Album of the Day — June 9
Carole King — Tapestry
Carole King — Tapestry
09.June.2020
Carole King
Tapestry
1971
An artist is rarely part of one music movement … rarer is to be part of two … and rarer still is creating a genre-defining album in the later.
But then, not every artist is Carole King.
PART ONE — BRILL BUILDING
Carole King and her then-husband, Gerry Goffin, were two of the bevy of writers installed at the famed Brill Building in the early ’60s. With writers like Burt Bacharach and Hal David and Neil Diamond, they churned out hit after hit.
They wrote so many hits that in 1963 John Lennon quipped that he and Paul McCartney “wanted to be the Goffin-King of England.”
Goffin-King songs defined a large chunk of the ’60s and included:
“The Loco-Motion” (hits for — Little Eva, Grand Funk Railroad, and Kylie Minogue)
“One Fine Day” (the Chiffons)
“Up On the Roof” (hits for the Drifters and later James Taylor)
“(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” (Aretha Franklin)
“Pleasant Valley Sunday” (the Monkees)
Among so many others.
King’s divorce from Gerry Coffin coincided with the shift in the music business from the Henry Ford method of writing songs employed in the Brill Building to something more personal & intimate. Sensing, and needing, a change, she moved west to California.
PART TWO — LAUREL CANYON
In 1968, Laurel Canyon was the growing Mecca of singer/songwriters. Residents Crosby, Stills and Nash were forming, Joni Mitchell had just released Song to a Seagull and was dating Graham Nash, The Beach Boys genius Brian Wilson lived there, Mickey Dolenz and Peter Tork of The Monkees, Frank Zappa, Jackson Browne, Jim Morrison, et al.
By the time King arrived, the scene was rapidly ascending and picked up more steam when Mitchell gave it a shout out on her third album Ladies of the Canyon, pre-dating Tapestry by 11 months.
Arguably, Tapestry would be the Laurel Canyon sound at its apogee and come to define the sound of the ‘70s.
When King arrived in California she started a band called The Scene and recorded one album but her reluctance to perform made the album dead on arrival. She then recorded her first solo album, Writer, in 1970 with friend James Taylor playing guitar and providing background vocals.
Writer peaked at #84 on the Billboard Top 200 but failed to do much else.
CAROLE KING DIGS DEEP
The scars of a failed relationship can last a lifetime. And Tapestry opens with a three-song cycle that has the arc of any failed relationship.
The opening piano intro to “I Feel the Earth Move” is one of the most recognizable in music and it beats in the same way your heart does when you first meet someone who you makes your stomach drop and heart skip a beat.
If you’ve ever heard the song (or been in love), as you read the next four lines, you’ll hear the beat:
I feel the earth move under my feet
I feel the sky tumbling down
I feel my heart start to tremble
Whenever you’re around
But then for whatever reason work, school, travel, physical or emotional distance, your lover is no longer next to you … “So Far Away” details the ache of the distance, however, its manifested:
So far away
Doesn’t anybody stay in one place anymore
It would be so fine to see your face at my door
Doesn’t help to know you’re just time away
Long ago I reached for you and there you stood
Holding you again could only do me good
Oh, how I wish I could
But you’re so far away
Then, as is often the case, “So Far Away” leads into “It’s Too Late” & seals the fate of the relationship:
Stayed in bed all mornin’ just to pass the time
There’s somethin’ wrong here, there can be no denyin’
One of us is changin’, or maybe we’ve just stopped tryin’
And it’s too late, baby now, it’s too late
Though we really did try to make it
Somethin’ inside has died, and I can’t hide
And I just can’t fake it, oh, no, no
If you’ve been in love and broken up, then you know this arc.
In an interview with Mojo Magazine, Tori Amos said: “Her songs are like stories or sonic movies. You want to walk into them. With ‘I Feel the Earth Move’ or ‘It’s Too Late’, you’re right there.”
The songs on Tapestry drop the esotericism of love and reveal the universality of emotions that accompany the feeling for us all.
But love isn’t all doom and gloom on Tapestry.
On “Beautiful” King lets you know that once all that heartache is over, you can’t give up on love. Just keep moving and you’re gonna be just fine … just keep moving … but like most things, it’s on you:
I have often asked myself the reason for sadness
In a world where tears are just a lullaby
If there’s any answer, maybe love can end the madness
Maybe not, oh, but we can only try
You’ve got to get up every morning
With a smile in your face
And show the world all the love in your heart
Then people gonna treat you better
You’re gonna find, yes you will
That you’re beautiful
You’re beautiful
You’re beautiful as you feel
In recording Tapestry, King not only wrote new songs but reached into her back pocket to reinterpret some of her earlier compositions. One of those songs was “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” a #1 hit for The Shirelles in 1960.
The difference between King’s version and The Shirelles is the difference between love and loss, naivete and knowledge.
The Shirelles sing with a sense of hope that only first love can bring. That moment when two people give the most valuable thing, the only thing, they have to offer — their bodies.
Carole King’s version lacks the buoyancy of the original. King’s voice is less that sense of excitement of innocence and more the acceptance of knowledge. Still hopeful, but knowing the potential of what could lay ahead.
King sings “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” from the perspective a of a woman that belies the moment.
Having the ability to make yourself vulnerable to those experiences of love and loss is not something everyone is willing to do. Perhaps they’ve done it and been burned, who can say? Thankfully, we have eternal optimists (or pessimists, the perspective I suppose) in artists like Carole King.
Revealing her vulnerability, and ability to express that across the emotional spectrum so adroitly as King does here on Tapestry would set the template for singer/songwriters for … well, it’s still the template people use today.
No Carole King … no Taylor Swift. Might it have been someone else? Maybe. It wasn’t. It was Carole King … and its what makes Tapestry one of the musical masterpieces of the 20th century.
To date, Tapestry has sold over 25 million copies worldwide and it remained on the Billboard charts for 313 weeks — second only to Pink Floyd’s 724 weeks with The Dark Side of the Moon.
In only its second year, 2003, the National Recording Registry determined that Tapestry was “culturally, historically, or aesthetically important” and added to the Library of Congress for preservation.
Recording Tapestry ran concurrently with friend James Taylor’s Mud Slide Slim. So not only did they share musicians like guitarist Danny Kortchmar and drummer Russ Kunkel, but both albums include “You’ve Got a Friend.”
Taylor had a #1 hit with it, King did not. Carole King also covered her own “(You Make Me Feel )Like a Natural Woman” which was a top ten hit for Aretha Franklin in 1967 … it was not a top ten hit for Carole King in 1971. Are her versions “less than” the others? No. They’re not.
Tapestry was universally applauded upon its release:
Village Voice critic Robert Christgau said that her voice, free of “technical decorum”, would liberate female singers (and it did, making the world a better place). In a Newsday article from 1972, celebrating sales of five million copies of Tapestry, he said: “Such statistics are so overwhelming that they seem to transform a mere record into some sort of ineluctable cultural presence, and in a sense they do.”
Future Bruce Springsteen manager, but then Rolling Stone rock critic Jon Landau said in his review that King was one of the most creative music figures and Tapestry was an album “surpassing personal-intimacy and musical accomplishment.”
Tapestry — noun: a piece of thick textile fabric with pictures or designs formed by weaving colored weft threads or by embroidering on canvas, used as a wall hanging or furniture covering.
That’s what Tapestry is. It’s a sonic representation of this thing we call “life” and it weaves together songs about all the things that make a life full: falling in love, out of love, friendship, experiences, characters, but mostly love … the thematic substratum that would define the “California Sound” of the ’70s.
Throughout her career, Carole King has been one of the most feminine voices in music. But make no mistake, King was no pushover or wallflower. In a masculine industry, King set a songwriting standard the transcended gender and created a career that is unparalleled, regardless of gender.
Tapestry wasn’t just an album, it was a clarion call that everyone is vulnerable in love and that you can fall in and out love and be vulnerable without losing your identity.
For all the hurt that can accompany love and heartache, Tapestry tells us all that it’s going to OK … eventually.
That’s her cat, Telemachus, at her feet on the cover.