Little Girl Blue (38 page)

At Radio Cidade, Rio de Janeiro, November, 1981.
Sydney Junior/Brazilian Carpenters Friends Club

Karen's final public appearance came January 11, 1983, at CBS Television City, where she and Richard (fourth row, second and third from left) attended a photo shoot with past Grammy recipients. “Look at me, I've got an ass!” she exclaimed to Dionne Warwick.
The Recording Academy

The original Carpenter crypt at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Cypress, California.
Randy Schmidt

Promotional poster for the 1996 release of
Karen Carpenter
, the original, unreleased solo sessions.
A&M Records

The Carpenter Exhibit on display in the foyer of the Richard and Karen Carpenter Performing Arts Center on the campus of California State University at Long Beach.
Randy Schmidt

The Carpenters' star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, 6931 Hollywood Boulevard.
Randy Schmidt

Cynthia Gibb and Mitchell Anderson star in the 1989 biopic
The Karen Carpenter Story
.
CBS-TV

W
ITH GREAT
anticipation and a mix of emotions, Karen boarded a plane bound for New York on the morning of May 1, 1979. Production meetings commenced the following day with Phil Ramone asking, “Ideally, what would you like to do?”

“Well, I
love
Donna Summer,” Karen replied, explaining how Summer's latest single “Hot Stuff” was her current favorite. “I'd give
anything
if we could do a song like that!” This certainly surprised Ramone. Disregarding her brother's plea, she went on to explain that, in addition to singers like Aretha Franklin and Barbra Streisand, she loved just about anything of the disco genre.

Karen took up residence in a posh suite at the Plaza Hotel on Fifth Avenue. She was fascinated by the panoramic views of the New York skyline and the idea that there were butlers assigned to every floor, but within weeks the novelty of the revered Central Park address wore thin. “We were talking about stupid expenses and the hotel,” Ramone recalls. “I said to Karen, ‘Why would you want to do that? If we're going to work together, why don't you come live at my house? We've got plenty of room.'”

Ramone proceeded to move Karen into the master suite of the relaxing estate he shared with girlfriend Karen Ichiuji in Pound Ridge, a small town on the New York and Connecticut border. The quaint surroundings of this rural community were much like Hall Street from Karen's childhood. The two Karens quickly became close friends. Ichiuji was a singer herself who recorded under the name Karen Kamon and would later contribute the song “Manhunt” to the popular motion picture soundtrack for
Flashdance
. Phil called her K.K., but Karen preferred her own silly nickname of Itchie. Living together allowed producer and artist to discuss plans for the solo project around the clock. “She was a workaholic,” Ramone says. “That house was a very creative house for me, and it was for her, too.”

Karen and Phil set out to establish a common vision. Their hour-long commute from Pound Ridge to Manhattan's A&R Studios, located at 322 West Forty-Eighth, allowed the two to peruse demos for the project. “
The laughs and silliness
we shared on those trips forever made us friends,” Ramone recalled in his book,
Making Records: The Scenes Behind the Music
. “While we were driving, Karen would be the DJ, playing all the songs that had been submitted for her consideration. She'd sit with a legal pad, listen intently and rate them. ‘Should this be on the A list, or the B?' she'd ask.”

During these initial stages, Ramone extended an invitation to friend Rod Temperton to come to New York to write for Karen. The former keyboardist for the funk/disco band Heatwave accepted and moved into Ramone's guest house with only a keyboard and a set of headphones in tow. “All you had to do was make coffee and give him cigarettes,” says Itchie. “Our house became this big musical commune.” Temperton offered Karen several of his own compositions, including “Off the Wall” and “Rock with You,” but at that point the songs were just grooves at the piano, still in their most raw form. She declined both charts, saying they were too funky. According to Itchie, “Everyone else loved the idea,” but the project was young and lacked direction. Within a few months, Ramone introduced Temperton to Quincy Jones when the two attended a barbecue held at the home of the pop music titan, and the songs were soon pitched to Michael Jackson.

Karen visited Jackson in the studio during his 1979 solo sessions while he laid down tracks for “Get on the Floor,” a song he had cowritten with bassist Louis Johnson. “Phil wanted to show her what Michael's album was like,” recalls Itchie. “He was so upset that Karen didn't want to do any of Rod's material at first.” Ultimately she chose two Temperton originals for her project, “Lovelines” and “If We Try,” the latter being a particularly satisfying match for her smooth and flirtatious vocals. “Once Rod started arranging for her, they got along so well,” Itchie adds. “She loved the harmonies they created, and they were so right for each other musically. She felt comfortable working with him, and it was kind of like being with Richard in a sense, artistically.”

The two Temperton songs Karen passed on became huge hits for Michael Jackson on his
Off the Wall
solo album. Also featured on the album was his recording of “She's Out of My Life,” a song by Tom Bähler long rumored to have been written in response to the end of the composer's own brief relationship with Karen Carpenter in 1978. “Some believe that I had written that as a result of mine and Karen's breakup,” Bähler says. “The fact is, I had already written that song by the time Karen and I became romantic. That song was written more about Rhonda Rivera, who later married my friend John Davidson. Rhonda and I had been together for two years, and it was after we broke up that I started dating Karen.”

Over time, Karen developed a great sense of security as she recorded with Phil Ramone. It was not the same as working with her brother, but she felt comforted and protected by him in the studio. “
If he hadn't been
as gentle and sensitive as he is, I couldn't have done it,” Karen said. “He knows how close Richard and I are.” Aside from the early contract with Joe Osborn's Magic Lamp Records, Karen had worked exclusively for A&M Records and under Richard's guidance. “I was scared to death beforehand,” she said. “I basically knew one producer, one arranger, one studio, one record company, and that was it. It was a different surrounding, working with different people with different habits. I didn't know how they worked; they didn't know how I worked. I'm used to blinking an eye and an engineer knows what I
want or Richard knows what I'm thinking. . . . I'm used to being part of a duo. Richard's like a third arm to me.”

For Karen's sessions, Ramone recruited members of Billy Joel's band. At the time the men were in the middle of recording
Glass Houses
, their fourth album together with Joel and one that produced his first #1 single, “It's Still Rock and Roll to Me.” Unlike many of the polished studio musicians Karen was accustomed to working with in Los Angeles, this band was raw—likened to a garage band—and chosen by Ramone for their boundless energy. “
Was Billy's group perfect
?” Ramone wrote in 2007. “No—but that's what I loved. They were a real band that worked together night after night, playing his music with passion.”

At the age of seventeen, drummer Liberty DeVitto and fellow Long Island teens Russell Javors and Doug Stegmeyer formed the band Topper, which eventually evolved to become Billy Joel's band. “Phil thought we'd be an interesting core group of musicians to work with her because of the relationship we had with him and Billy as an artist,” recalls Russell Javors. “We were the kinds of musicians that would push the envelope when we worked with an artist, too. I'm sure it was a different kind of atmosphere than Karen was used to working in. We were very vocal about what we thought and what we did. It was a bunch of guys rather than a group of session musicians.”