A Natural Woman

by Carole King

  “I liked that I could set a mood in B with the lights. And I always put the players where everyone could see each other. Your piano was in the middle of the room, with the drums where you could see them and the drummer could see you. I put everyone around you in a semicircle so everyone could see you because you conducted with your head. I always changed the control room lighting for the mood of the song, and I did the same with the lighting in the studio.”

  I never knew any of that.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Technology

  I was lucky to have Lou Adler as a producer and Hank Cicalo as a recording engineer. Some producers claimed to be able to “fix it in the mix,” but that phrase was never in Hank’s or Lou’s vocabulary. They knew that a mix could turn out well only if they had captured a great performance, and they created an environment in the studio and control room that would be most favorable to that outcome. They also knew that a bad mix could ruin a great performance and they worked diligently to make sure that never happened on their watch. I believe that along with the talent of all the writers and musicians, it was Hank’s skills in the mixing room combined with Lou’s instinct and A&M’s state-of-the-art equipment that put Tapestry across the finish line.

  In the early seventies, state-of-the-art equipment included a console that I found beyond my ability to comprehend until an assistant engineer explained that it consisted of multiple identical modules. Sound was recorded through magnetic reel-to-reel tape and analog recording machines with calibrated motors that moved the spools of tape at a predetermined speed. If we wanted to lower the key so I could reach a high note, Hank slowed the machine down and then brought it back up to speed after I had sung the note. Did I sound like a chipmunk? No one would notice. An editing or splicing block with slots for a straight or angled cut allowed an engineer to cut and reconnect audiotape with precision. Did we want to take out everything between the end of the first verse and the beginning of the third chorus? A skilled engineer with a sharp razor blade and an even sharper sense of where the downbeats matched could do that.

  During the overdub phase of Tapestry, Lou suggested that I layer background vocals in my own voice on some of the tracks. In the early sixties Gerry and I had accomplished layering by recording back and forth between two machines, but after a few overdubs the tape became too noisy. That didn’t stop Donnie from releasing Little Eva’s “The Loco-Motion.” Most people would say that the first sound on that recording was the locomotive snare drum. Not so. The first sound on that track was tape hiss from all the overdubs back and forth. But a clean recording of layered overdubs was possible in the early seventies because of Sel-Sync,* an innovation that allowed me to hear previously recorded material through a “play” head at the same time as I played or sang new material onto a blank track through a “record” head. Somehow the technology compensated for the physical gap between the play head and the record head and synchronized the timing of the old material with the new. For an artist who thrived on improvising new layers over previous ones, Sel-Sync was a godsend.

  After mixing came mastering. A master was a disc cut on a lathe with a stylus that converted the recorded signal into grooves on the disc. The master was used to stamp out the mothers from which vinyl records were pressed. Like photo negatives, mothers were the reverse of the final product. Where masters had grooves, mothers had ridges that would recreate the grooves in the vinyl. I understood master-mother-vinyl, but I would never understand how sound became grooves. The good news was, I didn’t need to. My job was to create a song and perform it, then watch in awe as highly skilled people used technology to convey music from microphones to tape, then to a master, a mother, and ultimately a vinyl disc with a label and a hole in the middle.

  In the fifties and early sixties singles were predominant. Singles were seven-inch black vinyl discs that played at 45 revolutions per minute, with a one-and-a-half-inch hole in the middle of each disc. On a multispeed phonograph, playing 45s required individual plastic adapters or a drop changer that fit over the spindle. A drop changer held up to ten 45s stacked several inches above the turntable. When the phonograph was turned on, the first 45 would drop and the sound would be transmitted through the stylus to an amplifier and speakers. After the first disc finished and the needle reached a predetermined spot near the center post, the machine swung the arm out of the way. The second disc would drop down, and so on, one at a time, until all ten discs were stacked on the turntable. Sometimes the needle got stuck and played a scratchy sound until the arm was lifted manually. It was beyond our imagination that producers of something called “hip-hop” would deliberately put the sound of scratching from a stuck needle on a track and call it music.

  In the early seventies long-playing albums (LPs) were favored by most music fans. LPs were twelve-inch vinyl discs meant to be played at 33 revolutions per minute. Singles were still being pressed but were used mostly for promotion. Artists were shunning the industry’s prior custom of releasing albums with one hit and eleven tracks of filler. Instead they strove to include as many high-quality tracks as a disc could accommodate. Other advantages of an LP were that a listener didn’t have to get up as often to change the record, and the twelve-inch-square covers could be adorned with the psychedelic art, photos, lyrics, and liner notes that listeners prized almost as much as the music.

  Continuous-loop eight-track players were popular in rural communities because they traveled well in cars and trucks. Cassette tapes took over in the eighties until compact discs replaced them in the nineties. By the dawn of the twenty-first century most people’s CD collections had disappeared into their computers, where they reappeared on the screen as MP3s and other dots, letters, and numbers that enabled consumers to download for free what they used to have to pay for. Distraught record companies aimed lawsuits at consumers like buckshot until Apple hit the bull’s-eye with iTunes.

  The equipment we used in 1970 was a link in a chain of audio technology that some say began with the sixteen-inch transcription discs, or V-discs, on which Billie Holiday’s performances were recorded. Today we can see audio on a computer screen. We can record, change, manipulate, and even create notes, sounds, tempos, loops, and other elements of rhythm, melody, and words. If I sing “tonigh” and I want to hear that final “t,” I can copy and paste an audio image of the “t” from the end of the word “beat” elsewhere in the song, so then we hear “tonight” as I intended to sing it. Using software such as Pro Tools and Auto-Tune, an artist can record a sophisticated, multilayered track on a laptop at a desk in a hotel room for (depending on which hotel) less than it cost back in the day to rent, let alone purchase, a studio-quality multitrack machine. The technology is changing so rapidly that some recording applications in use today could be obsolete by the time you read this.

  Technology is not necessarily helpful in my hands. Trying to record and manipulate audio takes me away from the emotional trajectory of a song. In the hands of engineers such as Hank Cicalo and, in my later studio work, Rudy Guess, technology can be another instrument. Some might argue that it’s the most important instrument because it records and enhances all the others. Others believe technology is making music less musical. Which brings me to a question I’m asked consistently in interviews and discussions:

  “Has today’s technology lowered the quality of music from that of previous generations?”

  I believe that as long as people have hearts and minds and the capacity to laugh, cry, dance, feel, and fall in and out of love, a good song will always find an audience because it connects us to our humanity. If technology can help people make that connection, I’m a fan.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Tapestry Snapshots

  I was so deeply involved in the making of Tapestry that it’s difficult for me to describe those happy, productive weeks in a logical or linear fashion. But these random scenes remain vibrantly alive for me in memory snapshots:

  James and Joni sitting on adjoining stools, their heads almos
t touching as they whisper to each other and share a private moment before Hank is ready for them to sing background harmonies on “Will You Love Me Tomorrow.”

  Though James and Joni are singing on separate mics, their closeness is an almost physical presence. I can’t tell you what specific frequency it occupies, but the intimacy between them can still be heard and felt on this recording.

  Me at the microphone recording a scratch vocal with utter abandon, knowing I don’t have to strive for perfection.

  After a basic track has been recorded, I quickly record a scratch or guide vocal so other musicians and vocalists can hear the song while overdubbing additional parts. Because I love singing over a great basic track my musicians have just delivered, the scratch vocal is often my most heartfelt performance, and just as often we can’t use it because I’m too hoarse from having sung the song multiple times while the musicians were learning it.

  The sight of my face in the glass between studio and booth reflecting my joy as I improvise layered vocals and keyboards over the basic track and lead vocal.

  I have no idea what I’ll do on the next overdub until I sing along with what’s already there. Layer by layer, I weave an aural tapestry out of sound waves. Some of my favorite moments in recording are when I hear a perfect vocal or piano part come out of me with no plan or forethought. Even better: it was captured on tape!

  Having just finished a take, I’m in the dimly lit studio waiting for Lou to tell me what he thought of my performance.

  I see Lou talking to Hank, but I can’t hear them through the triple glass window. The talkback button, controlled by Lou, is my lifeline.

  Me sitting on a high wooden bench in Studio B surrounded by a Hammond organ, a couple of electric keyboards, assorted microphones and cables, and the omnipresent candles and incense.

  The dim light makes it difficult for me to see the keyboard controls as I search for the right sound to create a dark, spacious mood for the recording of “Tapestry.”

  Me fussing with my headphones to get them in the correct position so I can hear what Lou is hearing in the control room and also hear live in the room the string quartet playing the arrangement I wrote the night before.

  As I prepare to conduct the quartet I worry that I won’t do it right, but the musicians encourage me to conduct with whatever movement comes naturally. “Don’t worry,” they say. “We’ll do the rest.” And they do.

  Lou, Hank, assistant engineer Norm Kinney, the musicians, and me crowded in the control room listening to the take that Hank has just recorded with such efficiency that not one creative moment was lost. I have no idea that Hank is building a sound that will endure through many decades.

  Playback for a band can sometimes be fraught with “more me” syndrome, with each player wanting to hear more of his or her part. Lou wisely keeps my vocal down for the band playback so they can enjoy hearing themselves way up in the mix, but everyone knows that the final mix will have a more realistic balance, i.e., more me.

  Charlie in the studio punching in a bass note.

  The technology to move a note up or down on a computer screen has yet to be invented, but with Sel-Sync it takes less than a minute to punch in the right note. A wry-smile truth among bass players is that the best take is invariably the one with the bass mistake. If the band achieves a good performance without a bass mistake, we know we haven’t peaked yet.

  Lou quietly making suggestions, keeping the process going, never allowing anything to compromise the integrity of a song or the relatively simple presentation that will become a hallmark of my work.

  My daughters and their friends flowing in and out of our sessions in jeans or long dresses with their hair pulled up in flowered headbands.

  The only time Louise and Sherry weren’t allowed in the studio was when the RECORD light was on. Otherwise they and their friends wandered in and out at will. Sometimes, when I had to work at night, Sherry or Louise, at home with Willa Mae, would call to ask if they could pleeeeeease do their homework in the morning.

  “No,” I’d say. “You need to do it tonight!”

  Other times—inconsistent mom that I was—I’d say, “All right. Just don’t forget to set your alarm!”

  Sometimes the girls needed me to settle a dispute about who left whose sweater crumpled in a ball at the bottom of their closet.

  “No, Mom, it can’t wait. We need you to deal with this now!”

  “I don’t care whose sweater it is,” I said, channeling King Solomon. “You pick it up, your sister can hang it up, and then both of you go finish your homework!”

  I may have been a professional songwriter and recording artist in the hallowed halls of A&M Studios, but to my daughters I was the homework police.

  Chapter Fifteen

  In Retrospect

  One of my greatest joys as a songwriter has always been hearing different interpretations of a song. I’ve mentioned Gerry’s and my original demo of “Natural Woman” starting out one way, the version Aretha released being considerably different, and my version on Tapestry representing a third way. My live performance of “Natural Woman” with a full band is unlike either of my earlier versions. Since Aretha recorded what I consider the definitive version, “Natural Woman” has been recorded by many great artists, among them Céline Dion, Mary J. Blige, and (with a small but important lyric adjustment) James Ingram, Rod Stewart, and Bobby Womack.

  To develop such interpretations, an artist typically works with a producer. Some producers are more effective than others. Lou Adler was one of the most effective in the business. Among his many attributes, for me the most valuable was his ability to give his artists a safe space in which to be creative. Lou had ideas of his own, but he saw himself mostly as a facilitator. Like all the great sidemen, he knew when not to play. In addition to offering his own ideas when they were needed, Lou listened carefully to my suggestions, and if they couldn’t be implemented at the time, he would remember and find a way to incorporate them. It’s difficult for me to give an example because our respective ideas are so thoroughly integrated into the whole album. And even as he was minutely attentive to every detail, he never lost sight of the big picture. For Lou that meant preserving the soul and integrity of the music while coordinating the work of the artist, band, engineers, graphic artists, photographers, and business people to create a package that would be commercially successful. In 1970, when many producers and recording artists purported to disdain commercial success, the kid from Boyle Heights never lost sight of it.

  Our strengths were complementary. Where I lacked patience, Lou persevered through extreme tedium and repetition. He could listen to the same thing over and over with intense concentration on infinitesimal but important details. Often Lou and Hank handled the preliminary stages of mixing and then had me come in with fresh ears. After they had spent hours experimenting with where to put the cymbals and percussion in the stereo pan in relation to Danny’s rhythm guitar and my piano, I’d come in and say, “Try bringing the reverb down on my lead vocal at the beginning of the first verse,” and then other things would fall into place. It was a team effort in which each of us contributed valuable ideas.

  It was during the mixing of Tapestry that I discovered a listening perspective that I called the “other room listen.” I asked Hank to play an almost final mix a few times with the door open while I went out to the lounge, got a cup of tea, skimmed through a magazine, and exchanged pleasantries with one of the studio employees on her way to the ladies’ room. Hearing the mix with only partial concentration allowed my subconscious mind to lead me directly to any necessary corrections. It might be a too-soft piano fill, a too-loud snare drum, or the lead vocal out of balance with the background vocals. But when a mix was right, the “other room listen” confirmed it.

  Another system of checks and balances involved listening on a variety of speakers. Mostly we listened through the massive Altecs that dominated the corners of the control room with a bass level that foreshadowed the woo
fers on wheels that would emerge later in the twentieth century. As well as listening through the Altecs, Lou often listened through headphones so he could hear the discrete left, right, and center separation more clearly. Years later, when I asked Lou why he used the headphones so much, he said, “I always liked hearing your voice and piano in the middle of the top of my head.” As we got closer to a final mix we switched alternately to smaller speakers such as the Auratones* perched on the bridge of the console or the tinny, monaural car radio speaker directly in front of us that replicated the conditions under which most people would be listening. If a mix sounded good through all four systems, we took it to the next level: the “overnight listen” in which we brought acetates home, played them on our respective stereos, and got further input from friends and family members.

  Lou came up with the sequence of the tracks on Tapestry. On analog vinyl albums and cassette tapes there was an interval approximately midway through, during which the listener had to turn the product over. Until CDs made that interval obsolete, an album sequence had to take that pause into account. Knowing that pacing could make or break an album, I suggested several different orders for Lou to try, but we always kept coming back to his sequence. Now I can’t imagine it any other way.

  There was an actual tapestry. Inside the original double album cover is an image of the needlepoint I worked on when I wasn’t playing or singing. You can see where I stitched the words “thank you” before I gave it to Lou.

  People often preface their Tapestry story with, “You’ve probably heard this story a million times.” But each individual account of how Tapestry affected someone’s life is important to me because it’s important to that person. While we were recording the album I wasn’t thinking about all the people who might be affected by it, nor was I thinking about the level of success it might attain. I just wanted to get the songs on tape, enjoy the process with friends and fellow musicians, and maybe get some radio play. Hearing years later from people who grew up in countries around the world about how much the album had meant to them was something I couldn’t have imagined. Whatever the reason, I’m thankful that I was given this uncommon opportunity to create something that touched so many people in a positive way.