You've Got a Friend: The Carole King Story

Welcome to the White House, everybody.

Tonight, it is my great pleasure

to present America's highest award for popular music

to a living legend, Carole King.

She's passionate. As a musician, she's brilliant.

As a songwriter, she's brilliant

and intellectually, she's right at the top.

I think she's one of the greatest American songwriters of our time.

And her voice touches us because it's honest.

By the age of four, Carole was already mastering the piano.

By 15, she'd already conducted her first orchestra.

By 17, she'd already written her first number-one hit,

Will You Love Me Tomorrow, with Gerry Goffin.

So at this point, all of you are feeling like underachievers, I understand.

LAUGHTER

She really has her finger on the pulse of, er...of human emotions.

And she can paint them in a song.

And then, in 1971 came the biggest break of all

when she showed the world that

she couldn't just write hit songs, she could sing them, too.

If Carole had never written a song after that era,

she would still be a legend.

If Tapestry had never happened,

she'd be one of the most important people in rock'n'roll history.

So the fact that she pulled off that whole other career, you know,

er...is just mindboggling.

Nobody else has done what she's done.

Her album, Tapestry, struck a chord with a whole new legion of fans.

Carole has written more than 400 compositions

that have been recorded by over 1,000 artists,

resulting in over 100 hits.

As Carole tells it, the secret to her success is that,

"I try to get out of the way

"and let the process be guided by whatever is driving me."

That's what makes her songs so personal

and so powerful. So enduring.

She has a quality of...

sympathy and..and...normalcy,

but in fact, it's accompanied by also a quality of genius.

Carole King.

RAPTUROUS APPLAUSE

# You've got to get up every morning

# With a smile on your face

# And show the world all the love in your heart

# Then people going to treat you better

# You're going to find, yes, you will

# That you're beautiful as you feel. #

APPLAUSE

My mother had a piano, you know, right from before I was born.

And so I was able to play it

and work on it by ear and write little ditties.

But my mother also had been trained in piano,

so she trained me so I knew how to read music, as well.

I know some music theory.

My mother and father both were supportive and were can-do people.

I just started writing little tunes

and then when rock'n'roll was being born with Alan Freed,

I was hearing the music and thinking, "I could do that!"

Every high school in Brooklyn during the '50s had a rock'n'roll group.

They were all over the place. They were proliferating.

Danny and the Juniors were singing in the Bronx

and Neil Sedaka at that time with The Tokens,

was singing out of Lincoln High School.

Well, there must have been something in the water

but a lot of people have achieved fame or notoriety

as songwriters and singers and recording artists.

Barbra Streisand grew up in Brooklyn around the same time.

Neil Diamond, Neil Sedaka,

though I didn't know any of them except Neil Sedaka.

We started the Cosines,

which I believe she got the idea for in junior high school.

The name of the quartet, it was so imaginative, the Cosines.

And we were taking trigonometry at the time.

We performed at school dances and parties.

Anywhere we kind of had a chance

or, you know, school shows.

She was the singer, she was the writer,

she was the piano player for the group.

And she wanted this.

She wanted this as a career.

In those days, you could be a kid, as Carole was,

16 years old, coming from Brooklyn,

you could be a kid and go into 1650 Broadway or into the Brill Building,

one of the two buildings people think of

when they're talking about the Brill Building Sound.

And I'd always been fascinated by that culture,

which is to say an office building in New York City, in Times Square,

that used to be where the Tin Pan Alley songwriters

came in the '20s to sell their songs.

And now, in the '50s, was taken over by kids, teenagers, a lot of them,

to create the new sound of rock'n'roll.

You could knock on a door, you could get a producer

or someone in the business to listen to your song.

There were pianos in all those offices.

She came in, she played her piano for people.

And they'd hear the song and they'd think, "OK, I can sell that song."

And I was in the waiting room and there was this kid there.

She looked like she was about 15 years old, in jeans.

And I started to talk with her.

And I thought to myself, "God, this girl is so confident."

And I said to myself, "If this girl has talent,

"she's going to be a huge star."

And it happened to be Carole.

She was simply being paid to write songs

for top groups that needed songs.

Because in those days, there were very few singer/songwriters.

That phenomenon had not yet really occurred.

It was made-to-order song writing.

You were either writing for a specific artist

or you were writing a song that the publisher

you were working for would go out and shop

to various singers.

There was a breakdown in those days

between who wrote the song and who sang it.

# There's a lot of things I want

# A lot of things that I'd like to be

# But, girl, I don't foresee a rags-to-riches story... #

I was going to be a teacher and marry some nice doctor.

Instead, I married Gerry Goffin.

# There's just one little dream

# I've got to make come true

# There's just one round I've got to win

# I can't be a loser with you

# Baby, baby, just once in my life

# Let me get what I want...#

He definitely came at a time in my life

when I needed somebody to write better lyrics than,

"Baby, baby, baby, baby sitting."

There's a myth we used to write in the Brill Building.

We actually wrote in 1650 Broadway.

Aldon Music was a music-publishing company

that was started by two fellas.

Don Kirshner and Al Nevins.

So the name is Al and Don together.

And they built up such a great reputation.

Don Kirshner was the best publisher that I've ever come across.

And their company became so powerful

that he would get record companies to promise him

the backside of a record just to get our material.

In those days, records had two sides.

That's right. There were things called records, too.

-I forgot that!

-They had two sides.

-Right.

Donny Kirshner, who was a great publisher

who had a really good ear, um...that group of writers,

Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil, Howie Greenfield,

Neil Sedaka, Carole, Gerry,

and some others in that group,

they had 36 top-ten records in three years.

All of us then were fans of American music

and would study every detail of the label.

And, of course, the names Goffin and King

kept occurring in those little brackets

under some of our very favourite songs.

Goffin and King wrote songs to order.

It was like, OK, somebody needs a hit, you write the song.

I hate the word "factory." I really hate it.

It was a songwriting school.

You went in in the morning

and you went to your cubicle or your little office.

There was a piano there.

One of you sat there and the other one jotted down some words.

And you both sang or one of you sang and you tried to come up with songs.

I like that but it's got to be harder.

You know, when we write the lyrics to it, it will be different.

# La-la La-la La-la La-la La-la. #

Let's sing again.

# La-la La-la La-la. #

On the right side of the main room, there were about four different cubicles

and the cubicles would have an upright piano

and a piano stool and one chair and an ashtray

because everybody smoked like crazy back then.

And it's amazing we didn't get cancer.

-There's still time!

-Thank you!

Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann, who was her husband,

and Gerry Goffin and I, who were at that time married,

were a pair of writing teams that wrote for Don Kirshner.

They would write a song they picked, they'd start and finish.

There was no, let's work on it for a few days

and see what we come up with.

There was none of that. They would start, they would finish.

Some of the best songs you ever heard done in 20 minutes,

half an hour, 45 minutes. Unbelievable, you know.

It came surprisingly quickly.

It was a craft to finish them off,

but we already had the model in front of us

in the last hit that that artist had.

So all we had to do was catch the mood.

It wasn't too hard to do for us.

It was a lot of fun too.

It would be very competitive.

With Carol and Gerry we ended up being really good friends

but at the same time, we would be jealous of each other

if the other team got the record.

And that was very confusing to us because as friends we loved them.

But if they got the record, we hated them!

'Will You Love Me Tomorrow' was a follow-up to a hit by The Shirelles.

Their hit was 'Tonight's The Night'.

In writing 'Will You Love me Tomorrow',

we tried to write 'Tonight's The Night' sideways and upside down,

so it had some of the same feeling and yet was a new idea.

# Tonight you're mine completely

# You give your love so sweetly.

# Tonight the light of love

# Is in your eyes

# But will you love me tomorrow. #

There's a reason why that song has lasted

and why people keep coming back to it.

There's an extraordinary beauty in it

and a kind of emotional texture that you might not ordinarily

hear in something you would think of as a pop hit.

We had at that time one child. That was in '61. That was Louise.

Sherry wasn't born until '62.

Gerry was working as a chemist to support the family.

I was at home with the child. The traditional male-female roles.

We were also writing to try and make it to free ourselves from the nine to five,

except I was still taking care of the child and the house as well.

But that was fine. It worked out fine.

This was pre-Beatles, so a lot of pop music was bubble gum music.

And a lot of it was... I don't know.

There wasn't a lot going on in pop music and they stood out completely.

# I'd like to know that your love

# Is a love I can be sure of

# So tell me now

# And I won't ask again.

# Will you still love me tomorrow. #

Gerry Goffin wrote those words from a woman's perspective.

But Carole wrote this incredibly beautiful music that has this drama

of that moment of making your sexual passage.

# So tell me now

# And I won't ask again

# Will you still love me tomorrow. #

'Will You Love Me Tomorrow' was a big hit and it went to number one

and we were delighted because then we could devote ourselves

to working on songs full-time.

Carole's melodies are sometimes more joyful than Gerry's lyrics.

The lyrics can sometimes have a lot of darkness in it

that she sets off with a more optimistic melody.

# Take good care of my baby

# Now don't you ever make her cry

# Just let your love surround her

# Paint a rainbow all around her

# Don't let her see your cloudy sky

# Once upon a time

# That little girl was mine.

# If I'd been true

# I know she'd never be with you

# So take good care of my baby

# Be just as kind as you can be

# And if you should discover

# That you don't really love her

# Just send my baby

# Back home to me. #

We were so into writing for other artists that after 'Take Good Care Of My Baby' was written

we liked the demo I did on it so much

that we did another demo in that mode.

I think we were going to give that to Bobby Vee but we said no, let's put this one out.

And that was my first record as an artist

called 'It Might As Well Rain Until September'.

# What should I write

# What can I say

# How can I tell you

# How much I miss you

# The weather here

# Has been as nice as it can be

# Although it doesn't really

# Matter much to me

# For all the fun I'll have

# While you're so far away

# It might as well rain until September. #

We got to the point where we were spending a lot of time in the studio making demos

and I used to bring Louise to the studio in her little playpen.

And it got kind of hard to do both

so Little Eva came to stay with Louise

and people had the impression she was pushing a broom

around the kitchen one day, singing

and we heard her sing and said, "Stop! We must record that voice."

But the fact of the matter is, we knew she could sing when she came to work for us

and it was just a matter of time before we were going to have her singing some of our demos.

# Everybody's doing a brand new dance now

# (Come on baby do the loco-motion)

# I know you'll get to like it if you give it a chance now

# (Come on baby do the loco-motion)

# My little baby sister can do it with ease

# It's easier than learning your ABCs

# So come, on come on

# Do the loco-motion with me. #

There never was a dance the loco-motion until after it was

a number one hit record and everybody says, how does this dance go?

So Little Eva had to make up a dance!

# Chains

# My baby's got me locked up in chains

# And they ain't the kind

# That you can see. #

The original image was that old street corner music, you know.

Three people standing there just doing it in harmony,

which we do in concert sometimes.

# Chains

# My baby's got me locked up in chains

# And they ain't the kind

# That you can see

# Oh-oh, these chains of love

# Got a hold on me

# Yeah. #

When the Beatles started to write songs,

I have no question they looked to Goffin and King

and they overtly spoke of Goffin and King as among their inspirations.

# Chains

# I can't break away from these chains

# Can't run around

# Cos I'm not free. #

I thought it was really neat when the Beatles did my song 'Chains'

because they were this big phenomenon in this country

and everybody was going, "Oh, wow!" And "They're great song writers."

Gerry and I had written 'Chains' for The Cookies

and had a record with it here and then they went and did it.

I sort of feel like I'm still learning things about Carole King.

I mean, this woman wrote so many amazing songs.

# I walked home and she held my hand

# I knew it couldn't be just a one-night stand

# So I asked to see her next week and she told me I could

# (I asked to see her and she told me I could)

# Something tells me I'm into something good

# (Something tells me I'm into something)

# (Something tells me I'm into something)

# Something tells me I'm into something good

# (Something tells me I'm into something)

# To something good

Oh, yeah. #

I remember making a suggestion about writing something about a secret place.

Some place somebody goes, you know. Where do you go?

In New York, where we lived at the time,

one of the few places you could go to get away was up on the roof.

# When this old world starts getting me down

# And people are just too much

# For me to face

# I climb way up to the top of the stairs

# And all my cares just drift

# Right into space

# On the roof's the only place I know

# Where you just have to wish to make it so

# Let's go up on the roof

# Up on the roof. #

My mum wanted to live in the suburbs.

My dad probably would have loved to live in the West Village

or in New York City somewhere.

But my mum just wanted to be a normal housewife.

So all I remember is this house in West Orange, New Jersey,

and having these two kind of weird-ish parents,

compared to the other parents on the street.

She was traditional in the sense

that she wanted a house in the suburbs.

That was what she thought her life would be.

She also was the only person our age I knew who played mahjong.

She said you'll find out that even

when I was a teenager I was an old Jewish lady.

That's what I was right from the beginning.

So she wanted a house and a tree and the yard and the kids

and the dog and the cat.

That is so much who she is

and I think that's why people feel connected to her.

# You make me feel. #

Jerry Wexler presented Gerry Goffin and me with the title

and said I need something for Aretha.

Here's the title - 'Natural Woman'.

Then he rolls up the window in his limo

and drives off and we were like, OK.

# When my soul was in the lost and found

# You came around to claim it

# I didn't know just what was wrong with me

# Until your kiss helped me name it

# Now I'm no longer doubtful of what I'm living for

# Cos if I make you happy Do I need to do more

# Because you make me feel

# You make me feel

# You make me feel like a natural woman. #

'Natural Woman'. That is a Gerry Goffin lyric.

That is a man writing about what a woman feels, which is incredible.

That's how great he was as a lyricist.

"When my soul was in the lost and found you came along to claim it."

Those words, how he packed all that emotion in those words is a miracle.

For Carole to sing a song, or anyone,

that Aretha Franklin had sung

is, you know, I mean, that takes something.

Carole's voice is so personal,

it really seemed as if you were reading something

written in someone's soul.

# Oh, baby, what you done to me

# You make me feel so good inside

# And I just want to be

# Close to you

# You make me feel so alive

# You make me feel

# You make me feel

# You make me feel like a natural

# Natural woman. #

It was socially conscious writing without the sledgehammer.

"Another pleasant valley Sunday here in status symbol land."

You know?

Lyrics like that that are a comment

and yet were very much attuned to the times and very much

reflective of that he and Carole had moved to the New Jersey suburbs.

# Rows of houses that are all the same

# And no-one seems to care. #

I think he felt that he was trapped in suburbia

and 'Pleasant Valley Sunday' was his anthem of rebellion.

# See Mrs Gray she's proud today

# Because her roses are in bloom

# And Mr Green he's so serene

# He's got a TV in every room

# Another Pleasant Valley Sunday

# Here in status symbol land. #

I remember being so impressed when my mum and dad

had a song on The Monkees album

because The Monkees were all that then.

And I do remember Davy Jones came over to our house one time,

which just floored me.

At six years old, Davy Jones was, you know,

he's the perfect height for a six-year-old!

But he was just the whole world to me.

Those songs are, to my mind, they are masterpieces, you know.

Without the self-consciousness of Dylan or something like that,

you can go back and revisit those songs and really enjoy them

and find a lot of meaning in them.

There's a lot of forgiveness in her music.

There's a lot of compassion in her music.

But forgiveness is a key thing.

She goes through a real break-up in her life.

Her husband has been unfaithful to her more than once.

She loved him a lot. He loved her too but it couldn't work.

They were married very young, very young,

when they were teenagers because she got pregnant.

And that infidelity came out of a real frustration that they

had been married for four years and Gerry was still only 23.

They had been surrounded by, he was a very handsome guy,

there were a lot of beautiful women around all the time

and he told Carole about it before he did it.

It's one of the interesting things about the story.

He kind of asked for her permission.

I remember the divorce happened simultaneous with the move to LA.

They were splitting up and moving into separate houses

as we moved to LA from our house together.

And I just thought, "Oh, cool, we're going to have two houses!

"That's going to be so cool."

It didn't hit me like, "Oh, my God, my parents are splitting up."

And they kept writing together.

Even after they split up they would get together

and write often enough to me that it looked like there was harmony.

It was like part of our family was being taken away from us.

It was very disturbing for us.

And I worried about her and I worried about the kids

and I worried about him.

and what was going to happen to everybody.

I moved to California in about 1968 and James Taylor

was just in the process of coming over with Peter Asher

and Charles Larkey, who I had known back East was moving there also.

So James's guitar player was Danny Kootch.

We all were looking at California as the place to be.

One year ago you were cycling home from school in London

at four in the afternoon and it was raining and dark,

and suddenly you're in a Mustang convertible and it's not raining,

it's not dark and there are beautiful blondes everywhere.

And you go, this is probably an improvement!

I think this is a good move!

Most of the musicians in New York, they did pit bands,

they did work for the Broadway shows, things like that.

In LA, everyone was doing rock 'n' roll.

They were making Jan and Dean records, Beach Boys records. So it was very different.

It was a very exciting scene at the time.

We were all friends and liked to play the same music.

Before too long I found myself teamed up professionally

and personally with Charles Larkey.

Charles Larkey moved in with us.

He was my stepdad. He moved into Wonderland with us.

# When the sun comes up in the canyon

# And you are feeling lost and abandoned

# Some stranger may knock upon your door. #

I was contacted by Carole when she moved out here from New York.

She didn't know a lot of people out here,

or a lot of people in the music industry for sure.

She had gotten together with Danny Kortchmar

and Charlie Larkey as a group called The City.

That's the first thing I recorded with Carole on the West Coast.

'Now That Everything's Been Said' was the name of the album.

Lou produced. We recorded it at a studio on Gower in Hollywood.

It was the first album I played on.

The first full-length album I had ever played on.

And certainly, I had never met anyone like Lou, who was a brilliant record producer.

My friend and mentor, Bert Schneider, had been encouraging me

to write lyrics and Carole had just divorced from her husband.

She had come into Bert's office

and he was producing The Monkees movie.

Bert pulled the lyrics out of his desk,

handed them to Carol and she said, "They're good, did you write them?"

He said, "No, my friend Toni did."

And we just got along well and I remember feeling good about it

and obviously she did too.

She became my writing partner from that night on

and we worked together for around five years.

The City album probably happened

because Carole didn't want to be a solo artist.

And Charlie and Kootch, Danny Kortchmar,

probably talked her into recording as a group.

The thing I remember about The City is the songs are wonderful.

Remember the tempo. They were just getting their sea legs as a band.

If you listen closely you can see the roots,

or the beginnings of 'Tapestry'.

# How come you want to leave me here

# Is there something else I should know

# You may think it's strange I never noticed the change

# That made you want to get up and go

# Get up and go

# Now that everything's been said

# Now that everything's been done

# How come you want to leave me here. #

I would write the lyrics first, I would give it to Carole

and she would write the melodies to my lyrics in an hour.

Including the arrangement.

The first thing that I envisioned with Carole after The City album,

which I had to treat as a group,

was a solo artist that you always felt,

she was sitting at the piano and singing to you.

That was the basis of 'Tapestry'.

At the time the 'Tapestry' album came,

James was also doing his second album which was the 'Sweet Baby James'

album and so Peter was working with James in one studio

and Lou was working with me and Charles in the other studio.

Lou was the kind of guy,

he likes to have things very cool and very quiet.

No fuss, no muss.

Whatever had to be done with Carole, they would discuss it in the office.

When they got to the studio,

I got into the room and it was up to Carole.

A & M was located on the corner of Sunset and La Brea

and it's a former Charlie Chaplin Studios, which isn't bad to

have that sort of vibe going, if you will.

The Carpenters were in studio A, and they were creating.

Joni Mitchell doing 'Blue' in studio C.

She liked that small intimate room.

Carole was here.

We were making a good record. We knew that. It was a simple record.

Records like 'Tapestry' could be overproduced in a minute.

Let's add more guitars, let's add more of this or that.

Lou and Carole wanted that simplicity.

They wanted it to be nice and warm

and a very comfortable record for people to enjoy.

# I feel the earth move under my feet

# I feel the sky tumbling down

# I feel my heart start to trembling

# Whenever you're around. #

I wanted it to stay that simple and always have that feeling that

Carole was singing to you and playing the piano.

We turned all the lights down in the room, all the lights we are

seeing and all the background lights down and all that stuff.

Everything was what makes an artist comfortable

so you had all of that ambiance and environment going.

After a while they got so comfortable with that,

they were like playing in their living room.

It felt a lot like family

and everyone wanted everyone else to succeed.

'Will You Love Me Tomorrow', Joni and James sang background on.

James was on a lot of 'Tapestry'.

If he wasn't singing, he was playing.

They were all friends. Joni and James, they were all friendly.

It was fun. They would come in and Carole knew what she wanted.

When it comes to her music, she is in control of what it's going

to be and how it's going to come out.

It's wonderful to work with her and wonderful to work with

a person that has that kind of confidence in what they want.

A lot of the material they are recording or the show they are putting on,

it makes it really easy for someone like me to find out what they need and give it to them.

We were doing two or three tunes a day. It's hard to imagine now.

The day we cut 'I Feel The Earth Move',

we did two other tunes that day.

It took us three weeks to make 'Tapestry'. 22,000.

She got involved in every single part.

She had specific ideas of what she wanted me to play.

Specific ideas for the bass player to play.

I played the solos off the floor. The solos were not even overdubbed. They were just played live.

I didn't have time to think about it and it's a good thing

because if I'd thought about it, I would've screwed them up.

I didn't have time to think about it. Carole just said, you play a solo here, and I did.

GUITAR SOLO

Vinyl used to have two sides.

There used to be a logical place for a pause

and we as the creators of that product had to build in

a place for that pause and I think that made for a really

interesting theatre almost, it would be like the intermission in a play.

And then the actual sequencing of an album is kind of a lost art.

Sequencing at that time was very important

because you go through one side, you turn it over

and so all of that was based on one person listening to it

and not, how is this going to go over with 25 million people?

Lou saw what was going on and he described it, in an interview,

he said this is going to be the Love Story -

Love Story at the time was the big book and movie -

the Love Story of albums, and he was right on the money.

# As I watched in sorrow

# There suddenly appeared

# A figure grey and ghostly

# Beneath a flowing beard

# In times of deepest darkness

# I've seen him dressed in black

# Now my tapestry's unravelling

# He's come to take me back

# He's come to take me back. #

'Tapestry' was one of those albums

that it come out and it was everywhere immediately.

Maybe 'Sgt Pepper' was the only other experience, at least I've

ever had like that, where the record appears and then suddenly

every song and everywhere you go, people are playing it.

The album exploded.

It wasn't one of those where we had to sit around and wait

and see what was going to happen. It truly exploded.

I was reading Rolling Stone and there was a review of her album.

It was an incredible review.

I went out and I bought the album and I started listening to it

and her lyrics just blew me away.

I was so surprised. She was a really good lyricist.

And I remember shopping in grocery stores and hearing it.

# And it's too late, baby. #

And going, "I hear my mom's voice."

Oh, I thought it was my mom calling me.

The same timbre of voice that goes "Sherry!"

is the voice that was,

# Too late, baby. #

I hear my mom... Oh, she's on the radio.

It was the right songs at the right time for the audience

that was ready for them.

They said everything that people were feeling

and couldn't really express.

She never did any press, interviews, anything.

She never brought any of that home so it still felt like this

thing was going on outside of our world in the big world.

The transition from the '60s to the '70s in the US was a very complicated time.

I'm sure it was everywhere, but here the Vietnam War was still raging.

There were 550,000 American troops in Vietnam in 1969.

Vietnam is not that big a country. It's half a million troops.

There were still the after-effects of the assassinations

of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King.

There was still a lot of anger in the atmosphere

and it was very unpleasant.

A very unpleasant period in the history of America.

'The great '60s ambitions, the great utopian hopes,

'clearly weren't going to materialise,'

so people began looking inward and that was the singer-songwriter movement.

Carole's record was so warm and so welcoming

and so made you feel that a friend was taking care of you, and a

friend was saying things that you were feeling, but couldn't express.

First of all, it instantly touched me.

It felt intimate and it felt like she could be singing for me,

or I could be singing those songs myself.

I think it really hit home for so many people, especially women.

It was my go-to record for any time I wanted to feel better.

It was like a friend.

The record was like having a close friend

and her voice was your girlfriend.

It still affects women to this day

because it wasn't trying to do anything or trying to be anything.

It was a very honest album.

Carole has, to me, one of the great voices,

but it's not classically a great voice.

It's not like Aretha or Barbra or Celine. It's not.

It's a voice that every woman thinks she could have.

It's an art to be able to connect with a listening audience

the way Carole did and I think the simplicity of the songs and

the simplicity of the arrangement and the trueness of the emotion

that came out through them, people could relate to that.

And they made it their own.

It was an artist expressing what she felt.

That is what was different about it. All of a sudden

the artists were singing the songs that they wrote about their lives.

SONG: "It's Too Late"

# Stayed in bed all morning just to pass the time

# There's something wrong here there can be no denying

# One of us is changing

# Or maybe we just stopped trying

# And it's too late baby now

# It's too late

# Though we really did try to make it

# Something inside has died

# And I can't hide it I just can't fake it

# Oh, no, no, no, no... #

This is a song about disappointment,

but the ever-youthful optimism of youth.

And I'm an optimistic person, so the last verse addresses that,

that we both have a future, though not with one another.

That's what the song is about.

# There'll be good times again for me and you

# But we just can't stay together

# Don't you feel it too?

# Still I'm glad for what we had

# And how I once loved you... #

You get it right.

It's the right combination of the songs, the lyrics,

the way Carole sang them, the band, the way Lou did it.

Just everything came out right.

It's just one of those records that couldn't be bettered.

She was reluctant to go out on the road for months

and leave her daughters and to be gone.

She was very reluctant to go out. She didn't want to tour.

It was mixed for me.

There was times when she'd go on the road and she would take us.

That was a really special, wonderful time for me.

When she went on the road and we couldn't go

because we were in school, she left us home with a friend of hers who

was taking care of us. I would get really...

I remember crying listening to So Far Away,

like she was singing it to me.

What's your take on how difficult it is for a woman to have a

career in the performing arts

and also maintain a family?

Very difficult. Very difficult.

The only time, I guess, when I had really young children, that I ever was on tour, was with you.

I remember we were away for six weeks, home for two weeks

and then away for another six weeks.

And that six weeks was very difficult.

SONG: "So Far Away"

# So far away

# Doesn't anybody stay in one place any more?

# It would be so fine to see your face at my door

# It doesn't help to know

# You're just time away

# Long ago I reached for you and

# There you stood

# Holding you again

# Could only do me good... #

I like that song a lot.

That song...

The part I'm playing on it's incredibly simple

but that song meant a lot to me because

I have spent my whole life on the road

and that brings certain kind of, um...

a kind of weight to bear

when you're away from your family and your loved ones.

I've always had confidence in the fact that

when I played music,

it touched people in some way and...

The place I didn't have confidence was as a performer,

that's where I had no confidence

and that's where you came in.

It was James and me saying to Carole,

"Look, would you sing some of them to open the show?"

And she agreed to do so.

She was very nervous, she was scared.

She got over her stage fright very quickly

because she had an incident that happened when she was performing at the Troubadour.

She sits down and plays one-and-a-half songs

and then Doug Weston, who owns the Troubadour, says,

"I'm sorry, we're going to have to empty the building, we've had a bomb threat."

So we walked out and then we came back in

and Carole sat down at the piano and they cleared it and she said,

about the bomb,

"As long as it's not me."

That cracked the audience up and she said from then on, she was not nervous.

Which is terrific, I mean, that's great.

When she finally stepped up to the plate herself

it was like hitting a major vein,

you know, like a seam of water

flowing underground or something.

It just welled up.

She hates to travel, she hates the hotels, she hates the dressing room,

but as soon as she gets on stage with the fellas

and we start playing, she lights up and nobody can light up like Carole.

Carole is like a Christmas tree. She lights up and the whole room glows.

Oh!

JAZZY PIANO INTRO

# Now, big Jim the Chief stood for law and order,

# Yes, he did, yes, he did.

# He called for the guard to come

# And surround the border... #

James and I were standing on the balcony at sound check

and she played You've Got A Friend for the very first time.

I can't remember anything for one year either side of hearing this song

but I remember standing there and hearing Carole play this song.

And that's where James fell in love with the song.

He thought it was one of the most perfect pop songs ever written, which remains true to this day.

In an amazing act of generosity

she let me cut this tune first, release it first,

and I was amazed because she was cutting Tapestry at the time.

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

I didn't realise at the time that I would be singing that song

every single night for the rest of my life.

LAUGHTER

# If the sky above you

# Should grow dark and full of clouds

# And that old North wind

# Should begin to blow

# Keep your head together

# And call my name out loud now, baby,

# Soon I'll be knocking upon your door...

I love him so much it's that real...

Everybody says, "were you a couple?"

No.

"Do you ever think about it?" No.

The first connection was musical.

It turned out we spoke the same language.

We sat down and we slipped back into the mother tongue, really.

It was great.

We played on each other's records, we just had a common mind, you know.

# All I want

# Is a quiet place to live... #

Leaving California was something that didn't come easy.

It had been my home for ten years.

In 1977 I left and went to Idaho.

Charlie was the first new dad that I had.

And, er...

He walked into a situation, there was no winning in that situation.

Rick Evers was a whole different situation.

My mom,

she was just hypnotised by him.

I moved to Hot Springs community and it had hot running water

and cold running water outside of the house. It had no indoor plumbing.

We used outhouses, it had no electricity, no phones.

I'm pretty sure I was 14 when Rick met my mum and quickly took us

to Idaho. It wasn't like she was moving for work or necessity.

She was moving cos he said so, and so I resented it that much more.

I knew he was a terrible guy. I lived with him

and he had a really scary temper.

When he'd get angry, I would feel scared,

I would, like, run in a room and lock the door.

Even though he'd never hit you, I felt like he was going to.

It doesn't surprise me that he did actually hit her

and it's horrifying.

He was obviously a troubled, deeply, deeply troubled

screwed up individual and was making Carole's life miserable

and also making the rest of our lives miserable.

They hated him and they had every right to and as a person,

they didn't like him and they didn't like the way he treated Carole

and they didn't like the way he treated the band and...

You probably know, at one point,

he hit Danny Kortchmar coming offstage and hit him hard.

She's a brilliant, intelligent,

insightful woman who married a creepy guy. This happens.

And then one day, she snapped out of it. It was...

We were back in LA, we lived in Idaho, but we'd come back to LA

because Carole wanted to make an album.

It turns out that prior to meeting Carole, he was a junkie.

My mum just said, "I've had enough, I'm leaving, Sherry, come on."

We flew to Hawaii and when we got to Hawaii,

we got a message that Rick died. He killed himself.

He actually shot up too much drugs. In my own head I went, "Good."

It's terrible to say about another human being,

but he's the guy that caused so much pain in our family,

so much chaos and he did it to himself.

It's not like, you know, some tragic thing happened to him.

He just was stupid.

# What kind of fool do you think I am?

# To believe you really give a damn

# You're looking out for number one

# What kind of chance are you willing to take?

# Are you willing to give just a little bit for your own sake?

# That's really looking out for number one...#

I guess it was in 1978, after Rick Evers died,

I decided I was definitely going to go back to Idaho with my two

younger children, Molly and Levi.

She fell in love with Idaho.

She fell harder for Idaho than she fell for Rick, ultimately.

She's still in love with Idaho.

She loves the mountains, she loves the winters there,

she loves the air. If she could, she'd be there all the time.

Living in Idaho, which is part of the Northern Rockies ecosystem,

and 20 years ago, most people hadn't heard the word, ecosystem.

What it means in my area of the country is that a bear doesn't

get to a state line and say, "Oh, that law in this state

"means I'm protected here so I'd better not go into the next state,

"where I'm not protected."

I think the wide open spaces were calling to her.

This is where she wanted to, I think, have her, sort of, her life.

We treat the Northern Rockies as an ecosystem

and there's a piece of legislation that

I work on called the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act.

She's come to Capitol Hill, just not to get the door open,

she understands the landscape, she understands the politics,

she's telling them about the science,

she's talking about what the habitat destruction is doing.

She understands the economics of it.

Of the forest that once covered America,

only 5% remain intact but we can still save some.

We can save some cover, some food supply

and endangered species in the Northern Rockies,

because it is the largest viable ecosystem in the lower 48.

Her manager on the show would say to folks,

"On the road with Carole,

"Carole talks about the tour, about this much. NREPA, this much."

This is Carole's passion for the environment,

protecting these places.

# I know this world needs changing

# I know the shape we're in

# But with all the confusion

# I've reached the conclusion

# There's only one place to begin and that's

# One to one... #

She's happiest with the quiet life in Idaho.

She will still tour and play shows and she records from time to time,

but she loves Idaho with a passion

and she wants to preserve a great area of incredible natural beauty.

She just loves the environment there and she's an environmentalist,

so, if you're going to meet an environmentalist, you're going

to live in the environment.

In January 2014, Beautiful, the musical based on my mom's life,

opened on Broadway.

The idea started of making a musical based on all four of us, based on

our friendship and our competition with each other in the early '60s.

That's how it basically started.

I thought these are four interesting people.

I'd met Carole, Gerry, Barry and Cynthia.

They were really interesting, charming, funny and smart.

# I'd like to know that your love

# Is love I can be sure of...#

If she was told it's going to be called Beautiful,

the Carole King musical, what do you think?

She'd have gone, no, that's not happening.

After the first reading, the feedback that they got was,

were you stopping before Tapestry? You can't do that.

The most interesting art, the one that people are going to

want to see is Carole's art.

So, we need to focus on her a little more

and step back on everyone else and Barry and Cynthia agreed with that.

We became supporting players.

We've used to joke that they were Lucy and Desi

and we were Fred and Ethel.

I knew going into it I couldn't do a mimicry,

I just knew it wouldn't work.

For many reasons, some of the logistical reasons being that

her voice is so unique, there is no way I could copy her voice.

# And it's too late baby now it's too late

# Though we really did try to make it

# Something inside has died and I can't hide...#

Too late is one of the ones that always hits me every night

when you sing it. I can feel it in the audience.

Oh, my gosh, we get to hear the song because we love it.

Then the audience realising what that song means to them.

# You've got to get up every morning with a smile on your face

# And show the world all the love in your heart...#

One of the things I always loved about her was her honesty

and her authenticity.

When she performs, she has such joy and it's so honest and it's

like there's nothing between her and the music she's making.

She likes to be the centre of attention and at the same time,

she's like, "Don't make me the centre of attention."

She's like, no, I want my life, I want to be a normal person,

so I think she's been kind of smart about drying those boundaries.

A lot of people watching, musicians and artists,

what advice would you give to songwriters

and musicians starting writing songs today? What would you say?

Write from the heart, write what you feel and just, yes, we can.

There you are.

You heard it from one of the master songwriters of all time.

For a lot of people, things are discouraging out there right now.

Things seem hopeless and all I can say is persevere.

I've had hopeless times in my life about different things

and you just have to persevere because one day, that door does

open and if you don't persevere, you won't be there

when it does, so persevere, don't give up hope

and don't be discouraged.

Her legacy will be enormous.

Her legacy may be like a Gershwin legacy

or a Rodgers and Hammerstein legacy because

there is a generation now that just adores her stuff

and it keeps it alive.

# Soon I will be there

# To brighten up even your darkest night...#

There's no pretence to anything Carole does and that's

so true of her writing and performing.

I just always admired the way she goes out on stage

and just sits down and does it.

You go, oh, my God, I totally know what that song is about.

That's happened to me, or that's how I feel right now,

or that's how I felt then

and no-one's ever been able to say it that way before.

They make it their own.

I would think honesty is the prevailing

emotion of Carole as a writer and a performer.

She said exactly what I was going to say.

Yeah, but I'm the lyricist, so I said it.

# I'll be there, yes, I will

Hey now.

# Now ain't it good to know that you've got a friend...#

Her singing, it doesn't have a lot of artifice in it

or ornamentation.

It's pure, it's like, here's who I am.

I think people... I think that's what they love about her.

# And take your soul if you let them

# Oh but don't you let them...#

If Tapestry never existed,

Carole King would still be among the handful of most

important song writers in pop music history, so let's just say that.

# I'll come running

# Oh, yes I will

#To see you again

# See you again and again

# Winter, spring, summer or fall

# All you've got to do is call

# And I'll be there, yes, I will

# You've got a friend. #