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In the name of the king
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Carole King's group hardly toured due to her stage fright
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Born Carole Klein, King started playing the piano when she as just four years old. In high school she was into lyrics, even forming her first band, the Cosines. When friend and neighbour Neil Sedaka, who went on to become a teenage heart-throb, left for New York to explore a career in music, King followed in his footsteps.
Sedaka dedicated a song to her, Oh Carol which climbed the charts but her riposte, Oh Neil got nowhere. While studying at Queen's College, an ability to pen lyrics like she did, drew her to Gerry Goffin. The two became co-writers and were married not much later.
The songs they wrote together produced about a 100 hits ranging across varied rock styles. . The King-Goffin duo wrote and produced The Loco-Motion for their 17-year-old baby-sitter Little Eva Boyd, that scaled the charts and catapulted the latter to star-status overnight. King went solo, but her only hit was It Might As Well Rain Until September, that reached No. 22 on the charts. Along with columnist Al Aronowitz, King and Goffin launched their own label, Tomorrow Records, which failed. One band the brand featured was the Myddle Class that had Charles Larkey on bass. When King's relationship with Goffin soured and they divorced, she married Larkey.King formed another group, The City, that brought in guitarist Danny Kortchmar. Largely owing to King's stage fright, the band never toured but cut an album called Now That Everything's Been Said. One of the tracks, You've Got A Friend earned James Taylor a hit. He encouraged her to write and sing her own songs. Working with Taylor and Kortchmar yielded Tapestry that had two hit singles, It's Too Late that peaked on the charts and So Far Away that touched No. 14. The offering won four Grammys, sold over 22 million copies and stayed on the charts for nearly six years.
A. GEORGE ANTONY
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