A chain of petty coincidences over the past week or so has gotten me to
thinking again about the "ego" side of the Joni-as-an-artist (and
me-as-a-fan) conflict vis a vis her underappreciation by the general public
(and how that appears to be inevitable given the high level of her artistry).
It started the weekend before last, with my reading a review of Blue posted
in the Articles database here, in which Robert Hilburn of the LA Times wrote
that, in a rare year where albums by Carole King (Tapestry), Janis Joplin
(Pearl) and Carly Simon (debut) had already made their bids for places among
the top 10 albums of the year, Joni added a fourth female entry with Blue. He
makes no further comparisons between Blue and those other albums, in what is
a shortish but highly favorable review.
Anyway, a couple of nights later I, for the first time in a long time, was
rummaging through my old vinyl collection, when I came across Tapestry. I
listened to it for the first time in many years (even followed the lyrics),
and found myself truly enjoying its catchy melodies, simple arrangements and
the earnest but seemingly honest romanticism of her vocals. But when it was
over, I caught myself reflexively chuckling at the comparison between
Tapestry and Blue. I mean, Blue's lyrics, melodies, vocals, musicianship and
(IMO) production were all clearly superior on an artistic level to
Tapestry's. And, I found some confirmation of my chuckle in the VH1 lists (I
know these do not mean much, if anything, but...), where Joni placed 5th
versus Carole's 10th in 'Top 100 Women in R n R', Blue place 14th versus
Tapestry's 39th in 'Top 100 Albums in R n R" and Joni placed 32nd or so
versus Carole's 85th or so in 'Top 100 Artists in R n R' (which was one spot
ahead of Madonna and 2 ahead of Santana - the group). What does this mean ?
Not much, I am sure (for example, Bonnie Raitt placed 4th on the Women's list
but did not make the top 100 in the unisex list - go figure - while Hejira
did not make the top 100 albums). But I digress.
On Saturday, I noticed a 'coming Sunday' tickler in the Newark Star Ledger
(my wife subscribes for the local news, she says) about an article that would
appear the next day celebrating the 30th anniversary of Tapestry, a 'landmark
album that changed the music business forever, and paved the way for
generations of singer-songwriters to come'. So, I figured I'd read it on
Sunday. Only I took my brother golfing on Sunday for his birthday, and we
played 36, so fast forward to Monday when I finally read the Tapestry article
on the bus leg of my commute into NYC. It was written by one Lisa Rose, a
staff writer with whose work I am not familiar. Anyway, there were three
related articles covering the better part of 3 full pages of the Spotlight
section of the Ledger. The articles comprise a tribute to the album and to
King as well, and form a really informative collage, IMO. Among the
interesting tidbits reported were the following:
1. Lou Adler, who produced and engineered the record, was quoted as saying
that even before the record was released (in February of 1971), the people at
A&M's headquarters were all playing the record in their offices, and saying
things like "she captured my feelings". There was no doubt there it was going
to be a hit.
2. There was this description of the album, that could have applied to
Blue. "Released ....midway between Woodstock and Watergate, Tapestry was the
fabric of change. The album was an acoustic colledciton of palintive melodies
and soul-on-sleeve poetry, candidly touching on such universal themes as
love, lonliness and self-esteem. The pror-confessional album, it boasted such
classic songs as It's Too Late, I Feel the Earth Move, So Far Away, Will You
Love Me Tomorrow, (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman, and You've Got A
Freind.
3. It's Too Late was the top single in the country this week, 30 years ago.
4. Tapestry spent 15 weeks at No. 1 and stayed on the LP charts for nearly
6 years, with sales totaling 15 million copies worldwide to date.
5. There were no press junkets, world tours, music videos etc to hype the
album - it just sold itself.
6. It was only her second solo album.
7. She wrote the lyrics to 7 of the 12 cuts (with Toni Stern and her
former husband Gerry Goffin writing most of the rest).
8. Carole, now age 59, is presently working on her 18th studio album (none
of the others were nearly as successful commercially as Tapestry, of course).
9. She keeps her life private, and turned down an interview request for
the story, even though it was clearly to be favorable.
10. The list of those citing her as an influence includes Alanis Morrisette,
Diane Warren, Deline Dion, Trisha Yearwood,, Slash and Semisonic. Those cited
as covering her songs include Courtney Love, Kylie Minogue and Mary Blige.
Not very impressive as a list, IMHO. I bet if one goes to her web-site (I
assume she has one) one will find much better lists.
11. After she and Goffin split up in 1967, she moved to Laurel Canyon with
her 2 daughters, and started a group called The City with her second husband,
Charles Larkey (bass - what's this with second husbands who are bass players
?), Danny (Kootch) Kortchmar (guitar) and Russ Kunkel (drums). They cut one
album. She did all the writing and arranging, according to Kootch, and mostly
used the others for support and confidence. He also said that Carole is a
complete musician who reads and writes music - apropos of and in contrast to
a recent thread here vis a vis Joni. She "was the bandleader, and more or
less taught everyone ow to play", he said.
12. Tapestry took 4 weeks to record. (James Taylor and Joni were cited as
having contributed background vocals - on the album they are referred to -
and pictured on the inside of the cover - as the Mitchell/Taylor Boy and Girl
Choir, backing up Will You Love Me Tomorrow). When it was done, Adler told
Kootch he thought it was the "Love Story" of recordings. He was right, it
seems.
Anyway, here are some of my musings in question form:
Q1. Has Tapestry sold more than all of Joni's combined ? I hope not, for my
sanity's sake.
Q2. James played acoustic guitar on 5 of the cuts on Tapestry. Carole played
piano on 7 of JT's songs on Mud Slide Slim (which featured you've Got a
Friend), also released in 1971, and which was also recorded during January
and February of that year. Joni did background vocals for 3 of JT's songs
from that album. JT and Carole both used Kunkel and Kootch for their albums.
JT really played acoustic on 3 of the songs from Blue of course (not the
barely audible kind of backup heard on Tapestry), and Kunkel played drums on
3 cuts. Pretty incestuous, it seems to me. And, James and Joni played
boyfriend/girlfriend later that year during the England concert (BBC), if I
recall correctly. Does anyone know exactly what was going on during the first
part of 1971 versus the second part ? Were JT and Carole always just
'Friends" ? 'When, exactly did James and Joni become an item and for how long
(I know it was done by See You Sometime in 1972)?
Q3. Did Tapestry and its success contribute to Joni's seclusion in working on
Blue ? Was there an element of competition there, of having been beaten
temporarily at her own game (LOTC preceded Tapestry, after all, so it is not
clear to me which confessional album spawned which).
Q4. Has Joni ever been asked about her reaction to the relative sales success
of Blue versus Tapestry ?
Q5. Do an album's songs really have to have such hooks that they can be liked
on the first listen in order to sell (I did not feel that way about Sgt
Pepper or even Revolver when they first came out, but of course I was only a
teen and an extremely unsophisticated listener at those times) ?
Anyway, I just had to vent.
PS - One of the three pieces was a local color story about a song King penned
for the Monkeys called Pleasant Valley Sunday, which was written by
Goffin/King and named for Pleasant Valley Way, a street in the West Orange NJ
neighborhood where they resided for a brief time in the mid-1960's. The
catch line was "Another Pleasant Valley Sunday, Here in status symbol land".
Well, I officially lived on PVW for two months. My wife lived there for 10
years, and when we got married we had to sell two houses and buy a third to
accomodate our newly merged family. We sold mine first, so we moved into her
house for two months until we sold it and bought the new one. It is not an
idyllic street at all - really sort of a major through street zoned for
commerce as well as residences. Barbara's house was about a medium length par
4 away from a pretty famous comedy club called Rascals on the same street.
PPS - Barbara bought the PVW house because she taught in a different school
district, but her son could walk to and from school without crossing any
streets. Well, today (oops, it is very late, so I guess I mean Yesterday),
her son Michael and his wife Jessica made us first time grandparents with a
baby boy, so we are thrilled (and perhaps a little bit sobered at the same
time) to be Grandma Barbara and Grandpa Bob. The good news is that now we
have to go to Florida more often in the winter to visit (and play golf).
;-)
