Queen King

Carole King tells a great story in her memoir, A Natural Woman, about hanging out with John Lennon in 1976 in New York.  The last time she'd seen him was 1965 when the Beatles were touring America, and he'd been very rude. She asked him about that and he admitted he'd been so intimidated by the songs she'd written with Gerry Goffin that he was afraid of saying something stupid, so just made a smart remark instead.

It's true, there were no better songwriters working in the pop world in the early 60s.  The Beatles sure knew it--they performed Goffin/King hits every night in their formative years.  The team wrote such titles as "Will You Love Me Tomorrow," "Chains," "The Loco-Motion," "One Fine Day" and "Up On The Roof." King tells how she came to be a hit songwriter and a lot more in her memoir.

It's that "a lot more" that I have to warn about.  The movie Grace Of My Heart is about a Carole King-like songwriter who as a young woman in the early 60s writes pop songs for other artists, loses her husband, moves to California in the mid-60s and then records her first solo album as the decade is ending.  It's a decent film, but I love the first half about the Brill Building era so much I was sorry to move on.  Carole King's career was still interesting after the British Invasion, but it's the early chapters I liked best.

She was born Carol Klein in 1942 to a Jewish family in New York.  A smart girl, she skipped a couple grades in school and seemed to skip ahead everywhere else, establishing a career when most are still wondering what to do with their life.  She grew up loving music, but was especially moved by the power of rock and roll and R&B. She started writing her own songs and by fifteen was composing and recording professionally.  At sixteen, she met Gerry Goffin, the boy of her dreams. He became her collaborator--she wasn't much at lyrics--and they married when she was seventeen.  By the time she was eighteen, she had a daughter and a #1 hit single.

From 1960 till the Beatles took over the charts and more performers started writing their own songs because it made them more "authentic," Goffin and King wrote hits like those listed above for numerous acts.  Carole created the arrangements and often played and sang on the tracks, while Gerry would be the official producer.  They had another daughter and moved out to the suburbs of New Jersey.

Post-British Invasion, they spent more time in California, where the action was (and where they'd eventually live), and continued writing hits, such as "Pleasant Valley Sunday" for the Monkees and "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" for Aretha Franklin (note the lyrics are by Goffin).

But the times were a-changin'.  Gerry not only wanted to write more sophisticated songs, he wanted to experiment with the new freedoms the 60s offered--particularly the drugs and sex. He also had mental issues to deal with.  In 1968, they split up.

She kept writing, sometimes with lyricist Toni Stern, sometimes doing her own words.  She was convinced by producer Lou Adler to become a recording artist, even though she didn't want to do promotion. In 1971, she released Tapestry, which became one of the biggest albums of all time.

Her sound now is more personal, less pop.  While I find a lot of stuff from the singer-songwriter era a bit dreary, the songs here, like "It's Too Late" and "I Feel The Earth Move," are good enough to overcome any objections.

She continued releasing albums through the 70s that were successful by any commercial standard except those created by Tapestry.  Her music is still pretty good, but I find it less and less interesting, and thus found the book less and less interesting.  And when you realize we're not even halfway over when she starts recording Tapestry (she's seventy now and was still in her twenties then), the book can become a bit of a slog at times.

Of course, it's not all music with Carole.  She wants to talk about her life, and the later chapters more often deal with things like her relationships with men (including a very abusive one) and moving out to the country--not really why I checked it out.

Still, Carole King comes across as a very sweet, thoughtful woman you'd like to know.  She's also supremely talented, but we all knew that before we picked up the book.