B005S8O7YE EBOK (24 page)

• Having just finished a take, I’m in the dimly lit studio waiting for Lou to tell me what he thought of my performance.
  

I see Lou talking to Hank, but I can’t hear them through the triple glass window. The talkback button, controlled by Lou, is my lifeline.

• Me sitting on a high wooden bench in Studio B surrounded by a Hammond organ, a couple of electric keyboards, assorted microphones and cables, and the omnipresent candles and incense.
  

The dim light makes it difficult for me to see the keyboard controls as I search for the right sound to create a dark, spacious mood for the recording of
“Tapestry.”

• Me fussing with my headphones to get them in the correct position so I can hear what Lou is hearing in the control room and also hear live in the room the string quartet playing the arrangement I wrote the night before.
  

As I prepare to conduct the quartet I worry that I won’t do it right, but the musicians encourage me to conduct with whatever movement comes naturally. “Don’t worry,” they say. “We’ll do the rest.” And they do.

• Lou, Hank, assistant engineer Norm Kinney, the musicians, and me crowded in the control room listening to the take that Hank has just recorded with such efficiency that not one creative moment was lost. I have no idea that Hank is building a sound that will endure through many decades.
  

Playback for a band can sometimes be fraught with “more me” syndrome, with each player wanting to hear more of his or her part. Lou wisely keeps my vocal down for the band playback so they can enjoy hearing themselves way up in the mix, but everyone knows that the final mix will have a more realistic balance, i.e., more
me
.

• Charlie in the studio punching in a bass note.
  

The technology to move a note up or down on a computer screen has yet to be invented, but with Sel-Sync it takes less than a minute to punch in the right note. A wry-smile truth among
bass players is that the best take is invariably the one with the bass mistake. If the band achieves a good performance without a bass mistake, we know we haven’t peaked yet.

• Lou quietly making suggestions, keeping the process going, never allowing anything to compromise the integrity of a song or the relatively simple presentation that will become a hallmark of my work.
  

• My daughters and their friends flowing in and out of our sessions in jeans or long dresses with their hair pulled up in flowered headbands.
  

The only time Louise and Sherry weren’t allowed in the studio was when the
RECORD
light was on. Otherwise they and their friends wandered in and out at will. Sometimes, when I had to work at night, Sherry or Louise, at home with Willa Mae, would call to ask if they could pleeeeeease do their homework in the morning.

“No,” I’d say. “You need to do it tonight!”

Other times—inconsistent mom that I was—I’d say, “All right. Just don’t forget to set your alarm!”

Sometimes the girls needed me to settle a dispute about who left whose sweater crumpled in a ball at the bottom of their closet.

“No, Mom, it can’t wait. We need you to deal with this now!”

“I don’t care whose sweater it is,” I said, channeling King Solomon. “You pick it up, your sister can hang it up, and then both of you go finish your homework!”

I may have been a professional songwriter and recording artist in the hallowed halls of A&M Studios, but to my daughters I was the homework police.

O
ne of my greatest joys as a songwriter has always been hearing different interpretations of a song. I’ve mentioned Gerry’s and my original demo of “Natural Woman” starting out one way, the version Aretha released being considerably different, and my version on
Tapestry
representing a third way. My live performance of “Natural Woman” with a full band is unlike either of my earlier versions. Since Aretha recorded what I consider the definitive version, “Natural Woman” has been recorded by many great artists, among them Céline Dion, Mary J. Blige, and (with a small but important lyric adjustment) James Ingram, Rod Stewart, and Bobby Womack.

To develop such interpretations, an artist typically works with a producer. Some producers are more effective than others. Lou Adler was one of the most effective in the business. Among his many attributes, for me the most valuable was his ability to give his artists a safe space in which to be creative. Lou had ideas of his own, but he saw himself mostly as a facilitator. Like all the great sidemen, he knew when not to play. In addition to offering his own ideas when they were needed, Lou listened carefully to
my suggestions, and if they couldn’t be implemented at the time, he would remember and find a way to incorporate them. It’s difficult for me to give an example because our respective ideas are so thoroughly integrated into the whole album. And even as he was minutely attentive to every detail, he never lost sight of the big picture. For Lou that meant preserving the soul and integrity of the music while coordinating the work of the artist, band, engineers, graphic artists, photographers, and business people to create a package that would be commercially successful. In 1970, when many producers and recording artists purported to disdain commercial success, the kid from Boyle Heights never lost sight of it.

Our strengths were complementary. Where I lacked patience, Lou persevered through extreme tedium and repetition. He could listen to the same thing over and over with intense concentration on infinitesimal but important details. Often Lou and Hank handled the preliminary stages of mixing and then had me come in with fresh ears. After they had spent hours experimenting with where to put the cymbals and percussion in the stereo pan in relation to Danny’s rhythm guitar and my piano, I’d come in and say, “Try bringing the reverb down on my lead vocal at the beginning of the first verse,” and then other things would fall into place. It was a team effort in which each of us contributed valuable ideas.

It was during the mixing of
Tapestry
that I discovered a listening perspective that I called the “other room listen.” I asked Hank to play an almost final mix a few times with the door open while I went out to the lounge, got a cup of tea, skimmed through a magazine, and exchanged pleasantries with one of the studio employees on her way to the ladies’ room. Hearing the mix with only partial concentration allowed my subconscious mind to lead me directly to any necessary corrections. It might be a too-soft piano fill, a too-loud snare drum, or the lead vocal out of balance with the background vocals. But when a mix was right, the “other room listen” confirmed it.

Another system of checks and balances involved listening on a variety of speakers. Mostly we listened through the massive Altecs that dominated the corners of the control room with a bass level that foreshadowed the woofers on wheels that would emerge later in the twentieth century. As well as listening through the Altecs, Lou often listened through headphones so he could hear the discrete left, right, and center separation more clearly. Years later, when I asked Lou why he used the headphones so much, he said, “I always liked hearing your voice and piano in the middle of the top of my head.” As we got closer to a final mix we switched alternately to smaller speakers such as the Auratones
^*
perched on the bridge of the console or the tinny, monaural car radio speaker directly in front of us that replicated the conditions under which most people would be listening. If a mix sounded good through all four systems, we took it to the next level: the “overnight listen” in which we brought acetates home, played them on our respective stereos, and got further input from friends and family members.

Lou came up with the sequence of the tracks on
Tapestry
. On analog vinyl albums and cassette tapes there was an interval approximately midway through, during which the listener had to turn the product over. Until CDs made that interval obsolete, an album sequence had to take that pause into account. Knowing that pacing could make or break an album, I suggested several different orders for Lou to try, but we always kept coming back to his sequence. Now I can’t imagine it any other way.

There was an actual tapestry. Inside the original double album cover is an image of the needlepoint I worked on when I wasn’t
playing or singing. You can see where I stitched the words “thank you” before I gave it to Lou.

People often preface their
Tapestry
story with, “You’ve probably heard this story a million times.” But each individual account of how
Tapestry
affected someone’s life is important to me because it’s important to that person. While we were recording the album I wasn’t thinking about all the people who might be affected by it, nor was I thinking about the level of success it might attain. I just wanted to get the songs on tape, enjoy the process with friends and fellow musicians, and maybe get some radio play. Hearing years later from people who grew up in countries around the world about how much the album had meant to them was something I couldn’t have imagined. Whatever the reason, I’m thankful that I was given this uncommon opportunity to create something that touched so many people in a positive way.

Tapestry
’s success was undoubtedly facilitated by its release at a time in twentieth-century cultural history when people were beginning to turn inward to explore the emotions about which other songwriters and I were writing. The contemporaneous success of
Tapestry
,
Sweet Baby James
, Joni Mitchell’s
Blue
, and other great albums by singer-songwriters who performed their own songs seems to bear that out. Reviewers dubbed us “singer-songwriters.” In an earlier century we would have been called troubadours.

I
n the early 1970s, a booking at Doug Weston’s Troubadour in West Hollywood could put an artist on a fast track to fame. That was the case with many singer-songwriters, including Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell, and Elton John. Doug’s club had a reputation for being an encouraging place both to be and see a new artist. Audience members who had enjoyed a performer’s early appearances there took even greater pleasure in going back to see that performer at the Troubadour, knowing that she or he was drawing huge crowds in much larger venues. I didn’t know until later that Doug’s contracts required performers to come back and play the club periodically for very little money no matter how successful they became. My first appearance at the Troubadour was as an audience member.

When I learned that James Taylor was scheduled to headline at the club for a week starting November 24, 1970, I was just thinking about how much fun it would be to see my friend play there when Peter Asher rang to ask if I was available to play those dates as a member of James’s band.

I was.

Peter then called Lou to enlist his help in persuading me to open for James as an artist in my own right. With
Tapestry
about to be released, Lou was happy to make that call. He was less happy, though not surprised, when I told him I wasn’t ready to do an entire set on my own, and I definitely wasn’t ready to do it at the hottest club in town.

“You’re already going to be playing with James,” Lou said. “All you have to do is sing your own songs just as if you were playing for friends in your living room.”

“It’s not the same.”

“Remember when you told me how much you enjoyed performing ‘Up on the Roof’ in James’s set?”

“Ye-es,” I said, wishing I hadn’t told him that. “But that was just one song in someone else’s show. It’s not the same as performing a whole set.”

“Would you feel more comfortable if Charlie played string bass with you on some of the songs?”

“Maybe.”

“What if we brought in the rest of the string quartet?”

He was referring to violinist Barry Socher, violist David Campbell,
^*
and cellist Terry King.

It
would
be a beautiful presentation.

“Okay. I’ll do it.”

Charlie and I rehearsed, the quartet and I rehearsed, and I rehearsed alone until I felt as prepared as I would ever be. I made a long burgundy-colored velvet dress for opening night. My hair would be done by—no one. It was my hair. I wouldn’t require much makeup either. I was a natural woman in life, and that’s who I’d be at the Troubadour.

On opening night there was a line around the block. This was not unexpected. James’s show was reportedly one of the best around. More than two-thirds of the crowd were record industry people and friends of James. The rest were fans. There was overlap in that many industry people were James’s friends, fans, or both. When the show finally started, it was well beyond fashionably late. Every table was filled to capacity, with barely enough room for the waitresses in their skimpy outfits to sidle past each other with their trays held high above their heads to deliver the overpriced drinks that were the lifeblood of Doug Weston’s income stream.

As the opening act, I wouldn’t have a chance to ease into any kind of comfort zone. There would be no pre-loved introduction. The lights would go down and then I would be
out there
, just me and a piano and three hundred people expecting me to be really good. Charlie and the quartet would join me later in the set.

Looking down from the dressing room upstairs, I could see the stage. It was little more than a platform, roughly twelve by six feet, which stood two and a half feet above the audience. I checked my hair in the mirror. It was still my hair. I double-checked my makeup, now even more natural because my blush and lipstick had faded. I began whispering to myself: “… friends in my living room… friends in my living room…”

Then it was time. The lights dimmed to half and I walked down the stairs. From the sound and light booth, a disembodied voice intoned, “Ladies and gentlemen… Carole King!” and the house went to black except for the bar and the stage. I walked onstage and bowed to acknowledge the audience, then I walked over to the piano, sat on the bench, and looked down to make sure that a glass of water had been placed next to the upstage leg of my piano. (It had.)