound for New York from England.  It was the height of the James Bond craze in 1965, a year after the release of ‘Goldfinger’, when Simon sent the 007 star a cheeky note, asking him if he fancied coming to their cabin for a cup of tea or pre-prandial cocktail and within 15 minutes he had rung them from the ship’s presidential suite, inviting them for champagne and dinner.  They ended up dancing together in his quarters and Carly says that Connery suggested a threesome which they turned down.  Lucy quit the group to marry a physician and Carly went on to bigger and better things in a solo career.

In 1966, the day before Simon turned 21, Carly Simon was asked to work with Bob Dylan, but when she met him he was wasted and the next day he had his famous motorcycle accident, which sidelined his career for a while.  Carly started working with Robbie Robertson and all the people in his band and she met other people like Al Kooper and Paul Butterfield.  Simon found a job working as a secretary on a TV variety show.  Her first day on the set, she was flashed by comedian Redd Foxx and Marvin Gaye tried to stick his tongue in her mouth.  When she made her first album, Jimi Hendrix was also in the studio at Electric Lady, and she did not understand why Hendrix kept going into the bathroom, because she was naive, and did not understand drugs.

Carly wanted to be a writer more than anything else, she wanted to be a songwriter more than a singer, so that wouldn’t have to perform, as the prospect of performing terrified her.  The press was calling her “the first feminist pop star”, and Carly was eager to follow up with a second album.  Electra Records’ Artists and Repertoire (A&R) man/talent scout Steve Harris, convinced Carly to do a live concert to promote her single ‘That’s The Way I Always Heard It Should Be’ and they traveled out to L.A. where she opened for Cat Stevens at L.A.’s The Troubadour in West Hollywood on April 6.

Cat was born as Demetrios Steven Georgiou and he worked as Steven Demitri Georgiou Adams, and then became Steve Adams at the start of his career, then his girlfriend Teresa Jones started calling him Cat Stevens and now he is known as Yusuf Islam.  Cat Stevens had become a star with his song ‘Wild World’ and ‘Peace Train’, from his ‘Tea For The Tillerman’ album.  The Cat Stevens / Carly Simon shows were sold out and Carly trembled and stuttered through the day, but sailed through the performance, and then met James Taylor backstage.  But tonight was not yet their time.

The Troubadour shows helped catapult ‘That’s The Way I Always Heard It Should Be’ into the Top 10, and it stayed in the Top 40 ten weeks.  Carly Simon would end up selling 400,000 copies.  When Carly flew back to New York, Cat Stevens did too, and he asked Carly out.  Carly invited him to come to her apartment for a date as they were going to play Carnegie Hall together.  Cat had recently been involved with actress Patti D’Arbanville and he was running late.  On the appointed night, she waited and waited for her guest.  He was supposed to arrive at about 7 o’clock and she was nervous because the chicken wasn’t cooked yet and she thought that the cherries might melt.  Carly was so stuck in the moment, she was excited and nervous about seeing him, as this was their first date and she started thinking that she could “never know about the days to come”.  She didn’t know when the door-bell was going to ring and then all of a sudden it was a quarter to eight and she had written the whole song.

She picked up her guitar and tuned the low E string down a whole step to D, and then she wrote this song for him.  Carly’s voice is a well-controlled contralto (a type of classical female singing voice whose vocal range is the lowest female voice type), and has a largely strong and warm tone, especially coming from her chest.  She sang this song emphasizing all of the syllables distinctly, “An-ti-ci-pa-tion / An-ti-ci-pa-tion / is making me late / is keeping me wai-ai-ai-ting.”  She said that when Cat finally did arrive, she was sitting on her bed proud of her new song.

Simon earned a Grammy Award in 1971 for Best New Artist inducted into Songwriters Hall of Fame, 1994.  Over the course of her career, Simon amassed 24 Billboard Hot 100 charting singles, 28 Billboard Adult Contemporary charting singles, and won two Grammy Awards.  AllMusic called her “one of the quintessential singer-songwriters of the ‘70s”.  Carly met Warren Beatty for the first time while she was on tour opening for Stevens, and he came to visit her backstage.  When he saw that there was no one else around, he closed the door, looked into her face, and looked down at her at her braless breasts, and said, “Can I see you?”  Her infatuation with Beatty started to deteriorate after a few months.  Carly walked a slippery slope being romantically involved with Mick Jagger, Kris Kristofferson, Jack Nicholson and getting married to James Taylor.

In 1979, Heinz Ketchup made a commercial that featured Carly Simon’s hit ‘Anticipation’. The Taste that’s worth the wait. Carly sold the license to Heinz for $50,000 so they could use her song.

We can never know about the days to come
But we think about them anyway
And I wonder if I’m really with you now
Or just chasin’ after some finer day

Anticipation, anticipation
Is makin’ me late
Is keepin’ me waitin’

And I tell you how easy it feels to be with you
And how right your arms feel around me
But I, I rehearsed those words just late last night
When I was thinkin’ about how right tonight might be

Anticipation, anticipation
Is makin’ me late
Is keepin’ me waitin’

And tomorrow we might not be together
I’m no prophet and I don’t know nature’s ways
So I’ll try and see into your eyes right now
And stay right here ‘cause these are the good old days

(These are the good old days)
And stay right here ‘cause these are the good old days
(These are the good old days)
(These are the good old days)
(These are the good old days)
(These are the good old days)

Written for Daily Addictions prompt – Deteriorate, for FOWC with Fandango – Guest, for Ragtag Community – Slippery and for Word of the Day Challenge Prompt – Infatuation.