by Carole King
Chapter Sixteen
Graduation
The release of my singles in 1958 went virtually unnoticed by the public. It probably didn’t help that I wasn’t out there promoting them, but I was just as happy to stay home and prepare for college. As much as I would have enjoyed having a hit single, I didn’t want the peripatetic life of a performing artist any more than my parents wanted it for me. By then I was using the professional name I would use for the rest of my life. It had evolved in two steps. First I had added the “e” to Carol to distinguish myself from two other Carol Kleins in my school. Then, following a precedent established by Jewish entertainers before me who believed a non-ethnic name would improve their chances for success, I decided on King.
Tinkering with my name was more psychologically significant than the evolution implied. I was still seeking a change of identity. I was also trying to downplay my intelligence because brainy girls were considered less desirable, but playing dumb conflicted with my passion for learning. I loved knowing the answers, and I liked bringing home good grades. Though traditionally bestowed on men, education was important in my family. My grandparents were unusual among immigrants of their generation in sending both their daughters to college. It was then more common for a female high school graduate who wasn’t already wearing an engagement ring to be sent to work until she found a rich husband, married him, and moved out. It was my grandmother who had insisted on college for my mother and my aunt. My compliant grandfather did his part by working hard, coming home, and facilitating Sarah’s wishes.
That I would go to college was never in question, but I had yet to decide where. I considered Ohio State in Columbus, where my cousins lived, but if I enrolled as a resident in one of the five New York City colleges I could continue to live at home and tuition would be free. My older female relatives predicted that I would meet my future husband in college—as had my mother. Ideally, mine would be a premed student. Becoming the “Mrs.” in “Dr. and Mrs. (insert Jewish name here)” was the highest achievement they could imagine for a young woman. But first I had to pass the rigorous exams called Regents that New York State required of every senior. I passed with high marks and received my diploma as a graduate of James Madison High School in June 1958. I was sixteen.
Though my parents were unflagging in support of my musical ambitions, they wisely counseled me to choose a career I could count on to earn a living. I figured I’d get a degree, become an elementary school teacher, get married, have four children, and write songs in my spare time. I was about to enroll in Brooklyn College when my parents, then reconciled, announced that we’d be moving to Rosedale, a suburban neighborhood in Queens.
Queens? I thought with dismay. What could there possibly be in Queens?
When I entered Queens College in the fall of 1958 I had no idea that Art Garfunkel and Paul Simon were anything other than fellow freshmen until I saw their photo in a magazine with a caption identifying Artie as “Tom” and Paul as “Jerry.” Prior to ABC-Paramount’s 1958 launch of my ill-fated singles, a small company called Big Records released a single by Tom and Jerry called “Hey Schoolgirl.” Having made the top 50, it was considered a hit.
Paul and I soon became friends. Among the things we had in common were a similarity of age and a desire to stay involved in writing and recording popular music. Hoping to earn some extra cash, we began making demos together as the Cousins. Paul played bass and guitar, I played piano, and we both sang. Some songs were his, some were mine, and some were written by other people. The income was negligible, but we would have done it for nothing.
We were especially proud when part of an arrangement we created for a demo of a song by Mary Kalfin was used on a master release on Audicon Records. Though the single didn’t make it past #69 in Billboard, the Passions’ “Just to Be with You” is considered a doo-wop classic.
Paul and I never wrote a song together. When I asked Paul in 2006 why he thought that was, he said he’d never thought of himself as a collaborative songwriter and didn’t think he was any good at writing lyrics until “The Sound of Silence” went to #1 in 1966.
I was still writing my own lyrics in 1958, but they weren’t much improved from 1957. I needed a collaborative songwriter with better lyrical skills than mine.
Chapter Seventeen
Goffin and King
At fifteen, when I was a high school junior, I had come upon a drawing in True Story magazine of a young man with dark hair and dark eyes. It had so epitomized my ideal boyfriend that I cut it out and put it in my wallet. It was still there the day I met Gerry Goffin.
In the fall of 1958, when Gerry was nineteen and I was sixteen, he was a night student at Queens College. Since I was a day student, our schedules were unlikely to overlap. One afternoon, while studying for a test in the student union with my friend Dorothy, I was having trouble concentrating due to intense menstrual cramps. I was just putting away my books when the door opened and Gerry walked in. My heart stopped. He looked exactly like the drawing in my wallet.
As soon as my heart started beating again I received another surprise. Dorothy knew Gerry. She waved him over, introduced us, and told Gerry I wasn’t feeling well. He offered to drive me home. On the way we stopped at a drugstore, where Gerry bought a pack of cigarettes and I bought some Midol. Back in the car, Gerry stripped the cellophane from the top of the pack, shook out a cigarette, and put it between his lips. After lighting the cigarette, he shook the match and tossed it out the window. I thought of my father’s occupation and cringed inwardly but said nothing. Gerry started driving again. With the radio playing jazz, a conversation about music was quite natural. We had in common two genres that we liked—jazz and show tunes. When Gerry said there was one kind of music he didn’t like, I asked, “What kind is that?”
“Rock and roll.”
Oh, great.
Gerry elaborated by citing the opinions of people of high intellect and musical sophistication who considered rock and roll a temporary and inferior trend.
“A lyric’s gotta have a deeper meaning with emotional impact,” Gerry said in his thick Brooklyn accent. “ ‘A wop wop-a loo-mop’ doesn’t meet those criteria.”
I wanted to tell him how emotional the impact of Little Richard’s music had been on me, but at that moment the boy who looked like my drawing could have persuaded me that the sun rose in the west.
Then Gerry revealed that he had written a book and lyrics for a musical he called Babes in the Woods, based on a novel, The Young Lovers, by Julian Halevy. Gerry was looking for someone to set his lyrics to music so he could bring the project to a Broadway producer and achieve his dream of making so much money that he would never again have to work at a nine-to-five job.
I waxed enthusiastic in telling Gerry how it felt to play a song for an A&R man and have him like it enough to record it. Gerry listened intently, finished his cigarette, and threw it out the window. I wanted to scream, “Don’t do that!” but again, I said nothing. A couple of minutes later, he lit another cigarette with one hand while steering with the other. He looked so incredibly cool that I lost mine, which is probably what made me do what I did next.
“Actually,” I volunteered, “Atlantic is looking for a song for Mickey and Sylvia.”
Gerry took a deep drag on his cigarette, exhaled, and said, “Why don’t we write something for them?”
I was taken aback. He had just spent twenty minutes conveying the low esteem in which he held rock and roll. When I asked why he wanted to write a song in a genre for which he had so little respect, he said he wanted to do it as an intellectual exercise, just to see if he could.
Seeing that we were only a block from my house, I rapidly recounted how I had first seen Mickey “Guitar” Baker backstage at the Alan Freed show.
“And then Mickey teamed up with a woman named Sylvia Robinson for a vocal duet on Atlantic Records, and then ‘Love Is Strange’ became a smash hit, and that’s what we need to use as a model… Oh, look! Here we are!”
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I introduced Gerry to my mother, then he and I went into the living room. After only two spins of “Love Is Strange,” Gerry came up with an idea for the follow-up. “The Kid Brother” would be about a couple of teenagers trying to make out who were constantly interrupted by the girl’s little brother. The punch line, to be half sung and half spoken by Mickey, was “Here’s a quarter, kid. GET LOST!!”
We completed our first Goffin and King song in less than an hour.
Writing with Gerry was easy and comfortable. After we agreed that he would write lyrics for my rock and roll songs and I would write the music for Babes in the Woods, our next few writing sessions were devoted to the musical. But because pop songs had the potential to deliver a more immediate financial reward, we began writing more in that direction. Our work together in the fledgling discipline (or lack thereof) of rock and roll would become so lucrative that Babes in the Woods would be permanently relegated to the dusty attic of memory (or lack thereof).
The financial reward for our first effort was less than we had hoped. We brought “The Kid Brother” to Atlantic, and Jerry and Ahmet liked the song. Unfortunately Mickey and Sylvia had just broken up. Mickey and his new partner, Kitty Noble, recorded our song, but the capricious winds of fortune blew “The Kid Brother” in the opposite direction of “Love Is Strange.” “The Kid Brother” was released as the B side of an A side called “Ooh Sha La La” that didn’t do well. Nevertheless, we considered it a major accomplishment to have our first song recorded by Mickey Baker. We wrote more songs and occasionally sold one for a twenty-five-dollar advance—pocket change for a publisher, but a fortune to us.
Chapter Eighteen
Married, with Children
At first Gerry and I spent most of our time together writing songs. As our musical catalog grew in 1959, so did our romantic relationship. That summer we were married at my parents’ home in Rosedale. The day after the wedding we moved to a one-room basement apartment on Bedford Avenue, a block away from the house at 2466 East 24th Street in which I had spent my childhood. The move was our honeymoon. While Gerry continued working as a chemist in downtown Brooklyn, I took a job as a secretary with a company in Manhattan that manufactured industrial chimneys. After work, using my grandmother’s recipe and others from Leah Leonard’s Jewish Cookery, I prepared supper for Gerry and me on a two-burner stove in the tiny alcove that served as a kitchen. With minimal exaggeration, Gerry used to tell people that our apartment was so small that he could turn the shower on with one hand while opening the refrigerator with the other.
After dinner, we wrote songs. Sometimes I took a day off to meet with publishers and record executives in the hope of receiving one of those twenty-five-dollar checks. We didn’t get one often, but when we did the money was as welcome as a couple of fluffy matzoh balls in a bowl of chicken soup. It would be even more welcome the following year. I was pregnant. Working by day, writing by night, we were either in debt or breaking even—never ahead. We kept hoping for a hit that would free us from our day jobs, but one day my boss did that for me before we could afford to lose the income. My bouts of morning sickness when I was at work and my taking too many days off to meet with publishers may have impaired his confidence in my commitment to industrial chimneys.
I was on a song-selling mission the day I ran into Neil Sedaka on Broadway. When I told him Gerry and I were pushing our own songs, Neil suggested I meet with Don Kirshner and Al Nevins, with whose publishing company he and Howie Greenfield were signed. When I called to request an appointment, the secretary said her bosses could see me the next day. Gerry couldn’t take time off from work, so I would attend the meeting alone. The next day I took the BMT to 49th Street. As I walked up Broadway, I was filled with so much anticipatory energy that I barely noticed the teeming street scene around me. Riding up in the elevator I reminded myself of my two objectives: getting us a publishing deal sufficient to get out of debt, and signing with a publisher with a track record of hits with top artists. Having already attained a #1 hit by Connie Francis with “Stupid Cupid,” written by Neil and Howie, Aldon Music met the second requirement.
Aldon combined the first names of Al Nevins and Don Kirshner. Al had been one of the Three Suns, best known for their 1944 hit “Twilight Time.” Al had financed the partnership, while Don had brought his close friendship with Bobby Darin and Connie Francis and an unerring ear for a hit. Arriving in Aldon’s reception area I could hear a cacophony of male and female voices singing, several pianos playing different songs in different rooms, and two or three current hit records blaring, all at the same time. When I gave the secretary my name she escorted me into Al’s office to meet her bosses. After introducing me, she left and shut the door behind her. My first impression of Al’s office was that it must have been decorated by someone who designed brothels. It had red drapes, a red carpet, and a red piano that dominated the room. The piano had red-and-black stools and a lacquered black shelf around it with red coasters on which people could set their drinks. One could almost imagine the piano being announced in a basso profundo voice: The Red Pianohhhhh.
After I had answered a few preliminary questions such as “How do you know Neil and Howie?” Al invited me to sit at the piano and play some songs. Donnie was constantly in motion, alternately pacing, tapping his feet, and nodding his head slightly off rhythm. After each song, Al applauded enthusiastically, Donnie winked at me, then Donnie and Al looked conspiratorially at each other. After the fourth song, Al praised the music and the lyrics and Donnie complimented me on my “piano feel,” by which I gathered he meant my pound-out-the-rhythm-as-hard-as-I-could style of accompaniment. Al was just saying he’d like to meet Gerry when Donnie looked at his watch, stood up, and said, “Gotta run, babe.”
Moving toward the door, he added, “I gotta go meet Connie”—I assumed he meant Connie Francis—“but can ya come back tomorrow? Bring Gerry.”
“Sure, no problem.”
Donnie paused at the door long enough to say, “I like what you’re doin’. Lemme hear some more songs,” and then he was gone.
Al recapped more elegantly what Donnie had just said, then walked me out to have his secretary set up an appointment for Gerry and me for the next day.
I floated home. (Full disclosure: a Brooklyn-bound BMT train was involved.) When Gerry got home from work I told him how it went. He was skeptical but willing to take a day off to hear what they had to say.
At the conclusion of our meeting the following day, Donnie and Al offered Gerry and me a three-year publishing contract that would give us, as a team, an advance of $1,000 the first year, $2,000 the second year, and $3,000 the third year. In exchange for $6,000, to be deducted from our future royalties, Gerry and I would assign ownership of the copyrights of all the songs we would write under the term of the agreement to Aldon Music, Inc., “and/or their heirs and assigns.” Any advances would be recouped from the writers’ share of the publishing income. The publisher’s share, equal to that of the writers, would go to Aldon and/or their heirs and assigns. At the time I had no idea what “heirs and assigns” were, but with extensions our agreement with Aldon would come to include all the songs that Gerry and I wrote separately or together from the time we signed with Aldon in 1959 until several years after the release of Tapestry in 1971.
We left that meeting feeling as if we had struck gold. To us, $6,000 was a huge sum of money, and that first check for $1,000 did get us out of debt. To Al and Donnie, $6,000 was a relatively small amount to invest in what was then fifty-six years of ownership and/or the right to transfer ownership of the copyright of any song written by Gerry and/or me during the term of the contract.
With our immediate financial concerns alleviated, we focused on the need to find a bigger apartment before the anticipated arrival of our baby in March. We moved to a ground floor two-bedroom apartment on Brown Street between Avenue Z and Voorhies Avenue in Brooklyn. That entire area had been cornfields when I was a child. Now it was filled with attached brick d
uplex houses in which a family could live on the upper two floors and cover their mortgage by renting out the ground-floor apartment. Gerry pejoratively called the neighborhood a “people farm,” but I was thrilled to be living in four rooms instead of one.
In January 1960, I was a month shy of eighteen. The baby’s due date was approaching, and all I knew about giving birth was that it would be painful. My main source of information was my mother, who was as helpful as she could be considering that her own experience had been limited to two births for which she had been medicated. Her own mother had practiced natural childbirth, though not by choice or name, but childbirth without drugs was no more an option for me in 1960 than it had been for my mother in the 1940s.
“When I was giving birth to you,” she recalled, “the drugs they gave me made me groggy, but they didn’t stop the pain.” She hastened to add, “Don’t feel bad. You were worth it, even if you did elbow me away the first time I held you….” I rolled my eyes and then we both smiled. It wasn’t the first time I had heard that story.
Then her eyes clouded with sadness as she recounted the memory of my brother coming out purple and staying that way for what seemed to her like too long a time before he turned pink. At subsequent doctor visits, when she suspected that Richard had a hearing disability, she was told that his purple color could have been an indicator of oxygen deprivation, which she later came to believe had caused his disabilities.
My mother’s recollections were not giving me a lot of confidence. As an apprehensive seventeen year old undertaking to learn exactly how childbirth worked and how much it would hurt, I wanted my mother to tell me how painless and uncomplicated her experiences had been. At the same time, I was grateful for her counsel. Had one of my daughters become pregnant at seventeen I would have said, “You’re much too young to have a baby!” but then I would have risen to the occasion, as did my mother.