by Carole King
After the show my group and I made our way to the hotel where the McCartneys were staying. One of their assistants met Joe in the lobby and escorted all twelve of us up to the area where a lot of other people were waiting to see Paul and Linda. The McCartneys’ entourage on the road included some of their children, teachers, the band, band family, the crew, some crew family, and a multiplicity of personnel essential to run the intricate machinery of a behemoth concert tour. I would have bet money that the traveling population on that tour exceeded that of many American towns.
The McCartneys’ very specific culinary requirements had increased the size of their entourage by the number of people it took to shop for food and cook for the entire assemblage. I’ve never encountered a more impressive buffet on tour. Notwithstanding Linda’s criteria that no food could be served that had ever had a face, the vegetarian menu was varied, organic, and delicious. I’m probably not the best judge of how it was for nonvegetarians because my own taste in food mostly coincided with Linda’s, except that I sometimes ate fish. My band and crew were usually seen at mealtimes tearing into mounds of bacon and eggs or double helpings of fried chicken and mashed potatoes, but even they raved about the excellence of the vegetarian cuisine.
Considering the show he’d just put on, I couldn’t believe how much energy Paul still had. Watching him and Linda move through the room I was struck by the way they seemed to move as one, much as they seemed to move through life. It was impossible to imagine Paul without Linda or Linda without Paul. Linda might not have been movie-star beautiful, but she had a natural beauty that emanated from her blue eyes and radiant smile. I could see how she might have impressed the rock stars who had allowed her to take their pictures.
When Paul and Linda reached my group they spent more than a polite amount of time with us. Up close, I could see that Linda had removed her show makeup. Her freckles and natural blush on a face framed by her straight blonde hair gave her an earthy, girl-next-door appearance. When Paul spoke, of course everyone’s eyes were on him. When his attention was momentarily diverted, Linda kept the conversation going. When at last Paul was pulled away to greet other visitors, my group dispersed and I found myself standing with Linda, face to face, just the two of us. She began to talk about the challenges and joys of motherhood. I listened and commiserated. Then I told her how grateful I was to have spent so much time living in relative privacy with my Larkey children in a simple, natural environment. Linda said that she probably would enjoy something like that, but Paul’s fans would never allow him to get that far away. Just then Paul called her name. She squeezed my hand and then went to join him, leaving me with a more personal appreciation of her devotion to Paul and their children. I thought, If Linda can inspire this kind of feeling in people, no wonder Paul is happy.
My friends and I were gathering to leave as a group when Paul and Linda walked over to where we were. That’s when Paul showed yet another side of his talent for entertaining. He described a recent appearance on Late Night with David Letterman with a gift for mimicry that was startling in its accuracy. Playing the respective roles of David Letterman and Paul Shaffer, McCartney completely captured the essence of both men. When Paul McCartney quoted Paul Shaffer, he became Paul Shaffer. Replying as Letterman, his facial expressions and voice morphed into those of Letterman, right down to Dave’s Hoosier accent.
Finally it was time to say goodbye. I hugged Paul, then, taking Linda’s hands in both of mine, I told her how much I had enjoyed visiting with her, and how very much I had enjoyed her performance that night. When I specifically complimented her solid rhythm on the keyboard and her tight vocal blend with Paul and the others, Linda’s eyes became moist. She thanked me and embraced me. Then she stepped back.
Eight years later, on April 17, 1998, Linda McCartney succumbed to breast cancer. She left a legacy of love, family, respect for all living things, and her remarkable photographs. She was fifty-six.
Chapter Four
A Quiet Place to Live
I was able to tour and travel in 1989 and 1990 in part because Charlie willingly absorbed the day-to-day responsibilities for our two teenagers, and in part because two young friends from New York and L.A. moved to Idaho to help take care of my ranch. Elissa Kline and Erik Gillberg signed on for a year and stayed for seventeen, leaving only when the son they had raised at the ranch through early childhood began asking if he could live closer than four miles away from his nearest friends. While they were still at the ranch, when I was on tour, I was comforted to hear about Erik’s and Elissa’s discovery of their individual creativity as they and Ian explored the inner worlds that so often make themselves known when one lives at nature’s pace. They get it, I thought with mixed emotions, wishing I, too, could be there. I might have composed a song about how much I longed to be in a quiet place had I not already written one in 1973.
All I want is a quiet place to live
Where I can enjoy the fruits of my labor
Read the paper
And not have to cry out loud
In the years after I wrote “A Quiet Place to Live” I experienced times of peace and times of turmoil—which could describe anyone’s life. But in 1990, the year I turned forty-eight, my life was anything but quiet.
After Rick’s and my divorce became final in June 1990, I was eager to return home and again experience my ranch as a place of tranquility. But fate had something else in mind. First Disney asked me to film a video, paradoxically called Carole King: Going Home, that would include interviews and concert footage from the City Streets Tour.* Then in December I was cast as a teacher in an ABC After-School Special called “It’s Only Rock and Roll,” shot in Pine Bush, New York. There I became friends with John Gibbons, an actor who played one of my students. The math of me at forty-eight and him at twenty-seven added up to, at most, a brief encounter. That encounter lasted for six years during which we accumulated a wide range of adjectives that described our time together. “Quiet” was not one of them. Between John’s exponentially increasing collection of cassettes and, later, CDs, his sporting equipment spilling out of every closet, and the multitude of his frequent and lively visitors, the continual wind from the opening and closing of doors made me feel as if I were rooming with a tornado.
John and I made frequent trips to L.A. On one such trip in the fall of 1991, I went to write with Brian Wilson at his studio. Brian had two pianos. I sat at one and he at the other. Listening to him noodle around with familiar chord clusters, I was reminded not only of how much Brian had contributed to popular music but also of how much I had personally enjoyed his work. Even when Brian had had problems functioning in what most of us think of as “the real world,” he had always been a pure, perfect channel for the music of the gods.
That Saturday we worked for a little over an hour on a riff in E-flat that Brian had come up with. We experimented with chords and harmonies around the recurring phrase, “Rock, rock, rockin’ and a-rollin’,” until our collective span of attention ran out. As I began to gather my things I had an impulse to tell Brian that I thought the tune we had started sounded like a quintessential Brian Wilson song. But before I could say a word, he remarked that he thought our little ditty sounded exactly like a Carole King song.
We agreed to meet the following afternoon to finish the song, but I never made it.
The next morning I went for a hike alone. I didn’t realize that a trail leading down a steep cliff was a false trail until I lost my footing. I bumped and slid all the way down a sixty-foot cliff. The muscles of my left buttock took every bump with what felt like the force of a sledgehammer. After the first few bumps I lost count. Finally I landed on the beach below the cliff. My left foot hit first and took all the shock. My body crumpled onto the sand. Then I rolled onto my back. I had been fully conscious the whole way down, and as I lay there, panting, I was aware of my surroundings. I wiggled my toes, legs, arms, and fingers. Then I rolled my head from side to side. Every stimulus was followed by the response I w
as hoping for. Then, lying on my back with my left knee pointing skyward to form a triangle, I was just thinking how miraculous it was that I had survived the fall and avoided injuring my spine when a bolt of pain struck with what I imagined was the force of a meteor. It was the most excruciating pain I had ever known. On a scale of one to ten, I would have rated it at seventeen had I been able to speak. All I could do was moan. My awareness was reduced to a core of agonizing pain, at the periphery of which I sensed rather than saw people coming to help. A helicopter arrived to provide me with speedy transport to a hospital. It also brought EMTs who did their utmost to ease my pain and prevent further injury until they could get me to an emergency room. The medication they gave me brought the level of pain down to about fourteen, which allowed me to convey John’s phone number to one of the bystanders before I was evacuated.
In the emergency room, a doctor examined me, gave me a prescription for stronger pain medication, and released me into the care of John, who had come to take me home. Though he drove as slowly and carefully as he could, I felt every seam in the road. Every time we drove over anything rougher than polished asphalt I emitted a gut-wrenching cry. On the way home he stopped to fill the prescription and gave me a pill that we both hoped would take effect before he carried me up the stairs to where we were staying. Once he got me upstairs he laid me gently on the couch and helped me with basic needs through the night, but the muscles in my buttock had been so badly bruised that I couldn’t stop moaning. The next day John took me to a different hospital. At the first hospital’s emergency room I had been in so much pain from my banged-up buttock that no one, including me, noticed any other injury. When an orthopedist at the second hospital heard that I had landed on my left foot, he immediately ordered an X-ray. My foot had been broken in three places. I remained in the hospital for eleven days. It took six months after that for my bruised buttock and broken bones to heal enough for me to walk without assistance, and another six months of intense physical therapy to achieve normal functionality.
During the third night of my hospital stay, as I lay in bed waiting impatiently for the next painkiller, tears of self-pity began streaming down my cheeks. Why me? I asked. The answer came, not in words, but in the realization that I had been given an opportunity to expand my compassion and knowledge of human nature. I had experienced firsthand what it was like to live with mind-numbing physical pain so intense and so inescapable that drugs could relieve it only briefly, if at all. And in addition to the care and attention I received from John, I got to witness and simultaneously benefit from the competence and generosity of all the medical professionals I encountered, including physical therapists and practitioners of alternative medicine. The entire experience from injury to recovery convinced me that medical caregivers deserve a special wing in the Hotel Afterlife with extra helpings of caviar, champagne, and chocolate.
Five days into my stay I remembered my missed appointment with Brian Wilson. I felt terrible about having stood him up and called him as soon as I could. Brian was sympathetic and relieved.
“I was worried about you,” he said. “I’m sorry you got hurt.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Me, too. I can’t wait to finish what we were working on.”
Brian said, “You work on getting better, and we’ll write again soon.”
“Soon” turned out to be fifteen years.*
Chapter Five
The Troubles
My pain was nearly gone and my injuries mostly healed in the summer of 1992 when John came home even more excited than usual. He’d just been invited to go to Ireland to spend a week with four of his friends sightseeing and visiting some of their relatives. When he asked, “Would you like to come along?” I had my bags packed before he got to the question mark. In keeping with the budget of most of the group, we stayed either in bed-and-breakfasts or, strictly separated by gender, in the narrow twin beds of the boys’ and girls’ bedrooms of the modest homes of the relatives. There would be not the slightest opportunity for sexual congress between unmarried guests in our hosts’ Irish Catholic households.
We spent a staggering amount of time in pubs.* The people we met were unfailingly friendly, humorous, and helpful. In Ireland, when you ask people for directions, they don’t simply tell you how to get there. A man will get in his car and lead you there—never mind that it’s thirty kilometers each way. If you ask a woman for directions, she’ll be equally helpful. She’ll send her brother, husband, or son.
One night John and I met a young woman from Belfast—I’ll call her Dierdre—who was putting herself through law school by working as a waitress at a pub. When she invited us to join her for a visit to her family’s home we were eager to go in spite of the danger, or, for some in our group, because of it.
The conflict known as “the Troubles” between Irish Catholics and Protestants in the six counties of Ulster had been going on since the seventeenth century. This made visiting Belfast a good deal more of an adventure for us than, say, a visit to Ennis in County Clare. The warring factions’ respective names for the six counties sounded almost the same. Catholics considered the six counties in “the north of Ireland” part of the Irish Republic, while Protestants considered the counties a separate entity called “Northern Ireland.” You did not want to use the wrong name with the wrong people.
As we drove north toward the disputed territory we had to pass through several checkpoints. At each checkpoint our rental car was thoroughly searched for bombs and other weapons. There were no exceptions; every vehicle was searched. After being cleared to enter Belfast, we found our way to Dierdre’s house. There we were greeted warmly by a gathering of relatives that included our friend, her mother, her aunt, and, soon after we got there, her father and uncle arriving home from work. We were sitting in the parlor chatting with the family when Dierdre’s twelve-year-old brother came in. Dierdre whispered to us that the lad was several hours late arriving home from school. During our conversation about matters ranging from the price of cotton fabric in America to the optimum amount of dill to put in a salad, you’d never have known how worried his mother had been. Now that he was home, she didn’t berate him or ask questions. She simply told him to wash his hands, then she went into the kitchen with her sister to start serving dinner while Dierdre organized seating around the table.
Almost impossibly, there was enough room and food for all of us. Dierdre’s father led us in saying grace. Then massive plates of stew, mashed potatoes, soda bread, and salad were passed around along with pitchers of lemonade and iced tea. It was only when everyone had a full plate and had begun to eat that the boy told us the reason for his delayed arrival. One of his mates had been killed in a fracas between Catholics and Protestants. When our lad had arrived at school, the authorities had asked him to accompany the adults delivering the news to his friend’s family. Dierdre’s brother gave us the details as matter-of-factly as an American twelve-year-old might have come home and reported to his family at dinner that one of his teammates had broken his ankle during football practice.
I found the boy’s unemotional delivery more frightening than anything I’d seen in the newspaper or on TV. I found it difficult to wrap my mind around the fact that children were speaking about the killing of friends and relatives as if such killing were a matter of course. Even more horrifying, it was a matter of course.
At the end of our week in Ireland we flew home to America, leaving the children of Belfast in Belfast. But I couldn’t leave behind the memory of mothers waking up every morning to see their husbands off to work and their children off to school knowing that there were more than even odds that someone known to each mother, maybe one of her own family, maybe even—Jesus, Mary, and Joseph forbid!—her own child, would be killed that day. How could they ever begin to fix such a problem?
Put the mothers in charge.
Chapter Six
Colour of Your Dreams
I was powerless to fix the Troubles, so I redirected my frustration into creating
songs that I hoped would lift, educate, or entertain a listener. If I got it right, a song might do all three.
I wrote the songs for Colour of Your Dreams variously in California, Idaho, and New York and recorded them piecemeal in 1992 and 1993 with Rudy Guess at his studio in California. I released the album in 1993 in partnership with Hilton Rosenthal on a small independent label called Rhythm Safari. The 1994 Colour of Your Dreams Tour was memorialized in a video titled Carole King—In Concert.* In addition to the members of my band, In Concert featured Slash of Guns N’ Roses as my guest. My decision to pair musically with Slash was perplexing to many of my fans, but I was being true to my custom of expanding my repertoire to include musical styles with which I was relatively unfamiliar. I had been inspired to write “Hold Out for Love” by Slash’s guitar work on “Sweet Child O’ Mine.” When Slash came to Rudy’s studio to play on my song, the parts I had been imagining in my head came alive with his passion, energy, and the skill of a good musician who knew exactly what I wanted. When Slash performed live with me on “Hold Out for Love” on the Colour of Your Dreams Tour, I got a tremendous kick out of watching audiences’ skepticism turn to appreciation.