A Natural Woman
Page 15
It was Toni’s generous approach to songwriting that first inspired me to think that maybe I could write lyrics on my own. A second wave of inspiration would come in 1970 from someone I had met a few years earlier.
Chapter Five
The Night Owl
I was twenty-five and still living in New Jersey in 1967 when I ran into two of the Myddle Class in a music store on West 48th Street. Rick and Charlie were there to look at guitars, and then they were going to a club in the Village to catch a band they knew.
“You gotta come see these guys,” Rick said. “They’re unbelievable!”
The Flying Machine was playing four sets a night. With Gerry in the studio and the girls in New Jersey with Willa Mae, I could catch an early set and be home by eleven.
The Night Owl Café was bustling when we entered. Charlie and Rick immediately recognized three of the Flying Machine among the people milling around the bar. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness the musicians greeted each other with what appeared to be some kind of secret handshake. Then Rick introduced me to drummer Joel “Bishop” O’Brien, and Danny Kortchmar, who sang, wrote, and played guitar. Charlie added that Joel and Danny had been two of the Martha’s Vineyard King Bees. Then Danny introduced me to Zach Wiesner, the Flying Machine’s bass player. Following Zach’s glance, I noticed an extraordinarily tall man with long hair standing off to one side of the bar.
Following my look, Danny brought me over to the tall man and said, “James! Say hello to Carole King.” James Taylor mumbled something like, “Hrrph, harya,” then turned and covered the distance to the dressing room in several strides. Danny looked at his watch. It was time for their set. Danny, Bishop, and Zach quickly followed James.
Years later, James would tell me that he had so much respect for my songs that when Danny introduced us he didn’t know what to say, but at the time I felt like an unwelcome intruder.
“I should go,” I told Charlie.
“You’re already here,” he said. “Just stay for one set.”
“Trust me,” said Rick. “You’ll be blown away!”
With that, Rick took my arm and guided me toward the center of the club where some people were already seated in church pews. We were seated at a table barely big enough to hold a candle, drinks, and an ashtray. A waitress materialized to take our order, which arrived just as the Flying Machine began to file onto the stage. James pulled a mic toward his acoustic guitar, Zach and Danny plugged in their instruments, Bishop picked up his sticks, and the stage lights went up.
From the moment I heard the first notes out of James’s guitar, I was mesmerized. When the band came in on the downbeat of the first verse and James began to sing, I felt as if I were witnessing a long-lost friend who also happened to be an angel. Rick was right. I was blown away. As much as James tried to blend in with the band, his stage presence was unmistakable. His songs and the quality of his voice evoked an astonishing range of emotions. His modest demeanor was authentic and endearing. He told stories and jokes between songs with a dry, self-deprecating sense of humor, and his banter with Kootch, Zach, and Bishop was witty and familiar. His joy at being onstage was apparent and infectious, and when he threw his head back to hit the high notes, there was no doubt about it: James Taylor loved to sing.
After the set James was swarmed by audience members eager to tell him how good he was. Though I shared their opinion, I didn’t relish being part of an after-show crush, and I was a little gun-shy following our earlier encounter. I was also experiencing that sense of borrowed time that mothers of young children often feel when they’re out having a good time. I decided to head back to New Jersey without saying goodbye to James or the band. Charlie and Rick walked me to my car, and I drove home to suburbia.
Like so many other bands who had come to New York, the Flying Machine believed that a record deal was all that stood between them and their ascent to the top of the charts. After all, their main songwriter was James, whose gift for singing and songwriting was manifest. Danny, in addition to being an accomplished guitar player, was also an excellent songwriter. And Zach was James’s cowriter on “Rainy Day Man.” But the potential of the Flying Machine would not be realized in that incarnation. As the seasons of New York changed around the smoky clubs in which hopeful bands played, the atmosphere inside remained the same, as did the availability of hard drugs in Greenwich Village. In addition to being one of a number of bands competing for the attention of A&R men, the Flying Machine was struggling with James’s addiction to heroin. In the fall of 1967 the hopes of the band were dashed to “pieces on the ground.”* In desperate need of help, James called his father, Dr. Isaac Taylor, a professor at the University of North Carolina. Ike drove to New York and brought his son home to Chapel Hill.
After several months, James felt that he had recovered sufficiently to look for another career opportunity. His decision to fly to London turned out to be fortunate. Peter Asher was already known to the world as half of Peter and Gordon when the Beatles put him in charge of A&R for Apple Records, a division of the Beatles’ Apple Corps, Ltd.* It was Kootch who suggested to Peter that he give James a listen, and Peter had the wisdom to sign James immediately. The result was James’s eponymous first album.
The first time I listened to the songs on James Taylor I thought, I could hear these songs a thousand times and never grow tired of them.
That theory would be tested and affirmed.
Chapter Six
Kootch
Accounts differ about when the Fugs were formed—1964 or 1965—but all agree that Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg were the founders. Tuli was a Beat hero who published magazines called Birth and Yeah and sold them on the street in the East and West Village. Sanders’s operation, Fuck You Press, published Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts, which he sold at his Peace Eye Bookstore on Avenue A in the East Village. The name Fugs was reportedly derived from Norman Mailer’s use, in his novel The Naked and the Dead, of “fug” as a substitute for the word everyone knew it replaced.
After the Flying Machine broke up, the Fugs hired Kootch. He brought with him a killer driving rhythm guitar and a seemingly unlimited supply of outrageous licks. But his real love was black music in any form. Danny was a good-looking kid from Larchmont, New York, an affluent town in lily-white Westchester County. Coming of age under the heavy influence of R&B, soul, blues, gospel, and jazz, he had listened and practiced until he had mastered some of the sounds of the guitar players he admired in the genres he favored, and then he had listened and practiced some more.
Danny’s gig with the Fugs didn’t afford him much of an opportunity to develop his skills in his preferred genres, but it did come with a couple of distinct advantages for a young man: it was a steady job, and the Fugs attracted plenty of women willing to provide companionship. Often, after the show, Danny would emerge from the stage door wondering if he would wind up going home with one of the young women waiting to hook up with someone in the band. It never occurred to Danny—handsome, smart, funny, and reasonably well brought up—to be anything other than nice and polite to the girls waiting outside. This of course made the girls want to have nothing whatsoever to do with him. They had come to hang out with the bad boys and by all that was unholy that’s what they were going to do. Thus it was Tuli and Ed coming out the door—snarling, cursing, and projecting all the dark glory of their outrageous personae—who got all the chicks.
Danny was just beginning to think about leaving the Fugs when an L.A. band called Clear Light offered him a job if he was willing to move to California. Kootch left the Fugs, flew to the West Coast, and moved in with a group of hippies and musicians living at the home of Frazier Mohawk. The hazy discussions around Frazier’s coffee table often included the observation that living in Laurel Canyon was a much more desirable option than, say, getting killed in the jungles of Vietnam. Southern California was the center of everything fresh, young, and current. The beautiful people, the gorgeous weather, the burgeoning music scene, and the free
and easy lifestyle were a siren call to young men around the country, and they were responding in droves. One was a musician I’d known on the East Coast who would add a lot more than music to my life.
Chapter Seven
The City
After the dissolution of the Myddle Class, the Fugs hired Charlie Larkey to play bass. At the end of 1967 the band comprised Kenny Pine, Ken Weaver, Kootch, Charlie, Tuli, and Ed. Charlie was playing with the Fugs in New York when he learned that they had been booked in L.A. for three days in April 1968. By then it was common knowledge that Gerry and I were separated. When Charlie called to invite me to one of the Fugs’ concerts, I said yes. After the concert, he came home with me and stayed for the next three nights. When the Fugs’ engagement was over and Charlie had to go back to New York, we kept in touch by telephone. After two months, our conversations across the miles led to a big decision for both of us. Two months later Charlie gave notice, flew west, moved into the house on Wonderland Avenue, and began looking for a gig in L.A. He picked up a few studio sessions and sat in at clubs, but he wasn’t getting the regular paycheck he’d had with the Fugs.
When Clear Light broke up, Danny, too, was without a gig. Since Danny and Charlie both thrived on playing live with other musicians, Danny started coming over to jam with Charlie.
“We gotta keep our chops up,” Danny said as he lugged his guitar and a Fender amp up the stairs.
Taking the amplifier from Danny, Charlie agreed.
“If we don’t have calluses, we’re not practicing enough.”
Charlie plugged Danny’s amp into an outlet in the living room, then picked up his Fender bass, which was already plugged into his Ampeg B-12 bass amp. I said, “Right on,” flashed the two-finger peace sign, then went into the kitchen to prepare the only vegetarian entrée I knew how to make: nut loaf.
At first I tried to stay out of the way when the guys jammed, but inevitably I wanted to hear a bass and guitar on one of Toni’s and my new songs. And just as inevitably, after the three of us had played the song a couple of times, it took only the utterance of names such as Otis Redding or Miles Davis to get me to play soul and jazz tunes with them. But I was less reluctant than I had been at my neighbor’s house. Playing with Charlie and Danny was not only fun, it greatly enhanced my jamming skills. As the number of licks in my kit bag went up, so did my confidence and understanding of jazz. And Kootch had a gift for exhorting other musicians to play, write, and sing beyond what they believed was the edge of their ability. During our jams Danny challenged Charlie and me to be badder (in the sense of better) by planting himself in front of us in classic Kootch stance, with a facial expression that seemed to say, “I’m the baddest mutha-fuckah around. Whatta you got?”
Years later, Danny told me he hadn’t been thinking that at all. It was an expression of concentration. He was simply doing what he always did when he played with other musicians: listening, learning, and figuring out what he could play that would help establish a groove, augment the tune, and not get in the way of the other players.
Seeing how much I enjoyed playing with them, Charlie and Danny became more assertive in trying to convince me to perform. They wanted me to record an album of my songs with them as my band and then we’d take the band on the road. But I would commit no further than agreeing to go into the studio with them.
One day we were discussing possible producers when Charlie said, “You know Lou Adler. Why don’t you call him?”
I did know Lou Adler. After leaving Donnie’s employ, Lou had become one of the most successful producers, managers, and publishers in Southern California. He had founded two labels, first Dunhill, then Ode. Among the artists and titles with which Lou was associated in 1968 were “California Dreamin’ ” by the Mamas and the Papas, “San Francisco” by Scott McKenzie, “Eve of Destruction” by Barry McGuire, and other recordings by artists including Johnny Rivers, Shelley Fabares, and Spirit. Remembering how enthusiastic Lou had always been about Gerry’s and my demos, I got his number from Lester and reached him at his office. I told him I was in a band and invited him over to hear Charlie, Danny, and me. He said he’d be over later that afternoon.
After hearing the three of us in my small living room, Lou didn’t seem all that excited. But I took hope from his encouraging words when he left. We didn’t have long to wait. As soon as Lou got home he called to offer me a recording contract.
“Not the band,” he said. “Just you.”
This was not an unfamiliar scenario, but this time I stood up for my bandmates. I told Lou he needed to sign the entire band, and I made it clear that I was no more willing to go on the road than I had been when he was with Aldon.
“Just albums,” I said. “No promotional tours, and no club gigs.”
“No problem,” Lou said.
Lou signed the three of us to his label, Ode Records, at that time distributed by Columbia Records. With encouragement from Lou, Lester, Toni, Charlie, and Danny, I began to feel comfortable as part of a recording band. Everyone took me at my word that I didn’t want to perform live and turned their focus wholly toward the studio. But even a recording band needed a name.
“Hmm,” mused Danny. “We’re all from New York…. Why don’t we call ourselves….” He paused, then exclaimed with as much enthusiasm as if he had just discovered penicillin, “the City!”
That’s how quickly it happened. One minute we had no name. The next, we were in the studio recording as the City. We wanted to keep the band to just the three of us, so we took Lou’s suggestion and hired Jim Gordon to play drums on the album.
The title of the City’s first and only album, Now That Everything’s Been Said, was the name of a song I had written with Toni. We recorded that song, a song by Margaret Allison called “My Sweet Home,” and ten others that I had cowritten with either Toni, Gerry, or Dave Palmer, the lead singer and principal songwriter for the now defunct Myddle Class. Gerry and I were still in transition. We were speaking but not collaborating on songs. Though Gerry wasn’t directly involved in the recording of Now That Everything’s Been Said, we had already cowritten six of the songs on that album: “Snow Queen,” “Wasn’t Born to Follow,” “A Man Without a Dream,” “Lady,” “All My Time,” and “Hi-de-Ho (That Old Sweet Roll).” In 1970, Blood, Sweat & Tears would release a version of “Hi-de-Ho” from their album Blood, Sweat & Tears 3. The BS&T version, featuring the vocal of David Clayton-Thomas and the band’s distinctive horn section, would rise to #14 in Billboard.
Danny wrote these liner notes thirty years later for a rerelease of the album in 1999:
It seems like a million years ago when Carole, Charlie, and I sat in the living room of Carole’s Laurel Canyon house and worked these tunes up. Even though we had a group name, this was Carole’s record all the way. She would sing or play parts to Charlie and me, and once we got it right, we could hear how great this record was going to be.
By the time we went into Sound Recorders in Hollywood, I was pumped. This was the first album I had ever played on and I was thrilled to be working with the people at the top of their game. With Lou Adler producing and Jim Gordon on drums we went into Armin Steiner’s studio [Sound Recorders]. I soaked it up like a sponge and for me it was a learning experience of a lifetime.
The City album remains a great example of Carole’s brilliant writing skills, Lou Adler’s legendary production sensibilities, and Jim Gordon’s amazing musicality.
The seeds of the enduring classic album Tapestry were planted here, and I consider myself extremely lucky and proud to have been a part of it all.
We all considered ourselves extremely lucky. In fact, when the album was finished, we thought it was brilliant. Even without touring, we had no doubt that Now That Everything’s Been Said was destined for huge success. The next step was for Charlie, Kootch, and me to pose for album cover photos in hippie garb (i.e., our everyday attire). Columbia’s art department hired Jim Marshall to take photos in various locations around Los Angeles consistent wit
h the theme of a city. Executives at Columbia were so enthusiastic that they flew Charlie and Jim to New York so Jim could photograph Charlie eating a hot dog next to a street vendor, and other New York–specific activities. In the late sixties, record companies were not afraid to spend whatever it took to create an artistic cover or produce a creative album. To my knowledge, none of Jim Marshall’s photos of Charlie in New York ever made it onto the album.
I was twenty-six when Now That Everything’s Been Said was released in 1968. Charlie, Danny, and I expected it to zoom to the top of the charts within, at most, a few weeks. Individually and together we optimistically imagined the album’s success as if it had already happened. Danny and Charlie kept telling each other, “It’s a great album. The City is gonna be number 1 with a bullet!” The album didn’t get above 500 with an anchor. It never even charted.
Did the material fall short? Was something lacking in the presentation? Was it because I was unwilling to go on the road to promote the album? Whatever the reason, our disappointment at the failure of the album to chart would pass, but our joy at having written and recorded the City’s first and only album would endure. As would the music.
Chapter Eight
Truth Is One, Paths Are Many
After the demise of Now That Everything’s Been Said, Charlie told me he wanted to get a place of his own. He told me this gently as he held me and reminded me that he had gone from living with his parents to rooming with friends in New York to living with me. At twenty-two, Charlie had never lived alone.
At twenty-seven, I couldn’t argue with his logic, but it was little Carol who heard the news, and she wasn’t taking it well. All she—I—could do was hold on to him tightly, as if that would keep him with me. At last, after promising that he would always love me (a promise kept), Charlie stepped back and began to gather his things. As I watched him drive away I blamed myself, yet again, for my inability to keep two people together who loved each other.