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Nearly 30 years after the album set new sales records, the world now has a definitive edition of "Tapestry", the Carole King record which caught the spirit of the early 70s. Under the supervision ofproducer Lou Adler, Sony have revamped the record for the 21st century - the first in a series of digital rereleases of King's catalogue.
"I first worked with Carole when I ran Aldon's West Coast office between 1961 and 1964," Adler explains. "We had 36 Top 10 hits in that period, so I got to know her very well." Adler's job involved 'selling' Gerry Goffin and Carole King's songs to prospective artists and' producers: ''We'd send out demos, which Carole recorded withjust her piano, bass and drums, and then she'd add counter-melodies by overdubbing the backing voices. It was hard to get the demos back: people loved them so much that they'd pretend they'd lost them, rather than have to give them up!"
While King continued her writing career through the mid-60s, Adler became a prime mover in the Los Angeles pop industry. As the boss of Dunhill Records, he was responsible for a string of surf and folk-rock hits; as a producer and talent scout, he introduced the
world to Barry McGuire, P.F. Sloan and, most significantly of all, the Mamas and Papas - whose leader, John Phillips, he describes as "an amazing writer, truly a poet".
Dunhill's peak was 1967 - the year when Adler and Phillips masterminded the Monterey Pop Festival. Within ayear, the Mamas and Papas had split, Dunhill had lost direction, and Adler was entering a new era
with his Ode Records label.
"That year, I had a call from Carole King," he recalls, "who said she was working with a band called City, and asked if I was interested in working with them. I didn't have any hesitation."
City marked a departure for King, whose marriage to Gerry Goffin was waning, and who was struggling to find a role in an era when most artists wrote their own material. Goffin/King were responsible for most of
City's album, "Now That Everything's Been Said", but the project was intended to push the entire band, not just their singer. "Carole wanted me to bury her voice behind the group on that álbum," Adler explains. "She
wasn't really ready to be a performer, and the group format allowed her to hide." |
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Soon afterwards, King moved from New York to California. "It was a change she needed for personal and professional reasons,' reckons Adler. "Laurel Canyon was a very different environment, and she really blossomed there. She was suddenly working with people like James Taylor and Joni Mitchell, and fitting in very well with them."
ARISTOCRATS
Taylor and Mitchell were the new aristocrats of California soft-rock, and their support - they appeared on King's records, and Carole supported James Taylor on the road - proved vital in establishing the veteran songwriter as a performer. "Before then, 1 don't know if the public really had any idea who she was," reckons Lou Adler. "She was well-known in the business, but hadn't really been exposed to the public, except in the small print of records. Even 'It Might As Well Rain Until September' had only been a
one-off, and I don't know whether people connected that person with the songwriter."
The first stage in creating King's new identity was "Writer" - produced not by Adler, who was off making the bizarre movie Brewster McCloud, but by ex-husbánd Gerry Goffin and John Fischbach. After it flopped, Adler decided to resume control for her next project: ''Tapestry".
''We used many of the same musicians", he says. "The difference was the chemistry. When we started work, I had two thoughts: to keep it simple, allowing her to use keyboards and vocal s the way she had on her 60s demos; and to tie her to the piano, to make it more intimate. That was so refreshing, after all the guitar theatrics of the late 60s."
With King's voice and piano dominating the mellow rock backings, plus cameos from James Taylor and Joni Mitchell, "Tapestry" became the quintessential early 70s singer- songwriter album - confessional, but never self-indulgent. Songs like "It's Too Late", "Where You Lead" and "You've Got A Friend" (also recorded around the same time by Taylor) became instant standards, helping King to reach both the Top 40 singles and albums market.
PEDIGREE
Crucial to the reception of "Tapestry" by the widest possible audience were King's reworkings of two songs from her own back catalogue: ''Will You Love Me Tomorrow", her breakthrough hit for the Shirelles, and "A Natural Woman", cut by Aretha Franklin in 1967. Adler takes the credit for this decision: "I reckoned that was a way of reintroducing her to the audience, of demonstrating that she had a real pedigree as the writer of all these amazing hit songs."
The Shirelles' hit underwent a radical transformation, from upbeat girl group dancer to melancholy baIlad. "That wasn't planned," Adler concedes, "it just evolved that way. It fitted the times, and it was perfect for Joni and James to add their voices."
"Tapestry" is such a self-contained and unified record that it's almost a shock to hear it in its expanded form, with two bonus cuts."Out In The Cold", so Adler reveals, was "one of only two songs left over from the sessions. It had more of the original girl group feel, but it just didn't fit on the album. Hearing it again now, I feel justified in leaving it off, which isn't in any way a criticism of the track."
The second addition is a striking solo performance of "Smackwater Jack" from a 1973 concert. ''That's there to spotlight her piano playing," Adler says. "That was always a feature ofher concerts, where she would sit alone at the piano for several songs. I always felt that was the highlight of the shows." Adler and King collaborated on several more albums, without ever matching the sales - or, some felt, the artistry - of''Tapestry''.
"It was such a magical album," Adler admits, "that it would have been hard to duplicate it, so we didn't try. We just carried on making Carole King albums. Artistically, she always stayed where 'Tapestry' was; it was just that the sales didn't always show it." |
