Beautiful

Beautiful

Several years ago, Kim took me to see Beautiful, the Broadway show about the music, life and times of Carole King (a.k.a. Carol Joan Klein). The other night, Kim bought tickets to see a production of the same show at something called the Moonlight Amphitheater in nearby Vista. To begin with, I must say that the Moonlight is a lovely venue that we are very lucky to have so nearby. It’s a great spot to spend a summer evening and the quality of the production was every bit as good as the one we saw on Broadway. The actor/singers were exceptional and the staging lacked for nothing.

Just as when I saw the show the first time ten years ago, I was taken aback by how many songs Carole King wrote with her then husband, Gerry Goffin, long before we all came to know her as a singer in the early 1970s. She was one of those denizens of the famous Brill Building at 49th and Broadway, who wrote songs for other singing acts. I just wrote about Woody Allen, and he too had a whole career as a writer of comedy for other comedians (Gary Moore and Sid Caesar) long before he went in front of the camera.

King teamed up with Goffin, who wrote the lyrics to go with her music, and they produced a surprising number of hits. Her first one was Take Good Care of My Baby, sung by Bobby Vee in 1961. They followed that with Will You Love Me Tomorrow sung by The Shirelles. Yet another hit was Loco-Motion sung by Dee Dee Sharp, who had been their babysitter prior to her success.

While King & Goffin were cranking out hits, their neighbors in the Brill were Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, who had their own spate of hits like Blame It On The Bossa Nova, On Broadway, Walkin’ In The Rain, You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling, You’re My Soul and Inspiration, and many others too numerous to list. The two couples worked and played together, but mostly, they competed with one another for hits.

King & Goffin wrote Go Away Little Girl sung by Steve Lawrence and then Donny Osmond, a theme also picked up and exploited by Gary Puckett in Young Girl. Another great they wrote, Up On The Roof, sung by The Drifters was inspired by Goffin’s upbringing in Brooklyn when he would go to the rooftop to clear his head. It also became a symbol of his growing bouts of infidelity and personal angst. They also wrote some more teeny bopper hits like I’m Into Something Good by Herman’s Hermits. They wrote for The Animals a trio of hits; We Gotta Get Outta This Place, It’s My Life and Don’t Bring Me Down. None was as big a hit for them as their House of The Rising Sun, but they were still hits nonetheless.

King & Goffin were not thrilled to be asked to write songs for a new TV sitcom called The Monkeys, but they did so anyway a dozen times over with such great hits as Pleasant Valley Sunday. Some would suggest that the Monkees wouldn’t be the legends that they are without King & Goffin.

By the time the 60’s ended, so did Carole King’s marriage to Goffin. As she moved her act from New York to Los Angeles, she also decided to try her hand at making her own album and singing her own songs. This is the Carole King that most of us know the best. It put her in the pantheon of great musicians and singers like Joni Mitchell and James Taylor. In fact, Taylor played guitar on her first solo album Writer, which she made in 1970. She even included Up On The Roof on that album, sort of for old times sake. But it was her second album, Tapestry, which really had the impact. Almost every song on that album was a memorable hit to people of my generation. They were: I Feel The Earth Move, So Far Away, It’s Too Late, Home Again, Beautiful (the inspiration for the name of her musical), Way Over Yonder, You’ve Got a Friend, Where You Lead, Will You Love Me Tomorrow, Smackwater Jack, Tapestry and You Make Me Feel Like. a Natural Woman. These songs have a heavy tone about them in keeping with where she was in her divorced and displaced life in L.A.. And yet, perhaps given that this was released just when I went off to college and was popular throughout, I know almost every word of every song. It is the album that most of us define Carole King by. In fact, it won four Grammys and was named Album of the Year and had the Song of the Year (You’ve Got a Friend). It ranks #36 on Rolling Stone’s Greatest Albums of All Time.

Carole King has continues to release albums and write songs. Some standouts include You Light Up My Life, Now and Forever (from the movie A League of Their Own) and Anyone At All (from the movie, You’ve Got Mail). She has woven her music into every art form of my generation it seems. She now lives in Idaho and has collected as many awards and accolades as a musician of her era can. She occasionally plays with James Taylor and Anne Murray among many lesser known, but equally talented musicians. She has been covered by many other musicians ranging from Linda Ronstadt and Barbra Streisand to Helen Reddy and Kylie Minogue. If you are ever asked “who wrote this?” about some old familiar song, you have about a 50/50 chance of being right if you say Carole King.

We sat under the shooting stars of the Perseid Meteor Shower at the Moonlight Amphitheater for almost three hours listening to one song after another in the combined tapestry of King/Goffin, Mann/Weil and solo Carole King hits. It was one of those rare times when the comfort (or lack thereof) of the theater seats didn’t mean a damn thing to us. We all just wallowed in the music that helped define our era. When I am asked about my favorite artists my go-to answer is Billy Joel, Elton John, Meatloaf (yes, I love his music and especially his lyrics), and The Four Seasons. I think I am going to have to add Carole King to that list. It seems only fair since I am finding myself humming all her songs several days after seeing her biographical show…for the second time. What can I say, it was beautiful.