The Queen Is A King

Carole King' s 'Rhymes And Reasons"

Keeps Her On The Throne

Inside one of the sprawling buildings on the studio lot that houses A & M Records' headquarters, one searches diligently for Carole King's studio cubicle, where Rhymes and Reasons, her fQurth release on Ode Records, is being recorded, Wading through a panorama of c1ass and camp A & M's musical moguls reveal themselves before your very eyes. In the far comer of Studio C; Graham (Willy) Nash relaxes after touching up Joni Mitchell’s new LP, For The Roses, with a bit of irnprornptu harmonica work. Former Derek and the Dominos drummer, Jim Gordon and his girlfriend, Rene Armand, drift peacefully out of a rehearsal session for Rene's new LP, Rain Book. While Linda Ronstadt bounces down the hallway, strains of Hoyt Axton (author of Three Dog Nighes "Joy To The World" and "I've Never Been To Spain") echo from across the corridor, where he is polishing up his vocal chords with a slug of 69-cent Ripple wine as Bob Dylan’s producer, Bob Johnston, fiddles with the control knobs. Bare-footed Joni Mitchell, in cut-off jeans and multi-colored scarf, manages to escape unnoticed and sneaks out the door; no such luck for James Taylor, who exchanges social amenities with Sandy, the well-endow- ed blond receptionist.

And baby makes three: Above the din and the c1atter, a frail, pug-nosed girl ignores the background and peacefully nurses her baby while taking a break from recording her own album, Rhymes ande Reasons. The girl, of course, is Carole King, hard at work on what wiII be her fourth commercial venture since she stopped writing other people's hit records and started pening her own, While Lou Adler takes turns holding the baby in his lap, the recording resumes, with Carole' s huband, Charles Larkey, playing bass,
Harvey Mason on drums (this marks his first appearance on Carole's albums) Bobby Hall on percussion, and a remarkable string section led by Norman Kerbin and David Campbell, two young c1assical musicians who, through commercial exposure on the Tapestry LP, have gotten into arranging. Danny Kortchmar, Jo Mama veteran and Carole's oId buddy since pre-James Taylor days, accents the album's vitality with his electric guitar. Lou Adler fiddles impatiently with the control knobs, trying to erase some baby noises from the finished product. "She was on the outtakes," he recaIls, "but we didn’t want them." The picture of Carole nursing her infant strikes a familiar note to Adler, who has known Carole since 1961.

Recalling the impression he réceíved of Carole when he first saw her in the middle of an office at 1650 Broadway in New York, he says, "There was a playpen, and there was this little baby, and coming out of the room to check on her baby was Carole, who was nineteen or so at the time; then she would go back in and write, and come out a few minutes later to check. And now it's ten years later, and she's still checking babies and making records. Her production has never ceased!"

On the musical assembly line: But Carole wasn't aIways.in businessfor herself. Back in the early Sixtiesthe Brooklyn college girl, along with husband Gerry Goffin, were but one songwriting team on the musical assembly line at the Olden Music Building. The other fíve piano-equipped cubicIes housed the likes of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, and Howie Greenfield and Neil Sedaka. With one ear on the AM radio and one eye on the singjes charts, the teams worked under intense pressure to produce top single hits with accuracy and speed. Not the best of conditions under which to work, but they didn't impede Carole's performance.

From 1961 to 1964, she cranked out hits like "WiII You Love Me Tomorrow?," "Go Away Little Girl," The Animals' "Don't Bring Me Down," Bobby Vee's "Take Good Care Of My Baby," "Chains," "Don't Say Nothing Bad About My Baby," "One Fine Day," "The Locomotion," and the West Side Story of "On The Roof," to name but a few.

But the limitations of the AM sound took their toIl on Carole in 1964, when the Beatles came on the scene. "It was difficult to adjust," remembers Carole, "because these groups provided their own material. I never wanted to be an artist, but after awhile it becarne the most efficient way of getting songs to people." 

Solo debut: By 1968, Carole was ready to give it a go as a recording artist. She had had sorne mild success with “It Might As WelI Rain Until Septernber," her own composition, and had split from her husband, Gerry Goffin. She left for Los Angeles to join musician-friends Danny (Kootch) Kortchmar, Charles Larkey (now her husband) and Jim Gordon to form a group called The City, but the timing was evidently wrong for a folk oriented group. The City LP, produced byAdler, was never released and today remains a collectors item. The groupitself languished and split in different directions: the musicians added some more friends and became Jo Mama; and Carole became a solo artist.

Her first solo LP, Writer, was an over-produced, experimental solo ef fort ; yet behind the heavily supplied orchestration, Carole's hauntíng Iyrics shone through. "She was discouraged after Writer," says Adler. "She never showed it, but she was." The LP sold only about 6,000 copies at the time, and one year later Carole returned to the studio to make a masterpiece of an album that would crystallize her solo status as the top female performer in the world.

Tapestry surprised both producer Adler and Carole, fulfilling their wildest hopes. "When an album seIls as much as Tapestry" says Lou, "you really don't know what did it. It's hard to figure out when they sell that much." Tapestry, claims Adler, came close to being the best selling album in history. "It was a totalIy different album," he says. "For one, it was underproduced,and that's what was necessary with her." The constant themes of Tapestry underlined friendship, loneliness and the sorrow of relationships gone sour in haunting numbers like "You've Got A Friend," and "So Far Away." These would prove repetitive themes in her third solo LP, Music, which Adler cIaims is not an extension of Tapestry." The album in retrospect was sornething you got out after you had a big album. The group just got off on playing." Unlike Rhymes and Reasons, Adler believes Music's long instrumentals took away from Carole's voice. "If you turned on the radio, you wouldn't have recognized Music's instrumentals as being from a Carole King album. With Rhymes and Reasons, you always know it's a King record."

She makes RHYMES click: Carole King, at work, is a total musician. During the recording of Rhymes and Reasons, Adler explained, "She was the best. She's fast and she doesn't waste time. Her albums take three to four weeks. On this new LP, she came in with about eighteen songs and we went over them and decided which to record." This kind of total preparedness, makes Carole both a captivating vocal personality and a true professional. "You never question her honesty, she never lets you down," says Adler. "She has that way of saying things that a lot of other people want to say."

On Rhymes and Reasons as on Tapestry, she once again says what must be said for the sorrowful and the lonely, sketching sentimental daydream pictures of friendships and lost loves that wilI capture the soul of each listener.Most of the cuts, co-written by Carole and Toni Stern (who wrote the lyrics for "It's Too Late") express that sense of personal loss, that melancholy for good times past:

So come down. easy
Let it come down slow
l've been alone so long

That I [ust don't know what to do
And I don't want to lose you

"Come Down Easy"
(Carole King and Toni Stern)

Yet others express the hopeful optimism of, better things to come, and a general optimistic hope for rnan:

But I think I saw a brand new light

Coming over the horizon
Brighter than all the others
And it says all men are brothers

under the skin ...

"Peace In The Valley"
(Carole King and Toni Stern)

 A warm blanket to cuddle up with:

Rhymes and Reasons contains songs that you'lI whistle in the shower, hum in the park, and literally take to heart. It's clean sunshine music, vibrant airy sounds-like the blue of the sky and the fluffy lightness of the clouds. Some songs have the crisp feel of a brand new dollar bill. It's a warm blanket of sound. And Carole's happy with her latest LP. "She's really happy now," says Adler. "She got a new baby, and she's with a nice guy." Walking out of a local 'Hollywood bank near the A & M studios, a short, pug-nosed girl, dressed in a patch- worked granny dress and carrying a three month old baby, goes to the teller booth. The teller calls her by her first name, she makes her withdrawal, then turns to enter her Willies Jeep to return to her modest Laurel Canyon home. An anxious photographer recognízes Carole and rushes to capture her on film. She politely asks him not to take any photos. "Take a picture of the sky and the clouds," she whispers. "It'll do you good."