Then started a long run of hits, marriage, motherhood, stability, success and fortune. Not much is ever written about those things. However, on my way to these stellar years, there were critical moments: April 6, 1971 I opened for Cat Stevens at the Troubadour. Elektra put roses on everyone's table (from me). They made a big deal about me. James Taylor was in the audience. He came backstage. That was our first meeting. Around this time I also met Arlyne Rothberg who became my guiding force for 13 years. She was a very great manager and we have remained close friends always.

That's The Way I've Always Heard It Should Be was a sleeper and became a respectable hit in the summer of '71. I went to London to record with Paul Samwell-Smith a few months later. We made Anticipation. It was one of the best memories I shall ever have of recording. I had a band. The entire album was just that band (Andy Newmark, Jimmy Ryan, Paul Glanz) and myself. Cat Stevens did some vocals and there were strings on a few songs, but on the whole it was sparse and I loved it. Anticipation was a hit and then back to England to make No Secrets with Richard Perry in 1972.

There are all together too many stories around this time. The mind boggles. I got married to James Taylor. Next album was in L.A. and N.Y. with Richard again. Hotcakes. Sally was born just when Mockingbird was released (Jan 7, 1974). Then came Haven't Got Time For The Pain. I thought I would never record again due to the demanding and precious little sweet Sally I was taking care of (in the jolliest possible way) and so I was talked into selling my song Anticipation to Heinz Ketchup for a commercial. I wasn't at all displeased with the results. It was well done, and funny.

That same year I was back in the studio with Richard Perry in Los Angeles, recording my fourth album, Playing Possum. Not that much time had elapsed since I had decided that I would never be recording again. A photo session with Norman Seeff produced the cover of Playing Possum which was roundly thought to be obscene and tasteless. New mother, what could I be thinking?

Recorded the album Another Passenger with Ted Templeman. First association with Michael McDonald (then of the Doobie Brothers), I recorded It Keeps You Runnin. We lived in the house on Rockingham Drive that was to become famous twenty years later as the house that O.J. Simpson lived in. It was eerie to watch his Bronco pull into my driveway that day those many years later.

One snowy day in late '76 Marvin Hamlisch called and asked if I would listen to a song he and Carole Bayer Sager had written for the new James Bond movie The Spy Who Loved Me. It had been a lifelong dream of mine to sing a song for a movie. I had done this many times as a young girl with only a mirror recording my movements. So often what you do in the mirror as a small person creates an image that comes to fruition. I also had descriptive, imaginative fantasies about being a spy, which works well into my theory. As an adult, I own several trench coats and have a pocket flashlight that doubles as a moisturizer.

In early '77 Ben was born (Jan. 22, 77). We took him to LA.. when he was a few months old. James recorded the album J.T. and I worked with Richard Perry on Nobody Does It Better. The movie (The Spy Who Loved Me) came out in the summer of that year. There was a huge blackout in the Northeast the day of the screening. As Roger Moore was drifting to Alpine earth, attached to a parachute, he fell more and more slowly and my voice in the soundtrack got lower and slower and then there was nothing. No Roger. No me. No lights in the theater.

An inauspicious beginning to what was to be a very successful project. In point of fact, I like to start projects either during blackouts or during heavy rainstorms. When they coincide, it is almost an experience of sheer delirium. Naturally I am not alluding to the kind that is brought on by heavy drinking, but that is obvious, isn't it?

By the beginning of '78, my little family and I were living on Central Park West on New York City's Upper West Side. We had twelve rooms, two of which overlooked the park. Others looked over less attractive spaces. Because half of the family was so "little" in physical size, the space seemed particularly large. I just moved out last year and it seemed small by that time - especially the closets.

I started work with Arif Mardin on Boys In The Trees. I met many of the musicians I would play with for years to come: Steve Gadd, Richard Tee, Will Lee, Hugh McCracken, Mike Mainieri, David Spinoza to mention just some of those spectacular NY chaps. Late in '77 I had collaborated with Michael McDonald on a song called You Belong To Me. Teddy Templeman had sent me a copy of Mike going "Doo be doo be doo" (which I always thought were relevant syllables for the Doobie Brothers and wondered if Frank Sinatra had borrowed them, or the other way around) to the melody of what is now 'You Belong To Me'. I wrote the words in the kind of short time that panic elicits. (Panic that somebody else will steal your job.) Teddy gave them to the group and they recorded it. Several months later I recorded it too and it became my first hit in a while. It was odd that during all those months Michael (McDonald) and I never spoke. It was all done through the middle man: the producer! Michael sent me a plant when the song went Top Ten. I went on tour. Something of an oddity. I took Sally and Ben with me. James was supportive - for all of the seven shows. Then I stopped touring. That for me, was a lot.

I believe that was the year of the No Nukes concert, but it may have been '78. A well documented anti nukes rally at Madison Square Garden in New York. I shared the stage with legends and occasionally joined in song with them. It was filmed for a movie.

I recorded Spy produced by Arif Mardin. It contained the song We're So Close which to this day is the saddest song I've ever written. It was about how close you can pretend to be when you know it's all coming undone. How you can use excuses to make it all look okay.